Chapter 3

Bellingham, Washington

Saturday, February 15, 2020

Sarah spent the first five years of her life as a mommy dog living in a bare-bones shed in a Palm Springs puppy mill. She’d

had some socialization before she came to live with us but not much. She no longer freaks out at the sound of hair dryers

or flushing toilets, but she doesn’t really trust the doggy door. She makes her needs known to me by fixing me with an unblinking

stare, which means either (a) it’s time to eat or (b) it’s time to go out. In the mornings, however, when the stare tactic

is a nonstarter because I’m still asleep, she gives me the cold nose treatment in my armpit. That works.

Knowing we had a visitor lurking in the guest room, I made my own pit stop in our en suite and put on a robe before venturing out into the rest of the house. Sarah wasn’t surprised when, on the way to the front door, I made my customary detour into the kitchen long enough to start the coffee machine on its morning calisthenics. Our home is of the water view variety. That means the front door, the one that leads into the living room, is the one that opens out into the fenced front yard. The back door is the one everyone uses to enter and leave the house.

Since the phone charger is on the kitchen counter next to the coffee machine, I picked my phone up and checked for emails

and texts that might have come in overnight. The first text, a clearly furious one from Kelly, was written in all caps: I AM COMING TO GET HIM. I WILL BE THERE BY ELEVEN!

The previous evening, when Mel had assured me that we’d get it all sorted, I believe she anticipated some kind of reasonable

discourse among a group of calm, sensible adults. Kelly’s all-cap message made her sound a lot more like someone intent on

a search-and-destroy mission rather than a civilized discussion. It made me feel as though what we were in for would be more

like a cross between Jerry Springer and Dr. Phil .

The second text was from our housekeeper who comes every Saturday. Fortunately for all concerned, she wasn’t coming today.

With an irate Kelly on her way, that was a relief.

On weekends when Mel doesn’t have to rise and shine at the crack of dawn, I usually let her sleep in. She was still in the

bedroom sawing logs, and I saw no reason to go back and wake her up only to tell her that a very pissed-off Kelly was on her

way. With that in mind, I stuffed the phone in my pocket and turned my attention to the coffee machine. By the time Kyle ventured

out of the guest room, I was on my second cup of coffee and working my crosswords.

“Morning,” I said.

He replied with a wary half grin.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“I guess.”

“Help yourself. If you’re using one of the big mugs, press the two-cup button. For a small cup use the other one. Cream and

sugar?”

He nodded.

“Cream is in the fridge. Sugar is in the sugar bowl on the counter. If you want to stir your coffee, be sure to get a spoon

out of the drawer. When people use the sugar bowl spoon to stir their coffee, it sends Mel around the bend.”

“That’s one of the rules?” Kyle asked.

“Yup,” I told him. “Let’s call it rule number one.”

Our Magnifica coffee machine takes a while to grind the beans and brew the coffee, so it’s not exactly an instantaneous process,

but the wait means that each cup is freshly brewed. While Kyle’s was in the making, I wondered what the hell we’d talk about.

How does a seventysomething make casual conversation with a heartbroken teenager who is, more or less, a stranger? Chances

are, Kyle was dealing with the same issue.

When he came into the living room, rather than settling on the sofa, he sank down onto the floor and sat cross-legged next

to Sarah, who was curled up on her rug. She greeted him with a welcoming tail thump.

“How did you sleep?” I asked.

“Not very well.”

That was hardly surprising. Neither had I.

“I got a text from your mom a little while ago,” I told him.

“Oh?”

“She sounds mad as hell and says she’s coming to get you. She’ll be here by eleven.”

Kyle looked alarmed. “But I thought you and Grandma Mel said I could stay.”

“We said we needed to talk about it, and we did, but the bottom line on whether you go or stay is up to you. You get to decide.

Mel and I are both on board if you want to stay, but the final decision will be yours.”

“Mom’s going to be mad.”

Those words and the uncertainty with which they were uttered didn’t sound like they came from someone prepared to regard himself

as an adult.

“She already is,” I advised him, “and that’s hardly surprising. Moms are like that, and yours comes by it honestly. When my

mother, your great-grandmother, got mad, believe me, she was something fierce.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I replied. “You see that framed photo at the far end of the mantel?”

Kyle nodded.

“Mind getting it down?”

