Round Twenty-Eight
MAGGIE
My stomach whooshes from a day brimming with anxiety, my arms hurt from lugging heavy things from the moment I woke, my hair tickles my skin and sends me into an overstimulated mess, and the alerts on my phone make me want to weep.
But that’s all until Jeremy’s screaming voice cuts across the yard and shoves everything else aside.
His eyes are puffy from tears, his cheeks red with emotion. He sprints with his hands high above his head, hurdling my lavender like his life depends on it, and then he throws himself into my arms so I have no choice but to catch him.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I hold his weight with just one hand under his butt, his legs wrapped around my hips.
I use my other hand to brush hair off his face and search for blood.
I swipe his cheeks. I turn his head left, then right.
I study his throat and the pulse frantically pounding against tissue-thin skin.
I even lift his shirt and examine his stomach.
“What happened?” Desperate, I yank him in and crush his small body against mine. “Did you get hurt?”
He cries against my neck, shaking his head. “No.”
“Did your dad get hurt?” I cast horrified eyes across my dark lawn. “Jeremy? Is your dad hurt?”
“No.” He wraps his arms around my neck and squeezes tight enough to threaten my life. “He’s okay.”
“Then what is it, honey? What’s wrong?”
“It’s the storm,” he howls. “I thought the storm hurt you.”
“Me?” My heart flip-flops in my chest. “Oh my gosh, baby. You were worried about me?”
“I didn’t see you in days,” he rasps. “I even left notes in my window for you to see.”
I push him back just far enough to scour his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy this week, I’m not sure I’ve even looked out my window at all.”
“Magnolia?”
My breath catches as I look up and meet Billy’s heavy stare.
He waits on his porch out of the incoming storm, his shirt whipping and moving with the wind.
Licking his lips, he simply crooks his finger and destroys the willpower I’ve spent days cultivating.
“Bring him back over,” he calls out. “Quick, before the rain falls.”
“You want me to take you home, handsome?” I kick my car door shut and ignore the massive file box on my passenger seat.
The mess it represents. The lost income hidden amongst its pages, and the humiliation of an event unraveled.
Leaving it all behind, I hug Jeremy to my chest and cross my yard.
“You scared me for a second there. I thought you got hurt or something.”
“I hate storms so much,” he groans. “I hate them more than I hate anything else in the entire world.” He chokes out a whimper as thunder booms overhead. “Why does the sky even need to do that, huh? It’s loud and scary and for no good reason at all.”
“Maybe the sky is feeling big feelings.” I step over the lavender garden and bring my eyes up as Billy’s broad hands join mine to support Jeremy’s weight. His nearness startles me. His stare guts me. But his soft smile heals hurts I’ve been inflicting upon myself for days.
“Let’s get him inside,” he murmurs, carefully guiding me up his porch steps, across the porch, and through his front door. He forces me all the way in, till the heating thaws some of the chill stuck in my clothes, then he turns on his heels and locks his door with a declarative snick.
Jeremy’s fractured breathing pounds in my ear, and his thundering heartbeat hammers against my chest.
“That’s a pretty big reaction to a storm, huh?” I make my way into their living room without Billy’s express invitation, head to the long couch Jeremy and I always defer to, then I sit and shuffle all the way back so he straddles my thighs and curls under my chin.
I run my fingers through his hair, gently scratching his scalp, and with my other hand, I rub slow circles against his back.
“Did something bad happen to you in a storm one time?” I press a kiss to his temple.
Another to his cheek, but when my lips touch his tears, my heart fractures a little. “What happened?”
“I just hate storms,” he whimpers. “I hate them cos they’re loud and dangerous and mean.” Shakily, he sits up and meets my eyes. “Usually when my dad is at home with me and then they call him back to work, it’s cos it’s storming out and someone got hurt.”
“Aww, honey.” I cup his cheeks and pull him back in. “So you were already afraid of storms, and then it feels worse, because half the time, your dad has to leave and help someone else.”
He buries his nose against my neck and nods.
“I bet that makes you feel extra scared.”
He nods again.
“Because you’re scared he’ll get hurt, too.
But you know what?” I toe my shoes off and twist on the couch, turning us so we lie side by side, with my back to the room and our legs tangled the way we like.
“Those people your dad helps? They’re having the worst day of their lives those times.
Something really awful already happened to them, and so then he comes along and he gets to be their hero.
” I lay my head on the arm of the couch, snuggling in with this little boy who isn’t even mine, but thrilling in the way he presses his cheek to my chest anyway.
He just… fits.
Even though he didn’t come from me. Even though it wasn’t my DNA that created him. Even though I missed the first eight years of his life, we fit.
