A Reunion
Izzy
“WE’LL GET A patch of grass, stake our claim and then we can go back and start sampling,” I suggested to Addie as we wandered down one of the many crisscross walks in Matlock’s town square late the next morning.
She was pushing Brooks in his stroller and we’d made a loop to check out all the booths and tents.
This year’s festival was bigger than the one I’d been to, some of the stalls going down alleys and one of the streets off the square shut down so food trucks could roll in.
There was everything a festival could have that was all about food but also all the festival vendors with all their wares on display, not to mention the face painters, hair braiders, flower laurel makers, balloon animal sellers, and then some.
The place wasn’t yet packed, but it was busy and festive.
But I was in hell.
My hell was due to three reasons. Drinking too many margaritas the night before. Staying up until four in the morning talking to my sister. And the fact she’d firmly avoided any chat about Perry, but I’d spied she’d obviously loaded up her car to the gills and brought it all to my house, mostly Brooks’s stuff.
I didn’t have a kid and I knew when you had a baby you didn’t have the luxury to travel light.
But you didn’t have to travel like she’d done to spend a few days off with her sister.
She had a portable crib, a portable high chair, a ton of his clothes (and hers by the way), several bags of diapers, wipes and the rest, what had to be every toy he owned and enough food to last a month.
So as we wandered I was tired, hungover and very worried, and to top that off, the sun was shining bright. The day was the warmest we’d had that year so far, and all I felt like doing was lying down and taking a nap or shaking my sister and demanding she tell me what was happening.
But I knew my sister. She wasn’t one to hold things in forever, she shared when it was her time. I just had to wait it out.
I didn’t like it but it was my only choice.
“How about here?” I asked, motioning to a wedge of grass shaded by a large tree, the surrounding areas quickly being taken up by other festival goers.
“Works for me,” Addie replied, looking rested and alert, something I found annoying but then she was a mom and she was a waitress at a high-end restaurant. She was used to late hours and lost sleep and being run off her feet.
I dumped the basket I was carrying that had napkins, plastic cups, real forks, spoons, knives, wet wipes, treats for Brooks and a bottle of sunscreen for touch ups, and I slid the plaid blanket out of the handles, unfolded it and flicked it out to lay it on the grass.
“I can’t believe you have a picnic basket like that,” Addie remarked.
I looked at the double door basket with its pink and white gingham lining rimming the edges then at my sister. “I got it at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. It was dirty but in perfect condition. Except I had to replace the lining, and that material I bought at a yard sale for five whole cents.”
She fell to her knees on the blanket and twisted to a sleepy Brooks in his stroller at its edge, saying, “That’s my Iz. If there’s a deal or a steal, she’ll find it.”
I said nothing because I considered that a high compliment.
Addie looked to me. “Except for dog food, cat food and bird seed, you ever pay full price for anything?”
“No,” I answered, and I had no problems with that either.
“Right,” she muttered, turning back to Brooks and pulling him out of his stroller, still speaking. “I blame Dad for a lot of things and that’s one of them.”
“Sorry?” I asked.
She set Brooks on the blanket and he immediately but drowsily crawled to me so I dropped to my knees so when he reached me, he could have me.
“You always wanted things. That’s who you are and that’s cool because pretty much everyone is like that. Mom wanted peace on earth and a fresh manicure every other week. I wanted him,” she motioned to Brooks, “and more like him. You wanted things.”
“I didn’t want things,” I said, feeling stung.
“You liked clothes and you liked shoes and you liked purses and hair stuff and your space just so. Mom bought that plastic wineglass for you that birthday and I swear, for months, you never drank out of anything but that.”
“I was a little girl and it was fancy,” I explained.
Her eyes locked to mine. “We’re allowed to want things and not only earn them and work for them and fight for them, but have someone maybe once in a while give them to us because they love us and they want us to have what we want.”
I stayed silent and held her gaze, letting her get it out.
She then got more of it out.
“Mom would have lassoed the moon and brought it down to us if it was in her power, and we wanted it. I’m not surprised she died so young. I think of it a lot, every day, and I think that cancer she had was Dad and it was always with her even before they found it, eating away at her every time she couldn’t give us something. Every time she had to do without so we could have stuff we just plain needed, not wanted, needed. She had to stomach so much of that, it’s not surprising it burned through her, wasted her away.”
