Summertime Dream (33 page)

“Where are you? Home? Aren’t you supposed to be in Atlanta?”

“I finished Atlanta early. I’m back in Falk’s Bend. I just got here. I’m not selling the house. And—” He took a deep breath. He looked up the stairs as Margie came down. Light winked off his ring on her hand. She gave him that sweet shy smile and his heart swelled with happiness. “She said yes. It’s a long story how I got here, but the short version is I’m getting married. Margie said yes.”

Mom’s happy shriek came over the phone loud enough even Margie heard. “What! I think you need to catch me up here, Chris. I’m confused. Margie, the girl in your emails? I’m confused, but overjoyed for you.”

Overwhelmed once more by what he’d done and how
happy
he was, he took another deep breath. “I’ve moved to Falk’s Bend. I’m keeping the house. I figured out what I want in my life. And Margie said yes.”

“She’s there with you? Can I say hello?”

“Yes, sure.” He held out the phone. “Mom wants to say hello.”

Margie’s eyes widened. “Now?” she whispered.

He grinned and set the phone in her hand. “She won’t bite.”

She gingerly raised the phone to her ear. “Hi? Yes, a wonderful surprise for me too. Yes. Thank you. I look forward to meeting you. Yes. He’s great. I will. Bye.” She handed the phone back, deeply blushing. “She wants to talk to you again.”

Before she could slip away, he caught an arm around her waist, and pressed wandering kisses to the soft skin below her ear. “Hi, Mom.”

“She sounds lovely and sweet and I’m so happy for you two. I’ll let you go and you have a wonderful day. Call me tomorrow when you can talk longer and tell me everything.”

“Thanks. Oh—and Mom, sorry, I almost forgot. Thank you for the boxes.”

Mom chuckled. “You haven’t even looked at them yet, have you? It’s not what you think. Your email got me to thinking and those are boxes your dad had packed away in the attic. I’d forgotten about them, they’d been in storage so long. I didn’t open them, so I’m not sure what all is in there, but I do believe everything in them belonged to your Grandma Loretta and Grandpa Will. Your dad would want you to have them. You never know, they might help you in your search. So open them soon.”

He turned to Margie. “Mom says those boxes are all stuff Dad packed up belonging to my grandparents.”

“Really? I’ll get a knife to cut the tape.” Margie headed off to the kitchen.

“Thanks, Mom. We’re going to open them and take a look.”

“I hope they help. I’ll let you go. I’m going to plan a trip to come see you as soon as possible. I love you.”

“Love you too. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Margie returned with the utility knife. He slit through layers of plastic tape and older layers of paper tape.

The three boxes held a hodgepodge of items: photo albums, books, baby clothes, knickknacks, Army memorabilia, postcards, a pair of bookends, a wooden mug, a jewelry box with costume pins and earrings, and a cigar box tied closed with ribbon.

He vaguely remembered the albums, not the neat and decorated scrapbook style albums Mom enjoyed making, but simple collections of photos of his grandparents’ lives beginning with a college age picture of Loretta and one of Will in his uniform.

He turned the page.

And found Nico and Will together in the same photo, arms clapped over each other’s shoulders, mugging with broad grins for the camera. Definitely Nico.

Margie’s sharp intake of breath echoed his own shock. “Oh, wow. They were friends.”

That page and several following held more snapshots of the two young men and Loretta, carefree young people spending time together, very much like the photos he had of his friends and himself at the river. Except, now, with the knowledge of the letters from Nico to Loretta, he could see the connection and passion shining between Loretta and Nico in the photos and how Grandpa Will was on the sidelines.

Then a solitary wedding picture of Grandpa Will in his uniform and Grandma Loretta in a flowered dress, both solemnly wide-eyed and weighed with something heavy.

And no more pictures of Nico.

Baby pictures of Dad and his brothers filled succeeding pages, the three boys growing up, and joining the Army, family vacations and holidays, Grandpa Will over in Vietnam, Dad and Mom marrying, and then Christopher himself. The photos of Dad and Mom together got him choked up. Damn, he missed Dad so much.

A soft squeeze of Margie’s hand on his shoulder helped ease the wave of sorrow.

