First Time, Forever, page 15
“Because I didn’t know which way home was. I thought I’d been going in a straight line, but when I looked around everything looked the same. I tried to figure out from the sun which way to go back, but I just felt so mixed up and Jesse was so tired. He kept sitting down and crying, and telling me he wanted his daddy. After a while we sat down and I had some matches, and it made Jesse stop crying to find little twigs and pieces of grass to put on the fire. I only had one peanut butter sandwich with me, though, and I gave that to him a long time ago.”
“I hope you had some of it, too, son.”
Mac shook his head, vehemently. “That’s the part I’m getting to. I wanted him to have it all. I figured out I don’t just like the kid, I really love him lots. And I figured out it doesn’t make me love Auntie Kathy any less. It kind of makes me feel bigger than I did before. Maybe you’ll laugh at me, but like I’m almost a man, now.”
“I ain’t laughing,” Evan said quietly.
“I guess maybe if that’s the way things are, I better stand on my own two feet,” Mac said.
Evan set him down.
“Me man now, too?” Jesse said hopefully.
“Oh, sure,” Mac said. “But no more Mr. Stinky Pants, then. Not ever. Got it?”
“Got it,” Jesse responded solemnly, and they all laughed.
Evan looked at the gathering darkness. “I think we’re stuck here for the night. I don’t want to risk it in the dark. Those horses are done. We’ll just sit tight for now. Break out those sandwiches, Kathleen.”
“Can you find your way home from here,” Mac asked anxiously, “or are we going to be like the Swiss Family Robinson, only lost on the prairie?”
“Even if I couldn’t find my way home,” Evan said, “those horses could. You could turn them around in a hundred circles and when you were done they’d point their noses for home and go in a straight line right there.”
They sat around the campfire. The boys ate every sandwich and Evan made them both drink some coffee.
And then a strange and magical thing happened.
There beneath the stars, they became a family. The family Kathleen had pictured, the family she had dreamed of.
Laughing and telling jokes and singing. As the night got colder, Evan stripped the blankets off the horses, and they squeezed under them, and holding as tight together as they could, they went to sleep.
They woke in the morning to the sound of a helicopter beating over them.
It landed close by.
“Put the boys on it,” Kathleen said. “I’ll ride back with you.”
“No way, Auntie Kathy. You and Jesse go. I’ll ride back with Evan.”
Kathleen did not miss the authority this was spoken with, like a true man, and so she climbed aboard the helicopter, a wide-eyed Jesse on her lap, and watched as her husband and her boy worked side by side to get their horses ready. Saw Evan clap Mac on the shoulder, and Mac lean into that hand for a moment, gathering strength, before he stood tall.
She watched them standing together on that seemingly endless prairie, until she could see them no more. With a sigh of contentment, she looked ahead.
Later that day, feeling exhausted and exhilarated, she welcomed the two dusty riders home, and said goodbye to the last of the search crews, her friends and neighbors.
“We’re going to go now, too,” Fiona Mortimer said. “Evan, we owe you an apology.”
Kathleen turned to see her holding a sleeping Jesse, looking out the window.
Fiona began to speak, almost to herself. “All we wanted was for Dee to be happy. She was our only child. We gave her too much. I can see that now. We gave her too much stuff, and we gave her too much freedom, and the more we tried to fill her up the emptier she got.
“Evan, either you’ve changed, or I read you wrong, and I suspect it’s a bit of both, but I know you and Kathleen will do a wonderful job of raising our grandson. Jesse is in good hands. We won’t bother you again.”
She turned from the window and put the sleeping child in Evan’s arms. Blinking back tears she walked rapidly to the door.
“Fiona,” Evan said. “Thank you. You know you are welcome here, anytime. And it’s no bother.”
Her husband cleared his throat and spoke. “We read Mac’s note while you were out there, and we realized something. We have been so broken by our daughter’s death that we forgot there would still be people who needed us, that we could still be of use. When we read Mac’s note, we realized there were lots of kids who feel like him. Who would love grandparents just like us. We need someone to dote on. When we get back to Regina we’re going to find out if there are some kids who need a granny and a grandpa to love them. Maybe that’s how we can say we’re sorry to Dee for loving her in all the wrong ways.”
“Ron,” Evan said slowly, “it seemed to me you got two kids right here that need a grandma and a grandpa to love them.”
Looking pretty close to tears himself, Ron nodded, shook Evan’s hand and followed his wife out the door.
“Who would have thought?” Evan murmured, watching them drive away.
“Do you ever feel as if we are in the presence of miracles?” Kathleen whispered.
“Well yes, ma’am, I do. A humble cowboy becomes a knight in shining armor. I know a miracle when I see one.”
“Love is the miracle. It makes good things grow out of hard ground, it makes tears into diamonds, it makes things that are wrong right again. It gives little boys daddies like you, and a woman like me the husband of her dreams.”
“You’re just saying that ’cause of the way I fill out my blue jeans.”
“Damn right, cowboy.”
And she kissed him. It felt as fresh, as exhilarating, as intoxicating, as it had the very first time.
She knew some people were blessed that way.
