The Welcome Home Garden Club (15 page)

“You’ll see.”

“So you agree that it’s a good idea for you to have some help.”

She glanced at his arm and he just knew what she was thinking. How much help could a cripple be? The maimed leading the maimed.

His smile vanished and he felt blood rush to his head.

Caitlyn’s bandaged arm was propped on the console armrest. Her friend Emma had brought her some clean clothes to put on and told her not to worry about Danny, that she and her husband, Sam, would happily keep him overnight again, but Caitlyn wanted Danny home with her. That’s where they were headed now.

“Yes. I need help. I admit it. Happy now?” she asked.

Was she just saying that to make him feel better? “You don’t like asking for help.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“So you get where I’m coming from.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re weak to ask for help,” he said.

“Just remind yourself of that from time to time.”

“Go ahead, give me a hard time, you’re not chasing me away.”

She cast a sideways glance at him. He pulled to a stop at a traffic light. “Was that weird about my father or what?”

“Unexpected.”

“He asked me to forgive him.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound like Judge Blackthorne.”

“Well, not in so many words, but he brought me purple hyacinth. If you give someone purple hyacinth, it means you’re asking for forgiveness.”

“You sure he knows that?”

Caitlyn grinned. “He does now.”

Gideon laughed. “I love to see you smile.”

“I love to hear you laugh. You don’t do it nearly often enough.”

They looked at each other.

“I think we have a mutual admiration society going here,” Caitlyn said.

Hell yes. He admired her something fierce. But was admiration enough? Could it span the chasm eight years apart from each other had created? This was their opportunity to find out. They’d be living in close quarters. Really getting to know each other all over again.

“Turn here. Emma and Sam’s house is the second one on the right.” Caitlyn pointed. “If you are going to move in—”

“I am,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“We need to get something straight.”

“What are the conditions?”

“You’ll be staying in the guest bedroom.”

“Well, I had assumed as much, but I didn’t realize you thought that I thought otherwise,” he teased.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Does that sentence even make sense?”

“We can’t confuse Danny.”

“Right.”

“We need time to figure all this out.”

“So we’re in agreement. No sex.”

Gideon licked his lips, swallowed hard. He didn’t like making promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. “No sex.”

“Whew.” She let out a breath. “I’m glad we got that ironed out.”

“How are we going to explain what happened to Danny?” Gideon nodded at her arm. “And about me moving in?”

“We’ll just tell him the truth. That I got hurt while gardening, warn him off of sharp tools, and tell him you’re going to stay with us for a few days to help out until I’m feeling better.”

The truth. Good policy. He had a great deal of respect for the way she’d raised their son. He wanted to tell her that, but he didn’t know if he could get the words out without choking up. She had done a damn fine job with Danny. Kevin too.

Jealousy gnawed at him. He hated the pettiness that made him jealous of a dead man. It occurred to him then that Kevin might have been jealous of him. He’d been Caitlyn’s first love and a dead (or so everyone had thought) war hero. Had Kevin felt incidental? Damn emotions anyway. All they did was get a guy into trouble. That’s why he tamped them down, tried his best to ignore them.

“This it?” He nodded at the cute two-story house on the acre lot with a black and white Border collie sitting on the front porch. Caitlyn’s house was on the next block over.

“This is it.”

He stopped the van and Caitlyn started to get out, but Gideon put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Stay put. You’re still weak. I’ll go get him.”

“I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable. He’s only met you once.”

“Settle down, Mother Hen. He can see you from here. And besides, it’s about time he got to know me.”

A flush of pink colored her pale cheeks. “You’re right. I know. I’m just feeling a little shaky.”

A wallop of tender emotions sledgehammered him. Caitlyn didn’t even seem to know it, but she was one tough cookie. Gideon felt heat rise to his own face. He felt so precarious with her. He wanted her more than words could say, and yet he was afraid. Not because he was scared of her and the things she made him feel, but because he was scared of himself and the things he was incapable of.

Like living a normal life.

Quickly, before she could see the fear in his eyes, Gideon turned and walked up the cobblestone path to pick up the son who didn’t even know who he really was. Wondering just how on earth he was going to survive living in the same house with them.

