Summer Breeze (14 page)

It wasn’t that Derek minded his wife’s spiritual bent. In fact, he welcomed it. But religion seemed better suited to women. Neither of his parents had embraced any kind of organized church. When he was a child, his mother had read lots of self-help books and gone to weekly therapy, which she had told him was more personally meaningful than any sacred creed or ritual. His father’s attitude—passed to Derek before the accident that took his life—was that religious people were weak, superstitious, and gullible.

Kim didn’t fit that description at all. At the same time, she did rely a lot on God. She had been through plenty of rough water in her life, and her faith seemed to help her deal with the past.

“This is delicious,” she murmured when she had finished praying and taken her first bite. “I’m going to spread the word around Dr. Groene’s office. Bitty is a fabulous cook.”

“She can’t hold a candle to you,” Derek said, winking at his wife. “I agree, this is good, but I’d rather have a home-cooked meal any day.”

Kim took a sip of her soda. She was quiet for a moment, eating and watching people enter and leave the shops along Tranquility’s main road. “Is there anything you don’t like about me?” she asked, just when he had gotten lulled into a soothing mood.

“Not a thing,” he assured her. “You’re beautiful. You take great care of the twins and me. People admire you, and you have lots of friends. You’re an excellent cook—or did I already say that?”

She smiled. “Yes, you said that. But what about our house? Do you like the way it’s decorated?”

Derek could sense trouble coming. It always started small, like the wake from a passing speedboat. And then before you knew what hit you, everything went wobbly and unstable, waves slammed you to the deck, and the boat that had seemed so safe suddenly felt as though it might toss you into the water.

“I don’t know anything about decorating a house,” Derek said carefully. “But I feel completely comfortable in our home. If I hadn’t, I would have said so. And, by the way, I love those living room curtains. Lace … nothing better for a living room than lace.”

Nodding, Kim took another bite of her wrap. Derek let out a sigh. He felt confident he had passed the worst of it.

“Your mother doesn’t like them,” Kim said at last.

“Mom has her own ideas about nearly everything. Her own style.”

“Yes, she thinks a ten-year-old girl should be taught to wear cosmetics. She thinks I should let her leave a type 1 diabetic all alone, by himself, so she can take the ten-year-old girl on shopping sprees. She doesn’t approve of baked potatoes on a day when we have French toast for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. And she’s certain that lace curtains clash with leather and twill.”

Derek suddenly felt like he was clinging to the side of a capsized boat. Where had that wave come from? What could he say? How could he make it all go away?

“I don’t know how long your mother plans to stay with us,” Kim was saying before he could think of a response. “At first it was a couple of weeks. Then she told me she would stay until school started this fall. But these days she never mentions anything about going back to St. Louis. In fact, I’m pretty sure she has moved in with us permanently.”

Taking a breath, Derek groped for a lifeline. He hadn’t so much as discussed the time of day with his mother, let alone talked about when she might be leaving. To him, she was just part of the Finley household now, participating like one of the family.

“Is that a problem?” he managed.

“What do you think?” Kim returned immediately.

“Uh … I think Mom isn’t really a problem, is she?” He searched his wife’s face. When he didn’t get an answer, he continued. “Kim, you grew up with people coming and going all the time. Folks moved in and out of your life on a regular basis. Even in adulthood, things haven’t been that different. You met Joe, and then the twins came along, and then Joe left. And after that, I entered the picture. Now my mom is here. So? Is it a big deal?”

“I don’t want to model my life after what I saw as a child. I hated all the moving and transition. My mother and her alcohol and all those men … it was awful. I’m trying to create a stable home for myself and my children. I already messed up with Joe. And, Derek … oh, I don’t know.”

He was drowning. He could feel it. Tentacles of confusion were dragging him under.

“We have a stable home, babe,” he tried. “We’re good parents. We love the kids. We love each other.”

“Do we? Do we even know each other, Derek? I mean, what is it that you really do all day? Why won’t you tell me about your work?”