He unfolded his long legs and stood up in one smooth movement without the slightest difficulty. I might have been able to

get up and down that way once upon a time, but not anymore. My two fake knees just aren’t up to it.

“This one?” Kyle asked, handing me a framed photo of a young man dressed in a World War II–era army uniform.

“That’s the one,” I said. “Does the guy in the photo look familiar?”

Kyle frowned. “He looks a lot like me.”

It was true. That was the first thing that had struck me the day before when I first caught sight of him—how much Kyle looked like my father and like me, too, for that matter. DNA is weird that way. It picks and chooses and sometimes skips a generation or two.

“That’s because he’s my father,” I told him, “your great-grandfather. He was only a few months older than you are now when

he left home and joined the army. He and my mother were dating and about to get married when he died in a motorcycle accident.

My mother learned she was pregnant after he was gone. Her parents wanted her to give me up for adoption but she refused. Over

their objections, she kept me and raised me on her own without a bit of help from her folks or from my dad’s family, either.

As for her parents, she never spoke to either of them again.”

“Never?”

“Never. That was at a time when single moms weren’t as common as they are now. If she hadn’t been fierce, she never would

have managed.”

“Do you think that’s what’ll happen with me and my mom—that she’ll never speak to me again?”

“I doubt it, but if she’s a chip off my mom’s old block, you need to understand that, if you go head-to-head with her, that’s

always a possibility.”

“You’d think my father would be old enough to not make the same mistake twice,” Kyle muttered.

Obviously he was aware of the fact that his mother had been pregnant with Kayla well before his parents tied the knot.

“Yes, you’d think so,” I agreed and let it go at that. After all, with my own newly discovered daughter, Naomi, in the picture, I didn’t have any room to talk about out-of-wedlock offspring. By the way, Naomi now works as a counselor in the rehab center where I originally sent her to get clean. Obviously the treatment worked.

At that moment and much to my relief, Mel turned up, rescuing me from what was fast becoming a difficult conversation. She

waltzed into the room dressed, made-up, and looking for her own first cup of coffee. While she stopped off in the kitchen

to press the coffee button, Kyle returned the photo to its place on the mantel and sat back down.

“What’s up?” Mel asked as she joined us in the living room.

“My mom’s coming to get me,” Kyle said grimly. “She’ll be here by eleven.”

“What do you think about that? Do you want to go home with her?”

“I want to stay here.”

“Then you’ll have to tell her exactly that,” Mel advised him, “but be prepared. There’s a good chance your mother will be

permanently pissed.”

“I know,” he said. “Gramps just told me the same thing.”

“You can live with that?”

Kyle nodded.

The beep of an arriving text sounded, and Kyle pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He glanced at it briefly.

“It’s Dad. They’re ganging up on me. He says I should listen to Mom. Figures. That’s what he usually does—puts it all on her,

but at least he’s not coming here.”

My opinion of Jeremy Cartwright, already at an all-time low, plunged a few more points. He could have at least pretended to

make the effort.

“But he’s not coming here and dragging her along,” Kyle added.

Obviously the “her” in question was Caroline Richards. With that said, Kyle stood up. “I think I’m going to go down by the

beach and take a walk.”

Referring to the rocky shoreline at the bottom of our bluff as a beach is a bit of a misnomer. Kyle disappeared into the guest

room and emerged a moment later, pulling on a puffy jacket.

“Can Sarah come along?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, “but grab her leash first. If you go down to the bottom of the bluff, you’ll be glad to have her tugging on

the leash when you come back up.”

Seconds later, he and Sarah took off. Once the door closed behind them, Mel turned to me. “Did you see his face when he mentioned

Jeremy’s girlfriend?”

“I did.”

“I suspect she’s at the bottom of what’s going on,” Mel offered.

“Probably,” I said.

Mel shook her head. “Boy,” she said, “it’s weird that I never picked up on the fact that both Kelly and Jeremy were so unhappy.

They’ve done a good job of covering it.”

“Haven’t they just,” I agreed.

Mel finished her coffee and stood up. “I’d best get my rear in gear. With a growing boy in residence, I need to figure out

what we’re having for breakfast. I believe I feel an attack of pancakes coming on.”

That wasn’t necessarily good news. There’s a reason we eat out as much as we do. Generally speaking, Mel’s pancakes aren’t

something to write home about, but as she set about rattling pots and pans, I retreated to the bedroom to get dressed.

