reluctantly and patting him twice on the back as though needing to maintain contact or reassure himself that Cain was real. His face was older, more weathered, but his ice-blue eyes were as clear as ever. “I get them! But I ask myself, Why doesn’t he go to Österreich? To visit my Lipizzaner?”
“Austria?” scoffed Cain with a wide grin, reaching back to close the tack room door. “It’s landlocked, Pop. I been on a ship for three years.”
“Ja, of course.” Klaus looked around the small living room/kitchen, his eyes resting on the Keurig machine on the small kitchen counter. He clapped his hands together expectantly. “You want coffee? Or heiße Schokolade, like when you were little?”
Had his father always been like this? In those angry years of high school, had he missed his father’s efforts to nurture and connect with him? One of his shipmates had pinned a father–son photo on a bulletin board over his berth, and beside the photo, he’d written a quote by Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” At 21 himself, the quote suddenly had personal meaning for Cain, who grinned at his graying father. He wasn’t in the mood for coffee or hot cocoa, but he nodded.
“Sure, Pop. Hot chocolate sounds great.”
His father headed for the kitchen, and Cain looked around the sparsely furnished room, most of the items probably hand-me-downs from Miz Magnolia since they appeared to be of good quality. A leather reading chair and love seat by a potbellied stove, a modern kitchen with a flat-screen TV mounted under the cabinets and black granite countertops, and a small table with two chairs for dining. Adjacent to this common room were two bedrooms with a connecting bathroom. Warm and tidy, with wooden walls and barn smells surrounding them, Cain felt—for the first time—how good it was to be home and, in fact, how much he had missed it.
“Woodman is . . . at home?”
“Ja, Papa,” answered Cain, setting down his bags by the love seat. “I dropped him off at Aunt Sophie’s half an hour ago.”
“How is he? Der Fuß?”
“Not good. His spirits are low, and he’s got months of rehab ahead.” Cain scrubbed his chin. “But he insisted on walkin' up the front steps of Belle Royale on his crutches, even though I was there to carry him.”
“He will be okay. He’s a strong boy. A good boy,” said Klaus with soft conviction.
Cain grimaced as jealousy flared up inside him. But it was true, wasn’t it? Woodman was strong and good—always had been, always would be—and it didn’t take anything away from Cain to acknowledge it.
“The best,” he agreed.
Crossing to his son, Klaus held out the steaming cup of hot cocoa and shook his head, smiling sadly at his only child. “Nein, Sohn. Genauso gut. Nicht besser.”
As good. Not better.
Cain clenched his jaw, staring at his father for a moment before dropping his gaze to the steaming mug in his hands.
“Danke,” he whispered. “Danke, Papa.”
It was a benediction to hear these simple words fall from his father’s lips, and it filled him with a kind of hope with which he didn’t have a lot of experience. He’d never had a strong vision for his future or the certainty that he deserved anything good. But for three years, with the exception of a few days leave here and there, Cain had been trapped on aircraft carriers with a thousand other men, and he’d had time to think. While Woodman mostly made his life happen, Cain had mostly gotten in his own way.
He’d been an asshole to his parents in high school. Yes, they’d always been unhappy. Yes, they’d gotten divorced when he was fifteen, arguably the worst-possible time in a kid’s life. But for all that their interests didn’t collide, his father had undoubtedly been the force behind Cain keeping his job at McHuid’s throughout high school. And without that job—for all that he didn’t love it or value it at the time—he would have felt even more worthless. The income from McHuid’s had allowed him to buy and rebuild his bike and had given him whatever sense of freedom he’d found in those years. It had also given his father a chance to look after him and check in with him on a