I have learned three very important things in the past six weeks:

1. Little boys pee on the toilet seat. Little girls do too. Katie says it’s all about drippage when it comes to girls, but I still don’t understand it. Perhaps I never will.

2. Pop is going to make a hell of a grandpa some day. What he lacks in patience, he makes up for in assholery, which can be endearing at times.

3. Katie isn’t nearly as into me as I’m into her.

Pop smacks me on the back of my head. “She has a six-week-old infant, dumbass,” he says. “She never sleeps. I’m sure of that, because I hear that thing crying all night long. A woman who’s not getting any sleep isn’t going to have any interest in romance.”

Katie and her family came to stay with me and Pop after she and the baby were discharged from the hospital. I didn’t want them to have to go back into hiding, and to tell the truth, I wanted to keep her and her family safe. It’s not a matter of if Cole is going to come back. It’s a matter of when.

We discussed it with Adam and Dan and with the local police, and we all decided that it was safer for Katie to stay with me and Pop at the big house than for them to move again. Adam and Dan took Cabin 114 for the summer, and they’ve been around when Katie needs them. We have an increased police presence in the complex, and the place is now open for the season, which means it’s crawling with people.

Our house is also brimming with people, which seems more than strange since I haven’t spent a summer here in years. Usually when I visit, it’s the off-season and it has always been just me and Pop. We have three guest rooms, which are perfect for the Stone family. Katie and the baby took one, Trixie and Alex took the bunk beds in another, and Gabby took the third. That left me in a cold, lonely bed. But I am okay with that, since I know Katie is snug as a bug in a rug right down the hall from me. She is safe and warm and within my reach. Now I just need to reach out and grab her.

The cabins on the lake are all rented out, and people started arriving about five weeks ago. There has been a never-ending chorus of “I need this” and “I want that” and “Can you fix this” from the people who occupy the cabins. Honestly, I don’t know how Pop kept up with it all for as long as he did, particularly since he has been alone since I got out of the police academy.

It takes me and him both to keep the place operating. I have no idea what he will do when I go home.

Katie and I haven’t shared so much as a kiss since that night at the hospital. Pop says I’m a chickenshit. Maybe I am. She has a brand new baby, three kids, and a threat hanging over her head. Maybe she’s not ready for anything new with me.

But maybe she is. I won’t know until I ask, will I?

“You wouldn’t happen to want to babysit tonight, would you?” I ask Pop, wincing as I say it because I just know he’s going to throw something at my head.

He heaves a sigh. “I’ll let the ones who can wipe their own asses make my dinner.” He gets a gleam in his eye. “That big one is a decent cook.”

“Her name is Gabby, Pop,” I remind him.

He waves a hand through the air as though my words don’t matter. “Oh, who cares what her name is. She makes a mean grilled cheese. Plus, she owes me a rematch so I can win my money back.”

Pop has been losing to Gabby at cards all summer. The kid is going to go to college on the money she’s made off Pop.

“So you’ll babysit?”

“Don’t they have grandparents right down the road?” Pop grouses.

“Pop,” I say. “C’mon…”

Pop gets up and goes to the bathroom without answering me.

Dan and Adam spend a lot of time with the kids during the day, but at night, Katie likes to have them close to us. She says it’s too hard to keep up with them in the dark. She’s right, and every minute they’re gone, I worry about them.

The central security alarm I installed goes off with a quiet little beep when the front door opens. Katie walks in carrying a car seat. She goes to the fridge and gets a bottle of water. Then she walks over to me and grins up at me, setting the car seat down at my feet.

“Hi,” she sings out. She sets the water bottle on the end of the counter.

A grin tugs at my lips as she grabs the lapels of my shirt and pulls me so my body meets hers as she falls against my chest.

“Whoa,” I say. “I could get used to this.” I let my hands rest at her waist. “How was your doctor’s appointment?”

She nods. “It was good. I passed with flying colors.”

“There was a test?”

“Yes,” she says. She drops her voice down to a whisper. “The is-her-vagina-all-recovered-from-pushing-out-a-baby test.”

“Oh.” I pull my head back and look down my nose at her. “Am I supposed to ask you about your vagina?” I feel like I’m walking through a field filled with explosives. One wrong step and BLAM! I’ll blow my own dick off.

“I totally think you should,” she whispers.

The door alarm bings again and Alex streaks around the corner.

I kiss Katie on the tip of her nose. “Hold that thought, okay? I want to talk about your vagina some more later, preferably when we’re alone. Like maybe over dinner?” I arch my brows at her and wait like a kid who’s asking out his first date.

Her face scrunches up. “Dinner?”