They went through life as if it were a dance, as if everything were brand-new and magic, as if there were all kinds of things left to explore and to fill them with that feeling of first-time wonder.
She knew, when he returned her kiss, that she had just become one of those people.
Every single day a new opportunity to live, to laugh, to fall in love all over again.
Every single day a first time.
Forever.
Epilogue
“Auntie Kathy, Granny and Grandpa Mortimer are here!”
Kathleen wiped her hands on a tea towel, and went to the door, watching as Mac flung himself into his adopted grandmother’s embrace.
“I got my report card,” she could hear him saying excitedly. “Straight A’s. Know what that means? My dad is going to teach me how to ride bulls. Well, steers. I’m going in a rodeo this summer.”
It was nearly six months now since Mac had started calling Evan Dad, and Kathleen still felt the same catch in her throat at the way he said my dad with such fierce pride and possessiveness.
Jesse shot out by her.
“Granny. Grandpa!”
Perfect r’s she noted, and felt just the faintest sadness at the passing of time, at how quickly little boys became big ones.
Jesse had said good-bye to diapers and his soother forever after he and Mac had walked onto the prairie that day.
They came through the door, the boys and their grandparents, and Kathleen noticed the soft radiance in Fiona’s face.
“How’s Adopt-A-Granny going?” she asked after they had exchanged hugs.
“I still think the name is sexist,” her husband groused good-naturedly behind her.
“We’ve had calls from all over North America asking for information. I’m going to be a guest speaker in Los Angeles next month. Me!”
“Fiona and I have sixteen grandchildren now,” Ron said, “including these two.” He rustled Mac’s head affectionately.
“Me going to be in rodeo,” Jesse crowed.
“What?” his grandparents said together.
“He’s going to be a mutton buster,” Mac said. “I’m helping him learn.”
Kathleen laughed. “Mac bought some sheep with his 4-H money. I think we’re the only farm in Saskatchewan with sheep that are now all broken to ride.”
“Yeah,” Mac said disgustedly, “not much buck left in them. Hey, did you notice my auntie Kathy looks different?”
She felt herself blush as the Mortimers turned their full attention to her.
“I do not!” she said.
“She’s pregnant!” Mac announced officiously. “We’re going to have a baby. Jess and me want a boy, but she doesn’t. She’d like a girl.”
“Me, too,” Evan said, coming in the back door. “I want a little girl with big brown eyes and long dark hair. Hi, Fiona, Ron. Good to see you.”
Kathleen watched as Ron shook his hand and Fiona hugged him. She could actually feel the love shimmering in the room.
Then he kissed her, as if he hadn’t seen her for a year instead of the few hours it had been. He turned back to their guests, his arm around her waist.
“I really appreciate you coming to spend a few days with Jess and Mac. I’ve been promising to take Kathleen to the Cypress Hills forever. Our first anniversary just seemed like the right time.”
Our first anniversary, Kathleen thought. Her thoughts went back over the year, and it seemed as if her mind was a photo album full of snapshots of moments she had once just imagined: Mac and Jesse chasing butterflies through the tall grass, their house brimming over with laughter, Evan looking at her with a tenderness that never went away.
“You’re doing us the favor,” Fiona said. “What do you guys want to do first?”
“The water slides in Medicine Hat,” Mac said.
“I’m too old for that,” Fiona said, with mock fear.
“That’s what you said about tobogganing,” Mac reminded her. “When me and Jesse were cold and wanted to come back in, we couldn’t get you off the sled.”
“These older women,” Evan said solemnly, “just run a man into the ground. They’re full of surprises.”
Kathleen smacked him on the arm, then looked into his eyes and felt a deep welling of gratitude for all the wonderful surprises life had brought her.
“Come see my room, Grandma,” Mac said, tugging on her arm. “I just repainted it.”
“Thank the Lord,” she said.
“All black,” he said gleefully. “Even the ceiling.”
“Me want black room, too,” Jesse said.
“You have to wait until you’re twelve,” Mac told him sternly.
They had dinner together, and then Evan and Kathleen were shooed out the door, their suitcases already in the truck.
“The stars are just coming out,” she said wistfully, after they had driven for half an hour or so.
“I suppose you want to stop?”
“Could we?”
He stopped the truck and they sat in the silence and looked at the stars. After a long time she reached into her bag and got him out a small square box.
He unwrapped it.
Inside was a belt buckle, engraved with the date and year of their anniversary.
“The silver,” she said softly, “was from a real suit of armor, worn by a real knight in the middle ages. The armor was damaged in a fire. It couldn’t be fixed.”
“How on earth did you find something like that?” he asked, turning the buckle over in his hands.
“The Internet.”
He laughed. “Is the world going to leave this old cowboy behind?”
“No. The world will always need cowboys. And knights. Always.”
“Come here.”
She slid across the seat to him, into the place she loved to be most. His arms. He kissed her until they were both breathless.
“Kathleen, will we ever get to the Cypress Hills?”
She thought of the options. Kissed him again, long and hard, and said, “I certainly hope not.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3768-5
FIRST TIME, FOREVER
Copyright © 2000 by Cara Colter
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Cara Colter, First Time, Forever
