October 2019
“Hello!” Sam called from the kitchen when he came home last Friday night.
Normally, when the kids and I were home, when he walked in the door, we mobbed him.
It came with his job, the chance that he could be shot at in the course of a normal day, so him being home, safe and sound, was something we celebrated.
The fact that only the dog was there, barking at him, dancing around his feet like normal, his tiny tail a blur of wagging, was a surprise.
But it couldn’t be helped. Kola needed all my attention.
“Hey, Dad,” Hannah trilled back, the happy note in her voice easy to hear even as she didn’t turn to look at him, keeping both eyes on her brother instead. “How was your day?”
“Fine,” he said, walking around the end of the couch, carrying Dobby, our Chihuahua, before he bent and petted the cat, who was waiting patiently to be greeted, standing on the arm of the couch beside Hannah. “What’s going on?”
“Kola’s trying to figure out what he wants to do,” Hannah answered somberly as Sam kissed her forehead before stepping over her legs and taking a seat between us.
He put the dog on my lap and then leaned sideways to kiss me. I met him halfway, inhaling him as I brushed my lips over his.
“What are we doing?” he asked me as he eased back, turning to look at Kola, who was pacing in front of the TV.
“You don’t want to go put your gun away?”
“No, I wanna know what this is first.”
We were all quiet for a moment as Kola, arms crossed, scowling, reached the fireplace, turned, and then walked back to the china hutch with glass doors that we used to hold trophies and framed awards that the kids had won and Sam’s medals from when he was in the military, as well as his commendations as a federal marshal.
“Hey, buddy,” Sam said to his son. “What’s goin’ on?”
Kola stopped suddenly and looked at his father. “I don’t even know what to do.”
“All right,” Sam replied, turning his head to look at me—I shrugged and smiled—and then to his left, to Hannah, who shook her head, and then back to his son. “Why don’t you tell me what’s up.”
“Okay,” Kola agreed, holding his hands up, using them like bookends, as though visually framing his words.
“So I have this new girl in my Constitutional Analysis class. Her name’s Ashley, and today she asked me to come over to her house after school so she could get my notes for the test on Monday and go over some other parts of how Mr. Parkinson wanted the arguments presented.
He has this deviational model that he wants us to use, and she’s never seen it before. ”
I myself had tried to help Kola with his homework for that class, only to be utterly defeated by the deviational model that was supposed to be easy to use.
“When we got to her house, I was surprised that she had us go to her room, and even more when she locked the door.”
Sam crossed his arms. “This girl had you in her room with the door locked?”
Kola nodded.
“Okay,” he said, taking a quick breath.
“But I wasn’t comfortable, so after a minute I got up and unlocked it and opened it. But then she got up and closed and locked it again and told me it was fine.”
The play-by-play was killing me.
“So then I told her to knock it off or I was out of there, and got up to unlock it at the same time someone tries to come into her room.”
“Like the doorknob is trying to turn?” Hannah asked her brother.
“Yeah.”
“Then what?” Sam prodded his son, stretching out his arms across the back of the couch.
“So then Ashley goes to the door, opens it, and her dad, or, I guess, her stepdad is there, and he asks her what’s going on.”
“How are you not murdered?” Hannah asked, bewildered, turning to look at me and Sam before returning her focus to her brother. “If I locked my door and there was a boy in there, I would be murdered and then reanimated and grounded until I was thirty.”
“Right?” he said, his brain clearly spinning.
I was starting to understand what had happened. It was a mindfuck for him, and he was trying to make sense of it all.
“What did she tell her dad?” Sam questioned his son.
“She told him nothing happened—which was true—and he says okay, like it’s cool, like it’s no big deal. He tells her he trusts her, and then she grabbed my face and gave me this crazy kiss goodbye, and then after just went to the bathroom.”
“And what did you do?” Hannah wanted to know.
“I left.”
Sam grunted.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Do I believe that nothing happened?”
Kola nodded.
“If you tell me nothing happened, then I trust you, but you know damn well that in our house, locked doors are not acceptable.”
“No, I know, which is why I felt weird with it locked, and then when her dad—I mean her stepdad—when he tried to open it and couldn’t, I felt like I was doing something bad even though I wasn’t.”
“Since you weren’t doing anything wrong, why is your brain spinning over this?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from him.
