Family Be Mine (5 page)

H
UNT FILLED THE VASE
with water from the sink in Ben's kitchen, turned off the tap, and ambled over to the table, careful not to lose any of the hydrangea branches that jostled against each other. He placed the vase in the center of the wooden farm table and fussed inexpertly at the heavy blooms, the globes of dusty-blue flowers drooping toward the table.

“There, that should do it,” he said, and backed away.

“I thought I should bring something to Katarina if I was going to drop in.”

“She's not here right now to thank you.” Ben leaned against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed, and watched Hunt's efforts with a skeptically raised brow.

“The dog trashed another bush in your mother's yard, didn't he? And you're just trying to hide the evidence, right?”

Hunt shrugged. “Well, something good might as well come from Fred's enthusiastic communing with nature. Besides, I think she was returning from her book group by six, and I didn't want her to look out the window and notice the damage. I made it with plenty of time to spare, I think.” He instinctively glanced at his wrist before he remembered that he had stopped wearing one right after he'd finished chemo and no longer had to get to appointments on time.

No matter, he slipped his hand in the side pocket of his chinos for his BlackBerry. Nothing. Well, that suited him just fine. This was the New Hunt, the Stress-Free Hunt. He started to whistle off-key. The noise caused Fred to lift his head from licking the tile floor around the rubbish bin. He stared at his master with a wrinkled brow that might mistakenly be interpreted as intelligence. Then he scampered out of the kitchen with an unfocused sense of purpose.

“He's not going to do anything destructive, is he?” Ben asked. He watched Fred bolt down the hallway, his four paws barely touching the hardwood planks.

“He's fine. As long as you don't have any exotic fish in the house, I wouldn't worry.”

“I'll be sure to keep the cans of tuna fish under wraps.” Ben kept his arms crossed and waited.

“Listen, I've been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Sometimes a wise move,” Ben said sardonically.

Hunt continued undeterred. “I've come to the realization that I want to do something to help mankind. Make a difference for humanity.”

“That's great.” Ben uncrossed his arms. “Let me ask you, though. In the process of all your thinking, have you narrowed it down a little? Thought of anything in particular?”

Hunt wagged one finger in the air. “Not yet, but that will come. The crucial thing for now is that I am thinking about what I want to do.”

Fred chose that moment to rush back into the kitchen. A white athletic sock hung from the corner of his mouth. He checked that Hunt was still there before twirling around and racing out again, the sock streaming behind his flopping ear.

Ben headed after the mutt. “You're lucky that I'm pretty sure that sock was Matt's.” He walked to the bottom of the steep stairs leading to the second-floor bedrooms.

The eighteenth-century cottage had originally consisted of little more than the kitchen, but it had been expanded in the late nineteenth century to include a living room, dining room and a study on the ground floor. The attic had been refitted into two bedrooms at roughly the same time. The upstairs and downstairs bathrooms didn't come until the twentieth century, and Ben had recently updated them again.

“You know, Hunt, I was more than happy to renovate the bathrooms as a measure of my love and devotion to my lovely wife, but I hadn't counted on refinishing the stairs.” He winced as the dog's nails scurried frantically on the wood as he bounded up the stairs, made a tight circle around the landing, and threw himself headfirst down once more. He stopped only to deposit the sock at Ben's feet before charging up yet again.

Ben turned to Hunt who had followed him, still muttering something about humanity. “You know, I'm going to bill you for the damage, and no amount of Adult School attendance is going to get you out of it.” Ben shook his head in disgust.

Hunt smiled as he watched Fred repeat his frantic maneuvers. “Give him a break. He's never used stairs before.”

“Poor baby. To have to live in a house with an elevator must be such a deprivation.”

“That was the architect's idea, not mine. He called it ‘an elegant solution to a challenging space.' His way of saying my downtown Grantham lot was way narrower
than he originally realized, and why not spend another twenty grand or so on my modern folly.” Hunt marveled at the dog's fierce glee. “Can you imagine the utter joy he must be feeling at experiencing something for the first time? To be that exhilarated, that overcome with emotion.” He turned to Ben. “Can you remember a similar feeling? I know I can't. It must be like an awakening…like experiencing birth all over again.”