“What’s for dinner?” Alex asks as he streaks back into the kitchen. He tosses the football up again and again, and a puddle is forming below him on the floor.

“Clean that up,” Katie says, and she throws him a towel out of the drawer.

“I’m taking your mom out,” I tell him.

“Oh, cool,” he says as he wipes up the last of the water, and then he streaks out the door again.

“Dad must have taken them swimming,” Katie says. Adam escorted her to the gynecologist’s office.

I nod. “He came and got them after lunch.” I reach down and unbuckle the littlest of the Stone children from his car seat and hoist his wiggly little body into my arms. “And Pop said he’d watch them tonight so I can take you out on a proper date.”

She purses her lips. “And just what would a proper date consist of?”

I pretend to think about it. “Dinner…”

“And?” She stares hard at me.

“And dessert…”

She punches her fists into her hips. “And…”

“And maybe making out in the front seat of my truck.”

She smiles. “Oh, now we’re talking.”

Katie and I have had a very odd sort of courtship. Meaning we didn’t have one at all. She came home with me the day she was released from the hospital and we fell into a routine like an old married couple. She was nursing a newborn and tired, and not to mention three other kids to take care of. So I just started doing what I could here and there. I feed kids and herd kids to bed, read books and tend boo-boos, and I do what I imagine a husband might do. But I know deep down inside that I am not a husband, so that has created a tiny little barrier in my heart. And I don’t know what to do about it.

“What about Hank?” she asks with a nod toward the baby. She’d let Trixie pick his name. After Katie vetoed Pearl and Enid, Trixie settled on Henry, or Hank for short.

“We can take him with us. He’ll sleep until he wants to eat. Then he’ll eat and sleep some more, and you won’t have to worry about him if he’s with us.” I sit down at the kitchen table and lay him down so he can rest on my knees and look up at me. “So, what do you say?”

“Are we going to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place?” she asks.

“Unless you want to go to a simple place. Completely up to you.” Hank had my attention. His eyes are still blue, and I have a feeling they will be startling like Katie’s.

“Let’s go to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place,” she says. “I’ll go get ready.”

I hear her turn to go down the hall, where she runs into Pop. “Katie, girl,” he sings out. “How’s your vagina? All ship-shape?”

I roll my eyes and talk to Hank. “Pop is so inappropriate.” Hank kicks his feet and bats those long dark lashes at me. “You’ll like him, though, when you get a little older. He’ll buy you condoms and talk about things that should never be mentioned in polite company.”

“I heard that,” Pop says as he comes around the corner.

“You’re not supposed to talk to Katie about her vagina,” I tell him.

He quirks his brows at me. “There are things a man needs to know, Jake, and when there’s a working vagina in the house, the dynamics change. So, I just need to know when to start buying you more condoms.” He chuckles.

I pick up one of Hank’s spongy little toys and throw it at Pop. It bounces off his shoulder.

“You got a phone call today,” Pop suddenly says.

“Who was it?” I ask. Hank is holding both my forefingers and he’s making gurgling noises.

“Your wife.”

I can almost hear the squeal of brakes in my head. “What did she want?”

“She said she needs to see you.”

I snort. “About what?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Good.” I baby-talk at Hank. “Pop is sometimes too nosy-wosy for his own good.”

Hank coos.

“She’ll be here this weekend.”

What? I scoop Hank up in my arms and stand. “Tell me you didn’t invite her here.”

“Do I look stupid?” He glares at me as he sits down at the kitchen table. “Don’t answer that,” he grumbles.

“So you didn’t invite her to come here.”

“No,” he belts out. “But she’s coming anyway. This weekend.”

I run my free hand through my hair. “Pop…”

“Time to man up, Jake. You haven’t seen her since it happened.”

“And I plan to keep it that way.”

Pop sits quietly for a moment. “You served her with divorce papers.”

How the hell does Pop know all this? Nosy bastard.

“She told me,” he goes on to say. “Now she wants to see you so you can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Well,” Pop says dryly, “I want a million dollars and to come home and find Halle Berry’s sex-crazed twin who has a penchant for whips and chains in my bed. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

Apparently not.

Pop opens his arms. “Give me that thing while it’s being cute,” he says. “You need to get dressed for your date.”

I lay Hank in Pop’s arms and stare down at them. Hank isn’t grinning yet, but sometimes I think there’s a smile in there just bursting to come out. I kind of wish he saves that first toothless grin for me. But I’m not his dad. I’m just his mom’s friend. His mom’s married friend.

“You got yourself in a nice little pickle. The married woman you’re shacking up with is going to meet your wife.”

“Katie’s not a married woman,” I remind him.

“Katie will always be a married woman,” he retorts. “Now she’s just married to a dead man.”

Truer words have never been spoken.