Chapter Thirteen

Traditional meaning of yarrow—healing.

A
fter making grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for their evening meal and insisting Caitlyn take a pain pill and get some rest, Gideon was at loose ends. Danny had hardly spoken to him. He was holed up in his room playing with his handheld video game device.

Gideon was not a man who could just lie around and watch television or surf the Internet. He liked to keep his body busy as well as his mind. He had to have something to do or go nuts.

“Danny?” He knocked on his son’s bedroom door. Son. The word still got to him every time it popped into his head.

There wasn’t an immediate answer. Gideon waited patiently, but just when he thought he was going to have to knock again, Danny opened the door and peeked out, his eyes leery, the dark cowlick sticking up at the back of his head.

“Yeah?” he asked.

Gideon remembered being that age, scared little kid trying his best not to show it. And like Danny, it had been just he and his mother. He knew the responsibility that fell on a boy’s shoulders when he had to assume the role of man of the house at a young age.

He also knew what it was like to find a strange man in your house and the resentment he’d felt when some guy tried to play daddy to him and tell him what to do.

There had been a revolving door of men as Linda looked for love in all the wrong places. Not that Caitlyn was in any way the same as his mother, but to a kid, an interloper was an interloper.

“Hi,” Gideon said, then felt dorky as hell for saying it.

Danny just blinked at him.

Great way to win him over, Garza
.

Gideon took a deep breath. “Your mom is sleeping and I wanted to work on the carousel animals, but they’re all over at the victory garden . . .” He almost told the boy that he had to come with him because Gideon wasn’t leaving Danny alone in the house while his mother was asleep and under the influence of pain pills, but he quickly realized that would not be an effective tactic. He thought about what would have motivated him at that age to help one of Linda’s boyfriends. “Could you give me a hand dragging a couple of the animals back over here?”

Danny raised his chin. “What’s in it for me?”

Ah, so he had a little mercenary on his hands. The kid took after him in more ways than just physical appearance. When he was Danny’s age he’d figured if he was going to have to put up with Linda’s men he might as well get paid for it. Gideon pulled five dollars from his wallet.

“Make it ten and you’ve got yourself a deal,” Danny said.

“You drive a hard bargain.” Gideon peeled off another five spot.

“And I want a ride on your motorcycle.”

“We’re taking the van. The carousel animals won’t fit on the motorcycle.”

Danny looked at him like he was a moron. “I know that. I meant later.”

“If your mother gives her permission, I’ll take you on the motorcycle,” he promised.

“She won’t give her permission.”

“How do you know?”

“She calls them death machines.”

“Let me work on her.”

“Really?” Danny gave him a genuine smile.

“Really.”

They went to the victory garden, took a couple of carousel horses from the shed. Several members of the garden club were there planting in the waning twilight. Gideon was relieved to see someone had cleaned up Caitlyn’s blood.

The garden club ladies made him stop and chat for a bit, asking about Caitlyn’s condition and raising speculations about who could have loaded the bear trap and planted it in their garden. They’d come to the consensus it had to be a contest competitor from a neighboring town, because they’d concluded that no one in Twilight was capable of such a thing.

Gideon shook his head at their insular innocence. How trusting they all were.

“Gideon,” Patsy said. “You tell Caitlyn not to worry about the shop. I’ll run it for her until she’s feeling better and we’ll all take turns taking her shifts in the victory garden.”

“That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Cross.”

“Here,” Dotty Mae said, and gave him a basket of small red flowers that grew in a thick clump. “This is yarrow. It’s good for healing and such a cheery color. I know it will lift her spirits.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re doing a fine job on the carousel by the way,” said another one of the women whom he didn’t know.

“I’m enjoying the work. And speaking of—” He gestured at the carousel horses waiting to be loaded into the van.

“Yes, sure. You have a good night and tell Caitlyn we’re all praying for her speedy recovery.”

Gideon thanked them again for their concern and rounded up Danny. His son—there was that magical word again—helped him load and unload the horses and carry them into the workshop that had once belonged to Kevin Marsh.