“Well, what do you want to know? There’s nothing that interesting about ticketing someone for carrying too many people on a pontoon boat. If there’s a big event, I usually tell you.”

“You say you do, but there’s been this drowning, and you haven’t told me a thing. Did you know your mother is trying to help Cody locate his family? The other day they were in the library most of the afternoon. They missed the TLC meeting completely, even though Cody kept telling her he wanted to leave. She wouldn’t listen. She
doesn’t
listen. She just says what she thinks. And you know what she thinks? She thinks all religions lead to God. That’s what she told our children, Derek. Your mother said she had looked into every kind of faith, including paganism! And she actually had the gall to say that one religion was no more valid than any of the others. She said it right in front of Luke and Lydia! That’s not what I want them to hear. Is that what you believe, Derek? What do you really believe about God, and why don’t I know?”

He was utterly sunk. No doubt about it. Somehow those lace curtains, his mother, Cody, makeup, religion, and type diabetes had all conspired to drag him to the bottom. He had no idea how to get out of this tangle.

“Religion,” he began. He could feel himself beginning to panic, his heart beating just a little too fast. “Uh … I don’t think about it much. It was never a part of my life before I met you, and it still isn’t. That’s the truth, Kim. I do my job, and I love you and the twins, and that’s about it. I wish I could tell you I was deeper and more complex, but that’s all there is.”

“You prayed the other day at the table.”

“Yeah, but …” He wadded up the paper in which his fajita had been wrapped. “Well, I believe in some kind of a Creator. I have trouble thinking that a blue heron or a purple coneflower could have evolved out of a blob of amoebas. I’m sure someone created the world and set it in motion. Some higher being. I don’t know what else to tell you about religion, babe. You heard my mother. I wasn’t brought up that way.”

“Neither was I, but it’s important to me.”

“Does it have to be important to me, too?”

At that, Kim caught her breath. “Brenda said it was all right for us to be different. You be you. I’ll be me.” She paused. “But not about God. I think we ought to be united. Would you come to church with the kids and me, Derek?”

Not only was he drowning, but a noose had somehow gotten wrapped around his neck, and it was growing tighter by the second. “Church?” he forced out, his voice quavering like a teenager’s. “I’m usually working on Sundays.”

“You could request a shift change.”

“It would throw everyone else off schedule.”

“Please, Derek,” she said. “My faith is a huge part of my life. I need for you to understand that. And will you tell me about the drowning?”

He ran a finger around his collar. “We don’t know much. I think they’re bringing in the Major Case Squad on this one.”

“Then it’s been ruled a crime?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it, Kim.”

“I’m your wife!”

“I know that, but …” He rubbed his eyes. “Okay. We know it was a woman, but we don’t know what did her in. The fishing line may be throwing us off track. It was probably an accident, but it could have been a homicide.”

“Who would do such a terrible thing?”

“We have no idea. You know how peaceful it is around here most of the time. If we have a crime, it’s usually because someone’s been drinking. Intoxicated boaters, family feuds, trespassing. We’ve been seeing more drugs around the lake than usual, but alcohol is still the main issue. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I, Kim?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“I don’t keep things from you. Not if I can help it.” He fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “There’s just not a whole lot to tell. This morning, I ticketed a kid riding without a life jacket on a personal watercraft. Over the past weekend, we chased down a couple of drunk speeders, and we cited a few females for indecent exposure. Later this month, we’ll be setting up a barricade to check for licenses, boating while intoxicated, and things like that. My work is interesting to me, because one day is always a little different from the next. But, Kim, it’s not like you’re missing a big drama. If you went out on the water with me, you’d be flat bored a good part of the time.”

“I wish you’d tell me things, though,” she said. “I’d like to know more about your daily life.”

