15
PEACE, LOVE…AND PUMPKINS
THE NEXT DAY, we’d dusted off Dylan’s Honda Accord from where it’d been sitting in the garage for the past few months and made our way to the outskirts of Sunset Cove to have lunch with his family. He’d called them last night to surprise them with the news we were in town, and they immediately suggested we pop over for a late round of campfire corn, whatever that was, but we’d begged off and gone for a walk along the beach instead.
The warm, salty air already had me feeling rejuvenated, and I wondered when had been the last time I’d felt so free. It wouldn’t last, of course, since word was bound to get out as to where we were, but for at least last night, with Dylan’s hand in mine as we watched the crashing waves, my world had found steady footing. Peace.
“You don’t look nearly as nervous to meet the parents as you did walking into my apartment yesterday,” Dylan said, aiming a quick look my way as he turned onto a long strip of dirt road. “Why is that?”
“Technically, I’ve already met your parents. And yesterday I was just preparing to hold myself back in case Derek ended up being a little too friendly.”
Dylan laughed at that and made a left, passing a mailbox in the shape of a two-story wood house that had me doing a double take. The trees were thick on our sides as we rode along a bumpy dirt and gravel driveway, and then Dylan said, “But, as you saw, our relationship is purely platonic.”
“I approve.”
“And if you hadn’t? Would there have been a wrestling match? Tearing each other apart for my affections?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d like to watch,” he said.
“And here I thought you just wanted to be watched. Learning more about you every day, Prescott.”
He laughed, and as the trees thinned out, a two-story wood house, an exact match to the mailbox, rose up in front of us, accented by a jagged staircase that went down from the top floor and a two-person rainbow hammock out in front. It looked exactly like the kind of place I expected the Prescotts to live. In the green wilderness without neighbors, and in a larger version of a shack-style house. The exact opposite to my mother and father’s pristine multimillion-dollar estate in their gated community just outside of Chicago.
After Dylan parked the car and we got out, Sunshine opened the front door and gave a big wave.
“Hey, boys!” she said, and then went to the railing of the porch and leaned out over it to yell toward the backyard. “Ziggy, put the hoe down and come and greet your son and his new boyfriend.”
I glanced over the top of the car at Dylan, who was grinning but shaking his head.
“Don’t worry.” I chuckled. “My mother is always telling my father the same thing. Hos can be such a problem.”
Dylan let out a bark of laughter, and then raised a hand to shield his eyes as he gazed up at Sunshine. I followed his line of sight to see her running toward the stairs, and as she went her flowy, tie-dyed purple dress billowed out from where it was cinched around her breastbone and swished down around her legs and ankles. When her feet hit the stairs, I noticed she was without shoes as she raced down, excited to see her boy, and I was blown away by how that made me feel.
How comforting it must be to have such unconditional love. To know that no matter what you did, or who you were, all you had to do was come home and you would be accepted. No matter who you were.
Dylan was so lucky, and it explained so much about the man I was coming to know with each passing day. The reason he was so open, so free with himself, and so unbelievably kind and loving. It was all right here. The heart of Dylan was now standing in front of us with warmth in her eyes and what I knew to be pure happiness for the two of us in her heart.
“Ahh! I’m so pleased you’re here,” Sunshine said when she got to the bottom of the stairs. She looked between the two of us, and her smile was so full of love that I swore I could feel it pouring off her as she came toward us with her arms outstretched. Her long blonde hair was left free, save for two braids on either side of her head that were secured at the nape of her neck, and her tanned skin made her look positively radiant.
Sunshine Prescott was everything I’d thought she would be, and after she’d finished hugging her son and stepped in front of me, I couldn’t help but return her warm smile.
“Hercules,” she said, before wrapping her arms around my waist and giving me a welcoming hug. As I returned the gesture, I looked over the top of her head to Dylan, who winked at me. Just as she released her hold and took a step back, a tall man dressed in a dirt-smeared tank and faded denim shorts with frayed ends came walking toward us, wiping his hands on his legs. He was wearing a pair of flip-flops and a wide-brimmed hat that showed his long, dark hair to match the Frank Zappa mustache that declared this man Ziggy Prescott.
“There’s my boy,” he said as he came forward and reached for Dylan, pulling him into a bear hug. As he clapped him on the back, I saw the way Dylan tightened his hold around the man and knew he’d needed this just as much as it seemed they did. This family was a close one, which was something…new for me, and though Dylan was a grown man, this injection of family love was already having a calming effect, if the way he settled into his father’s embrace was any indication.
When Ziggy released him and cupped the sides of Dylan’s neck, he asked, “Are you okay? You know Sunshine and I don’t watch TV and all that junk, but we have the laptop you got us, and after you called we looked at a few things.”
