Chapter 19
D elilah found herself humming the next morning as she bustled around the kitchen making pancakes for the boys.
“Can we have chocolate chips in them?” Jesse wanted to know. He’d just come out of his room wearing pajama bottoms, his chest bare. His hair stuck up in all directions.
“We don’t have any chocolate chips,” she said. “But I can slice some bananas to go on top.”
“Okay.” His tone indicated that it was anything but okay, but that he would somehow try to muddle through the travails of breakfast.
She used a spatula to turn a batch of pancakes on the griddle. “Did you have fun last night?” she asked.
“Yeah!” Jesse perked up, the lack of chocolate chips forgotten. “The s’mores were really good. And it was cool going with Quinn. I didn’t think we would do that kind of stuff with him. I thought you didn’t even like him.”
Delilah looked at her son, surprised. “Of course I like him. Why did you think I didn’t?”
Jesse shrugged. “You always said we couldn’t call him or invite him anyplace. And whenever we did see him, it was like you didn’t want to.”
He was right. She had acted that way. But she couldn’t tell her son that she’d pretended not to like Quinn because she liked him too much—so much that she worried he would hurt her, hurt her boys, and tear open the old wounds that were barely starting to heal.
“Well, we didn’t know him very well,” she said. “That’s all. But now he’s getting to be a friend, isn’t he?”
Gavin came into the room, rubbing his eyes as he yawned and struggled to fully wake up. “Who’s our friend?”
“Quinn,” Jesse said, catching him up on the conversation.
“Oh. Yeah.” Gavin nodded his agreement.
Delilah slid some pancakes onto a plate, sliced some banana on top of them, then drizzled on a modest amount of maple syrup. She put the plate in front of Jesse, who scrambled up onto a barstool at the kitchen island to eat.
“What would you guys think if we spent more time with him?” Delilah asked, already knowing the answer.
“That would be so cool!” Jesse said, his mouth full of pancake.
Gavin nodded vigorously.
“We’re going back to Connecticut in less than a month,” she reminded them. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with Quinn while we’re here.”
“We could go camping maybe,” Jesse said. “Or fishing. Quinn said he likes fishing.”
“Maybe,” Delilah agreed. She poured more batter onto the griddle to form Gavin’s pancakes. “I just don’t want you to be sad when we go home and we have to say goodbye to him.”
“We won’t be going home,” Jesse reminded her. “We don’t even have our house anymore. We’ll be going to Grandma’s.”
“Just until we can get our own place,” she said.
Gavin climbed up onto the barstool next to Jesse’s and waited for his pancakes, his thumb in his mouth.
“We could just stay here,” Jesse said.
Delilah froze. She didn’t want Jesse thinking that way—not when it meant reality was going to leave him disappointed.
“This house isn’t ours,” she said. “We just have it until the end of the month.”
“There are other houses in Cambria, Mom,” he said.
Time to change the subject—and fast. “So, what do you guys think you want to do today? Here, Gavin. Your pancakes are ready.”
“I just feel bad about the kids, that’s all,” Delilah’s mother said on the phone later that day as Delilah sat in an Adirondack chair on her back patio, watching the kids explore the tide pools just below the house. It was low tide, and the waves slapping into the rocks were small. After some argument, Jesse had convinced Delilah that if they were allowed to go down there alone, neither he nor Gavin was likely to be swept into the ocean.
“Why do you feel bad? The kids are fine.”
“Well, they’re all alone at Christmas.”
Delilah stifled a sigh. “They’re not alone. They have each other, and they have me.”
“You know what I mean. Why, you probably don’t even have a Christmas tree.”
It was true—she didn’t. That hadn’t seemed like something you could do in a vacation rental house. But why not? Of course they should have a Christmas tree.
“We’re getting one this weekend,” she said, deciding it on the fly.
“But what are you going to decorate it with, Delilah? All of your ornaments are in storage. And the kids’ stockings …”
“We’ll buy more ornaments. We’ll buy more stockings, Mom. I can do that, you know. I got a whopping settlement in the divorce.”
Jeanette made a scornful sound. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“The settlement? It is a good thing. Especially because Mitch didn’t leave me enough money to buy food before the court made him do it. He didn’t leave me enough to take care of his own children.”
She heard the bitterness in her voice and told herself to suppress it. The kids might hear, even over the sound of the surf. And she’d vowed never to trash Mitch in front of his sons. And anyway, she didn’t need her mother to hear her anger, her hurt.
“Well, divorces hurt everyone, Delilah. Especially the kids. That’s why I keep thinking that if you and Mitch could just get counseling—”
“He lives in Paris. With his new girlfriend. That’s going to make the logistics of counseling kind of complicated, Mother.”
“Oh, honey …”
Delilah didn’t want to talk about the divorce. She didn’t want to talk about Mitch or her financial settlement, and she absolutely did not want to talk about any scenario involving her getting back together with her ex. Instead, she shifted to the original topic—Christmas.
“You know, the boys are having a good time in Cambria. There’s this local event called Hospitality Night.…” She told her mother about it—about Santa and the s’mores and all of the fun the kids had. The one thing she didn’t mention was Quinn. Her mother definitely didn’t need to know she was seeing someone.