“Listen, I can appreciate that he's a puppy and excited. Just don't start getting all New Agey on me.”

Hunt huffed. “You're such a cynic.”

“I might be a cynic, but I'm a happy cynic. Happy that you actually came by to see me. I was beginning to think you were only capable of migrating from your Bat Cave to your mother's stately mansion. What a relief to know you still remember how to drive out here! See, I can be as enthusiastic as that dog of yours. Speaking of which, go bring him down from upstairs.” Fred had taken a sudden detour and veered to the right in the upstairs hallway.

Hunt trudged up the stairs, frowning when he had to grip the handrail for leverage. He hated being weak. More than that he hated having other people see him this way.

Was it any wonder why he had started to avoid people in general? And if he had to go out, that he made a point of putting up a good front, especially with his mother? His mother… For all her outward concern, she was supremely intolerant of sickness. He knew she thought it a sign of weakness. “I simply refuse to be sick,” she was fond of announcing to him in particular.

It was easy to think that way, Hunt surmised, when you've never been sick a day in your life, not that
he'd ever pointed that out. Not that she would have listened.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Hunt was puffing. He stopped to regain his breath, then whistled. No response. “Fred, where are you, buddy?” He pulled the dog's leash from his back pocket.

From downstairs, Ben's footsteps moved away from the stairs. “I've got to clean up the living room before this baby shower, and I don't want to find out that he's gotten into something up there,” he called up.

A moment later Hunt descended with Fred on the leash. He found Ben in the study. “I hope you weren't too attached to that particular roll of toilet paper. I found another one in the vanity and hid the shredded bits in there instead.”

Ben finished straightening up the piles of library books and magazines. “Good. A move like that will make Katarina think that Matt did it,” he said, referring to his son.

To give Ben due credit, Matt, besides toting the usual baggage of a sixteen-year-old, had only recently come into his life after the death of his mother. Neither Ben nor Matt had known about each other before the reading of the will, and while both were determined to make the relationship work, they were still feeling their way. Katarina helped with smoothing out the relationship, providing mediation and the love, and a secret weapon—her grandmother.

“I don't think the kid has anything to worry about,” Hunt replied to Ben. “Hey, the kid can take care of himself. After all, he'd have Lena defending him like a mother hen no matter what.”

Ben hunted around for a place to put a pile of old
newspapers and settled for dumping it in the log carrier by the fireplace. “That oughta do it. Amada is away for the week visiting her cousin in Mexico, and I was put in charge of tidying up. You don't know how to vacuum, do you?”

“How hard can it be? If I can graduate from Grantham University, I should be able to work a simple machine. Here, hold the dog, and point the way.”

“It's in the hall closet.” Ben took Fred's leash. The dog eyed him cautiously, then pulled away with all his might in the direction of Hunt. “I don't think Fred has quite warmed up to me.”

Hunt came back dragging the canister vacuum behind him. “Don't take it personally. He's afraid of men. Try looking smaller.” Hunt bent down and peered around the back of the vacuum. “There must be a cord hiding somewhere.”

Ben hunched his shoulders, but at six foot three it was a little hard to look small. Then he tried sitting on the arm of the couch. Fred just pulled harder. “I don't think this is working.” He nodded toward Hunt. “It's down on the left side.”

“Check.” Hunt pulled out a length of cord and plugged it in.

“So if he's afraid of men, why is he so fond of you? Oh, I forgot, it's your naturally unthreatening charm.”

“What's that?” The sound of the vacuum cleaner filled the small space.

“I was just commenting on your wimpiness,” Ben shouted.

“You can't rile me,” Hunt yelled back. “I'm perfectly secure in my manhood. Witness my confident manner with the vacuum cleaner.” He pushed it toward Ben and
caught the ragged edge of an ancient Oriental rug, causing the machine to grab. The noise changed to a desperate high-pitched gurgle, like blackbirds swarming in an air-conditioning vent.

