“I’ll see you on Wednesday!” he yells as he opens the door to his cabin.
“Wait,” I call out. I jog toward him and toward the front door.
“Can’t,” he says. “I have to throw up now.” He walks in and slams the door in my face. I stand there on the porch for a minute, not sure what to do. But the only thing on my mind is the fact that he has three children to take care of, but he feels terrible.
I open the door and walk in behind him. I can hear him heaving in the bathroom, so I give him some privacy. I look around his tiny cottage. It’s laid out exactly like mine, but his mom didn’t have all the family photos and knick-knacks that my mom always left lying around. His mom said that things like that were just more to have to dust.
Finally, he comes out and sinks down on the sofa that’s as old as I am. “Feel better?” I ask him.
“Much.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes.
“Where are the kids?” I go to his kitchen and start looking through his cabinets. He needs some soup or some toast, but I don’t find anything but kid snacks and juice pouches. I grab a juice pouch, punch the straw into it, and take it to him.
“They’re with Eli,” he says. He doesn’t look at me when he says it. He just keeps his eyes closed, but he takes a few tentative sips from the juice pouch.
I lay a hand on my chest. “They’re with my Eli?”
“Yep.” He belches and grins at me, still without opening his eyes.
“Why are they with Eli?” Eli doesn’t know anything about kids. He’s never spent any time at all with them and God knows we never had any.
“I asked him to watch them. Gabby’s helping him.”
“Are they up at the big house with Katie and Jake?”
He shakes his head, wincing in discomfort as he does it. “They’re at your cabin. Gabby said she was going to make fairy wings with them today.” He grins again. “I can’t wait to see Eli in wings.”
I snort out a laugh. “I can assure you that Eli is not going to wear wings.”
“I can assure you that Kerry-Anne will talk him into it.” He settles more deeply into the sofa. “She’s very persuasive.”
“She looks more like you than Lynda. Sam, on the other hand, looks like Lynda spit her right out of her mouth.”
“Your North Carolina is showing,” he teases. He finishes his juice pouch and holds it up for me to take it. “Thanks,” he grunts out when I get up to throw it away.
“Is chemo always this hard on you?” I ask.
“Oh, this is nothing compared to the last round. I only threw up once, and I’m pretty sure that was because of your sucky driving.” He picks up a scatter pillow and throws it in my direction.
“Hey!” I complain, but the pillow falls a few feet short of me, proof that he’s feeling worse than he’s letting on.
“You need to learn what a turn signal is for.” He sticks his tongue out at me and I return the gesture.
I throw the pillow back at him. “How old are you? Twelve?”
“At twelve, I didn’t have hair on my balls.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks. “Oh, jeez,” I breathe out, but I’m laughing too. Aaron always did have a way of shocking me into laughing. I’ve missed it, those random moments of gleeful embarrassment.
A knock sounds on the door and it opens up. Eli sticks his head in. He looks from me to Aaron and back. “I just wanted to be sure you guys were okay,” he says.
Aaron sits up and asks, “How were the kids today?”
“Miles took a two-hour nap, Kerry-Anne played with Trixie most of the morning, and Sam kicked my ass at fishing.”
“That’s my girl,” Aaron croons, with a fist pump.
“I told her that I’d find her a fishing hat,” Eli says. “The sun was in her eyes all morning.”
“I have one,” Aaron says. He gets slowly to his feet and walks to the tiny closet in the corner of the room. From the top shelf, he takes out a dusty pink cap. He knocks it against his leg and dust floats in the air.
“That was Lynda’s,” I say quietly.
Aaron stares at the cap. “Yeah. She’d be happy knowing Sam has it.” He knocks it against his leg again.
Eli jerks his thumb toward the door. “I’m going to get back to the kids.” He looks at Aaron’s hands, still holding the cap. “Do you want me to take that?”
Aaron shakes his head. “Nah. I want to give it to her.”
“I don’t know if this is the right time or not…” Eli lets his voice trail off, and he stares at the floor.
“It’s always the right time if it’s about my kids,” Aaron replies.
“Sam wants to talk to you about her mom, but she says it makes you sad,” Eli suddenly blurts out, and then he looks like he wishes he could take it back. The wince on his face says it all.
“It does make me sad. But it makes me happy too.” He stares at the cap. “I’ll be sure she knows that.”
Eli nods and turns to slip back out the door.
“I wish we’d bet on those fairy wings.” Aaron chuckles and gives me a wink.
It’s only then that I realize that Eli had had two large misshapen appendages sticking out from his back.
“Told you Kerry-Anne is persuasive. It’s that cherubic smile. Gets you every time.”
He walks toward the front door, and I follow him. “Where are you going?”
“To give my daughter her mother’s hat, and to talk to her about Lynda as much as she wants. Want to come along?” He stands in the open doorway and looks back at me, waiting.
“Well, they’re at my house,” I remind him.
“C’mon,” he says, and he rocks his head in the direction he wants me to go. As I walk by him, he grabs my hand and stops me. He stares, hard, into my eyes, and his well up with tears. He blinks them back, but not before I notice. “Thank you for going with me today.” He gives my hand a tight squeeze and I squeeze his back, trying to swallow the lump that’s suddenly in my throat.
“You’re welcome,” I manage to croak out.
I follow him to my cabin and walk in to find a beehive of activity. Gabby is with Sam, Kerry-Anne, and Trixie at the table, and they’re putting the finishing touches on their wings. Glitter, glue, and scraps of paper litter the table. Miles sits in his bouncy chair on the floor next to the table.
Aaron walks over to Sam and pulls Lynda’s old cap down over her hair. She looks up, unsure of what’s going on. “I heard you need a fishing hat,” he says quietly.
She pulls it off and looks at the front of it.
“It was your mom’s.”
“Really?” she asks, and I can see the appreciation for the small, intimate gesture in her gaze when she looks at him.
“She wore it all the time,” he says. He runs a hand down her hair, and then she pulls the hat on. “She said it was her lucky fishing hat,” he goes on to explain.
Eli pretends to sulk. “If she gets any luckier, she’ll skunk me every time.”
“I skunked him today, and I didn’t even have a lucky hat,” she croons.
“I heard.” Aaron leans down and air-kisses the top of her hat. “You’ll kill it tomorrow.” He looks down at the table. “Did you guys make some fairy wings for me?”