He rested one horse on a metal worktable, balanced the other between two sawhorses. Once upon a time he’d promised Caitlyn he would repair the carousel and restore her family heritage. He smiled, remembering how much joy that promise had brought her.

“I wish I could carve things,” Danny said, running a hand along one of the horses. “But my mom won’t let me have a pocketknife. She says I’ll cut myself.”

“She’s just being a good mom.”

“Yeah, but how will I ever know how to use a knife if she never lets me have one?”

“You do make a good point,” Gideon said.

“So you’ll talk to her for me?”

“About letting you have a knife?”

Danny nodded.

The urge to say yes to anything the kid asked was a strong one. He had so much to make up for, but he knew just giving in to Danny was not the best way to parent. So he didn’t answer, but instead patted the metal stool beside the worktable. “Hop up here and I’ll show you how to restore a carousel horse. And when we get to the part where we need to carve something, I’ll show you how to use my knife.”

“Really?” Danny’s eyes glowed.

The expression in his son’s eyes started a warm glow inside Gideon’s gut. “Sure.”

Danny scrambled up onto the stool. He was close enough for Gideon to smell him. It was a unique aroma, part Caitlyn, part Gideon, part Danny’s own bona fide scent.

Gideon reached over to the radio parked on the windowsill. “Let’s have some tunes. What kind of music do you listen to?”

“I like Toby Keith.”

“Country-and-western.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gideon fiddled with the dials, tuned in a country-and-western station. “Watching You,” a song about a father and son by Rodney Atkins, was playing. The timeliness of the tune squeezed his heart and brought home the fact he’d already missed so much. The loss hit him like a blow to the gut. He clenched his jaw, steeled himself against those soft emotions. He couldn’t tear up in front of the kid.

But Gideon made note of everything, wanting to hang on to this memory for all time. Danny had on faded blue jeans with a small hole in one knee and a red and blue striped T-shirt and grubby sneakers. He was a lean kid, almost but not quite skinny. His shoulders were fairly broad for a seven-and-a-half-year-old, but Gideon had no doubts he’d grow into them.

“Where do we start?” Danny asked.

“First comes the sanding,” Gideon said. “Do you know how to run a hand sander?”

Danny shook his head. “My dad said I shouldn’t ever touch his tools.”

My dad.
The words were like a bucket of ice water thrown over his little father-son fantasy.

“Well, you’re getting older now,” Gideon said, ignoring the possessive urge to tell him that he was his father, not Kevin. “You have to learn how to handle tools sometime, right?”

Danny beamed. “Right!”

Gideon showed him how to put sandpaper onto the hand sander and how to tighten the strap around his hand. “Okay, now be prepared, the sander is going to vibrate and jerk your hand around. You need to press down to control it, but don’t press too hard.”

“Okay.” Danny nodded.

“You need to put on a pair of goggles to keep from getting something in your eye.” Gideon plucked a pair of goggles from where they hung on a nail sticking out of the wall. He slipped them on over Danny’s head, tightened the band to secure the goggles in place. “How’s that?”

“Good, but what are you going to wear?”

“You’re the one working with tools. You get the goggles.”

“That makes sense. What next?”

“Run the sander lightly over the horse to knock off the old paint. Start with the big areas first like the saddle and work down to the small, hard-to-get places like his hooves.”

“Gotcha.”

“You ready for me to turn on the switch?”

“Can I do it?”

The kid was so eager for independence. Caitlyn had been too protective, but he understood why. She’d lost a lot in her life—her mother, him, her husband, her relationship with her father. She had a need to cling to what she had, but at some point, a boy had a need to break free from the apron strings, to explore his world and build up his self-confidence.

“Sure,” Gideon said. “Go right ahead. Just be prepared for it to try to run away from you.”

Danny turned on the sander and laughed with delight as it charged over the back of the horse. “This is fun!”

Gideon reached for the sandpaper and went after the other carousel horse, rasping sandpaper over it by hand. He kept one eye on Danny, making sure the kid was okay. A hand sander was pretty harmless. Even if he lost control, at worst, he’d get skinned up.

