Chapter Five
T hat night, after a late dinner, Gus sat with Ella listening to her read from a chapter book she’d found at the library. Ella loved reading to him, and he enjoyed this quiet time they almost always managed to share at bedtime. Tonight, she’d had to use her inhaler after dinner when he’d noticed her breathing sounded wrong. The asthma that cropped up now and then, he believed, was stress related. Often, it seemed to be triggered when she got too excited, or nervous, or scared, and seemed rarely triggered by environmental issues like allergies, although they hadn’t entirely ruled that out either. The inhaler, combined with some calm time together seemed to help more than anything. He hoped one day, she’d outgrow it, but there were no guarantees.
He leaned his head back against her headboard and closed his eyes, thinking that despite his worry for her, how much he loved this time with her and how fast it was all going.
How much longer would she want him to sit on the bed with her, listening to a story? Was it only weeks, or months away when that wouldn’t seem important to her anymore and she’d want her privacy? She was, after all, six going on sixteen, having been raised with nothing but adults around her, moving so often that real friends were only temporary Band-Aids over the loneliness he suspected she felt, where books had become her companions.
Now that she was in first grade—not preschool or even kindergarten anymore—he knew that stability for her was going to become an issue. Maybe it already had become an issue. Maybe he was just trying to ignore what he could hardly bear to look at. Ella was growing up. She had needs, just like he did. And hers were more important than his.
“You’re not listening,” she said, pulling him out of his thoughts.
“Yes, I am.” He jerked a look down at her. “Fezzik is carrying Princess Buttercup up the Cliffs of Insanity.”
She gave him a look. “Three pages ago.”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess I was just thinking…”
“That Westley was the Dread Pirate Roberts?”
Gus laughed and tickled her, and she shrieked with laughter. “Yes. That’s what I was thinking. And that you’re a lot like Buttercup.”
“I am?” She beamed a smile at him.
“Sure. You’re smart and pretty and adventurous. And someday, some boy named Westley or Brian or Joe is going to fall madly in love with you. Before that, you’ll go away to college and… I’ll miss you. I’ll miss this.” He kissed her on the top of her head.
“I won’t ever leave you, Daddy.” She hugged him tightly.
“Not yet. But someday. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“Then you’d be lonely,” she said, and he could hear a hitch in her voice.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ve got all my animals. All the horses and cattle I take care of. And Luke will be around and—”
“Tell me the story of Mommy again,” she interrupted, making it clear that his brand of gaslighting wasn’t going to work forever. “The one about how you met.”
She’d heard it a hundred times before and he was only now starting to notice that she asked for that story or some other vignette of his old life with Lissa whenever he mentioned loneliness in any form.
“You sure you want to hear that one again?”
She nodded, taking the framed photo of Lissa holding her as a baby off her bedside table to study it.
He leaned his head back against the headboard again. “Okay. The day we met, I was walking across campus on this wide, brick sidewalk that crisscrossed the grassy quad. I was in a big hurry to get to my class because I was late. It was just spring that day and all the trees had started turning green and flowers were blooming everywhere. And up ahead, blocking my way, I saw this big group of people—mostly women—standing on the sidewalk carrying homemade protest signs.”
“What did her sign say?” Ella prodded.
“There were a lot of signs about the movement. The women’s movement. But her sign said, S HE N EEDED A H ERO , S O S HE B ECAME O NE .”
“Why did women need a movement?” Ella asked in all seriousness. This was a new question.
“Sometimes… people need to stand up for the things they believe in. And… women, a lot of women, decided to do just that.”
“Hmm. And then you saw her looking at you,” Ella said, prompting him to go on.
“And then, through this crowd of people that had started to move toward me, I saw her. She was looking right at me and when our eyes met—your mom had the prettiest golden-brown eyes—I suddenly forgot where I was going. About my class and the test I was about to miss. Everything. I nearly got trampled by the protesters as they walked past me. But when she finally reached me, she stopped and said, ‘Hey. Don’t I know you?’”
“And you said, maybe ?” Eloise loved to recount this part.
“Right. Even though I knew we’d never met. I told her. ‘My name is Gus.’ And she said, ‘I’m Lissa.’ And she just smiled at me—with a smile just like yours—and she asked if I wanted to join her. And of course, I said yes. How could I not? And, from that moment on, we were together.”
Ella snuggled against his chest. “And you loved her.”
“I loved her,” he said quietly. “And she loved you.”
“And you miss her? Like I miss her?”
“Yes, I do. I do miss her. She misses us, too, I think.” This conversation, they’d also had many times. About how Lissa was watching over Ella, but she was never going to be able to come back to them the way they both wished she could.
It had taken him almost two years just to accept her death himself. He’d quit the practice he’d become a partner in, packed up their lives and fell into this itinerant fill-in practice routine that had eventually brought them here, to Marietta, to fill in for Dr. Anders.
“Daddy,” Ella said after a long pause. “Do you think Mommy would mind very much if you loved someone else?”
Gus turned to stare at her. “What do you mean?”
“So that you wouldn’t be lonely?”
