It felt oddly perfect, as if, at long last, the universe had finally been set right.
Even more odd was the fact that Arlene was a little disappointed that Jack had announced his intention to surrender on Saturday night. Despite the sheer impracticality, part of her had been seriously considering taking him up on the craziness of a Las Vegas weekend. But not this weekend, because Maggie was part of her school’s Playcrafters group, and they were performing a series of ten-minute plays at a local assisted-living facility on Sunday afternoon. And Arlene wasn’t going to miss that.
Not for anything.
As far as her disappointment went, it was very small. Very manageable. It was nicely mixed with her current feeling of breathless anticipation.
After this party was over, she was going to do her best to convince Jack that there was no point at all in waiting for tomorrow night.
Right now the conversation was all about a book called
The Hunger Games
. Will had gotten an early copy from a friend who did a book review blog at the
Boston Globe
, and Maggie had loved it so much that she shared it with all of her friends.
She’d made sure to get it back so that Arlene could read it, too. The copy was coming unglued, the pages rubberbanded together.
Arlene had finished it in one sitting, while Maggie was at school.
“Foxface,” Lizzie was saying. “I would totally be Foxface. I would finally have a good reason to use my mad shoplifting skills.”
Maggie looked quickly at Arlene. “She’s kidding.”
Arlene certainly hoped so. Jack was sitting so that his
hand was resting lightly against her back, and she appreciated his solid presence.
“Don’t say things like that,” Maggie lit into Lizzie. “My mom doesn’t know that you’re not serious.”
“My mother’s the shoplifter in the family,” Lizzie told Arlene brusquely, with a blunt honesty that was disarming. “She got caught once when my little brother and I were with her and …” Her sharply featured face twisted. “Believe me when I tell you I’d starve to death before I ever did anything as moronically stupid as that.”
Arlene
did
believe her. “That must’ve been hard.”
“It sucked.” Lizzie glanced at Maggie before steadily gazing back into Arlene’s eyes. “But there are definitely worse things in life to endure.”
“Lizzie,” Maggie said, a warning tone in her voice.
“It’s okay,” Arlene told her daughter, still holding Lizzie’s somewhat challenging gaze. “For the record, I liked Foxface a lot.” She glanced at Jack who hadn’t yet read the book. “I don’t want to say more. Spoiler alert.”
Jack spoke up. “I guess I gotta read this book.”
“Oh, you do,” Maggie told him earnestly. “I’ll lend it to you.”
“I’d love that,” Jack said, smiling warmly back at her.
This was weird. This feeling of … contentment? Satisfaction? Serenity?
It was a sense of unity, of belonging, of rightness.
Maybe this was what it felt like to have a real family—to have someone, very literally, at her back, not just during bad times, but good times as well. Which was not to say that she and Maggie hadn’t been a family, albeit a small one. But it had always felt to her as if it were Arlene and Maggie against the world. With Jack sitting beside her, it felt more as if they were
part
of the world.
The conversation had drifted to the character named Peeta, and Jason was enduring some intense teasing. If
Lizzie was Foxface, and Maggie was the heroic main character named Katniss, then Jason was Peeta. Apparently Lizzie’s brother Mike had some competition in the crush-on-Mags department.
Arlene looked at Jack to see if he’d made note of the boy’s blushing, but he was frowning.
But only because his phone was buzzing. He’d set it to vibrate, and he now pulled it out of his pocket. “Ah, shit,” he said. “I mean, shoot. Sorry. Becca just called me three times in a row.”
Arlene laughed. “I think that qualifies for an
ah, shit
,” she leaned closer to him to say.
He smiled, but he wasn’t happy. “I better take this,” he told her as he pushed his chair back from the table.
“Say hi for me,” Arlene said, and the face he gave her—
Not a chance in hell
mixed with
Are you freaking kidding?
—made her laugh again.
“I’m in the middle of something important,” she heard him say into the phone as he headed for the door to the hallway, “so unless this is an emergency …”
Jack put his finger in his ear as he started to push open the door with his shoulder. But then he froze. It was only for an instant before he was moving again, but his body language had changed so dramatically that Arlene was up and out of her chair and heading for him, before the door shut behind him.