They sanded together, father and son, in the workshop. Country-and-western music played on the radio. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed softly in time to Danny’s sander. Paint flakes and dust filled the space, flew off in all directions. Danny concentrated like a brain surgeon. He poked his tongue through the gap between his teeth, eyes focused intently.

It reminded Gideon of when he’d first discovered the magic of tools and how they could help him shape and create things. He’d made a cutting board for his mother when he was Danny’s age, then later, when he was older and had acquired more knowledge and tools, a rolling pin. Not that his mother had ever baked pies or even cooked for that matter. She’d been a McDonald’s and TV dinners kind of mom. But she’d really been proud of that rolling pin. She’d used it to smack up bags of ice for her drinks.

Funny, the things that made an impression.

Danny was making good progress on the horse, sanding off the saddle, heading down the flank in a matter of minutes. It struck Gideon that the child might have inherited his gift for woodworking, and the pride that swelled inside his chest was both surprising and overwhelming. Overwhelming because if Danny had inherited his good qualities, what bad qualities had he also taken from his dad?

Dad.

Such a friendly word. A word he’d never imagined would apply to him. He’d thought he was too damaged. Too messed up to be a good father.

You are messed up, but you don’t have to stay that way.
The thought tumbled through his head, fleeting, but insightful. He didn’t have to stay this way.

Oh yeah? There’s nothing you can do about that missing arm. It isn’t growing back.
But he was more than an arm, wasn’t he?

“Hey,” Danny called out over the noise of the sander.

“What is it?”

“It’s not working so good anymore.”

“You need to replace the sandpaper,” Gideon said. “Turn it off and load another piece on there like I showed you.”

Danny flipped off the switch, pushed the goggles up on his forehead, shook out his arm. “It makes my skin feel like an itchy jumping bean.”

Gideon laughed. “I warned you that it would vibrate.”

Danny scratched his arm vigorously.

“It’ll stop doing that once you get used to a sander.”

“You know a lot of stuff,” Danny said.

“It’s because I’m old.”

Danny cocked his head to study Gideon. “You’re not
that
old.”

“Thanks.” He smiled.

“You were in a war, right.”

Gideon nodded. “I was.”

Danny got really quiet. His gaze flicked cautiously to Gideon’s face, and in that moment he looked exactly like his mother, filled with worry and hesitation. “Did you ever kill anybody?”

Gideon sucked in a deep breath. How did you tell a child the truth about something like that? “Sometimes a soldier is forced to kill in order to protect innocent people.”

“From bad guys?”

“From bad guys,” he confirmed while at the same time wishing life was really that simple. Bad guys against good guys. Right against wrong. Good against evil. But he’d seen bad people do good things and good people do bad things, and he knew in the end it was difficult to tell who was who.

Danny’s gaze shifted to his hand and Gideon could see what question was coming next. “Did someone try to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to your arm?”

“I picked up a bomb.”

Danny looked at him like he was nuts. “Why did you pick up a bomb?”

“I didn’t know it was a bomb. It was inside of a doll that a little girl dropped. I picked it up to give it back to her and it blew off my arm.”

That was heavy duty. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so honest. How could he explain that someone had wanted him dead so much that he would put a bomb in a child’s doll and risk killing his own kid in some misguided zealous plot?

Danny hooted. “You got bombed by a girl?”

His laugh surprised Gideon, but Gideon immediately saw the humor in it. “I did.”

“A tiny little girl.”

“A tiny little girl.”

“That must have been embarrassing.”

“Yeah.” He was so relieved that Danny saw the funny side of it and not the darkness. He certainly hadn’t gotten that trait from either Caitlyn or Gideon. Perhaps he’d picked it up from Kevin, whom Gideon remembered as an easygoing guy with a sharp appreciation for the Three Stooges brand of humor.

“Did the other soldiers tease you?”

“Not so much. I did lose a hand.”

“Oh, yeah.” Danny’s face sobered. “Can I touch it?”

“The artificial hand or my stump?”

“Both.”

Gideon rolled up his sleeve, revealing how the prosthesis attached to his arm. Danny lightly ran his fingers over it. “Cool, it’s like a robot hand.”