Wild Flower (8 page)

“I will, thanks, Mom,” I told her.

I walked Rae home for a nap in the afternoon and ended up sleeping alongside her. Clinty woke us up an hour before dinner to remind me that he was biking into Landon to play baseball. Justin and I tried to get to as many of his games as we could.

“Ok, sweetie, I love you,” I told my tall son, and he gathered me into his embrace with no self-consciousness. He was a dear heart, just like his father Chris had been. Clint resembled his father a great deal, but it was his deepening voice that sometimes, if I was caught off guard, gave me pause. He sounded just like Chris, his voice rising and falling unconsciously with the same timbre and tone; he had the same exact laugh.

“Love you, Mom,” he said in return, tugging his ball cap over his shorn hair.

“We'll see you a little later,” I told him.

Rae and I walked back to Shore Leave along the same path, the quality of the light altered now, softer, that evening was approaching. The tint in the air was a clear amber, and I let myself bathe in the radiance of it; I never failed to take pleasure in the long summertime beams. Rae scampered ahead again, running up onto the porch and banging into the café. I noticed Mathias's truck in the lot, and Camille's near their apartment. And dammit, Zack Dixon's car was still in the same place he'd parked it this morning.

“Jilly, you guys having trout with us?” Mom poked her head out the door to ask. “Dodge is bringing Ruthie and the triplets.”

“No, we're heading over to the athletic field to watch Clint's game,” I reminded her.

I had forgotten my shoes on the side of the café, and headed that way to grab them. I collected a pile of lifejackets, intending to return them to the shed, and had just bent down, gingerly, to catch my flip-flops by their straps, when my arms broke out in gooseflesh.

“Jillian!” I heard behind me in the next instant, and turned to see Zack jogging up the incline. He'd drawn his canoe up onto the shore. I wanted him and every piece of equipment associated with him off of Shore Leave property as soon as humanly possible, but wasn't entirely sure how to express this without sounding slightly crazy. He was lean and athletic, catching up with me long before I had a chance to disappear inside the café. At my side, he asked, “That's your name, right?”

In the afternoon light he appeared sweaty and worn out, normal-looking, a sunhat shading those eerie eyes. Without waiting for me to respond, he added, “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Sorry. I have a big mouth, and you are really, really pretty. It threw me for a loop.”

I stared at him wordlessly, clutching the lifejackets to my belly in a protective sort of gesture, also very much thrown for a loop.

It's an act, I realized. He's selling me something. But what? Why?

“Just keep your opinions to yourself, all right?” I said at last, turning back towards the café, shifting the burden of the lifejackets to my other arm. Without asking permission, he swept them from my grip.

“You're pregnant,” he said. “I'll carry these for you.”

“Thanks,” I said distractedly. “You can throw those over by the porch.”

“Mama! Millie's daddy is here!” Rae appeared at an open window to announce.

“Where's Camille?” I asked her, grateful for this excuse to leave Zack behind. I climbed up the porch steps and entered the café to see Noah Utley standing awkwardly just inside the entrance, hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. Even if I wasn't particularly fond of him, it was easy to see why he had once appealed to my niece; he was tall and fair and angelically handsome, if slightly worse for the wear these days. He offered me a polite, impersonal smile.

“Hi, Noah,” I said. “You here to pick up Millie Jo?”

“Yeah, she's coming to Lilly's birthday,” he explained, naming one of his brother Ben's kids. “Is Camille around?”

“She's up at her place,” I told him. I knew he didn't like to encounter Mathias, surely for various good reasons, and tended to avoid their apartment if at all possible. Too late for that now, I saw, as Mathias and Camille came ambling up the path, fingers linked, Millie scampering just ahead of them. Noah bit his bottom lip and his chest rose and then fell as one taking a fortifying breath, studying them out the window. He looked like a man who desperately needed a drink and I felt a small splash of sympathy for him; he had matured a little since the summer that he had first dated and then impregnated my niece, though was now a college dropout who lived with his parents and relied upon them to foot his monthly child support bill. And it had to be tough to watch your former girlfriend looking so blissfully happy in the company of another man. Noah drew a second deep breath and then, seeming to have gathered courage, headed outside to collect his child.