“I know it can be scary watching your dad leave, and it’s especially tough, because those are the nights you need him the most. But you’re also pretty lucky, don’t you think, that you get him all the other nights?
” I set my thumb beneath his eye and wipe the tears from his skin.
“They only get him one time, one night, and they’re so scared and sad and lonely, they probably don’t even have time to appreciate their hero.
But you get him forever, and forever is fun, right? Like when you play ball in the yard.”
“Or the times we make human soup at Ramone’s?”
I exhale a watery laugh. “Yeah, those times, too. Or the times I sneak donuts through the fence and you spend all day long hiding them from him. It’s funny, because he’s a policeman, but we keep the donuts for ourselves.”
He snickers, snot bubbles tickling the base of his nostrils.
“You get all the fun stuff,” I murmur, accepting a tissue that simply arrives from…
nowhere. Or, really, from Billy, who hovers nearby, too well-behaved to encroach.
Scrunching the tissue, I press it gently to Jeremy’s nose and smile down at his watery eyes.
“Even though storms can be scary, I know your dad is strong and sensible, so even when he’s out being someone else’s hero, I know he’ll always be okay.
He’s too stubborn not to be, don’t you think? ”
Giggling, Jeremy nods.
“No dumb storm will ever mess with Detective Caster, and it especially won’t stop him from coming home to you—” I tap the end of his nose.
“—Since you’re so dang cute. And guess what?
I live next door now, so if there’s ever a storm bad enough that the phone rings and your dad has to go help somebody, I’ll be here. ”
“You’ll stay with me?” His voice shakes. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Even if you marry someone else and they don’t want you to talk to us anymore?”
“Even if I—” Stunned, I study his sweet face and the worry lines marking his brow. “If I get married? Honey, if I get married, I would ask you to walk me down the aisle, anyway.”
His eyes flare wide. “Really?”
“Of course! My dad isn’t around anymore, and you’re my most favorite guy on the planet.
Who else would I ask if not you?” I press a kiss between his brows and luxuriate in the way he turns impossibly still.
He’s so careful not to bump me back. So mindful not to be the brute he usually is.
“If my new husband has a problem with how much I love you, then he won’t be my new husband.
He’ll be my ex, and he’ll have a big, red, boot-shaped mark stamped into his butt, because that’s how hard I’d kick him out the door. ”
Sniffling, he settles into the crook of the couch and fingers a length of my hair, playing with the lock and twisting it between his fingers.
“I’m sorry your dad died.” Blinking through his tears, he brings wet eyes up to mine.
“I know how that feels, ‘cept you had a mom and no dad, and I have a dad and no mom.”
I clamp my lips shut and try with all my might to still my trembling jaw.
“Was your dad amazing?”
And there it goes, my breath bursting free anyway, fluttering his new hairdo back. “Yeah. He was amazing. He’s the reason I believe in true love, and the reason I work so hard at my business. I grew up watching the way he loved.”
“How he loved your mom?”
“Her. And me. I got to feel his hugs, and I even got to lie with him on the couch, kinda how you and I do it. We’d tangle our feet and whisper about our day. He wasn’t afraid of storms, either. In fact, I’m not sure he was afraid of anything.”
“Were you sad when he died?”
“Yeah.” I go from wiping his cheeks to wiping my own.
“I was so sad, I couldn’t even talk about it for a really long time.
I couldn’t explain my feelings, because they were so overwhelming and so heavy, like a big bully was sitting on my chest and squishing me down.
I cried a lot and begged my mom to make it all better.
I wished on stars.” I grin through my tears.
“I wished every single night to bring him back to me, but after a while, when I realized it wouldn’t come true, I changed my wish to something else. ”
“What?” he whispers shakily. “What did you wish instead?”
“That it wouldn’t hurt so much anymore. That I could think of him and not cry.” I lean a little closer, smiling conspiratorially. “And I wished I could think of my friend from Plainview, too, and not cry.”
“Was it…” Uncertainty flickers in his eyes. “Y-you mean my dad?”
“Uh-huh. I didn’t have very many friends back then, but that rascal, cheeky boy Billy Caster was my favorite of them all.
I missed my dad so much, and when I wasn’t missing him, I was missing my friend.
But I guess all that wishing on a star worked out, huh?
Because I live right next to that rascal now, and even better, he went and made another one.
Don’t tell him I told you so, but I reckon you’re an even better Billy Caster than the actual Billy Caster. ”
He giggles, the tremors from outside being replaced by bouncing laughter. “That’s why you give me all the donuts, right?”
“Exactly.”