“Don’t think of it like that,” I whispered, lifting up Brooks and holding him tight to me but never taking my eyes off my sister.
She glanced at Brooks in my arms before looking away and declaring, “I’m getting souvlaki.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She turned back to me. “You stay. Save our place.”
“The Greek tent isn’t in Africa. We won’t be gone a week. Our stuff will be okay here.”
“Iz, I hate to break this to you,” she started, swinging out an arm, “but bad stuff, really bad stuff, happens. Even in Mayberry.”
I didn’t think of Matlock as Mayberry.
With the gazebo in the square and the cute shops and handsome buildings with their bright bunting all around it, I thought it looked more like Stars Hollow.
“No one is going to take an old picnic basket,” I told her.
“People are capable of anything. They don’t know you cleaned it up and lined that picnic basket yourself, and if you had to replace it with something new you couldn’t, because you have horses to feed. They just want it so they’ll take it and they don’t think for a second that it means something to someone else and it’s not theirs to have in the first place.”
“Addie—”
“And anyway, I love him more than my life but it wouldn’t suck to take a walk in the sun and get some souvlaki without pushing my boy in front of me.”
I knew she had very little of that. She had a neighbor who ran a small daycare center in her house who also loved Addie and Brooks, so she did a lot of extra watching him because Perry couldn’t be bothered to do it. Even when he wasn’t working.
But if Addie wasn’t working, anything that had anything to do with taking care of Brooks was all on my sister.
I held her boy closer. “Brooks and I’ll stay here.”
“That’s my Izzy,” she murmured, again locking eyes with me. “If what happened to Mom ever happened to you, you’d waste away in seconds, not able to give the people you love everything they want.”
“Addie,” I whispered.
She rolled to her feet. “I’ll be back.”
I rested on my knees and watched her go, disappearing quickly in the fast-growing crowd.
I had her on my mind and all she said. I also had a sleepy Brooks in my arms. It was naptime for baby boys, and sleepy Brooks was reminding me I needed a nap and badly.
With all this, at first, I didn’t notice it.
But then I did.
People were watching me, and when I caught their eyes, they didn’t look away.
Some smiled. Some lifted their chins. One woman even waved. So tentatively I waved back.
I would think this was friendly but they weren’t doing it to other people.
It was just me.
It was me because of Francine.
And it was Francine because of what she saw happen at The Star between me and Johnny.
Crap.
I fell to my hip and curled my legs around, cradling a snuggling Brooks in my arms and trying to ignore the attention I was receiving.
“Okay, well,” I began in a half hum, half coo to my nephew while rocking him gently side to side, “the good news is, it seems I have the town’s approval when it comes to me and Johnny. The bad news is, it seems the town thinks there’s something to approve of.”
Brooks’s eyes were drooping but that wasn’t the only reason he made no reply.
The sun dappled the picnic blanket, the big trees over us offering shade and coolness that wasn’t to be found on some of the paths that were in the sun and I decided to put Brooks down so he could settle in.
I also decided to have a bit of a rest myself. I told no lie, the souvlaki was not in Africa and Addie would be back in no time.
So I put Brooks on his belly on the blanket. I was careful to tuck around my bum the full (but knee length) skirt of my black sundress with its stark red, orange and yellow flowers intermingled with teal peacocks print, subtly ruffled short sleeves and plunging vee neckline (so, okay, the possibility I’d run into Johnny crossed my mind while dressing that day, sue me). I curled my legs in their dusty cowboy boots up to cocoon Brooks as much as I could. I then rounded him with an arm, resting my head on my other arm that I stretched out.
In that position, I watched my nephew drift off to sleep.
I thought I might doze, but Brooks was out and Addie would be back shortly, we’d be okay.
And I didn’t keep track because I fell asleep, but that was the last thought I had before I fell asleep.
I woke in the much the same position.
But with profound differences.
Therefore I opened my eyes and I saw Brooks’s body lying atop a yellow-gold T-shirt. That T-shirt was what my head was lying on top of too. Under it, I felt soft and hard. And beyond it at a downward angle there was a flat area covered in T-shirt with my arm wrapped around it. Beyond that were very, very faded men’s jeans with a man’s lower body inside them, one of his legs cocked, knee to the sky, the other one of his legs straight, my legs wrapped around it.