Noah looked like shit in the evening light, there was no denying. Sometimes I couldn't believe I had ever found him attractive; strain seemed to have aged him, and to my eyes he appeared much older than the past three years would warrant. The weird graduate student from Moorhead came around the far side of Shore Leave with his canoe and asked Mathias if he'd mind helping him strap it to the top of his car, Millie was up on the porch saying good-bye to Rae, and I seized the moment of relative privacy to ask Noah quietly, “You haven't been drinking today, have you?”

There was no way in hell I would let my child go with him if I even so much as suspected, but for all that he looked pale and rather drawn, I didn't think he appeared under the influence. I could smell his cologne, no hint of booze, but I still had to ask.

He sighed and gave me a resentful look, mouth twisting up a little. He said calmly and just as quietly, “Of course I haven't. Jesus, Camille.” And then, though he sounded more exhausted than angry, “I know you called my mom.”

“You may not believe me, but I actually do worry about you,” I said, and it was true; I did feel concern for him, along with a large slice of resentment and irritation, but there was no need to mention that.

“Well, don't waste your time,” he said, though again there was more defeat in his voice than provocation.

Mathias finished lending a hand and turned back towards me, sending me a private message with his eyes,
Everything all right?

I nodded incrementally. Noah looked over his shoulder at Mathias, then immediately away. He acted so omega wolf around Mathias, as though my fiancé had once beaten the shit out of him, instead of behaving with as much politeness and respect as Mathias could manage for someone he actually despised. Noah cleared his throat and said, as the Moorhead guy's car rattled out of the parking lot, “I'll have her back home by ten or so, is that all right?”

“That's fine,” I said. I called up to my daughter, “Come give me a hug!”

Aunt Jilly came out onto the porch as Noah and Millie Jo drove away, shading her eyes against the glare of the evening sun. She asked, “You guys eating here this evening?”

“No, we're heading to Bull and Diana's,” I told her.

“Ma's been complaining that we don't come for supper enough,” Mathias added.

“God, I'm jealous,” Aunt Jilly said. “Diana's an incredible cook.”

Five minutes later we were headed around Flickertail in Mathias's truck. I was wearing a soft sundress, white patterned with sunflowers, my hair loose over my shoulders. I felt relaxed, better after having talked to Aunt Jilly, and Mathias was whistling softly, in tune with an old Randy Travis song on the radio, his right hand warm on my thigh.

“Aunt Jilly told me that you talked to Mom,” I said softly, studying his profile. Summer sunshine had darkened his skin, making his eyes all the more stunningly blue by contrast. His black hair, fresh from the shower, was drying with a slight curl along the back of his neck, falling over his forehead.

He rubbed his palm over my leg as he said, “I worry about you.”

“I know,” I assured him. “I'm not upset. I just wish they'd go away so I could sleep all night without waking you. I don't mean to worry you.”

“Honey, it's my job to worry about you. You're mine,” he reminded me, attempting to elicit a smile, I knew.

His words warmed me thoroughly and I slid my hand over his, patting him. I said, “I just mean I don't want you to worry excessively. I wish I could remember exactly what I dreamed. It's like the second I startle awake it gets snapped away. I know I'm missing something important. If I could just talk to—”

“Malcolm?” he filled in, completely serious. We had talked about it many times before.

“Yes…or, I don't know…I just don't know. Even if we could just find out what happened to him. Our ancestors were shitty record-keepers,” I said, only half-joking.

“Things get lost, destroyed, burned up in fires,” Mathias said. “It's been over a century. I wish I had better answers too, honey. What did Jillian say?”

Mathias knew about my aunt's abilities; his own sister Elaine was actually similarly gifted. She read the tarot and was sometimes struck with what she called ‘senses' of people.

“She said she knows that Malcolm lived beyond 1876,” I said, and so I took this for truth. “But where, and for how much longer, I don't know.”

“Hey, if we don't find all the answers on our trip, will you still have a good time?” he asked, again teasing me a little, though I heard the concern he was trying to hide.

