Feels Like Summertime (19 page)

With my heart full of hope, I turn around and whisper, “Thank you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he whispers back. He stares into my eyes for a moment. Then he disappears into the darkness.

I fall back against the bed and climb under the covers. Gabby and Laura will let me know if Hank wakes up. I rub my face against the pillow, and scissor my legs together to warm the sheets. And I fall asleep amongst a sweet cascade of old memories and new dreams.

I
turn the doorknob slowly
, trying to sneak back inside as quietly as I’d left. I stop when I get inside and smell coffee brewing. I squeeze my eyes closed and wince inwardly. “Morning, Jake,” Pop sings out from the kitchen.

I walk around the corner. “Morning, Pop.”

“Did you have a good night?”

I nod and pour myself a cup of coffee. Pop’s probably going to make me go clean a bathhouse or something.

Pop grins over the rim of his coffee cup. “How’s Katie?”

“She’s fine.”

He pats the table in front of him. “Come sit for a minute,” he says.

“Can I just get my toothbrush, instead?” I swear, I would rather clean a bathhouse than get a talking-to now from Pop.

He kicks a chair out with his foot and points to it. “Sit.”

I drop into it with a groan.

He lifts his newspaper and pulls a brown envelope from underneath it. “When your mother found out she was dying, she asked me for only one thing.”

Pop rarely talks about my mother. But I do know he loved her fiercely, and he loves me with just as much ferocity. He is tough, but he is fair, and he is the standard by which I make all the decisions in my life. I can be a father now because he’s been such a good example of one my whole life. I’ve watched, learned, and listened.

“What did she ask you for?”

Pop takes a sip of his coffee. “She said that when I knew you were settled and happy, that I need to make sure you stay that way.”

He slides the envelope toward me. I don’t touch it.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I finally think you’re settled and happy, you big dummy.” He pushes the envelope a little farther toward me.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Open it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Chickenshit.”

I shove it back toward him. “You can’t make me.”

He stares at me. “You sure?” He drums his fingers on the table.

“Damn it, Pop.”

As I open the envelope and fan the enclosed paperwork around me, Pop starts to talk.

“Your mother’s only concern when she lay dying was that she wanted to be sure I took care of you. I always have, or at least I’ve tried.”

A big ball of emotion chokes me.

“She worried about you, Jake. She wanted you to have the life we had. She wanted you to have the happiness we had. She wanted the world for you.”

“And it was your job to get it for me?”

“Fuck no,” Pop bites out. “It was my job to teach you to get it for yourself.”

I can’t speak.

“Your mother was the gold standard. The day she put you in my arms for the first time was the happiest day of my life, Jake.”

“Thanks, Pop,” I choke out.

“I watched you with Laura, and I hoped one day you would come to love her like I loved your mother, but you never did. And she never loved you like your mother loved me. You two just kind of skated along. You were content, but you weren’t really happy. And every time I saw you together, I worried more and more that I was letting your mother down.”

I swallow, but I still can’t speak.

“Then she cheated on you with that big lug in my guest room, and it was the best thing that ever could have happened to you.”

“That
big lug
took a bullet for me,” I mutter.

Pop waves his hand in the air like he’s waving away smoke. “I don’t give a damn about any of that,” he says. “She did you a favor, because you ended up with Katie, and that girl loves you.”

“She loves you, too,” I say quietly.

“And I love her,” Pop says clearly. “And I love those kids like I would if they were made by you.”

“I know you do, Pop.” I look at the paperwork spread all around me. “What
is
all this?”

“This is your future, son,” he says. “Your mother inherited this place from her father, and then we ran it together. We raised you here, and we built something wonderful. And now it’s yours and Katie’s. If you want it, that is.”

“You’re giving us the complex?” I can barely breathe.

“Yes.”

“Starting when?”

“Now.”

I can barely ask the question. “What about you?”

He chuckles. “I’ll still be here, you dipshit.”

The clench around my heart eases a little.

“There’s enough money in the business account that you can keep the place running for a few hundred years, and I hope you’ll actively participate and help it grow. If you want to go back to New York, I’ll still be here. But I’d like for you two to run this place with me until I die.”