As she slipped out into the hall, he was going through his pockets almost frantically, even as he asked, “He’s in surgery right now? Who’s the doctor?”
He’d found a folded piece of paper to write on, but as he looked at Arlene he said, “Pen, I need a pen.”
He always carried one in the back pocket of his jeans—even back when he was in college—and she reached for it, and sure enough it was there.
She uncapped it before she handed it to him, and as he scribbled the name of a doctor and what looked like a
hospital onto the paper, he said into the phone, “You seriously left them home alone when Luke was … No, I’m not saying it’s your fault. How could appendicitis be your fault? I’m just … Oh, oh,
that
helps. That’s … Do we
really
have to do this now? Shouldn’t you … No,
no
, I’m not saying that! That’s not what I—” He took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “Look, I’ll call you back with my flight information. Yes. Yes.” He hung up the phone.
“Jesus!”
“Luke or Joey?” Arlene asked.
“Luke,” he told her, already scrolling through his address book. When he glanced up at her, his eyes were apologetic. “I gotta catch the next flight to San Francisco. World Air flies out of Logan. I have their number in here, somewhere …”
“People don’t die from appendicitis,” she told him.
“Yeah, I know, thank God, right?” Jack said. “But I’m sorry, I still have to go.”
He thought she’d said that to … “Of
course
you still have to go,” Arlene said. “I wasn’t … That wasn’t …”
“Where the hell is it?” he asked, frowning at his phone.
Arlene reached into her pocket for her own cell. “I’ll get the number from information.” She dialed her phone. “World Airlines ticketing,” she told the voice system. “Please put the call through.”
Jack, meanwhile, had started trying to access his far fancier phone’s Internet service. “Shit,” he swore as he tried to access the tiny keypad. “Shit. I’m all thumbs.”
She’d already been put on hold, so she held out her phone for him. “Trade.”
Jack handed his phone over as he took hers, holding it to his ear.
Her Master Sergeant had a similar phone to Jack’s, and Arlene knew how to use it. “What are you looking up?” she asked.
“It ruptured,” he told her.
Oh, no
. She didn’t say it aloud, but she didn’t have to.
“Yeah. He’d been complaining of stomachaches for weeks,” Jack said, but then he pointed to the phone. “Yes, thank you. I need the next available flight to San Francisco. Or LA. I could fly into LA. Or even Sacramento … There is?” He looked back at Arlene. “One seat left on a red-eye to San Francisco. It leaves in two hours. I’m going to take it.”
“You should,” she said, as the Internet revealed that the big danger from a ruptured appendix came from infection after surgery. Peritonitis. And oh, she’d been wrong. People
did
still die from a ruptured appendix.
Jack had dug for his wallet and was giving his credit card information to the airline rep.
He was going to need a ride to the airport, but Arlene didn’t have a car. She stepped into the pizza party room, where her brother was completely focused on Dolphina. “Will!” she called.
But it was Jules Cassidy, always vigilant, who looked up and came over.
“What happened?” he asked, and she told him what she knew as she pulled him with her back out into the hallway.
“Robin and I can drive you to the airport,” Jules told Jack as he hung up Arlene’s phone. “No problem.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, handing Arlene her phone. “Damnit, I have to leave, like, ten minutes ago.”
“I’ll get Robin.” Jules vanished.
“Luke’s going to be okay,” Arlene told Jack.
He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.
“Call me when you get there,” she said.
“It’s going to be late,” he said.
“I don’t care,” Arlene insisted. “Just call me when you land. And again when you get to the hospital. And whenever else you need me.”
The muscle was jumping in his jaw. “I will,” he said, then he grabbed her and held her close. “Jesus, I’m a total douchebag for thinking this. My kid’s in the hospital and I can’t stop thinking shit,
shit
, why didn’t I check into the Baldwin’s Bridge hotel with you when I had the chance?”
She laughed. “You’re thinking that because you’re human and you know damn well that you were going to get some tonight.” She lifted her head to kiss him, and the kiss he gave her back was deliciously loaded with promise. But his worry and fear was back there, too, and she pulled away, because he had to go. “I’ll be here when you get back,” she promised him in a voice that was breathless.
