Feels like Home (Lake Fisher Book 2) Read online

  “Titties,” Mr. Jacobson says close to my ear so that the kids can’t hear. “You just assumed they were on your forehead.” He chuckles loudly.

  “Daddy, can we keep it?” Sam asks.

  I turn to face her. “Keep what?” And I see that she’s holding a tiny kitten in her hand. It’s not much bigger than a small can of soup. “Where did you get that?”

  “We found it in the woods. It just walked right up to us,” Eli explains.

  Sam passes it to me, and I hold it up to look into its eyes. They are green and bright. And the cat lets out a meow to end all meows as it stares at me.

  I hand the cat to Eli. “I’d like to see you keep this alive for the next month.” I pull Sam in front of me and lay my hands on her shoulders. “Sam can help you.”

  “You want me to keep it?” Eli squawks.

  “For a month.”

  Eli stares at me. “For a month?”

  I shrug. “Call it a test run.” I glare at him until he gets it.

  “A test run,” he says slowly. “For a month.”

  “One month.” I hold up a single finger.

  “Then what happens to it?”

  “That’ll be up to Sam.”

  Sam claps her hands and dances in place. “I’ll help you take care of it.”

  “Well, you had better,” Eli says. “It’s your cat.”

  Sam dances in place again. “What do we feed it?”

  Eli raises an eyebrow at her. “You want to go google it?”

  “Can we?”

  “I think we probably should.” He motions for Sam to follow him. He still has Miles strapped to his chest, but he looks pretty content. They leave together.

  Kerry-Anne is with Trixie and Katie. Sam and Miles are with Eli. “I’m hungry,” I say as I start to look through Jake and Katie’s cabinets for food.

  “Toaster pastries are in the other cabinet,” Mr. Jacobson says. He points to the left.

  I reach up to get one, rip open the package, and take a bite. “It doesn’t taste like ass,” I say around a mouthful.

  “I kind of like the taste of ass,” Mr. Jacobson says with a grin.

  “Now I know where Jake gets it from,” I mutter and swallow. But I’m also smiling as I sit down at their kitchen table to finish my toaster pastry.

  “Feel better now?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.

  I don’t give him more than a nod. Katie walks back into the room.

  “I was a jerk,” I blurt out.

  Katie freezes. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She gives one sharp nod of her head. “Okay.”

  “Thanks for letting me sleep in.”

  “You’re welcome.” She walks over and makes a move like she’s going to place a kiss against my forehead, but instead she gives me a raspberry. She blows long and loud, and she leaves me with a wet spot on my skin. She picks up my hand and looks at it. “Jake gave you boobs,” she says. She licks the pad of her thumb and wipes it across the ink. “And it’s permanent.”

  Then she starts to laugh and walks back out of the room.

  14

  Bess

  I stand, dumbfounded, in the tiny kitchen of my tiny cabin and watch as Eli walks in through the front door. He has a baby strapped to his chest, a twelve-year-old girl following close at his heels, and she’s holding a little silver-furred kitten in the palm of her hand. He goes to the end table and picks up my laptop, opens it, enters the password, and sets it on Sam’s lap. She tucks the kitten between her neck and shoulder and starts to type. I hear them murmur to one another as he watches over her shoulder.

  “We’ll need to get a litter box.”

  She points at the screen. “We could use this and teach it to pee in the toilet.”

  “What?” Eli asks, his brow furrowing. “Cats can’t pee in the toilet.”

  She points to the screen again. “This says they can.”

  “Well, order one of those, and we’ll have it delivered.” He takes out his credit card and hands it to her.

  I feel like I have stepped into an alternate universe. One where everything is topsy-turvy and upside down, and no one cares that the lamp is on the ceiling or the fireplace poker isn’t in its stand. Everyone just carries on. Business as usual.

  I stand there and watch them as Eli makes a list of things they need to buy for the kitten. Sam calls out items and he writes them down. A litter box, kitten food, toys, a pen light… Those are all things that Eli adds to the list, and then some.

