Pulling Home (2 page)

Peter, a title that gained him official entry into the Wheyton family.

“Daddy said he and Uncle Peter will take me to a Padres game when we get back.

You can go too, if you want.”

Relieved to have the conversation shift to more pleasant topics, Audra wrinkled

her nose. “I’ll wait for football. Now scoot and get ready, then we’ll wake Daddy.”

“Be right back.” Kara flipped down the hall toward the stairs with three

cartwheels and a round-off.

Audra straightened the pillows on the couch and tucked a copy of
Soap Digest
into the magazine rack. She’d better wake Christian and warn him his daughter would be pouncing on him in a few minutes. She moved down the long hallway and tapped softly on the bedroom door, waiting for the low mumblings of sleep to surface. “Christian?”

She eased the door open and peered inside. Slits of light poked through the blinds, casting strips of brightness on the room. The oxford shirt and khaki slacks for the trip hung from a hook outside the closet, loafers and socks resting beneath it. His suitcase stretched open on the floor, socks with socks, shirts with shirts, pants with pants, folded and compartmentalized. Her lips twitched as she thought of the special shoe covers he used to protect his clothing from coming into contact with ‘the contaminants on his soles.’ He’d brought order and love into her life, along with a sense of belonging and simple acceptance, and for that, she would always love him.

“Come on, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”

He lay on his stomach, his head half buried under a pillow, arms extended,

shoulders and back exposed. The rest of his torso was covered with a single sheet. Even in the dimness of the room she could make out the sleek definition of muscle. She reached over and lifted the pillow from his head. His right hand thudded against the bed, his eyes remained closed, mouth partially open. “Christian?” She shook his shoulder, gently, then harder as the iciness of his skin seeped into her hand. She grabbed for his fingers, felt their stiffness. “Christian!” Her scream bounced off the walls in desperate, agonizing pleas, but she knew he couldn’t hear them, knew he would never hear them.

Her husband was dead.

Chapter 3

“Audra Valentine? It wouldn’t surprise me, after the way her mother carried on,
the poor thing probably knows nothing about mothering.”—Marion Fitzpatrick

Jack Wheyton didn’t like surprises. He dealt with enough in the operating room

on a daily basis but dammit if Leslie hadn’t gone and planned a birthday party for him, a surprise one no less, that he’d found out about from his friend, Bernie Kalowicz.

It wasn’t like he could back out without looking like a complete jerk or

devastating Leslie. She was so damn passionate about everything, which could be good or bad, depending on one’s situation and perspective. That passion made her an excellent nurse, the perfect caregiver for the children Jack operated on. Those kids needed hope as they lay in their beds, bandaged and bruised in body and spirit. The parents needed that same hope and Leslie gave it to them with encouraging words and a calming presence. If a family requested she remain with their child after surgery, she did, whether she was scheduled or not. The floor called her White Angel because she hovered around the ill, willing them back to health. Who wouldn’t admire a woman like this?

And then there was the sex, which coupled with passion, proved downright

explosive. Her father might be one of the most respected clergymen in the community, but Pastor Richot’s daughter wasn’t timid with her body or her needs. The first time Jack went to the Pastor’s house for Sunday dinner, he couldn’t look at Leslie’s mouth uttering the blessing without remembering what she’d been doing with it an hour before.

There were only two stumbling blocks, or maybe he should call them boulders.

Grant Richot, Assistant Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery at McMahon Children’s Hospital. Jack’s personal pain in the ass. They’d been sparring since seventh grade when Suzie Sandervall stuffed a rabbit’s foot in Jack’s back pocket. It was green with a gold chain, very cool, only problem was the love note attached, which wouldn’t have been a problem if she hadn’t been Grant’s girlfriend. That was the beginning of the war that spanned two decades and worsened three years ago with the accident that killed Grant’s wife and smashed the nerves in his right hand.

Recently, Jack and Grant had been brought before the Chief of Pediatric

Neurosurgery and ordered to stop bullying one another and start working together or they would find themselves suspended. And so began a civil period of agreeing to disagree. Of course, Grant never missed an opportunity to snipe at Jack, not that Leslie listened to him. She loved Jack, had told him several times, showed him in many ways, including but not limited to the bathtub, the Jacuzzi, the back seat of his Expedition, and the hospital parking lot. Which brought up the second stumbling block—Leslie was his brother’s ex-girlfriend. She swore on her father’s bible she never slept with Christian or any other man until her sexual liberation in Barbados where she discovered ‘the wonder, the joy, and the addiction’ of sex.