What on earth?
In order to support a little of my weight, I pulled my arm up from where it was trapped between me and some solid heat and tilted my head back to look right into the beautiful black eyes of Johnny Gamble. Eyes that were shadowed by a beat-up baseball cap.
Brooks was dead to the world with his face tucked in Johnny’s neck opposite where I’d had my face tucked in Johnny’s neck with my head further supported by the crook of his arm, since he had one arm holding Brooks steady and the other one bent so his head could rest on his hand.
Never . . .
Never . . .
Never . . .
Was he more beautiful.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“You were out,” he stated.
I blinked at him.
“He was out too, but he’s a mover,” he told me, gently jostling Brooks who didn’t flutter an eyelash. “Kept my eye on you two, he got out from under your arm, you didn’t feel it. So thought it best to move in and make sure it was all good.”
“So you laid down on my blanket and cuddled into me?” I asked.
“No. I sat down on your blanket, until you cuddled into me,” he answered. “That was when I laid down.”
Oh man.
He was close, very close, my body still pressed to his side, my arm still wrapped around his stomach, my legs still tangled with his, and suddenly I lost track of the conversation.
“You look good in that baseball cap,” I told him and his lips hitched.
“And you look good in that dress, spätzchen. But just to say, you look a lot better in that dress than I look in this cap.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” I replied.
“I am,” he returned.
And there came the thrill down my spine.
“Margarita night got out of hand,” I shared and got a white flash through his black beard.
“That tends to happen with you.”
That got a tingle and not along my spine.
“I needed a nap,” I defended myself.
“I kinda noticed you like to crawl back into bed after you crawl out of it after you down some margaritas.”
That got a shiver.
Johnny felt it and took pity on me, gently jostling Brooks again.
“He’s cute,” he noted.
I moved my attention to my nephew, took my arm from around his stomach, laid my hand on Brooks’s diapered booty and whispered, “He’s the whole world.”
A change came over Johnny. I knew it because I felt it since I wasn’t looking at him.
Then I saw it when I lifted my eyes back to Johnny and the whole world became something else, and that something else started and stopped in the infinity of Johnny Gamble’s black eyes.
“You want some?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back immediately.
“How many?” he asked, still whispering.
“Fifteen, but I’ll take one if he’s healthy and happy.”
His heated eyes warmed a different way. “Fifteen is a tall order, spätzchen.”
“Thus me being happy with just one.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth and his voice became a growl. “Fuck, I wanna kiss you.”
Some sanity returned and I started to pull away, but his hand came from under his head so he could round me with his arm and keep me where I was.
“Johnny,” I breathed.
“We need to talk,” he decreed.
“I’m not sure—”
“Which is why we need to talk. It’ll give me time to make you sure.”
Oh man!
“Johnny—”
“After your sister leaves.”
“Jo—”
I cut myself off that time because he’d mentioned Addie.
“But I’d like to meet her while she’s here,” he went on.
I wasn’t listening.
My head drifted around and I saw that the festival had grown a great deal during my nap. I also absently noticed I—and now Johnny and I—still had a lot of attention.
What I didn’t notice was my sister anywhere.
I shot up to sitting on my hip as panic bolted through me.
Johnny came up with me, holding Brooks tight to his chest.
“Iz?”
“Addie,” I whispered.
“Izzy,” he growled, obviously feeling my change in mood, and my eyes cut to him.
“How long was I asleep?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“How long have you been here?”
“Watched you maybe five minutes. Been with you and Brooks fifteen, maybe twenty.”
“Was I asleep when you first saw me?”
“Yeah.”
“The souvlaki guy isn’t that far away.”
“Say again?”
I leaned into him, lifting a hand to press it tight to his chest, the tips of my fingers at the base of his throat, and said, “Addie. She went to get souvlaki. She said she’d be right back. It might take fifteen minutes to get souvlaki but it doesn’t take longer.”
“Maybe she’s having a wander,” Johnny suggested.
“She was in a bad mood when she took off. Not mad, just . . . whatever is happening I think was getting to her.”