His heart caught. “Do you think I’m lonely?”
She tossed him an I-may-be-only-six-but-seriously look.
“Kiddo,” he said, getting to his feet and tucking her in. He took the book and carefully closed it. “How can I be lonely? I’ve got you and Luke and my work. And that’s plenty for me. I think it’s time for sleep. You’ve got Sunday school in the morning.”
“I think Ms. Hardesty is nice,” Ella said with a sigh, snuggling down in the covers. “Don’t you?”
Cami’s face flickered through his thoughts as it had often in the last twenty-four hours, causing his gut to tighten. “Sure. Yes. She’s… very nice.”
“I think so, too.” She yawned broadly. “I don’t think Mommy would mind too much if you loved her. And then maybe Lolly could be my very own sister.”
Gus flicked off her light. This child … “G’ night, Ella.”
He could hear the smile in her voice as she said, “G’ night, Daddy.”
Downstairs, Luke sat on the overstuffed chair in the living room, picking out a soft song on his guitar. With his head bent over the instrument, he stopped intermittently to scribble something in the notebook beside him, then repeated the chords.
Gus had heard this particular song for the better part of a week now and he had to admit, he liked it. There were no lyrics yet, but the melody was good. Not that he knew the first thing about music.
“She all set?” Luke asked him, gesturing with a look at the second floor and Ella.
“She wanted to talk about Lissa tonight,” he said, walking to the fridge and opening a beer.
Luke nodded, plucking a few more chords. “You know, she likes it here. I think she’s feeling a little anxious about leaving again. Leaving this place, I mean.”
He tossed a beer to his brother as well.
Luke caught it and cracked it open. “Frankly,” he said, “I can’t say I blame her.”
Taking a long gulp of beer, Gus knew that some kind of ending was coming between them. It had been coming for a long time. But leaving Luke behind in Marietta was the last thing he’d expected when he’d taken this job.
He sat down opposite Luke, silent for a long minute. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m not saying anything… exactly. Just that this is a good place to put down roots. For you and for me and Ella.”
“Dr. Anders is planning to be back at work sometime after the first of the year. My job here will be done. There isn’t room for two large animal vets here. And, I haven’t mentioned it, but I’ve already got a line on a new job in Denver.”
“Denver?”
“Clarissa contacted me a couple of days ago. There’s apparently an extended pregnancy leave for one of the vets in a highly regarded practice there. Large animal practice.”
Clarissa Modar was his agent of sorts, a headhunter for traveling docs and vets. She’d kept him gainfully employed for the past couple of years.
“Gus,” Luke said, setting his guitar aside. “That little Jyn-gerbread up there isn’t getting any younger. She’s wanting friends, ballet lessons, a home—”
“I know,” he said, cutting Luke off. “I know that. Maybe… Denver.”
“It won’t be Denver. Or Albuquerque or Tucson either. Lissa’s not at the end of this road, Gus. Not for a long, long time anyway. And Ella… you know she’ll go anywhere with you. Until she’s eighteen, she will yank up her roots every six months or so and follow you. But every time you move, she starts over. From scratch. That’s hard on a kid. You and I both know that.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. Unless you’re saying you want to stay here. Without us.”
Luke bent over the guitar again. “Sooner or later. You know I don’t want to, but where’s the end point? When do you stop? I’ve been happy to help you and Ella. To be your support. I’ve needed you as much as you need me. I admit it. Finding you after all those years apart was the best thing that… well, you know.”
He did. And the feeling was mutual. Luke was eight years younger than him, and they’d been separated as young boys when their parents had died in a plane crash returning from a business trip. Gus had been taken in by his mother’s aunt, who didn’t feel equipped to care for a boy as young as Luke. He had disappeared into the foster care system, only to be shuffled around for most of his life between homes. When Gus turned eighteen, he’d begun searching for Luke. A couple of years later, after he’d met and married Lissa, his long search for Luke ended and they were finally reunited. They’d taken Luke in when he was still a teenager and given him a home. And Luke had been there when Lissa died.
There was no other family for either of them. He and Ella had become Luke’s family and Luke, theirs. But Gus knew his brother needed to make his own life. And that depending on him to be Ella’s other caregiver wasn’t fair to him. Especially with their itinerant lifestyle. He knew Luke was right about Ella and Luke was right about him, too. Running from all those things he’d left behind was doing none of them any good. He would talk to Clarissa about the possibility of a more permanent position in Denver when he finished with the next job. Maybe they could find a place to stay put.
He thought of Cami then, and of Ella’s words earlier. I don’t think Mommy would mind too much if you loved her.
If he loved her? He’d only just met her. On the other hand, Ella had been talking about Ms. Hardesty since the school year began, even though she wasn’t her teacher. How Cami would sometimes sit with her or others at lunch when they were alone. And how she’d stop boys like Harrison Deitmore from being mean to her or others when she was nearby.
The fact that he felt like he’d known her for much longer than a few days already, was a little disorienting. But it wouldn’t go any further than that. It couldn’t. He wouldn’t be here long enough.
An excuse that Luke might rightly claim was less a reason and more a deliberate plan.