“That does sound like fun,” Jeanette admitted. “Are the boys handy? I’d love for them to tell me about it.”
So Delilah called out to the boys, and they scrambled up from the rocks below and onto the patio via the small stairway that led to the beach.
She handed her phone to Jesse, then listened with growing horror as he told his grandmother all about Quinn.
Delilah made frantic hand gestures, trying to communicate with her son that this topic was off-limits. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t catch the gist of what she was trying to tell him, because he went on and on about their new friend and how he’d escorted them through town on Hospitality Night.
After Jesse, Gavin talked to his grandmother a bit, mostly responding to her inquiries in single syllables. Then he handed the phone to Delilah.
“Well, Mom, I’d better get going,” Delilah tried as the boys ran back down the stairs to the tide pools. “I promised the boys we’d—”
“Who exactly is this Quinn person?” Jeanette asked in frosty tones.
Delilah tried to make her voice casual. “Oh … he’s just a friend. Someone we met here.” She waved a hand airily as though her mother might hear the gesture and conclude there was nothing to dissect.
“A man.”
“Well, yes, he is a man, Mom.”
“Delilah! You’re seeing someone so soon? And you’re bringing him into those boys’ lives? I never imagined you’d—”
“It’s nothing, Mom.”
“It certainly isn’t nothing, Delilah, if you’re bringing a new boyfriend around your sons so soon after what they’ve been through. And how are you supposed to work on things with Mitch if you’re—”
“I’m not! I’m not going to work on things with Mitch!” She said it in the kind of whisper-yell you used when you wanted to be emphatic but you didn’t want the whole world to hear your business. “Mitch left me for another woman and moved to Paris! He was with her since long before that. Why shouldn’t I have someone? Why shouldn’t I have a little fun? A little pleasure?”
“Your pleasure has to come second to your children’s well-being.” Delilah could practically see her mother’s expression, pained and stern.
“I know that. I’ve always known that. It’s Mitch who didn’t.” She took a breath and composed herself. “Now, I really do have to go. Bye, Mom. I love you.” And she hung up before her mother could say another word.
It didn’t take long for Jeanette to report the news to Roxanne, who called Delilah to follow up.
“It sounds like you and the hottie are having fun,” Roxanne said.
By now, Delilah and the boys were back in the house, the kids in front of a TV show and Delilah in the kitchen putting together their afternoon snack.
“Mom told you.”
“Of course she did. She’s outraged. She wanted me to call and talk you down.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Delilah asked. “Calling to talk me down?”
“Oh, hell no. I’m calling to say good for you. Seriously, Dee. I hope you milk this fling for all it’s worth. You deserve it.”
“Well … thanks.”
Except, something about that made Delilah uneasy. Not something —one specific thing. The word fling .
Was that what this was? Was it just a fling?
The word didn’t seem to fit, somehow. But then again, neither did the word relationship .
But why did she have to define it, especially when it was so new? So fresh?
“Delilah? Are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Enjoy, is all I’m saying,” Roxanne went on. “And see if you can send me a picture. If he’s as hot as you say, I’ve got to see him.”
Quinn texted Delilah the afternoon following their Hospitality Night date.
What are you doing tomorrow?
He was busy today—he’d led a hike in the morning and had another one in an hour—but tomorrow was all clear, and the only thing he wanted to do with that free time was spend it with Delilah.
When she didn’t answer immediately, he tried to focus on other things. He’d finished the furniture website and was waiting for the client’s comments and change requests, so he worked a little on his own websites, both the one that advertised his wilderness adventures and the one offering his web design services.
He was just updating the price list for his hiking trips—time to bring his rate up a little—when his phone pinged with Delilah’s response.
I have to put up a Christmas tree.
Three dots bounced around, indicating that she was typing.
My mother thinks I’m giving my sons a crappy Christmas, so I have to get a tree and lights and ornaments.
Quinn sensed some angst there, so he abandoned the texting and called her.
“Hey,” she said when she picked up.
“Hey yourself.”
He’d been right about the angst. She started unloading it right away.
“Do you know that I actually hadn’t thought about getting a tree until my mother mentioned it? I’m a horrible mother. Of course the boys need a tree. It’s just, with the divorce, and selling the house, and everything we’re going through, it seemed like the last thing in the world I wanted to worry about. But it’s Christmas! And we’re here, and I have to make it as nice for them as I can. God. I don’t have anything. A stand, a tree skirt. I need everything.”
“What’s a tree skirt?”
“It’s the cloth you put over the tree stand so it’s not visible.”
“Ah. We always used a bedsheet for that.”
“Right. Okay. That would work.”
He’d clearly caught her when she was already worked up about it. This seemed like a good opportunity to make himself indispensable.
“Tell you what—I’ll help.”
She was silent for a second, either in hope or dismay. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” He leaned back in his desk chair and switched the phone to his other ear. “I don’t have anything going tomorrow, and besides, have you ever tried to put a tree in a tree stand by yourself? It can’t be done.”
“That’s—”
“It’ll be fun,” he said, interrupting her before she could say no. “We’ll play Christmas carols and make hot chocolate. The boys will love it.”
So will I, he thought but didn’t say.
“Okay. That’s really nice of you. I could use the help.”
He grinned, feeling satisfied with himself.
“No problem. Is ten a.m. too early?”