  “You want to run to the store with me?” Eli asks Sam.

  “Can we take the kitten?” Sam says.

  “I don’t see why not.” He shrugs. He points to the baby strapped to his chest. “What do we do with this?”

  She shrugs this time. “We can take him with us. My dad takes him everywhere.”

  “Doesn’t he need a special seat or something?”

  “It’s in my dad’s van.”

  “Do you know how to hook it up?”

  “My dad leaves the keys in his van. Can we just drive that?”

  “Works for me.” Eli grabs the diaper bag from the floor, and they leave together.

  I stand mute, unable to do anything but stare at the door they just walked through. I keep expecting somebody to scream “Gotcha!” at me and burst into laughter.

  The door flies open and Eli steps back inside. “Hey, if you see Aaron, will you tell him that I took Miles and Sam to get cat supplies?”

  No “Gotcha!” then. I nod. “Sure thing.”

  He grins at me. “Thanks.”

  I don’t even know this man. It’s like I never knew him at all. We’ve been married for eighteen years, and I didn’t know that he could do all the things he’s doing right now.

  I wash a few dishes and stare around the cabin. I had planned to spend a day packing and then go back home, but now I’m committed to taking Aaron to chemo every other day this week, so I’m no longer in a huge rush to pack. I pick up my camera, which is now out of film. I need to develop what’s on it. Then I remember the shack and that it needs to be cleaned out. I might as well work on that.

  I walk out the back door and head for the shack, but I realize that the door is open when I get to it. I step inside and I see that the interior is spotless. The room is small and the building made of shabby materials. You can see streaks of light through the cracks in the siding, but it always got the job done for my mom because she kept the cracks filled with crumpled newspaper. But the last time I was out here, this room had been full of old bikes, some blow-up water floats, and various other lake toys. Now it’s completely empty, aside from the developing table, and someone has set up my trays for me.

  “Hey, Bess?” I hear someone call from my front porch.

  I step out of the little shack and yell back, “Out here!”

  Aaron walks around the corner of the house and stops when he sees me. “Have you seen my van?” he asks as he jerks a thumb in that direction.

  “Eli borrowed it.” I start to remove the chemicals from the shelves so I can set up my trays. But the jugs are old and nearly empty, and some of them are rusty. I’ll need to order more if I want to develop my pictures.

  “Why didn’t he take your car?”

  “Yours had the car seat.”

  He scrubs a hand down his face. “Why did he need the car seat?”

  I finally stop what I’m doing so I can concentrate on him. “For the baby. Duh.”

  His eyebrows fly up toward his hairline. “Did you seriously just duh me?”

  “I seriously did.” I glare at him for a second, then I can’t fight back my smile. “Eli and Sam needed to go get kitten supplies, and they needed a car seat so they could take Miles, so they just took your car. You don’t mind, do you?”

  He huffs out a breath. “Would it matter if I did?”

  “Everything okay, Aaron?”

  He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “No, everything is not okay.” He starts t
o tick items off on his fingers. “I can’t find my kids. There are supposed to be three of them.” He touches his second finger. “My van is gone.” He touches another finger. “I slept late.” He touches a fourth finger. “Jake drew titties on my hand in permanent marker while I was sleeping last night.”

  I bite back a snort, only half-successfully. “At least it wasn’t a dick on your forehead this time.”

  He rocks his head to the side. “True,” he finally admits. “Today just feels…weird. I don’t know why.”

  I jerk a thumb toward my shack. “Did you clean out my little building?”

  “When would I have done that?”

  “Hmm. I wonder who did it.”

  “Eli did it this morning,” a voice calls out from the yard next door.

  I spin and find Jake standing there. He’s holding the hand of one of his kids and the other kid he’s wearing like Eli was.

  “Eli was up with the baby, so he just came outside and started working. He found the baby carrier in your stuff,” Jake explains to Aaron.