There’s that clench around my heart again. “You’re not sick, are you, Pop?”

“Oh, hell no. It’ll take more than a little bitty stroke to put me in the ground.” He laughs.

“Then why are you turning it over to us now?”

“I want to be with you and your family, Jake. You’ll have four kids and a wife, now, and you might need an old man like me around to teach them a thing or two. And I still need to beat that big one at blackjack.”

“Gabby,” I say.

He grunts. “Whatever.”

He leans to the left, looks out the window, and points to the adjacent property. “You could build your own house on the hill, if you want. Or you can stay here. There’s plenty of room. For everyone. Or if you want privacy, I’ll just take one of the cabins.”

“I want you with me, Pop,” I tell him around the lump in my throat. “I always want you with me.”

“You were your mother’s eyeball, Jake.” That might sound like a weird way of saying it, but I know it means I was the apple of her eye. I was her baby. I always knew that she and Pop loved God first, one another second, and me third. I never doubted my place in their lives. “She’d want you to grow old here, surrounded by people who love you.” He clears his throat. “Besides, who’s going to teach those kids to curse properly if I’m not around?”

I chuckle into my fist.

“Thank you, Pop,” I say simply.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ll talk to Katie and see what she wants, okay?”

“Okey-dokey.”

“But no matter what, we’ll always be wherever you need us to be.”

He pats the back of my hand. “I just need you to be happy. That’s all I care about.”

“Thanks, Pop,” I say again.

He nods and jerks his head toward the hallway. “Now go take a nap. You can’t marry that girl looking like you been up fucking her all night.”

“Pop!”

“Don’t
Pop
me. A man doesn’t sneak into the house at zero-dark-thirty with a shit-eating grin on his face unless he’s been elbow-deep in some vagina all night. Now go take a nap so you won’t look like shit later. Go. Get.” He shoos me along.

I lean down to kiss his forehead. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath until I let him go and stand back up. “I love you, Pop,” I say.

“I love you too, Jake.”

G
abby stands
behind me with a curling iron, making fat rings of my hair and letting them hang down over my shoulders. I chose a simple white summer dress for today, and I think Jake will like it. Gabby frees the last ringlet and steps back. “You look really beautiful, Mom,” she says.

“Thanks, Gabby.” I have to blink the tears back yet again. This day is so emotional on so many levels. “Have you checked on Jake?”

She shakes her head. “Alex is with him. And Pop. And Freddy. I think he’s covered.” Gabby lays her hand on my shoulder and stares at me in the mirror.

I cover her hand with mine. “I love you, Gabs,” I tell her.

“I love you too, Mom,” she says.

A knock sounds on the door of the cabin, which is where I’ve spent the rest of the night and the morning. Laura, my only bridesmaid aside from Gabby, gets up to go and answer the door. “Yes? Can I help you?” she asks.

“We’d like to see the bride,” a familiar voice says.

I get up and run to the door. “Oh, my God.” I stop and cover my mouth. Apparently, I’m going to do nothing but sob all day. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

Mr. and Mrs. Stone, Jeff’s parents, walk into the room and take turns hugging me tightly. Mr. Stone hugs me the longest, and when he sets me back from him, he has tears in his eyes.

“Jake called and invited us,” he explains.

My belly drops down toward my toes. “
Jake
called you?”

He nods. “He wanted to tell us about the wedding, and he thought you might want us to be here.”

“I did,” I rush to say. “I
do
. I just…” I don’t know how to finish it. I don’t know how to tell them that I was afraid they wouldn’t approve. “I was scared,” I finally admit.

Mr. Stone chuckles and it sounds so much like Jeff that I have to look at him twice. “Jeff wouldn’t want you to die with him,” Mr. Stone says. “He’d want you to find someone wonderful like Jake. He’d want you to be happy.”

I can only nod at him. I couldn’t get a word out if I tried.

“Well, we’ll be here watching. Cheering you on.” He leans toward me and pretends to whisper. “And drinking your beer.”

I laugh and hug him before he leaves. Jeff’s mom steps closer to me. She has been very quiet. “I’d like to make a formal request,” she says.