While doing so, I thought about what Mel had just said about having a growing boy in residence. I had worked my way through college as a Fuller Brush Man, selling my wares door-to-door. In the course of my sales career, I became quite adept at using the assumed close. I was taught to never ask a lady straight out if she wanted to buy a certain product. Instead I was directed to ask which color she would prefer or if she was going to pay by cash or check.

Mel Soames had just used one of those on me. We were having pancakes for breakfast because Kyle was coming to live with us.

Kyle had made up his mind about that, more because it was what he needed rather than what he wanted. And in the process of

Mel making up her mind, she’d made mine up as well.

I wasn’t sure about why Mel had landed so firmly on Kyle’s side of the equation, but she had, and I’ve been around Mel long

enough not to argue the point. My mother may have been tough, but believe me—so is Mel. That’s one of the things I love about

her.

And so, as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving my somewhat grizzled face, I squared my shoulders and delivered

another pep talk: “Welcome back to fatherhood, J.P. With any kind of luck, Kyle will be off to college in the fall.”

The pancakes were a bit thick, lumpy, and underdone in spots, but at least Mel tried. She was busy supervising Kyle’s first

time on KP duty when Kelly showed up. She marched in the back door without bothering to knock and came straight into the kitchen.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

“Get your stuff,” she ordered her son. “We’re leaving and we’re leaving now!”

“I’m not going,” Kyle replied mildly. “I’m staying here.”

Kelly spun around and glared at me. “Is this your idea?” she demanded.

“Actually it’s mine,” Mel said, moving into the line of fire and physically inserting herself into the conversation. “There seems to be a good deal of uproar going on in your family at the moment. Kyle came here looking for a safe haven, and we’ve told him he’s welcome to stay.”

“He needs to come home.”

“Which one?” Kyle asked.

That was a showstopper, and Kelly hesitated for a moment as if uncertain about how much of her current marital situation Kyle

had shared with us. Mel quickly put her out of her misery by letting her know we were aware of what was going on.

“We already know that you’ve moved out of the house and are living in Eugene with Kayla, leaving Kyle in Ashland with Jeremy

and his girlfriend.”

“His pregnant girlfriend,” Kyle specified.

At that point Kelly flushed furiously—the same thing she used to do when she was a little kid and got caught doing something

she wasn’t supposed to. Whatever it was, her bright red face was always a dead giveaway that she was guilty as sin.

Kelly took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, addressing Kyle. “That was the arrangement we all agreed to when this first happened.

We gave you a choice between coming to Eugene with Kayla and me or staying on in Ashland to finish out your senior year. You

chose Ashland.”

“Ashland isn’t working,” Kyle declared. “Besides, now that I’m eighteen, I get to have some say about where I live. I want

to live here.”

“What about finishing high school?” Kelly asked.

“There’s a perfectly good high school here,” Mel said. “We can get him enrolled on Monday.”

Once again Kelly turned her fury on Mel. “You’ve got no business turning my own son against me.”

“Nobody’s turning me against you,” Kyle interjected. “I can’t live with Dad and Caroline anymore, and I don’t want to live

with you and Kayla, either.”

“Why can’t you live with them?” Kelly asked. “What changed?”

“None of your business,” Kyle snarled back at her. With that he stormed off into the guest room, slamming the door behind

him.

Kelly looked back at me as if all this was my fault. “I hope you’re happy now.”

In the old days I had always been first in line when it came to accepting blame because most of the time I deserved it. That

was no longer the case.

“I don’t think anybody in your family is happy right now, most especially not Kyle,” I told her. “He came here asking for

help, and Mel and I are prepared to give it to him.”

“Screw you!” Kelly replied. With that, she turned and stomped out of the house. I already suspected Jeremy wouldn’t show up

to favor us with similar sentiments, and if he didn’t, that would count as yet another black mark against him. At least Kelly

had cared enough to come looking for her son and raise hell about it.

“That didn’t go very well,” Mel observed once Kelly took off, “but since this sounds like a done deal, we’d better go shopping.”

“Shopping?” I echoed. “Why?”

“Because we’re going to need lots more food around here, for one thing. For another we need to get another cable box so we

can hook up the TV set in the guest room. I doubt Kyle will be interested in watching what we watch.”

That’s one of the things I love about Mel. She can sort out problems long before I know they exist.