Fred jumped back, cowering behind Ben's leg.

Hunt tried pulling the vacuum away, but that only made the machine grip harder.

“Turn the damn thing off,” Ben shouted.

“What?”

Ben stood up and stepped on the power button. “I said,” he still shouted before realizing it wasn't necessary. “Sorry,” he lowered his voice.

Fred inched forward and bravely inspected the vacuum. There was a faint burning smell.

Hunt crouched down and worked the rug free from the bottom of the vacuum.

Fred nudged his thigh.

“It's okay, boy.” He fondled the dog's ear.

The puppy lifted a hind leg and scratched at his belly. The three paws remaining on the wood floor immediately splayed out from under him. His belly plopped on the floor. He looked up at Hunt and over to Ben, seemingly proud, as if that was what he meant to do all along.

Hunt laughed. Fred was good for making him laugh. Not much else did these days. Then he stood and looked forlornly at the vacuum. “Well, if I proved one thing, it's that even though my virility may be intact, I'm nowhere near as competent as the average woman.”

As soon as he'd said the words, Hunt felt the stirrings in his libido. Until he caught sight of his water aerobics partner he wasn't all that convinced that his loss of sexual desire was a temporary side effect of his
chemo as his oncologist had assured him.
But, aah, the miracle of a teeny-tiny electric-orange bikini,
he thought with a smile.

“Now that we've got that straight, I declare the job done,” Ben announced. He passed the dog's leash to Hunt and unplugged the vacuum. “So, tell me, how did that aerobics class go?”

Hunt blinked. Had his friend been reading his mind?

“I know I kind of backed you into it, and for once, I was actually feeling a bit guilty.” Ben searched around the end of the vacuum, trying to figure out how to push the cord back in its hole. Brute force didn't appear to be the answer. “Did it work out okay?”

“Well, it was wet and completely embarrassing, so I hope that makes you feel even more guilty.”

“So who did they match you up with then?” Ben glanced up. “There must be some way to push the cord back in, don't you think?”

“You knew about the whole partner bit?”

“I suppose I might as well come clean. I wasn't sure you'd go through with it if you knew it required close personal contact with a stranger. So who was it? Some old man recovering from angioplasty?”

“No, actually it was a woman, about thirty maybe.”

Ben dropped the cord, raised his hands and stood up.

“I'm done.” He faced Hunt. “So what was she recovering from?”

Hunt frowned. “I'd say
recovery
is not quite the right word.”

Fred tiptoed tentatively toward the vacuum. He put his nose down by the exhaust and sniffed.

Ben frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She's pregnant, bro.”

“Pregnant? So where's the father?”

Fred slumped down on his belly and began gnawing on a corner of the plastic casing.

“Apparently not in the picture.” Hunt stared off, not focusing on anything in particular. “What is it about fathers and their children, anyway?”

Ben growled.

Hunt quickly explained. “No, man. You didn't even know that Matt existed until last year. I was just commenting on the sorry state of affairs in general. I mean, you never even knew
your
father. Mine barely acknowledged my existence. My most vivid memory of him is not his face, but this big black Cadillac driving away. When he died while I was still young, I realized I didn't miss my father, but that shiny limousine was another matter.”

“If it will make you feel any better, I'll buy you a set of whitewalls on eBay,” Ben said.

Hunt smiled. “Spoken like a true friend and, I must admit, a good father.”

“Tell that to Matt.”

“No, Matt knows you'll always be there for him,” Hunt said.
The way you were always there for me through cancer,
Hunt could have said, but being a guy, he didn't. When it came down to it, he really wasn't New Agey after all, just his stiff-upper-lip mother's son.

“So what's with this woman's husband then? How come he's not there doing squat thrusts or jumping jacks or whatever it is you do in the shallow end?”

“Some of us have already chosen to do underwater jogging in the deep end with floaties.”

“Floaties?”