Now how could Jack complain when she put it like that? So what if she were

almost engaged to Christian when he dumped her for someone else? So what if she

occasionally intimidated Jack with her vast knowledge of sex and its pleasures? What man would really complain about too much sex?

Leslie was smart, compassionate,
great
in bed, and she knew a doctor’s life didn’t shut off after eight hours. She made solid wife material. So what if there hadn’t been a bell clanging against his brain when he met her? The one and only time that happened he hadn’t recognized it until it was too late, and obviously the other party hadn’t heard the same bell—not even a tinkle.

It was time to settle down. No kids though. It half killed him when he lost one of his patients. Having a child left a person too exposed, too vulnerable, too raw. He’d seen the grief in his own family when they lost his little sister, Rachel, at age eleven to meningitis. No warning, just an uncontrollable fever and a final trip to the emergency room in the back of the Town & Country with its fake wood-sided panels. Rachel was the reason he’d become a pediatric neurosurgeon, the reason he’d worked two and three jobs to pay his way through med school, the reason he’d pushed everything else aside to become one of the most respected in his field. Maybe she was even the reason he’d thrown away his one chance at true love—because it had come ten years too early.

But that was the past. Leslie was his present. The least he could do was attend his own surprise birthday party and if he were really lucky, she’d save a little frosting and give him his own private party later on.

The only downside was Christian. His flight landed tomorrow afternoon and Jack

promised to have dinner at his parents’ house so he could spend a few hours with his brother. Not that a few hours twice a year was enough time to get reacquainted, but at least they had that. Christian’s daughter would be with him.
Kara.
He still had a hard time being around her. She called him Uncle Jack, told him the only other uncle she had was Uncle Peter, and he wasn’t a real uncle, just a friend who acted like an uncle, whatever that meant. And then she’d throw her tiny arms around him and hug his waist and he’d stand there, feeling helpless and inadequate.

It was like that every time she came. The older she got, the more her cheeks

hollowed out, her eyebrows arched, her hair grew fuller, her smile, brighter. The older she got the more she reminded him of her mother…Audra Valentine Wheyton.

Christian’s wife. The woman he hoped never to see again.

***

“For Heaven’s sake, Alice, will you stop with the fussing? You act like Christian

can’t find food in California.”

Alice Wheyton lifted a cherry pie from the oven and set it on a wire grate. “Joyce, you mean to tell me if Susie were traveling twenty-two hundred miles to see you, you wouldn’t be cooking up a storm, fixing that beef tip and pepper dish she likes so much?”

Joyce Kirkshorn slid her pink-gray glasses up the bridge of her nose. She was soft and round with a voice to match. “Alls I’m saying is the boy’s coming to see you and if you keep it up, you’ll be too tired to enjoy the visit.”

“Hah. I’ll save the tiredness for when he leaves.” Alice placed the second pie, this one apple, on the other wire rack. “The cherry’s for Christian, the apple’s for Jack.” She slipped off her oven mitts. “Can’t favor one boy over the other, you ladies know that.”

She walked to the round oak table where her three friends sat, pulled out a chair, and plopped down.

“Less you only have one.” This from Marion Fitzpatrick, a tiny woman with a

beak-like nose and curly gray hair. “Rose’s all I’ve got, so she gets all the pampering.

And all Rose’s got is Hannah.” She looked up from the tiny bootie she was knitting, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Makes it kinda easy that way, nothin’ to fight about.”

“But no brothers or sisters?” Tilly McMally, the one they called ‘string bean’

spoke up. “Least I’ve got Katie and George, and five grandkids between them.”

Marion’s tiny fingers flew over the sea-green knitting needles. “God’s will’s all I can say. Didn’t have a choice in those days, not like today, when a person can decide the who, what, where, when, why, and even the if.”

Joyce nodded. “That’s for sure. Five kids in eight years, all those diapers, cloth, not the disposable ones these mothers have today, and the laundry—”

“And can you imagine asking your husband for help?” Alice chuckled. “Asking

him to feed the baby or change a dirty diaper so you can go soak in a tub with Calgon Bouquet and read this month’s
Good Housekeeping?
”

“Sure, I can,” Tilly said. “Merv would have said, ‘Go right ahead dear, soak as

long as you want,
after
you feed the kids and change their diapers. Oh, and don’t forget to pack my lunch for tomorrow. I’ll take roast beef on rye.’”