My stomach knotted at those words, as I wondered if they would hold some kind of resentment toward me for putting their son through all of this. But when Dylan nodded and looked my way to say, “I don’t care about all of that. Ace is totally worth it,” my heart pounded. And when both Ziggy and Sunshine followed suit, I felt my cheeks flush.
“Well, aren’t you a looker,” Ziggy said as his eyes fell on me, and with the hand he still held on Dylan’s shoulder, he gave his son a shake. “And here I thought you said you weren’t into pretty boys.”
“Pretty boys?” I repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one.”
Ziggy pulled me into a hug and laughed as he patted me on the back. As he leaned back, his hands went to my shoulders, and he said, “Whoa. Pretty boy has pretty big arms. You garden?”
My lips twitched at the rapid change in conversation. “Garden? Uh, I don’t, but I did take an agriculture class in high school.”
“Shoulda kept at it,” Ziggy said, his arm going around my shoulder, and then he began walking us toward the backyard. “You should see my garden. You could have a garden like this. I got rhubarb and zucchini, ’shrooms—”
“You grow ’shrooms?” I asked, my eyes going wide.
“Course I do. Can’t have a garden without ’shrooms.” Then he leaned in like he was going to tell me a secret and whispered, “We’d have the real Mary Jane out here if the government didn’t have a big ole stick up its ass. I always was good at trimming trees.”
I coughed and then looked over my shoulder to see where Dylan had gone off to, but he and Sunshine were trailing behind us, and there was a grin on his face. Made me wonder how much “gardening” he’d had to do when he lived with his parents.
* * *
ACE WAS GIVING me a don’t you dare leave me look as Ziggy steered him away, and I gave him an answering smile. I had a feeling I was going to enjoy seeing Ace outside of his element way too much today.
Ziggy gestured toward a square of four equal-sized patches filled with plants. “This here’s the pepper pin, or as I like to call it, ‘fruits that burn the hair off my ass.’”
“Oh, Ziggy,” Sunshine said, covering a giggle.
He answered her with a wink and then nudged Ace. “Betcha didn’t know chili peppers were a fruit, did ya?”
“No, sir, I didn’t,” Ace said.
“Mhmm, most people don’t. And don’t call me sir. I’ll be forced to spike your food with the chilies.”
“Yes, sir,” Ace said, and when Ziggy’s eyes narrowed, he backtracked. “I mean Ziggy.”
“That’s better. Now, here,” Ziggy said, handing Ace a shovel and indicating a small section he looked to be making holes in. “I’m getting ready to plant some pumpkins and I could use a hand. You up for a bit of good ole manly bonding, Ace?”
Sunshine looped her arm through the crook of my elbow and bumped into my side. I looked down at her to see a smile on her face, and I knew it was her way of conveying how happy she was that Ziggy had taken such a liking to Ace.
I’d always been very private about my family life, even with Derek and my friends. It wasn’t because I was ashamed of them, more because they meant the world to me and I wouldn’t allow anyone to have an opinion one way or another on how I was raised. But seeing Ace laughing alongside Ziggy solidified that this had been the right decision.
“Daydream…” Sunshine said in a wistful tone as she patted her hand over my chest. “It’s so good to have you home, my son.”
The lines around her eyes creased as she continued to grin up at me, and I leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. “It’s good to be home.”
“Yes, I can see you needed it. I understand it’s good to go away, but it’s always important to come home to your roots. To refuel with what’s truly important.”
There’s my Sunshine. Peace and love. Never was this a more welcome speech. Until recently, I didn’t think I’d truly appreciated how lucky I was when it came to both those things. But until witnessing Ace’s life, and the small amount of time I’d been living it, I had never realized how important peace was. As for love and understanding, I almost wished Ziggy and Sunshine could sit down with Ace’s parents and give them a lesson in the basics.
“How about you take a walk with me?” she said.
When I didn’t make a move to follow, she rubbed her hand over my chest. “Oh, don’t go getting all paranoid. I just want to ask you a couple of things and show you the gazebo Ziggy finally finished building for me. The grapevines have thrived this year. You know what that means?”
“Plenty of wine this summer?” I guessed.
“Mhmm, plenty of wine.”
I glanced over to where Ace was now crouched down beside Ziggy, listening intently to the instructions being given, and then turned back to Sunshine. “Okay, let’s go. I’d love to see it.”
As we wandered down the dirt path that wound through Ziggy’s boxed gardens, Sunshine stayed suspiciously pensive, and I could tell by the way she was gripping my arm that whatever she wanted to talk to me about was weighing heavily on her. And that meant one thing only—Brenda.
I knew what this was about. I’d been actively avoiding it since that morning at Syn when mine and Ace’s lives had been turned on its ass. It had been an easy out. A convenient way to push aside a subject I wasn’t comfortable discussing, but at the same time I knew it wasn’t going to go away. I also knew that I needed to sit down with Ace one of these days, sooner rather than later, and lay my miserable childhood tale out for him before he heard it from someone else. And with the way the press was relentlessly digging through every aspect of my life, there was no doubt in my mind that the conversation needed to happen soon.
