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Chapter Six

“ H ey, Mom. You’re up.” Josiah walked into the kitchen as evening descended along the lakeshore.

His mom, recovering from her MS flare-up, typically was in bed when he got home.

“I’m feeling a little better. And I wanted to fix supper for you.”

His dad was staying overnight in Blueberry Beach. He worked three long days, then a short day, and was home the other three.

On the days when his dad worked, he tried to make a point of being around for his mom.

Time had gotten away from him this evening.

Maybe because of talking to Claire, of realizing that she’d become a different, better person than she had been in school, or maybe just wanting, for some strange reason, to get the work done at the house so she could enjoy the flowers she’d talked about with such love and fondness.

He was a fool. She wasn’t going to care whether he got the house done fast or slow. But for some reason, he was driven to do it.

“Thanks. It’s always nice to come home to someone to talk to,” he said.

Sometimes he liked to be alone with his thoughts, but he knew that his mom most likely was not going to be around for decades, and he had made a vow when she had first been diagnosed with MS that he would appreciate every second he had with her.

He hadn’t always been able to keep that vow, but he kept trying.

“I didn’t realize you were lonely,” she said, walking slowly to the cupboard to get out a bowl so she could scoop out the soup he’d made the night before, when he’d gotten home from working on the yachts.

He tried to make his work schedule when he had to be away align with his dad’s work schedule when he got to be home. They didn’t always make it happen, and they had a neighbor lady who could come and help with his mom. Still, he liked it best when he or his dad was able to take care of her.

“Mom, you don’t have to do that. I can get it warmed up, and you can sit here and talk to me.”

“I like to take care of people. I know it’s ironic, saying that when I need so much care myself. But let me, since I’m feeling well enough today.”

He nodded, grabbed a spoon from the drawer and iced tea from the fridge, and poured himself a glass before sitting down at the small kitchen table.

There was no need to go into the dining room and sit there, with it only being his mom and him. They were very casual when his dad wasn’t around.

“How’s Miss Mattie doing?” his mom asked.

He paused. He’d told her that Miss Mattie had been diagnosed with leukemia about six months prior, and her prognosis.

He had wondered each time he was there whether Claire knew or not.

She didn’t act like she did. He didn’t know if she’d be wasting her time working on a ladder painting a house if she knew.

He wished that Miss Mattie would tell her, and then she could make the decision that he had made years ago regarding his mother.

“She’s doing well. Can’t really even tell,” he said as his mother nodded and the microwave beeped, and she walked slowly over to get his bowl.

She set the steaming soup in front of him and then walked to the refrigerator to grab butter before she pulled bread off the counter.

He remembered the smell of warm baking bread that had drifted out of the house while he was working, and he had wondered if Claire had had a hand in it. Miss Mattie was known for her delicious homemade bread, and it would be a shame if Claire didn’t learn how to make it too.

But no one had asked him, and he needed to keep his opinions and thoughts to himself, although…

“I told you her granddaughter and her two children have moved in with Miss Mattie?”

“You did. Claire. I remember her from your school days.”

Their school wasn’t that big, and neither was the town. Everyone knew everyone else. So it didn’t surprise him that his mom remembered her.

“I don’t think she told Claire about her diagnosis. I’m not sure if I should say anything or not.” He was hoping his mom might have some words of wisdom.

She paused, setting the salt and pepper down in front of him before she sank into the other chair.

“I don’t know what to say about that. I know Claire would want to know, but I also think that if Miss Mattie wanted her to know, she would tell her.

So you’re torn, because they want different things, most likely. ”

Yeah. That was the problem. He nodded and then said grace before starting to eat. “Did you already eat?”

“I wasn’t very hungry tonight,” his mother said.

He tried not to worry about that. He wasn’t going to try to coax her to eat if she wasn’t hungry. Although if she was hungry and just too tired to make something, he would do his best to help her. But that didn’t seem to be the case—she’d just warmed soup up for him.