“I suppose I can log in with you at the end of the day, but it won’t take more than a couple of minutes.” He reached for her hand. He wouldn’t mind sharing more of his life with her, but there were some things she was just better off not knowing. “Kim, is this really what’s got you all worked up? Me not reporting on my day? Me not going to church with you and the kids? This stuff never bothered you before. What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t say anything about it earlier, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care.” She sighed, and Derek wondered if she was done. But then she looked up at him again and continued in a softer tone. “Remember I told you about the social worker at the shelter who helped me sort out my feelings after I left Joe? She told me that for a relationship to succeed, both people need to feel safe expressing their needs. Derek, can’t you see how scared I am to rock our boat? I want you to be happy, and I live in fear of upsetting you. But I do need for you to talk to me.”

“What else do you want to know?”

“Why is it so hard for you to talk openly? Why do you evade me? Why do you walk into another room when someone calls you on your cell phone? Who keeps calling you, anyway?”

“Kim, you know phone calls are a part of my work. I’ve told you all I can. What more do you want?”

“I desperately want you to go to church.”

Here she sucked down a breath that sounded almost like a sob. Derek had thought he was about to reach dry ground, but the quaver in her voice sucked him under again. Didn’t Kim realize she had done a lot more than rock their boat? She was drowning him.

He crossed his arms over his chest and focused on the sign over Patsy Pringle’s beauty salon in the distance. Just As I Am. That was all he needed from his wife—that she accept him, flaws and all.

Derek didn’t mind telling Kim about his day. He might even venture over to her church once in a while to see what was going on inside. One of the other officers, Larry, talked about God all the time. Some of the men kidded Larry about it and tried to get his goat, but Derek respected his friend. If Larry and Kim were good examples of the way Christians lived, then it couldn’t be too bad.

Derek glanced surreptitiously at his watch. He needed to be getting back on the water, but he sure didn’t want Kim to wind up in tears at the end of their picnic. All the same, he had a bad feeling that she had uncovered the top of a sandbar, and no matter what, their little boat was destined to run aground on it.

“It’s your mother,” she blurted out suddenly. Covering her eyes with her hands, she shook her head. “Oh, Derek, it’s been really hard on me these past few weeks. How long is she going to stay with us? I don’t know if I can take much more of her criticism and interference.”

He stiffened. His mother might be called a spendthrift or a gossip or even a meddler, but she meant well. At her own suggestion, she had left her home and her busy social life in St. Louis, and she had driven down to the lake to help out with Luke. What right did Kim have to be so hard on her?

“If she’s not criticizing my curtains or my cooking,” Kim was telling him, “she’s dragging the twins off to who knows where. The outlet mall, the library. And then she doesn’t even watch them!”

“Let’s be grateful we have her help,” Derek told his wife firmly, hoping to put an end to the discussion. “Mom’s not the world’s expert parent, but she’s doing her best, Kim. She only had one child to practice on, and that’s me. She took on the twins when they were nearly eight years old. You know she would never hurt Luke and Lydia. If anything, the incident at the library was their fault. They skipped out on my mother and ran over to Tiffany’s house.”

“That never would have happened if your mother hadn’t taken them to the library and then left them so she could look for Cody’s missing family! Your mom has no idea how to be a real grandmother!”

“Well, she might if you’d ever consider having another baby, like I’ve asked you a thousand times.”

Derek took his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. He couldn’t imagine where that comment had come from, but it was the truth. Ever since they got married, he had been asking Kim to give him more kids. He loved the twins, but he wanted a bigger family. He longed for babies with his genes, his features, his blood. When he asked, Kim always told him she would think about it, but then she never said another word. How many times had he brought up the subject of more children, only to be dismissed with a laugh or a wave of the hand? If she wanted his mother to be a better grandma, Kim ought to be willing to produce a baby or two for her to learn on.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” he told Kim. “I’m late already.”

Kim sniffled as Derek got to his feet. More than anything, he wished he could wipe out everything he had said. He wanted to please his wife. He loved her with his whole heart. But what was all this stuff she had suddenly decided to throw at him? How much could a man take before he hurled something back?

As he stood over Kim, he tried to think of something to say to make it all better. Finally he let out a breath, shrugged, and walked to his truck.