  “I slept through all this,” Aaron says in disbelief.

  “You needed some rest,” Jake says.

  “Thanks for the titties, by the way.” Aaron shoots Jake a look.

  Jake chuckles. “Wasn’t me. That was all Pop.”

  Aaron’s eyes nearly bug out of their sockets, but finally he laughs. “I’ll have to thank him.”

  “Don’t encourage him,” Jake warns. “It’s best if you ignore his bad behavior.” He points toward the side of the house. “Eli leaned your bikes up against the side of the house after he gave them a good washing.”

  “Bikes?” I walk in that direction. My old red bike with the wicker basket on the front is leaning against the side of the house. And my dad’s old ten-speed is right next to it. And my mom’s three-speed, with the wide seat because she didn’t like her shorts getting shoved up her butt crack by a narrow seat, leans right behind them. A box sits on the ground that’s filled with buckets, pails, deflated floats, and other lake toys. There are discarded items from years past in the box next to it. It holds toys we outgrew and things we didn’t want anymore.

  “Eli has been busy,” Aaron says, hands on hips.

  “Very,” I reply, still a little shocked at how things are going today.

  The crunch of gravel signals Mr. Jacobson’s arrival. He comes around the corner on his red cart, driving across the grass, and stops in front of Jake. “Katie sent me to get you.”

  Jake frowns. “Is she all right?”

  “Fine. She said you’re supposed to be going to an appointment in a few minutes.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jake says, looking at his watch. “Baby doctor.”

  Jake passes the oldest of his little ones to Mr. Jacobson, who balances him on his knee, and Jake climbs into the cart next to him. They leave without another word.

  I scratch my head. “Do you feel like you’re in some sort of alternate universe?” I ask.

  “I’m beginning to,” Aaron says slowly, nodding in agreement. “I still don’t know exactly where my kids are.” He sits down on the grass and starts to riffle through the box of lake toys. He holds up a pair of pink sunglasses. “I remember these. You used to wear them all the time.” He perches them on his nose. Then he stares at me.

  “Wonder how they ended up out in the shack,” I say, and I sit down with Aaron on the grass and start to look through the things. I pull a small matchbox car out of the box. “I think this was yours.” I roll it toward him in the grass and it stops a foot away from him. He leans over with a groan and picks it up.

  “I won this at the carnival.” He smiles. “Do you remember the carnival?”

  “The cheesy event that Mr. Jacobson put together every year?”

  He chuckles. “My mom and dad always did the fishing game, the one where you tossed a fake hook over a sheet and reeled in a prize.”

  “Mine did the dart game where you had to pop a balloon.”

  “I loved those carnivals.” His eyes narrow with a memory. “Didn’t Eli kiss you for the first time at the carnival?”

  “No.” I smile at my own memory. “That was the night he held my hand.” That was back when things were simple, yet they seemed so complex at the same time.

  “Tell me about that day. What do you remember?”

  “I remember everything,” I say.

  15

  Bess

  The night air hung heavy around me, almost stifling in its intensity. It was the kind of air you had to chew before you could walk through it, my dad always said. I slapped at a mosquito that landed on my arm and looked around. The lakeside carnival used to be one of my favorite things of summer. But this year, for the first time ever, I was running an event instead of being the person who played the games and won the prizes. My mom had offered me the chance to do it, but I’d had no idea how busy it would be.

  My game was the floating ducks game. We had set up a small wading pool, filled it full of water, and floated little yellow rubber ducks in it. For one ticket, the little kids could lift up three of the ducks, to see if they could win a prize. If they found a red sticker on the bottom of the duck, they won a prize. If not, they got a piece of candy. All night long I’d given out candy, and I’d given out enough whistles, balloons, and tiny red balls that I was tired of looking at them.