He untied the cigar box and found a thick stack of folded feminine stationery. A chill shiver ran his spine as he picked up the first letter.

Dearest Nico,

Just a short note to say I received your letter today and how happy your words made me. I wish I could call you and hear your voice. Things are the same here, but your letters help me through each day we are apart.

I miss you so much. I will write again soon. Tell Will hello and thank him for me, and tell him I miss him too.

With all my love, Lori

He
read through each one, handing them off to Margie. These were the replies to all the letters from Nico they had found in the floorboard hole.

Last, at the bottom, a newspaper obituary for Nicomedo Giuseppe Ruggeri, dated August 17, 1948.

“Oh, no.” Tears filled Margie’s voice.

His throat was tight, too. “We knew something had to have happened.”

“I just thought they broke up.”

A thick folded sheaf of paper filled the bottom of the cigar box under the obituary. Initially dated a week before his dad had been born, the letter was written in Loretta’s handwriting, with paragraphs in Grandpa Will’s handwriting here and there throughout the twelve pages written over the first year of Dad’s life.

My Sunshine,

I call you my Sunshine, because that’s what you bring to my sad heart, but I already know you are our Nicholas, that you are the son my Nico wanted so dearly...

The letter pieced the last of the mystery and whole story of Loretta and Nico and Will together unfolded: Nico, the son of a teen mother who’d died in childbirth, and Grandpa Will, orphaned by a tenement fire, had been friends all their lives, having grown up in the same Boston orphanage. They’d enlisted in the Army together, survived the end of World War II together, and by further good fortune both managed to get posted to Fort Monmouth in New Jersey.

Carl Falk’s plans to keep Loretta safely tucked away from men at a women’s college failed miserably thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Loretta and her roommate and Nico and Will had met by chance as they all waited for the museum to open that morning. Chatting led to the four spending the day and evening together and by the end of the night, Loretta and Nico had fallen passionately, deeply in love.

They knew they were in for an uphill battle. Loretta’s parents had made their particular expectations for her future very clear, and Nico, poor and enlisted, and worse an orphanage-raised bastard and Italian, fell far short of their lofty goals. With her life at home growing more intolerable under Carl’s emotional and physical abuse, and the increasing likelihood of Nico’s deployment to Germany, they had secretly made plans to marry when she returned to college in August. But disaster struck. Carl had discovered their affair.

The proverbial shit hit the fan. Loretta managed to keep Nico’s identity safe from her enraged father, but ended up beaten for her defiance and locked away upstairs like some heroine in a gothic novel. Her mother had stood by and allowed it all, silenced by too many years of life as a target for Carl’s anger and abuse.

Loretta wasn’t so submissive. The moment she recovered enough to make the attempt, she escaped the locked room by climbing out the third floor window on knotted sheets. Thanks to Dex getting her to Jefferson City and giving her money, the desperate call that reached Nico, and Nico and Will using a weekend of leave and a borrowed car to drive like madmen nonstop to St. Louis to meet her train, she made her escape good with only the clothes on her back.

But all their plans for a life of happiness were cut short before they could marry when Nico had tragically died while attempting to save two children swept from a jetty from drowning. And Loretta was pregnant. Will had stepped up and taken care of Loretta. He’d married Loretta and they’d put Will’s name on the birth certificate, but they had christened Dad with the name Nico had chosen for his son.

Loretta had wanted to let her mother know she had a son and that she had married, but fearing her father, chose to cut all contact with home. She and Will decided to turn away from their unhappy pasts and focus on their future together.

“Wow. Dad was Nico’s kid, not Grandpa Will’s.” He reopened the album to Nico’s picture. “I don’t know how I missed the resemblance between them until now. Dad looks mostly like Grandma, but now, yeah, I can see Nico in him.” He flipped through the album pages. His grandparents looked like such a loving couple in all the photos. You couldn’t tell by them that their life together had begun with drastically different plans. However, their unconventional beginning might explain the age gap between Dad and his brothers.

“So, the mystery is solved.” He set the letter back in the cigar box. He’d put Nico’s letters with them once he unpacked. It’d be interesting reading them again in chronological order. He stood and offered his hand to Margie.

