Showers in Season (28 page)

After the week she’d had with Mark, Cathy had serious reservations about letting Steve take either of the boys camping Saturday morning. She offered them each twenty dollars if they behaved for him. If it provided the incentive they needed to cooperate, it would be forty dollars well spent.

Steve didn’t take the boys far, since he knew a long car ride might ruin the trip before it even got started. He took them to a wooded area just outside of Breezewood, and got Rick and Mark to help him unload his truck. He heard Mark muttering under his breath as he did, but he cheerfully ignored it.

When they had set up the tent, he tossed them each a fishing pole. “Come on. Let’s get down to the lake and see what’s biting. Mark, grab that box.”

Mark picked up the box he pointed to and opened it. “Stinks,” he said. “What is it?”

“Bait,” Steve told him. “Crickets.”

Mark’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you catch them?”

“No, I bought them.”

“They sell these things?”

Steve grinned. “Mark, have you ever been fishing before?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“He hasn’t,” Rick said. “But I did a long time ago.”

“When?” Mark asked, as if he’d been slighted.

“When you were a baby or something. Dad and I went.”

“Oh.” Mark studied the crickets again, then put the top back on. “I didn’t know Dad liked to fish.”

Steve had spent the last week praying that the Lord would help him to have compassion for the boys, and that he would see into their hearts, the way their mother tried to do. Now he saw that his prayers were being answered. “The question is, will you like it? Come on. Let’s go see.”

A little later they sat on the edge of the lake looking across the Smoky Mountains, fishing as the autumn breeze chilled them. Mark couldn’t take his eyes from his white cork ball bobbing on the water.

“When I was a kid,” Steve said in a quiet voice, “my parents had a lot of land. We had a little lake on the back of the property, and I would go there to fish. Sometimes I would just sit there for hours. Of course, I was never alone. I had three male labs that we bred, and they would follow me. They’d sit next to me and just look out over the lake as we fished. It was a great place to think.”

“Why are you doing this?” Mark’s question cut through the moment.

Steve looked over at him, bracing himself. “Doing what?”

“Taking us camping. Fishing with us.”

Rick shoved him. “Mark, shut up.”

“I just asked him a question!” Mark said.

“It’s okay,” Steve interrupted, pulling his line in and checking his bait. “What reason do you think I had for bringing you here?”

“’Cause you want to score points with our mom,” Mark said.

Steve laughed. “There’s some truth to that.”

Both boys looked up at him, surprised by the honesty.

“But I also wanted to get to know you guys a little better. Tracy doesn’t like to touch the crickets. It’s fun to fish with guys sometimes.”

Mark wasn’t buying. “You thought we needed a male influence,” he said belligerently. “But we don’t. We have a dad. If we wanted to go fishing, he’d take us fishing.”

“Mark, stop it!” Rick said.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “I’m not trying to horn in on your dad. I just thought it would be a pleasant way to spend a couple of days.”

There was silence for a moment, and Steve steeled himself for another accusation. How would he get past the suspicions and make friends with the boys? He breathed a silent prayer for help.

Then to all their surprise, Mark got a bite. He got to his feet and started jumping around. “I got one! I got one!”

Steve laughed out loud as he grabbed the line and helped him pull it in. The trout was an admirable size, big enough to keep, and Mark glowed with pride.

Rick was next to catch one, then Mark caught another. By noon, they had enough for lunch. Steve taught Mark and Rick how to clean the fish and cook them. Mark kept a marker on the fish he had caught, and refused to let anyone else touch them. He told them it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

After lunch, they piled into the truck and went to rent mud bikes. They spent the rest of the day getting filthy and making a lot of noise.

“I gotta get myself one of those,” Rick said, as they headed back to the camp. “I’m gonna start saving my money now.”

“Where will you ride it?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe the land behind the Bryans’ house. That new Gonzales family is nice and they’re never home. They probably won’t mind.”

“It might tear up the property,” Steve said. “Besides, if you can do it anytime, it gets old. Maybe you ought to just rent them once in a while.”

“Maybe,” Rick said, “but it sure was a blast.”

Mark looked down at his mud-caked clothes. “So how are we gonna bathe?” he asked. “I don’t think I can sleep like this.”

“We’ll bathe in the lake,” Steve said.

They both looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you kidding?” Rick asked. “It’s cold in there.”

“Not that cold. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

When they reached the camp, he took his clothes off down to his shorts, then ran and plopped into the lake. “Come on in,” he said, teeth chattering. “It’s nice and warm.”

The boys laughed. “It is
not
warm,” Rick said.