When we got to the end of the path, Sunshine stopped me and looked down at my loafers. I followed her gaze, and when I raised my eyes, she cocked her head to the side. “You know he’ll take it as an insult if you don’t take those off and feel the grass between your toes.”
I chuckled, knowing she was right. Ziggy took great pride in his garden and the extensive spread of grass that spanned the length of the property down to the back of their yard, where Lennon lived.
I toed off my shoes and then stepped with her onto the cool carpet of grass. God, I’d missed this place. It was so easy to get caught up in the rush of the city, the busy mainstream of life where everyone was consumed with their phones, computers, social media, and who was doing what. But none of that was here. Peace was here.
Sunshine led us across the grass, toward the cluster of trees on the right side of the property, and as she went she stroked a hand down my arm. “We’re very pleased you brought Ace home to meet us.”
“I am too,” I said, looking her way. “He needed it.” And then I corrected myself: “We both needed it.”
Sunshine nodded. “I can’t even imagine what his life is like. All that scrutiny. Twenty-four seven.”
“It’s pretty wild. He can’t even walk to his car without some photographer jamming a camera and microphone in his face.”
Sunshine stopped and looked at me, and I instantly knew what she was worried about. It was written in her troubled expression. That was one of the best things about Ziggy and Sunshine—they never hid things from their children. They were open and honest with everything they were thinking and feeling, and that was a welcome relief, considering most people spent their lives tiptoeing around the hard shit.
“Are you…sure you’re okay with that? With being in someone’s life who’s under so much of a spotlight?”
“Yes, I told—”
“I know what you told me, Daydream,” she said, a frown marring her forehead. “But have you really thought it through? Ace is lovely, dear; we aren’t saying he isn’t. Ziggy and I just want to make sure you’ve thought about…everything.”
“Everything as in Brenda?”
Sunshine lowered her eyes to the ground. “Well, yes. That’s…” She paused and then let out a sigh before peering back at me. “That’s information that hungry vultures will feast on. Vultures who are already digging around in your past.”
I knew she was right. When Ace had been leaving lunch with his parents that day at The Vine, the first question had surfaced regarding my foster care days, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before they looked deeper.
“I know. I want to talk to him about it while we’re down here. It’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a good place to come. So he can see where I truly grew up. That way when I tell him all the stuff that came before it, it won’t seem so bad.”
Hell, who was I kidding? No matter what I did or what I showed Ace, nothing would take away the shock of hearing what I would have to tell him.
“Oh, honey,” Sunshine said, squeezing my arm to her side. “You’re not worried about his reaction, are you? That man looks at you like you hung the moon.”
“Of course I’m worried. Not because I don’t trust him, but because I don’t want him to look at me differently. I don’t want that ‘hung the moon’ expression to go away.”
“There’s nothing you can do about your past, Daydream. He accepts you as you are or he’s not worthy of you.”
“I know that. I do. I’ll tell him.”
“Good boy.”
“And what about Brenda? Any more calls? Surprise visits?”
“Not a peep, and if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll stay away.”
“Or Ziggy’ll bury her in the backyard?”
Sunshine grimaced. “That was one option. But don’t you worry about her.”
“I’ll try.” I ran a hand through my hair and blew out a breath, gazing around at the newly erected gazebo, decorated by the lush green grape vines punctuated with plump purple muscadine grapes that wound their way up the trellis. “This looks great, Sunshine. I like that he put the rosebushes around it.”
“All of our favorites, see?” She went over and pointed to the one to the right of the entrance and went down the line. “Gypsy Sue for Ziggy, April Moon for me, Earth Song for Lennon, and New Dawn for my Daydream.”
Walking over to the bushes, I grinned at her and then bent down to smell each one. It reminded me of the first time I’d met Sunshine. When the lady from child protective services had pulled up in their driveway, she’d been out front, busying herself planting a bush of New Dawns for my arrival, and when she hugged me, she smelled sweet and earthy, same as she did now. I’d never been hugged before that moment, and I’d had no idea what I was missing. How important and necessary another person’s touch could be. I’d felt that way with Sunshine and Ziggy from day one, and the only other person who’d had that effect on me was currently planting pumpkins in my parents’ backyard.
“I love you, Mom.”
Sunshine’s head shot up, and when she straightened, her eyes glistened a little. “I love you too, baby.”
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders then, hers going around my waist, and I stayed there, content to be comforted by the woman who’d raised me—the only woman that mattered.
As a loud whoop let out from behind the house, Sunshine looked up at me. “We’d better get back. Sounds like Lennon’s found your boy.”