She caught hold and gracefully rose to her feet. “I wonder why they never told you.”

“Ancient history that didn’t seem to matter anymore? Grief made explaining or remembering too painful? Complicated things that didn’t need complicating? Everyday life taking precedence over the unchangeable past? Who knows? Maybe Dad meant to tell me and didn’t have a chance or find the right time to bring it up. I was always working. He was always working…” He pulled Margie into his arms, still reeling from the whole story.

She softly kissed his jaw and hugged him. “How do you feel about this? Your grandma and grandpa and Nico.”

How did he feel? He paused, picking through the storm of emotions before answering. Saddened. Stunned. Horrified. Amazed. “Relieved? We’ve heard so many different stories and rumors, for a while there I felt like I didn’t know my grandparents anymore. But they really were the strong loving people I knew. Stronger than I knew. The chances they took for love. I’m glad to know.”

They stood embracing in the quiet for several minutes. Taking a chance on love. Just another reason to feel right about taking his own chance on love here with Margie. To feel positive about the changes he was making in his life. Loving Margie, coming home to her, yeah, he’d done the right thing.

He sought her lips, soft and slow, tracing the full, tender curves. “I missed you so much.”

“I’m so glad you came home.” She joined in the kiss with abandon and a joyful sigh.

Slow burned into heat and needy rush, and he went hard in a heartbeat as he lost himself in her, breathing together, lips parting lips, caressing and swaying body to body. He’d come home in so many ways.

He filled his hands with her, reexploring the soft lines of her back, her waist, her hips, and the sweet curves of her ass. He backed her toward the stairs, but with all his focus on Margie and not on navigating, they collided with the parlor door and laughter filled the kiss.

A room. Sofa. Privacy. That worked for him. He spun her around, both of them striving to get closer, using the doorjamb for leverage, riding body to body. “I love you.” He pulled the frilly band from her ponytail and combed his fingers through the silky tumble.

“I love you too.”

He gently cupped her head, covering her mouth hungrily. They whirled around the corner into the parlor. The drapes drawn against the sun left the tidy, welcoming room filled with warm half-light. What a difference she’d made to the parlor. She’d made him a home.

Pulling away from her lips for the briefest moment, he slid the parlor door shut and yanked his shirt over his head.

Margie leaned against the wall, smiling as she worked at her buttons, slowly teasing.

Too slow. He finished the last buttons and slipped her shirt from her shoulders, unveiling the appealing curves of her breasts cupped in pastel blue lace.

He trailed kisses over the sensitive skin of her throat and shoulder and down as he dealt with the bra’s front clasp, freeing her breasts. He brushed his lips over the tight pink buds. Her sweet and citrusy scent filled him as he drew one nipple into his mouth, stroking the tender peak into pebble hardness.

Shivering, she raised her arms over her head, grabbing onto the door molding, arching into his mouth. “Oh, that feels so good. More.”

More suited him just fine. He delighted in every moment of the sensual play, brushing and teasing kisses, easy licks and hungry suckling until she was writhing against him with sexy little pants and gasps.

He straightened, taking her mouth hard and deep, needing to be in her, and she met him with fervor. Kiss upon kiss, caressing, fingers tracing sensuous paths, exploring every inch of warm skin. She rained moist velvet kisses over his chest, trying tender bites and licks to his nipples as she unbuttoned his waistband and drew down the zipper of his jeans. Her first gentle stroke was heaven, shooting a hot pulse of desire through his already burning body. He shoved down his jeans and briefs, giving in to her tantalizing exploration.

Taking unsteady steps backwards toward the sofa, they stripped the remaining clothing from one another, leaving a trail behind them.

“I need you.” She murmured against his mouth. “Now.”

They never made it to the sofa, tumbling with passion-fueled abandon onto the soft carpet. He fell back, bringing her to kneel over him, and grabbed for his jeans. But digging for the condom from his wallet became far from an easy task when she wriggled down to lavish warm kisses over him, fondling him with teasing fingers, tormenting him with delicate caresses to his aching balls, and utterly taking his breath away with lust. “Margie, love, please! Oh, damn, so good.”