“I never thought when you were a teenage boy that you’d be able to make soup that tastes that good. I had some earlier.”

Maybe that was why she wasn’t hungry. He shoved the thoughts away.

He’d long ago accepted that she was going to have good days and bad days, and she wasn’t going to get better.

MS wasn’t a disease that could be cured.

So bad days were to be expected. Not that he liked it, but he couldn’t let himself go into a tailspin every time it seemed like she wasn’t doing as well as he wanted her to.

“I’m glad you liked it.” He didn’t mention that he’d had to learn to cook for survival reasons, since she was often sick and in bed, and if he wanted to eat, he had to figure out something to make himself.

Plus, he was responsible for taking care of his mom.

That was part of the reason he’d stayed home and didn’t move out of the town or the house he’d grown up in.

He could hardly take care of her if she starved to death under his watch.

But there was no need to say any of that.

His mom already knew it, and him saying it would just make her feel bad because she felt like it was her responsibility to take care of him.

And she had always been very nurturing—she loved taking care of other people, and it was hard for her to sit and let others take care of her.

Everyone had a cross, he supposed. Some people had to learn to do things they hated, and others had to learn to be still and let others help, even when it was hard.

“I seem to recall you had a little crush on Claire when you were younger,” his mom said casually, like she was just making conversation and not accusing him of having a crush all of his life and still having it.

He tried not to take offense, and then he wondered why he would. Surely he could talk about someone he’d had a crush on when he was in junior high. But it made him uncomfortable… Did he still have feelings for her?

Had he carried them all the way from junior high, and seeing her again, remembering how she was…

He supposed he’d always admired her. From a distance in their friend group, since she wasn’t interested in him in the slightest. Still wasn’t.

And he supposed that was something he needed to remember so he didn’t go mooning over someone who wasn’t interested in him and never would be. But he thought they could be friends.

“She was my first kiss,” he told his mom, wondering if that was something boys were supposed to talk to their mothers about.

Maybe if his mom wasn’t sick, maybe if she were able to have a normal life, he wouldn’t talk to her about those things.

But she couldn’t really go out and have lunch with her girlfriends very easily.

As her disease progressed, she was able to do less and less.

“My goodness. Where was that?”

“In Miss Mattie’s barn. We played truth or dare, and she got stuck with being dared to kiss me. I forget how we were playing it, but I wasn’t too upset about it, though I think she was grossed out.”

“Well, sometimes teenage boys aren’t very appealing, and then they grow into themselves. Maybe she’ll notice that you’ve changed a good bit since you were a teenager.”

“I don’t think she’s interested in someone like me. She was married to a high-dollar lawyer in Boston, from what I understand.” He’d heard that from his mom, so he knew she knew it too.

“She’s not married to him anymore. There are reasons for that. Maybe she’s looking for something different.”

“Maybe I’m not looking for anything at all. Maybe I’m happy where I’m at. Maybe I’m not interested in the problems that come with being with someone who is divorced, with children, and all that baggage.”

It would be a lot of drama. And his mother and her illness was all the drama he could handle. Sometimes it was more—it felt like that anyway—even though he knew that God would never give him anything God wasn’t going to help him through.

And God could do anything.

“Maybe the drama of a wife, one with baggage or without, is what a man needs in order to grow and mature. Maybe that’s part of what makes him a man—dealing with all the trials that a woman brings into his life.”

“I suppose,” he said, although he’d never really thought about that before.

It could be true. After all, dealing with people, learning how to get along with them, to love them despite their faults, to be patient with them when they didn’t live up to expectations, or when they fell into sin that he thought should be easily avoided, or just habits and flaws that irritated him—all of that helped him become a better person.

He supposed his mother was right about that.

What could be more helpful than having to live with someone who was just as big a sinner as he was, only in different areas?

And who had just as many faults and flaws as he did, only in areas that irritated him.