Alice and her friends had lived within three blocks of one another for over thirty years. They met three times a week, usually at Alice’s, supposedly because her house boasted the largest kitchen and least commotion. Truth was, of the four women Alice possessed the easiest temperament and it didn’t bother her to dirty a few dishes, unlike Tilly, who wiped and washed as soon as a person used a spoon or spilled a drop of milk.

Out came the old dish rag, red and white checked, scouring, polishing, drying. Her friends hadn’t been in her kitchen since the day it snowed two years ago, and Joyce forgot to wear boots and trekked snow through the kitchen. Tilly yanked out the mop, sloshed Mr. Clean in a bucket and proceeded to wash the
entire
floor.

Marion was just as bad in her own way—she went to the grocery store once every

two weeks, sometimes two and a half, boasted about how she spent less than fifteen dollars for herself and Henry, and then offered Alice, Tilly, and Joyce day-old doughnuts picked up from the
reduced for quick sale
counter and
one
cup of coffee, generic blend.

Marion said if a body wanted a second cup, she’d have to put down her buck twenty-five, plain as rain. Alice tried to tell Tilly and Joyce that Marion was tight—frugal was a more friendly term—because she’d been raised in a house with eight mouths to feed and a father dead of a heart attack at forty-three. Tilly said that story didn’t hold water, that Marion would charge her own mother the buck twenty-five for a second cup of coffee.

They used to go to Joyce’s on occasion until five months ago, when her son,

Walter, moved home. At thirty-seven, he was separated from his wife, Ginny, and though they’d been in counseling for three months, and he’d joined AA, Ginny still didn’t want him back home, said she couldn’t trust him not to drink again. Joyce said Ginny was getting used to pawning the two little ones on Walter and going out with her girlfriends on Saturday night, said if the woman didn’t straighten up,
she’d
be the one joining AA.

All in all, Alice’s house was the most logical choice for their get togethers. She loved baking—banana bread, cinnamon coffee cake, apple strudel, pecan pie. And she didn’t mind a mess, actually preferred the disorder because it meant a person wasn’t getting set in her ways. There were no grandchildren to pop in, no children stopping by with laundry to iron or requests for two dozen chocolate chip cookies for the next Girl Scout meeting, nothing but Alice and of course, Joe.

She’d been married to Joseph Wheyton for forty-three years, most of them good,

a few of them rough, the worst, the year Rachel died. Joe was an honest man and a hard worker, though bad knees had forced him to retire three years ago. He’d been a bricklayer for forty-two years, never missed a day’s work, except when he had pneumonia back in ’72 and then, when Rachel died. The man had an opinion about everything, no matter if he knew anything about it or not. He said it was his duty as a United States citizen to exercise his right to freedom of speech and if he didn’t, then who knew when it might be taken away. Alice told him more than his speech would be taken away if he didn’t cut out the smoking and fried bologna sandwiches.

Joe spent most days in his wood shop, puttering around, making bowls and

specialty music boxes from blocks of wood—curly maple, poplar, ash. He’d made Alice a music box last year that played Dr. Zhivago’s,
Somewhere My Love.
It was crafted from mahogany, the detail so exquisite that when he gave it to her she cried. The man might not say the words very often, but
I love you
had been staring back at her from the smooth, mahogany gloss.

For all his orneriness, Joe Wheyton had two weak spots softer than a ball of

dough that’s raised and doubled twice—one for his granddaughter, Kara, and the other for the daytime soap,
On Eden Street.
When Kara came to visit twice a year, he’d pull her onto his lap and tell her stories about his boyhood, how his father immigrated from Ireland and worked as a bricklayer, teaching his own sons, Joey, Tommy, and Georgie, the art of bricklaying, while his ma, Kara’s great grandmother, canned tomatoes, beans, peppers, and took in other people’s laundry so they could make ends meet. Then he’d go on about Kara’s father, Christian, and Jack, recounting the time they gave Mrs. Slater’s toy poodle a haircut and when Christian talked Jack into wrapping him in twelve rolls of Scotts so he could see what it felt like to be a mummy. There were always stories, new ones every time, dug deep from the well of Joe’s timeless memory. Christian was always the accomplice, Jack the perpetrator. Alice loved to stand in the kitchen doorway, unseen, and watch her husband and granddaughter together. Joe grew years younger, his mood lightened, the frown around his mouth eased. If only they could be together more often, if only they didn’t live two thousand miles away...if only that woman hadn’t taken her son away.