He kissed her again. “Or you could meet me in Vegas.”
“Again with the Vegas thing.”
“We’ll talk about it,” Jack told her.
“Jack.” Robin was at the door. “Jules got the car, he’s waiting out front.”
The trip to the airport was going to take fifteen minutes at best. Longer if there was traffic.
Jack pulled Arlene back with him into the party room. He raised his voice. “Mags, I gotta go.”
But Maggie was already standing right there by the door, looking worried. “Jules told me that Becca called and Luke’s in the hospital.”
“Jack,” Robin said again.
“I’ll keep you updated,” Jack promised Maggie, giving her a hug and Arlene one last glance before he followed Robin back out the door.
Maggie chased after him. “Jack,
wait
!”
Arlene pushed open the door, too, watching as Maggie ran to keep up with Jack.
They were halfway down the hall when something Maggie said made Jack pull up short. Arlene watched as
Maggie stood there, almost nervously turning the green ring around and around on her finger. And Jack gave the girl his full attention as he listened to whatever she was telling him so earnestly. It was clear she was upset as she used the heel of her hand to wipe tears impatiently from her eyes.
Jack, bless him, spoke to her just as seriously, just as earnestly, and completely reassuringly. And then he took Maggie’s sweet face in his hands and planted a kiss on her forehead.
And it took Arlene’s breath away—watching this man be the kind of father that Maggie’d never had, the kind of father that all little girls deserved in their lives.
Whatever he’d said to Maggie calmed her, and she nodded as he told her something else, and then they both turned, almost at the exact moment, and looked back at Arlene and smiled.
And her heart damn near burst.
Then Maggie stepped back, and Jack was gone.
But then Lizzie appeared, running past Arlene to pull Maggie back with her into the party.
And Arlene knew she was going to have to wait until they got home to ask Maggie what she’d said to Jack, and what he’d told her in response. Except her phone rang, and she saw from the number that it was …
“Jack.”
“Hey.” His warm voice came through the tiny speaker. “Since I’m not driving, I thought I’d call and tell you, well …” He exhaled hard. “I’m just going to say it, okay? Maggie was afraid that my having to rush off to California was another ploy of Becca’s that would keep you and me apart. And I was sitting here and it suddenly occurred to me that if Mags was worried about that, you might be, too.”
Arlene hadn’t even considered the possibility. “
Should
I be worried?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his voice absolute.
“Then I’m not worried,” she told him.
“I love you,” he said.
Arlene nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t possibly see her. “I love you, too.” And then she said words that were even more astonishing—words she truly couldn’t believe were coming out of her mouth. “We’ll meet you in Vegas, Jack. Maggie and me. After Luke’s out of the woods. After Maggie’s show on Sunday. Maybe on—”
“Monday,” he finished for her, laughing, and she could hear his joy in his voice. “That would be amazingly great.”
“Or Tuesday,” she said, “provided I can take Maggie out of school.”
“I think they’ll let her go for her mother’s wedding,” he said, and the world tilted for her, because it was so surreal. And somehow Jack knew it, because he lowered his voice. “When you start having second thoughts, just remember, Leenie, how many years we’ve known each other. How good it feels, just to sit together in the same room. How well we fit.”
They did fit. But … “I still have to go back,” she reminded him. “I can’t get pregnant. Not … yet.” Once again, she’d said a word that she would never in a million years have believed that she’d say. But she meant it, because someday—a not-too-distant someday—she could imagine bringing another child into this world. A world that she was going to share with this man who loved her.
Arlene heard Jack smile as he exhaled, as he understood the subtext of what she’d said. “I love you,” he said again. Simple. And absolute.
“I know,” she said, and it was true. She believed him.
He laughed again. “I gotta go, Han Solo. Although I gotta tell you, you’re the only woman on the planet for
whom I would willingly play the part of Princess Leia. But my battery’s at ten percent and I don’t have my charger on me and, shit, I won’t have time to get one at the airport.”
“Then don’t call me when you land,” she told him. “Save your phone for an emergency. Call me when you get to the hospital. Whatever time it is. I’ll be here.”