“Your lips are turning blue,” Mark accused.

“That’s just from treading water,” Steve told him. “The aerobic exercise is pumping the blood through my lips.”

Rick guffawed harder. “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard!”

Mark grinned and pulled off his mud-caked shirt. “I’m gonna get in.” Leaving his jeans on, he dove into the water. He came up and flung the water out of his hair. “Nice and warm, Rick. Come on!”

Suddenly, Steve and Mark were allies, trying to coax Rick in. Not one to be outdone, he pulled off his shirt and did a cannonball right between them. Steve and Mark attacked him as soon as he came up.

They laughed and screamed and splashed and ducked each other until they couldn’t stand the cold anymore. Then they all got out, shivering and running to find towels and dry clothes. Steve had a new fire started before Mark had managed to get his wet jeans off.

Things were going just as he’d hoped, he thought. Cathy would be pleased.

While Steve was getting to know her boys around a campfire, Cathy spent the day shopping with Annie and Tracy. Steve had left her his credit card and told her that Tracy needed a couple of new dresses and some school clothes. He told her to buy Tracy anything else she saw that she might need. He trusted her to use good judgment.

She had never had such a peaceful day shopping for school clothes. Normally, she and Annie fought from store to store as Annie begged for things that were either inappropriate or too expensive. But today Annie delighted in choosing things for the little girl. Tracy liked everything the teenaged girl suggested.

That morning, Cathy had french-braided Tracy’s hair. Annie had taken her upstairs and applied a little makeup, which Cathy had promptly made her remove. They had eaten out in a nice restaurant, and with Tracy watching with adoration, Annie acted like a perfect lady.

That afternoon, she had taken Tracy to the clinic and let her play with two puppies and a litter of kittens she was boarding for the weekend. She managed to get a precious picture of Tracy with a kitten against her face. She hoped it would come out well enough to blow it up for Steve.

That evening, they rented the movie
Babe
and laughed as the little pig ventured through the plot. When it was over, Tracy leaned against Cathy, watching with sleepy eyes as the credits rolled across the television screen.

“Are you ready to go to bed, Tracy?” Cathy asked.

Tracy’s peaceful expression suddenly changed. “Where am I gonna sleep?”

“I was thinking you could sleep in Rick’s room,” she said. “I made him clean it up before he left.”

“By myself?” Tracy asked.

Annie, who had been getting ready for an eight-thirty date, sat down next to them. “Mom, she can sleep with me if she wants to.”

“But you’re going out. I don’t want her to stay up late. She’s worn out.” Cathy looked down at the frightened little face. “Tell you what, Tracy. You can sleep with me. I’m worn out, myself.”

Tracy’s worried expression faded. “Okay.” The three went upstairs to Cathy’s room, and Cathy began to take Tracy’s french braid down. When Annie had been this young, she had loved brushing her hair and arranging it with bows and barrettes. Annie hadn’t allowed her to touch her hair in years.

A soft smile came to her face as she remembered those times, and she caught Tracy’s eyes in the mirror. The child was smiling and watching her with pensive eyes.

“Are you going to marry my daddy?” she asked.

The question startled Cathy, and she stopped brushing. “You know, I have a real bad feeling that when your dad gets home from the camping trip, he won’t even want to date me anymore.”

Annie began to laugh, but Tracy looked disappointed.

When she had gotten Tracy into bed, Annie plopped down next to them. “Let’s say prayers,” Cathy said as she pulled the
covers up over the child. Tracy closed her eyes and folded her hands, and Annie bowed her head.

Cathy prayed for her boys and for Steve out “in the wild,” for their attitudes and their dispositions, and that they were still speaking to each other by the next morning. Then she thanked God for the blessing of the day spent with Tracy.

When they whispered “Amen,” she smiled down at the child. “It’s been fun spending time with you girls today.”

“We could do that all the time, Mom,” Annie said, “if you’d just take me shopping and act right.”

Tracy giggled, and Cathy rolled her eyes.

“I wish Annie was my sister,” the child said. “We’d have fun.”

“Nah,” Annie said. “We’d probably get tired of each other and fight like my brothers and I do.” She grinned down at Tracy. “On the other hand, it might be pretty cool to have a sister.”

“Now don’t get carried away,” Cathy said, sliding under the covers next to the child. “This is just one night. Steve and I are just friends.”

“Yeah, Mom, just friends. Like Danny Botcho and I are just friends.” She looked down at Tracy. “You should see him, Tracy. He’s got eyes to die for.”

“My daddy has eyes to die for,” Tracy said, and giggled.

Cathy grinned. “No comment.”