“Mathias James Carter,” I told him, unbuckling and sliding across the bench seat. He tucked me against his side, kissing my hair, as he made the turn into his parents' drive. I linked my arms about his neck and kissed his jaw, then his ear, where I told him softly, “You know the answer to that.”

Mathias parked and then swung me into his full embrace, tipping his forehead to mine and studying me at close range. He said softly, “I do.”

We were kissing, totally lost to the world, when someone rapped on the windshield with curled knuckles. We broke apart to see Mathias's oldest sister Tina and her husband Sam, who was shaking his head at us.

“You two trying to scare the kids?” Tina teased through the open driver's side window. I eased back, flushing a little even as Mathias grinned and kept me close to him.

“We are in love,” he told his oldest sister in the tone of voice you would use with the class know-it-all. He started singing “Forever and Ever, Amen” one of the Randy Travis songs he was famous for in the shower. My hands were on his shoulders, his clasping my waist, and I giggled, loving him so much and so fiercely that an ache formed behind my ribs.

Tina groaned, opening the truck door for us. She invited, “Come on, lovebirds, let's go eat.”

The Carters lived just a few minutes from their family business, White Oaks Lodge, in a spacious house overlooking Flickertail; from their wide, second-story back porch, I could see Shore Leave across the surface to the left. I could smell grilling steaks and heard the radio on top of the fridge playing. Diana appeared at the open screen door to greet us, smiling widely. Mathias's family reminded me a great deal of my own, as there was always an air of gaiety to their get-togethers, tons of food, kids running everywhere and making a mess, but no one really minding. Diana hugged me close, saying, “Hi, hon. No Millie Jo this evening?”

“She's with her dad,” I explained. I loved Mathias's parents, who I had met even before I knew him, when I worked at White Oaks last winter. Diana was petite, with lovely red-gold hair she had passed on to her three daughters, while Mathias resembled his father, who well deserved the nickname ‘Bull.' They treated my daughter as one of their own grandkids, and Millie adored them, more than I could have ever hoped.

“Son, you look happy,” Diana noted as Mathias caught her close and kissed her cheek. He was a mama's boy, the baby of his family after three demanding sisters. He called himself spoiled, but he really wasn't, not by any definition of the word, though his mother and sisters doted upon him. She went on, “It does my heart good.”

“Ma, I've never been so happy,” Mathias said, snuggling me against his side and kissing my hair.

“Honey, you're going to be pregnant long before the wedding,” Tina said to me, also kissing her mom on the way inside.

My cheeks heated instantly, even as Diana laughed. I admitted, “That's the second time I've heard that today.”

“When would our baby be born, if you get pregnant tonight?” Mathias asked, true excitement and anticipation in his tone, and the blush on my face flooded downward across my entire body.

“
Mathias Carter
,” I scolded him.

“You're just like your father,” Diana said to him, prompting Tina to groan, “Oh my God, Mom.”

“Around the end of March,” Glenna, the middle sister, supplied cheerily, from where she stood at the counter shaking salt into a bowl of noodles. Her ruby-tinted hair hung in a braid down her back. The house was chaotic in the wake of the granddaughters, running from the kitchen to the patio and back again; between Mathias's three sisters, there were eight girls.

As though reading my mind, Diana added, “I'm counting on grandsons, you know. I've got you two pegged for that.”

“Six or seven, that's what I'm thinking,” Mathias said.

“You guys,” I groaned, and Glenna poked my side, everyone laughing at me. It seemed that every other thing I said amused them.

“You're just so darn sweet,” Diana said, kissing my cheek before heading for the stove, where an enormous stockpot was boiling, full of corn on the cob.

I made my way to the beautiful old curio cabinet in the corner of the dining room, where Diana had framed and arranged numerous pictures of the family. I sought my favorite one and lifted it lovingly into my hands. I smiled at Mathias over my shoulder and teased softly, “I could handle having a little boy just like this.”

He grinned, saying, “I know I was adorable.”

