Three #3
I heard Kola before I saw him, and he was charging through the living room to reach Sam.
He dived at him, and Sam caught him the same way he had Hannah.
He didn’t lift him though because Kola was too old for that now.
He had announced that since he would be six soon—at the end of the month—he had to get used to doing grown-up things.
I loved it when his brows furrowed and he got serious.
Once we were all sitting down, after grace was spoken, Sam asked his son to tell Uncle Michael about the report he’d given last Friday.
“Oh.” Kola’s face lit up. “I did my report on the weapons that a deputy US marshal carries.”
Noah blanched.
I kicked Sam under the table. His smile in return was evil.
“Marshals carry a Glock 17 as their main gun and a backup one that they get to pick.”
“Why are we talking about guns at the dinner table?” Regina asked.
“Shh,” Thomas hushed his wife. “Kola’s talking about his report.”
“Oh, Kola’s talking about more than his report,” Jen assured everyone.
Michael’s eyes flicked to Sam. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Kola told him, thinking that he needed to assure his uncle that he knew what he was talking about. “Do you want to know what Daddy has?”
“I can’t wait to hear.”
“Daddy has a ten-millimeter Colt Delta Elite that’s this big,” he said, the space between his hands far too wide. “And if you got shot with it, it would make your whole head explode.”
That was a ridiculous boast as well.
“Ewww.” Riley, Rachel’s daughter, made a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“That’s so awesome,” Peter, Rachel’s son, chimed in, which was the first time I had heard him engaged in any conversation in quite a while.
Both kids, now teenagers, were taking their parents’ divorce and their father’s recent nuptials very hard.
“But guns are only to be used after you are trained to fire one,” Kola cautioned us all. “A gun is not a toy.”
“That’s right,” Sam agreed.
“I would love to learn how to use one correctly,” Peter said hopefully.
“Maybe I can take you out to the gun range sometime if you want, Pete,” Sam offered.
“No, Sam,” Rachel said firmly. “I don’t want Peter to learn that guns are—”
“Learning to respect a firearm is the first step to the prevention of accidents,” Sam assured her. “Now that you live alone, what is your protection in case of a break-in?”
“I have a bat, Sam,” she said, and I could tell how close she was to exploding.
They had been waging this debate since Dean had moved out. He wanted her to have a gun, and she was having no part of it.
I was actually with her. I hated guns. Sam being in law enforcement was the only reason there were two under my roof.
Sam slept with his Colt in the nightstand drawer on his side, and every morning, after he showered and dressed, he put it in his ankle holster before retrieving his Glock out of the combination safe built into the wall in our closet.
It was a whole ritual when he came home at night.
Kiss the kids, kiss me, pet the cat, and put his two work guns away in the safe.
And then, before bed, he’d go back to the safe and remove the Colt and place it at the front of the drawer before he got into bed.
There had not been a gun in the nightstand when it was just him and me; he’d never slept with a gun close, except for a long time ago, when I had been hunted by a serial killer.
But once he’d had his life how he wanted it—had his own family, a house, and become a father—things had changed.
Now there was not just me right there beside him, the only thing to protect; now there was his son and his daughter and the cat sleeping in one of his children’s beds.
He needed the certainty that he could guard us all, and the gun gave him that.
I hated having a gun that was not locked away at night.
I was not crazy about a gun, period, but the man was a deputy US marshal.
There was no way around it. But the firearm in the nightstand had been a problem.
I told him one of those badass ASP batons would be better.
He disagreed. He’d said a handgun wielded by someone trained to use it was the best defense.
“Sam, I don’t want to—”
“Mom, can I go to the gun range with Uncle Sammy? Please?”
The eyes she turned on Sam were hard. He looked bored, not flustered even one little bit.
“Sure,” she said softly.
“Thanks.” Peter smiled at her, and for a second, I saw how happy she was to be getting anything but snarling anger or cold apathy from her kid.
It went in waves. Sometimes, it was Dean’s fault, and the kids hated him and loved her, and sometimes, it was her fault, and the reverse was true.
I felt so bad for her and wished for the hundredth time that Dean had not been out looking for a new woman and instead invested time in finding fresh ways to love the one he had.
“I’d love to go to the gun range too,” Doug chimed in.
He was Jen’s second husband. Her first one had left her for his accountant.
Doug and Jen did not have any children together, but he had three—Ben, Todd, and Melissa—from a previous marriage of his own, and along with Jen’s daughters, Ally and Carla, they had five children they shared with exes.
The choice to have no more kids had been made because Doug wanted to travel and take the kids they already had to see the world.
Jen agreed, and they had taken their tribe on many adventures.
I was looking forward to going out of the country with my own brood someday; it just hadn’t happened yet.
“You got a gun?” Rachel asked her sister.
“Yes,” she told her. “Doug thought it was a good idea.”
“What’d you get?” Sam asked Doug.
“The Sig SP, like you’d suggested. You were right. I tried the Glock, and I didn’t like the sort of stiff mechanics of it at all. The smoothness of the Sig was much better.”
Sam was nodding. “Yes.”
“So, why does the US Marshals Service still carry the Glocks, then?”
“Really?” Regina said. “This is dinner conversation?”
“Mother”—Jen shushed her—“Doug’s asking a question.”
And heaven forbid we interrupt. It was sweet how Jen catered to him, but after years together, you’d think she would be over the honeymoon stage already.