“Call her,” Johnny ordered.
That was a good idea.
I turned to the picnic basket, which also held my phone, this move necessitating me untangling my legs from Johnny’s. I dug it out. I looked to Johnny and he held my nephew and my eyes as I called my sister.
She didn’t answer.
“Where are you?” I said into her voicemail. “Call me.”
Then I hung up, broke eye contact to bend my head to the phone and text.
“No answer?” Johnny asked.
I shook my head and texted.
When I looked to him, he said, “Pull up a picture of her, give me your phone. I’ll give you this little guy and you look after him while I go look for her.”
“You’d do that?” I asked.
“Fuck yeah,” he answered.
“Okay, I’ll . . . okay,” I mumbled, head bent to my phone again to find a photo of Addie. I turned the picture I found to him and said, “That’s her.”
“Almost as pretty as you,” he muttered, reaching out to the phone and taking it at the same time shifting like he was going to hand Brooks to me, but I didn’t go for Brooks.
I was so relieved Johnny was there and I could stay at the blanket and wait for Addie should she return but he was going to go out to look for her that I didn’t think.
I just did.
And what I did was lean in and press my lips hard to his.
I did it grabbing tight to the side of his neck, and when I was done, I left my hand there.
“Thank you,” I said with feeling, giving his neck a squeeze.
“Welp, Mayberry seems to have a good effect on my sister. I go to get some souvlaki and goody two-shoes here scores herself a hottie.”
I jerked my head back, my hand on Johnny staying where it was, and I saw my sister with a little cardboard tray in one hand, a huge soft drink cup with straw in the other, standing at the edge of the blanket.
“Where have you been?” I asked, finally letting my hand fall away from Johnny.
I might have done that but his free arm moved when I did to curl around my hips.
Addie didn’t miss his movement.
She also ignored my question, shifted her attention to her son and back to me. “He go down okay?”
“Where have you been?” I repeated, my panic gliding away and my focus returning.
And what I was focusing on was that her hair was in a haphazard pony when she’d left, but now it was in a significantly more haphazard pony that, knowing her as I did, stated a variety of things, all of which, again knowing her as I did, I knew to be true.
She didn’t have a taste for souvlaki.
Harking back, she’d eyed up the man in the Greek tent and he’d eyed her up in return.
She had a taste for the Greek guy in the souvlaki tent.
She’d been a wild one but she was true to Perry. I knew it. She loved him, adored him, against all my advice married him. And she told me everything (eventually). If she ever strayed (which she wouldn’t do and not simply because now she didn’t have the time), she would have told me.
Unless there was a reason to stray and that straying had happened so recently, she hadn’t yet had her shot to share.
“Addie,” I snapped.
She dropped to her knees, planted her soda in the grass, fell to her hip and took up the plastic fork in her tray, but she didn’t take a bite.
She skewered Johnny with her eyes.
“And you are?” she demanded to know.
“Johnny Gamble,” he rumbled.
“I was thinking you’d answer Magnus McHotterson but that works too,” she quipped, finally digging into her pork. “So, I know my sister and she wouldn’t score a hot guy and start making out with him in my thirty minute absence, so my guess is that someone wasn’t entirely forthcoming during margarita night last night,” she noted conversationally.
“That makes two of us,” I retorted.
She whirled a fork with pork stuck in its prongs in the air and then shoved it in her mouth.
She barely swallowed before she asked, “How long you been seeing each other?”
“We aren’t—” I began.
“Three weeks,” Johnny declared.
I looked to him to see his entire focus was on Addie.
“I’m taking his response,” Addie stated, and I looked to her to see her focus was on me. “You don’t suck face with someone you aren’t seeing.”
“We weren’t sucking face.”
“Girl, if you grabbed tighter hold on him, your fingers would have fused with his neck,” Addie returned.
I felt heat hit my cheeks and started glaring at her. “Let’s stop talking about Johnny and me.”
She arched her brows. “So there’s a Johnny and you?”
I ignored that. “Let’s talk about where you’ve been.”
“Uh,” she pointed with her fork to the paper tray, “souvlaki?”
“Getting souvlaki gives you sex hair?” I asked sharply.