“Okay…”

“We’d like to spend a little more time with our grandchildren. We can come to you, or you can come to us, we don’t care which, but we want to be in their lives.” She stops and clears her throat. “We want to be in
all
their lives. All four of them are special to us, and we want to know them.”

Emotion chokes me and I pull her to me. “You don’t have to,” I whisper to her.

“
All four
of them are important to us, so we’d like to see them all. We’d like for them all to know us as their grandparents, if that’s all right with you.”

I wipe my eyes. “It’s all right with me.”

She reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope. She holds it out for me. “Jeff left this for you,” she says.

I don’t reach for it. She thrusts it toward me again. I don’t take it. In fact, I take a step back away from it.

“It’s just a letter,” she says.

“Have you read it?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No. But you should.”

I take another step back. “Why do you have it?”

“You know the letters he left for everyone?”

I nod. Jeff left letters for everyone he loved, including me and his parents, and we got them when he died. He also left one for each of the children, for them to read on the day they get married. They don’t know about those letters, but I was left with strict instructions on how to distribute them. “I remember them,” I say. “I already read my letter.”

“Well, this was included in
my
letter, along with special instructions. I have another one to deliver too. You’re not the only one.”

“Who’s the other one for?”

“The other one is for the man you marry,” she says softly. “Jeff wanted to tell him some things.”

“What kind of things?” I whisper.

She laughs. “I have no idea, but knowing Jeff, it should be really good.”

“I don’t want it,” I say. “Take it with you.”

She sets it on the coffee table and walks to the door. She looks back at me. “We’d like to sit behind your parents. Would that be all right with you?” she asks. “Can we still be family?”

I nod emphatically. “Yes, of course.”

She goes out the door and leaves me with Laura and Gabby.

Laura walks over to Gabby. “Let’s give your mom a few minutes, okay?”

Gabby stares at me long enough to be sure I’m all right. Then they leave. They leave me alone with the letter.

I lift my perfectly manicured fingernails to my lips and chew on them, as I pace back and forth across the room. The letter seems to stare at me.

I pick it up.
For Katie, on the day she remarries
is written in Jeff’s chicken-scratch on the outside.

I put it back down on the table. I don’t want it.

I pass by it about a hundred more times, and then I finally pick it up, tear it open, and with shaky hands I pull out the single sheet inside. I sink down onto the sofa, because my legs are too wobbly to hold me up any longer.

D
ear Katie
,

If you’re reading this, then today is the day you’re marrying another man. Don’t worry—this isn’t a sad letter, and I have no sad intentions as I sit and write it.

Last night, the Hum-V in front of us went up in flames and we lost seven members of our team. Some of them were fathers and mothers, some were sons and daughters, and still others were husbands and wives. No matter who they were, they were loved by someone, and someone has suffered a great loss. It made me think about all the things I would want to say to you, if you were ever forced to go on without me. It probably won’t happen—I pray it won’t happen—but I want to be prepared.

If you’re reading this, you have trusted someone enough to accept his proposal, and you loved him enough to let him into our children’s lives. You are the best mother in the world, and you have good judgment when it comes to people. If you’ve gotten this far, you know you’ve made a good choice. If you ever doubt it, please know that I don’t doubt it for a second.

My suggestions to you:

1. Love him fiercely and with all your heart. The love you have for him will be different from the love you have for me. You don’t have to separate the two.

2. We have seventeen years of happy memories. Cherish them, but don’t let them smother the love you have for him. Don’t let them be the weeds that choke out the light. Let them be the fertilizer that will help your love grow.

3. Forgive easily. I know it’s hard, and I know your temper even better than you do. You get angry quickly. Forgive him just as quickly, and hopefully he will return the favor.

4. Let him lead our children when he can. Let him be more to them than a playmate. Let him be a father. He won’t take my place, but he can take his own place with you and with them—you just have to let him.

I love you more than you can ever imagine. And it’s my love for you that made me write this letter to you, because when I can no longer make you happy on a daily basis, I dearly hope that someone else can.

Love him fiercely, Katie, as I have loved you.

Until we meet again,

Jeff