“And I wouldn’t blame her for the baggage.

Sometimes people can’t help it that they end up with stuff.

Now, sometimes it’s our own fault that we get saddled with things, because we’ve made stupid decisions, but sometimes a man leaves a woman and it’s not really her fault at all.

It’s just because he didn’t have the character to keep his word and stay. ”

“You’re blaming the man an awful lot, don’t you think? It goes both ways. It could be the man who’s saddled with baggage because the woman he married didn’t have character or enough integrity to do what she said she was going to do.”

He was teasing his mom just a little bit, but he was also serious.

It seemed like the world was so eager to blame men, and it was irritating sometimes, because it was almost like women got a free pass and men paid for everything.

He did believe that a man should be a protector and provider, but he also believed that a man shouldn’t take the blame for the sins of womankind.

“Of course. I’m sorry. You’re right. I was blaming men, but that was because I was talking to you, a man, and we were talking about Claire, and I was just saying it may not be her fault.

” She let out a little laugh. It sounded tired, and he thought maybe he should stop the conversation.

But his mom continued to talk. “Of course, I could be taking Claire’s side in this, and maybe her divorce was all Claire’s fault.

Maybe she ran off with a man who ditched her, and her husband wouldn’t take her back. ”

“Somehow I doubt Claire’s really that type.

” He pictured her standing beside the paint she’d already scraped off, her hands on her hips, her eyes going up the side of the house, trying to figure out whether she was going to be brave enough to stand on some kind of scaffolding or lift and scrape the higher parts.

She’d had her chin jutted out and her eyes narrowed, and he’d be willing to bet she got it done. He admired that kind of grit and didn’t really think that was the kind of person who’d run off with a man and wreck her family.

But he’d been wrong about a lot more than a woman’s character before.

“I didn’t think she was that type either.”

His mother smiled, and he got the feeling that she had really liked Claire, maybe still did, although she didn’t know her.

“Does she know she was your first kiss?” she asked.

“I told her a couple of days ago. I found out that I was her first kiss too.” He laughed a little to himself and did not share with his mom that he had been more impressed with her initial kissing abilities than she had been with his.

In fact, he’d gotten the feeling that she had been kind of grossed out by him.

It didn’t make him feel very good about himself, because it wasn’t like he’d done a lot of practicing between then and now.

Some, but not much. Not much at all, since he didn’t see the point in kissing women he didn’t plan on marrying.

And while short-term pleasure was tempting, he had never been the kind of person who had trouble looking at the long-term goals he wanted to achieve in his life.

Kissing every woman in the county was not one of those.

In fact, he didn’t want his wife to have to walk down the street and wonder which women they passed were women he had kissed.

Claire was in a select group, although it apparently wasn’t a group to be proud of, at least not in Claire’s opinion.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to head upstairs to bed. My legs are aching, and my back hurts too.”

“I don’t mind at all. I’ll check on you before I go to bed, okay?”

“You don’t have to go to bed early because of me.”

“I want to get an early start in the morning, and I have a good book I’ve been reading. It’s upstairs, so I might as well stay up there.”

Normally he might sit on the porch for a little bit, if it wasn’t chilly, as it often was in the spring.

Still, the promise of summer was heavy and ripe in the air, and the idea that he would be spending a lot of it with Claire made him feel brighter.

Except…was she going to get a job? What was she going to do?

Were her kids going to be there all summer?

He was curious, wanted to know, and that was kind of unusual. Usually he could just take things as they came.

He got up, rinsing out his dish before putting it in the dishwasher and putting the soup away. He thought they had enough to last through tomorrow, when he was going to make ribs.

Was this what his life was going to consist of? Taking care of his mom when his dad wasn’t home, cooking for her, and thinking about the girl with whom he’ d shared his first kiss?

Maybe the anticipation in the air wasn’t because of summer coming. Maybe it was because of something else. Like his life was going to shift in a major way.

He shook his head. That was silly.