The Lost - J. D. Robb [72]
I like to think I helped set her straight there. If you can find a way to make a living doing what you love, welcome to the elite group of the most blessed people in the world. I’m in that group—I started back at Shannon & Lewis full-time in January. Sam’s in that group—he quit the hated actuary job in February, and now he’s doing magic gigs almost every weekend. Why shouldn’t Monica be in that group? I’m glad she took my advice and enrolled in photography courses at the Maryland Institute at night. We keep the twins.
I think of that spiderweb picture she took on the log. Bet it was great. Too bad it’s lying at the bottom of the Patuxent.
The Shenandoah is bright blue today, reflecting the June sky. “Say, pard,” Sam calls over to Benny, “wanna head up to the bunkhouse and rustle some grub for the old lady?”
Who could resist such an invitation. “What’ll we make?” Benny asks, splashing over to our chairs. He’s grown an inch since school ended, I swear. In two months he’ll be seven. I want to slow time down, make this summer last forever. Benny at six is too precious to lose, so I hold on tight.
“How ’bout a side o’ beef, a mess o’ beans, and a hank o’ jerky?” I say. Benny’s in his cowboy phase; it’s between spaceman and what I predict will be all soccer all the time.
He puts his arms around me, getting my shirt soaked. This is a good hug, though, spontaneous and fun. For a while last year, Benny’s hugs were needy and clingy and he was my too-constant companion. I’d wake at night with a feeling of being watched, open my eyes, and see Benny’s, two inches away. “Hi,” he’d say, stare until I said “Hi” back, and go back to bed.
We let it go, didn’t take him to a psychiatrist or anything. I let him have all of his mother that he wanted, every last second I could spare, all my attention and all my love—sometimes I thought I’d go nuts—and after a while he quit shadowing me. Of course, now I miss him.
“Or we could just heat up a boot.” Sam bends down to kiss me. “Got any ol’ boots, pard?”
“Just you, Hopalong.”
“Sure you don’t want to come on up to the ranch and help out? Me and Ben, we got a hankerin’ fer yer grits.”
“Why does that sound—”
“Can we just make some sandwiches?” Benny says with adult impatience. Sam and I look at each other and sigh. We feel bad. Nothing shoots Benny out of a phase faster than our embrace of it.
“So you’re okay?” Sam asks, sliding his fingers through my hair. Thank goodness the question is only rhetorical, but it took many weekends to get to this point—leaving Mom by herself in the river. After I woke up I went through a long period of dizziness, completely gone now, and a shorter period of “confusion.” I’d say something strange, something only Sonoma could know, for example, then get in trouble backtracking.
Like the night I told Benny, “Don’t feed her that; she can’t handle rich food,” as he was about to smuggle the rest of his dessert to Sonoma under the table.
“Yes, she can.”
“No, she can’t. Remember that time she threw up all over the dining room after . . .” Oops. “No, wait, that was some other dog.”
“What dog?” Sam asked, interested. “Because Sonoma did that—”
“No, no, some other dog. Hettie’s dog, she told me about her once. She has a big—”
“Nuh-uh, Hettie has cats.”
“Not Hettie. Did I say Hettie? Carla, the other one, she’s got some big dog who threw up in the—”
“When did she tell you this?”
“Well, not when I was asleep, obviously, ha-ha!”
“So—”
“Afterward, I guess, I mean, when else? Unless it wasn’t Carla—wait, no, it was Mrs. Speakman, the lady across from Monica. She’s got a German shepherd, Trudi, she threw up in the dining room. After she ate a—pie. She ate a pie off the—kitchen window, like in a story, and—Who wants coffee? Sam? I mean, Sam, do you want coffee?”
I wanted to tell them the truth. A dozen times I started to tell them, or at least Sam, but I’d listen to the sentence about to come out of my mouth and have