As Annie left the room and Tracy began to fall asleep, Cathy lay in bed, wondering if there really could be a future for the two families, or if it would all come to a crashing halt this very weekend.

By the time darkness settled over the area, Steve and the boys were exhausted. “You know something, guys?” Steve asked, leaning back against a stump and carving on a piece of wood. “I had fun today.”

“It was pretty cool,” Rick said.

Mark couldn’t be so generous. “It made Mom happy.”

Steve accepted that. “I like making her happy. I think your mom is about the coolest person I’ve ever met.”

Rick chuckled. “Yeah, she’s pretty cool, all right.”

Steve grinned. He knew Cathy would love to have heard him say that. “You know, when I was a kid, I didn’t appreciate my mom half as much as I do now. I used to think she was about the dumbest person in the world, and I would smart off to her with this scathing sarcasm, almost every time I opened my mouth.”

“You?” Mark asked.

“Yep, and my mom would sometimes get tears in her eyes and fuss back at me and tell me that I didn’t need to talk to her
that way. And I would think, ‘Who cares if I talk to her that way? She’s my mom. That’s what she’s for.’”

In the firelight, he saw Rick and Mark shoot each other grins.

He kept carving, shaving away pieces of wood just for the sake of keeping his hands busy. “But then I had a roommate in college, and he didn’t have a mom, hadn’t had one since he was eight years old. She had died in a car accident, and his dad had raised him. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’d sometimes take him home with me, and he seemed so moved by the fact that I had a mother there cooking in the kitchen, making everything warm and nice, feeding us and pampering us. And I started to realize that my mom wasn’t just this person put there to drive me crazy, or embarrass me, or wait on me hand and foot. I realized she was really a pretty neat person. What a blessing to have her.”

There was silence for a moment. Finally, Rick said, “You know, Mom’s a screamer and a yeller.”

Steve grinned. “I know.”

“You know she doesn’t take a lot of guff from anybody,” Mark said.

“Nobody but you.”

“I don’t give her that much guff.”

“Buddy, you give her plenty.”

Mark was quiet for a moment. “So what are you going to do? Marry her?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, looking down at the piece of wood in his hand. “Maybe in time.” He looked up at both boys. “What would you think about that?”

Rick didn’t look too happy. “It sure would mess up the dynamics of our household.”

Steve burst out laughing. “The dynamics of your household? What do you mean? Would I stop the yelling, the sarcasm, the volume?”

“You’d come in and start trying to change us,” Rick said. “That’s what always happens. I’ve seen it a million times.” He
sounded like a wise and bitter old man. “The mom gets married and the husband comes in and starts ordering people around.”

“Do you see me ordering Tracy around?”

“No, but she’s easy.”

“Besides,” Mark said, “we don’t have room for two more people in our house, and you don’t have room for four more in yours.”

“You’re right,” Steve said, looking up at the dark sky. “Bad idea.” For a moment, they were quiet, and he wondered if they were buying it. When he looked at them, they all started grinning.

Finally, he got serious. “I’m not going anywhere, guys. I hope you’ll try to get used to me.”

“How do you know she’s the right person?” Rick asked. “Maybe there’s somebody else out there who doesn’t have kids who would love to be Tracy’s mom. Somebody who could just move right into your house and there’d be no big deal and no adjustments.”

“Sounds like a nice scenario.” He shook his head and looked off into the night. “But there’s something about your mom.”

“Oh, brother.” Mark stretched out on his stomach and kicked his feet in the air. “Where’s your ex-wife, anyway?”

Steve’s face sobered, and he went back to carving. “I’m not divorced. My wife died of cancer,” he said, “a few years ago. Tracy’s another one of those kids who’s growing up without a mom.”

The boys were both quiet for a moment. “So is that why you want to marry mine?” Mark asked. “So Tracy will have one?”

Steve grinned. “If that was the case, I’d just hire a good baby-sitter. I wouldn’t pick a working mom with three teenaged kids. The thing is, your mom and I, we hit it off right away.”

The boys were both quiet.

“But like I said, I’m not gonna do it until everybody’s okay with it.”

“So is that why you brought us out here, to start working on us?”

“Nope,” he said. “Honestly, I just wanted to go camping. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any guys to go mud biking with, and I don’t think I’ve ever caught that many fish. It’s a good time, guys. I’m glad you came.”

Mark shrugged. “It wasn’t terrible or anything.”

That night, as Steve lay in his sleeping bag looking at the stars, he thanked God for the blessings of the day. Despite Mark’s underwhelming comments about the day, Steve knew it had been a success.