“Because I kept wondering what you guys would say about me just leaving without explaining things to him, and now I wonder if I should go back over and tell her father for sure that nothing happened.”
“What do you think we would say?” I asked him.
He crossed his arms, thinking. “I was wondering if it would be worse if I did it or if Hannah did it.”
“I would never do that, I don’t have a death wish,” Hannah chimed in quickly.
“Oh calm down,” he said snidely. “I just meant, if I had a locked door and there was a girl in there with me, would it be the same if Hannah had a guy in her room?”
“It would be the same,” Sam assured him, his voice low with a thread of warning. “You lock yourself in your room with a girl—or a boy for that matter—you better be prepared to have your privacy become a thing of the past. As in, the first thing to go is your door.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“No,” Sam told him. “I trust you, but I also need to know that you respect the rules of the house. What’s my motto?”
“Trust, but verify.”
“That’s right.”
“So you trust me to be in my room and not try anything with anyone, but you also want the door open so you can walk by and see that everything is as it should be.”
“Exactly.”
“And would it be the same for Hannah, or would you be more worried because she’s a girl?”
“No one is taking advantage of Hannah,” I told my son, because honestly, with a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, any guy that tried was an idiot.
“But yes, it’s the same for her. We have an open-door policy in this house that goes along with no one that we haven’t met before is in this house when we’re not here. Period.”
“I know,” Kola said with a sigh. “And neither me nor Hannah would ever do that.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” she affirmed with a smile and a quick nod.
“Stop sucking up,” I ordered her.
“Me?”
I shot her a look.
“So,” Sam began, his gaze steady on his son. “What do you feel like you should do?”
Kola bit his bottom lip, as he’d been doing since he was a little boy, before he met his father’s gaze. “I think I want to go over there and talk to her fa—stepfather.”
“You keep correcting yourself,” I pointed out. “Did she make a big deal out of that? Him being her stepfather and not her father?”
“Yeah. I guess her folks just got divorced last year, and right before school started, her mom married Mr. Crosby. Ashley had to move from Seattle to here, and now she won’t see her dad until Christmas vacation.”
“That sucks,” Hannah said, sounding sad.
“Yeah.”
“So she had to leave her school, all her friends, and her dad?”
He nodded.
“I’m so sorry,” I said gently. “That must be hard for everyone involved, but especially for Ashley. Poor kid.”
“She’s really miserable.”
“Why couldn’t she have lived with her dad?”
“Her dad’s a policeman, and so because of his job, he couldn’t have custody.”
I squinted at him.
“Yeah, see, I didn’t get that either,” he said, looking at me. “I mean, if you and Dad got divorced, and you wanted to move across the country with some new guy, I don’t see how I would have to move with you. I would be able to live with Dad.”
“Yes, you would,” Sam said, leaning sideways and kissing the side of my neck. “And no one’s getting divorced. Ever.”
It had to be one of his least favorite words, along with neutral, vegan, and unregulated.
“Yes, dear,” I soothed him, my hand lifting to his cheek. “No divorce.”
“Okay,” Sam announced, putting the dog on Hannah’s lap before standing up. “Let’s go to Ashley’s house and talk to her folks.”
Kola took a breath. “I think I want Pa and Hannah to come too.”
“Why?” Hannah asked, surprised.
“Because I feel like I want her stepfather to know how serious I am.”
I had to ask. “Buddy, do you like this girl?”
“Well, yeah, she’s nice. But that kiss was off—like she was putting on some weird act in front of him.”
I wondered how close she was to upping the ante in bad-girl behavior to get her shipped back to her father. “Okay, then,” I said cheerfully. “Let’s just wait for your father to change clothes and his gun.”
Sam had to carry at all times, it was part of the job, but the difference between his ankle holster and his shoulder one helped with the comfort level of most people. Nine times out of ten, no one knew he had a firearm within easy reach.
It was just two streets down and across a small park, and as we walked, the kids in front of us, I asked what everyone had decided to be for Halloween.
“Me, Harper, and Jake are gonna be musketeers,” Kola told me. “And Uncle Aaron is having the costumes made for us with real swords,” he finished excitedly.
“Oh, that’s so great,” Sam lied, squeezing my hand that he was holding.
“I’ll call him,” I said under my breath.
“I’m going to be Princess Mononoke,” Hannah announced happily. “And Uncle Aaron is having my costume made too!”