  Finally, when it was almost dark, the lines of little people hoping to win prizes started to dwindle. I sat down on the ground and rested my elbows on my knees, my chin in my hands, and stared toward the lake. I’d seen Jake, Aaron, and Eli walk toward the water almost an hour before. They’d been carrying their fishing poles and some buckets with them, and they hadn’t even given me a second glance as I worked at the carnival. Silently, I’d willed Eli to look in my direction. He didn’t, though. He just laughed when Jake burped really loudly and then he kept going with the boys toward the lake.

  I’d wanted to follow them. All week long, Eli and I had been spending time together. It had started out as just three groups of friends. Lynda and Aaron were, of course, together. And Jake and Katie had just started to get to know one another. Katie was new to the lake, and she’d arrived with her dad and her uncle two weeks before. Jake and Katie had been inseparable ever since the night he accidentally bumped her and knocked her off the dock into the freezing cold water.

  I still wasn’t sure he’d knocked her in. I think he fell in and she jumped in with him, but she refused to admit it no matter how many times I’d asked her exactly what happened. Regardless, they were getting closer. They’d even gotten in trouble for staying out way too late in Jake’s dad’s canoe the night before. They’d fallen asleep, and Jake’s dad had to go and find them. Now Katie was grounded, and Jake was afraid to go and see her because her dad didn’t particularly like him very much after that.

  One thing I knew for sure was that Jake and Katie were kissing, Aaron and Lynda had been kissing so much it made me sick to my stomach to watch them together, and I still hadn’t been kissed by anyone. Ever. And it was starting to feel like it was going to stay that way.

  Last night, when we’d all been hanging out at the dock, Eli had sat down next to me–even though he could have sat down next to anyone–and his pinky had touched mine as we sat there on the dock and stared out silently over the water. My mouth had gone dry, my head spun more than a little, and my belly did this weird fluttery thing that had never happened before. But despite the fact that he sat with me, and despite the fact that he had pressed his hand up against mine, he still hadn’t put his arm around my shoulders the way Aaron did with Lynda, nor had he grabbed me and spun me around the way that Jake did with Katie all the time. I was missing out, and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was starting to feel like I would never be kissed.

  Suddenly, Aaron’s lanky body landed next to me on the grass. I looked around and only saw him, which was weird because I was starting to think they’d have to surgically remove Lynda from his back pocket. “Are you by your
self?” I asked.

  He threw up his hands. “What? I’m not enough for you?” He leaned over and bumped me with his shoulder. “How was the carnival?”

  “Fine.” I sniffed as a gnat tried to fly up my nose. I brushed it away.

  Aaron pointed at his nose. “You got a little booger right there.”

  I rushed to wipe my nose. I looked down at my finger. Sure enough, I had a little smear of white snot. “Gross.” I wiped my finger on the grass. “Thanks,” I muttered as heat flooded my face.

  “No problem. That’s what friends are for.”

  “For telling you when you have a booger?” I sniffed again, still feeling like the gnat was up my nose.

  “Yeah, that. And I need to tell you something else, too.”

  “What?” I brushed an ant from the top of my foot.

  “Eli asked me about you today.”

  My heart started to gallop in my chest. “What did he ask?”

  “He wanted to know if you like him.”

  “He did?” I couldn’t bite back my grin. “What did you say?”

  “I told him you’re fickle and you really don’t like anybody.”

  I elbowed him in the side, which made him yelp. He rolled across the grass to get away from me. “What did he say then?”

  “He asked me what fickle meant.” He chuckled. “So I told him it meant you have the hots for him.”

  I kicked at his shin, but he moved too fast and I only kicked the air. “You did not.”

  He held up his hands like he was surrendering. “Fine,” he said. “I told him fickle meant you were picky. Which is why you’ve never been kissed.”

  “What?” I barked at him. “Please tell me you didn’t tell him that I’ve never been kissed!”

  He actually looked like he was a little ashamed. “It came out of my mouth before I thought about it.” He lifted his arms to block my right hand. “He didn’t mind! I swear it!” he rushed to add.