Johnny burst out laughing, doing this using his arm around me to snatch me closer to him, fitting me tight to his side.
Addie’s eyes narrowed. “We’re not talking about this in front of your new boyfriend.”
“He’s not my new boyfriend.”
Johnny’s arm spasmed and Addie didn’t miss it.
She looked to Johnny. “Only Izzy would be in hot guy denial. She was practically dateless all through high school and convinced herself it was because she was ugly when it was because the guys were pissed at her because they wanted to date her but she refused to put out.”
“Addie, stop sharing stuff with Johnny,” I snapped.
This time, Addie ignored me.
Spearing more pork, she shared, “She’s probably convinced you’re only hanging around because you want to be her friend.”
“We’ve had sex eight times, Addie,” I informed her stiffly.
Her eyes sliced to me. “Eight? You’re counting?” She again looked at Johnny. “Well done. Three weeks, eight goes. She usually makes a guy wait for a year before she gives him the goods.”
Johnny chuckled and I turned to him. “Stop laughing.”
“Right, spätzchen.” He gave me a squeeze and his body kept rocking but he beat back the audible of his humor.
So it was now him I was glaring at.
“Spätzchen? What’s that mean?” Addie asked.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Little sparrow,” Johnny answered.
“Cute,” Addie said through a mouth full of pork and a grin. “And so you,” she added, her blue eyes twinkling at me.
“I don’t make a guy wait a year,” I bit out.
She jabbed her fork at Johnny. “Apparently not anymore. Then again, for that,” she started swirling the fork, also at Johnny, “I wouldn’t wait five minutes.”
“Oh my God, someone kill me,” I said to the roof of leaves over our heads.
“Not gonna happen,” Addie replied cheerfully.
So I turned to Johnny, carefully pulled Brooks from his arm into my own, and decreed, “I’m going for a walk and I’m taking Brooks with me.”
“Don’t take Johnny. We have all sorts of fun things to talk about,” Addie said.
I speared her with a look.
She grinned through more pork at me.
And it was then the most adorable white Labrador in the world bounded toward us then to us, invading the blanket and jumping all over Johnny.
So the exuberant dog wouldn’t wake Brooks, I leaned away but then I stilled.
Completely.
Because Johnny was stilled.
Completely.
The dog danced around Johnny, kissing his neck, his bearded cheeks, butting him with his snout and bending to nose his hand, and Johnny just stared at him.
I also stared at him.
All of a sudden, Johnny took his arm from around me, lifted his hands and captured the dog’s head between them both. Dog and man stared into each other’s eyes before dog took his shot and licked Johnny from jaw to temple.
This was Ranger.
This was his dog.
This was his baby returned.
This was a reunion.
A happy one.
“Boy,” Johnny murmured with such immense feeling, my stomach that had twisted into a painful knot warmed even through the pain.
Ranger’s tail was wagging so hard, his entire body wagged with it.
Finally, Johnny’s eyes lifted and mine went in the direction he aimed them.
And there she was, maybe ten feet from our blanket.
Tall.
Buxom.
A mane of wild, beautiful, dark red hair.
A killer outfit that fit close to the one Johnny was wearing, a slim-fitting, black baby doll tee with what looked like a heart from a playing card on it with some wording in it, seriously faded jeans, worn in cowboy boots and lots of silver at wrists, ears, fingers and neck.
And a face that could start wars and end them.
She was so beautiful, I envied her on sight with such intensity it felt like I shriveled sitting there on my picnic blanket next to Johnny. Shriveled and shrank until I felt two inches tall.
Her face was stricken, pained, tortured.
And then she ran. Like a heroine in a romantic movie, with the grace of the beauty that was just her, she turned and raced through the crowd, bobbing and weaving, her hair flying out behind her, catching the sunlight with a ruby glow.
I was watching her so I didn’t know how it happened but Ranger made a choice and raced after her.
He stopped though. Stopped, looked back at Johnny, and with what looked like a “come on!” jerk of his head toward Johnny that sent his floppy ears flying, he turned and bolted after her.
And I sat frozen in agony on a picnic blanket dappled with sun on a summer day, holding my nephew as I felt the sudden movement beside me when, without a word, Johnny Gamble surged to his feet and sprinted after the both of them.