Mason and Lauren couldn’t hold back their laughter. Mason reached for the check. “Ef him indeed. All right, it’s a plan, then.”
O O O
Back in their house in Kensington, Shelby went right to bed and gave Mason a nostalgic thrill in letting him tuck her in, four-leaf pajamas and all.
“Still my girl?” he signed as he ruffled her hair.
Always, she signed back, and gave him a neck-twisting hug. As he was on his way out, closing the door: “Dad …?”
“Yeah?”
There’s something, a package I sent to you here. Probably arrive after I’m gone.
What is it? He signed back.
It’s nothing. I want you to throw it out. Don’t even open it.
Mason closed the door, with him still in the room. He turned on the light. “Honey? What is it?”
Nothing. Just promise me you’ll toss it.
“Can you give me a hint? Was it something … you found over there?”
Just something foolish. A dumb gift.
As she signed it, her fingers seemed listless, as if she were signing underwater. It was one of the tells Mason had come to recognize over the years. She was lying.
“Okay, honey.” He smiled. “No problem.”
“Promiss?”
Mason crossed his heart and signed, Promise.
“Good night.”
He eased out this time, after shutting off the lights. Back in his room, Lauren was struggling with her wheelchair. “Let me,” Mason said, coming to her aid.
“I can manage.”
“I know you can. But it’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of tucking in two girls in one night.”
“You rascal.”
“That’s me.”
“One award and the man thinks he’s god’s gift to women. Like we really swoon for the weathermen.”
“You know it’s true.” He scooped her up in his arms.
“Are you going to change me too?”
“Of course.” He tugged off her shoes, and started on her pants. “At least halfway.”
She grabbed him by the tie, pulled him up to kiss her. “I mean it about Gabriel.”
“I know.”
“Enough time has passed.”
“I know.”
He searched her eyes, seeing a spark of life that had been absent a long time. Living with the disability was hard enough, but living with guilt for what she perceived as her fault her children turned out how they did: one deaf, the other estranged, it wore on her. She had been on anti-depressants for years. Finally free of them, her spirits were lifted and fun had returned to her life. Both their lives. They played games. Scrabble, strategized through endless hours of global conquest with Risk, and pursued merciless bankrupt-inducing nights of Monopoly. She was almost all the way back to her old self. It had taken so long, but he needed to nurse her the rest of the way, only a few more steps.
Gabriel could surely help. Or he could unravel everything they had accomplished. He had to hope it would be the former.
“I’ll do it,” he whispered, the word blown gently through her lips as she pulled him close for another kiss.
O O O
In the middle of the night, out of a deep sleep, Mason rocked up in bed. Lauren was snoring, a low grinding of her teeth followed by a throaty warble.
But what woke him wasn’t anything so ordinary. It took another few moments of rushed breathing and a rising pulse thudding at his jugular to realize what it was:
A thunderstorm.
Violent, with tearing winds screaming through the palms; and suddenly, a pounding clap of thunder and a painfully blinding lightning burst.
He launched out of bed.
Again? There was no precipitation in the forecast. Not for tonight, and nothing on the ten-day projection. They were in the middle of a drought. Wildfires were raging to the southwest, made drastically worse due to the lack of rain.
Impossible. He slipped outside his room, into the dark hall where he paused at Shelby’s room. Opened the door a crack and in the next flash he saw her bed.
Empty.
He stepped in, and was about to dash out and down the stairs when he saw the open window and felt the drops of rain slamming in almost sideways through it, splattering off the hardwood floor. Ran to the window, and looked out.
There on the back lawn, behind the kidney-shaped pool and past the grill, in the pounding sheets of rain, were two dark figures. Arms raised, Christ-like, facing each other.
A lightning flash.
Shelby, in her white and green-clover pajamas, hair now wild, dancing Medusa-like in the winds, drenched, facing … Gabriel? It had to be him. He could see the shine of his bald head in the lightning burst. Still dressed all in black,