In the picture he was standing near Flickertail, eight years old, knobby-skinny and brown from the sun, his dark hair cut into bangs that hung in his eyes. Even so, the incredible indigo-blue of them shown in the picture. Summertime, and he was smiling widely to showcase two missing teeth, proudly holding up a stringer of bluegills. I set this one back, gently, and then lifted his senior picture from the bunch, feeling the familiar weightless sensation in my stomach at the sight of his beaming smile. He was posing with his hockey stick, leaning over it, clad in his blue and white Landon Rebels jersey, number ten.

“Do I hear Camille and my boy?” Bull called from outside. I loved my future father-in-law and had no trouble at all imagining him as someone from an earlier century. It was partially his gruff voice and partially the tendency to speak like he was in a Clint Eastwood-era western. He came rumbling into the house for hugs all around, then caught me by the shoulders and gave me a quick, speculative perusal with one eye squinted. He concluded, looking at Mathias, “Son, I remember Jackie Gordon well. I feel I oughta give you a punch in the nose on his behalf.”

I giggled and Mathias lifted both hands in surrender, laughing too. He justified again, “We're
in love
.”

“As even a blind man could see,” Bull agreed.

We headed out to the porch, where the view of the lake was stunning. Even having lived on its shores for the past three years, Flickertail never ceased to amaze me with its sheer beauty; I could live here forever (and planned to) and never take the sight of it for granted. Now, as evening cast its low-lying, apricot-tinted beams over the surface, the water lay smooth, unmarred by the whitecaps stirred up in the day, when the wind was usually stronger and motor boats flew back and forth, creating crisscrossing and unceasing wake-patterns. The Carters' house was just a stone's throw from the water, their wide dock stretching straight out before turning two corners; Bull's sleek outboard and a pair of bright yellow jet-skis were tethered to its length.

“Hi, guys!” Elaine said, from where she was seated at the glass-topped patio table. Tina and I joined her while Mathias descended the wooden steps to the lower-level deck where the menfolk were drinking beer at the grill. Elaine poured Tina and I each a frothy margarita and I felt a splash of guilt as I considered how exacting I was of Noah's behavior.

But you don't have a drinking problem,
I reminded myself.

“Thanks,” I told Elaine.

“Enjoy,” she replied cheerily. “You two are going to have such a great time on your trip.” She was on my right, feet bare, sitting cross-legged. Her silky red-gold hair had recently been cut short, falling to her jaw line. She tucked a strand behind her ear and added, “Dad's cousins out in Montana are really fun. We used to visit them every other summer when we were kids.”

“They have horses, too,” Tina said. “Or at least, they used to.” She caught Bull on his way back to the grill, a stainless steel spatula in one hand, a six-pack of Leinie's in the other. “Dad, do Harry and Meg still have horses?”

“They do,” Bull said. “Two or three, I believe. And they're spitting with excitement to see you and the boy.”

“I can't wait either,” I told him.

“Matty will want to show you all the places we used to stop along the way,” Elaine said. “He's a sucker for those roadside tourist traps.”

“I like them too,” I admitted. “I want to promise that we'll take great pictures to show you, but I am so bad about that. It's all I can do to keep up with Millie Jo.”

Tina said, “We all have that parental guilt about not taking enough pictures. Don't worry. Just have fun on your trip. Besides, you and Matty will have…more than plenty to do.”

Her sister laughed heartily at her suggestive pause, and I hid my face for a moment, giggling too.

“I was out at the cabin today,” Elaine said, poking me with her foot. “It's looking so good. Dad is just so tickled that you two are making it your own. It seems meant to be, you know?”

A shiver fluttered up my spine; maybe it was only the chill of the margarita. I said, “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I knew it last winter, I had a feeling,” Tina said, winking at me. Her russet-red hair was the wildest of the three sisters, fluffed out in curls. She asked, using Elaine's nickname, “Didn't I, Lainey? You're not the only ones with those.”

“She did tell me that she could see you and Matty as a couple,” Elaine admitted. Her eyes roved to her little brother, who was sitting on a bar stool near the grill, laughing about something with Bull. Mathias looked our way and blew me a kiss. Elaine added, “I haven't ever seen him so happy,” and smiled at me. “It's all you.”