Theo showed up shortly after that and spent a moment scooping up Caden and blowing bubbles on his tummy. The sound of baby cackles filled the two-story farmhouse, which was feeling not nearly that large with the lot of them squashed up on the ground floor.
Belinda, who was moving about in the kitchen with an efficiency and comfort that she didn’t usually exhibit in big crowds of people, smiled cheerfully at him.
“You want to feed him his dinner, Theo?”
Theo grimaced and then, with a resigned look at Spencer, said, “Sure!”
Belinda had some cognitive challenges—she had to make lists or she forgot things, and Spencer had been part of the family meetings during which she and Oscar and Preston had sat down and put together schedules so she could be the mom she wanted to be and not the mom she was afraid of being. But her people intuition was right-on. She paused what she was doing and took a good look at him.
“Oh! You’re dressed so nice! Don’t worry, it’s not anything messy. He’s getting macaroni tonight. We feed him with a spoon.”
The relief on Theo’s face was heartwarming, and Spencer had to look away.
Elsie saw it, though. “What’s that look?” she asked under the chatter. “Why do you look so pleased?”
“He dressed nice,” Spencer mumbled.
“So did I.”
Spencer laughed—she was wearing a dramatic red ruffled blouse and a black skirt, complete with bangles, because when she wasn’t in the air, she had embraced the complete lack of military in her life to dress as dramatically feminine as possible. She also knew that her complexion, vividly dark, and her sable-fringed, oval-shaped eyes, looked particularly sultry and fabulous in bright colors with a little bit of sparkly in her eyeshadow.
“You look glorious,” he told her truthfully. “But I know you’d look glorious if the rest of us were wearing our flight suits, because you can look amazing and you don’t back down from shit. But Theo… I think he had to buy that shirt from his savings so he could dress up for tonight.”
“Oh,” she said, her full lips tilting into a smile. “He did that for you.”
Spencer pursed his lips against the smile. “Looks like it, yes.”
She arched an eyebrow playfully. “And how does that make you feeeeeeeeel…?”
He darted his gaze away, because what he felt was way too serious.
“Like that, huh?”
“Look at him,” Spencer said, nodding to where Theo was setting the baby down in his chair. Oscar had gotten him what they all called “the feeding shirt”—which was a 3X sized T-shirt for the grown-ups so they didn’t wreck all their clothes, because mac and cheese was not as clean as all that when the baby got hold of it. He was smiling at the baby and making faces and blowing bubbles in his neck, and Caden was giggling the whole time.
“Yeah, that’s a damn shame,” Elsie agreed. “He’s actually making my ovaries bat their eyelashes and shake their asses. And he seems to like you.”
He slid a sideways look to her. “You and Josh want kids someday, Else?”
“Yeah. We’ve been talking about it.” She smiled winsomely. “Look at my little California boy. Don’t you think he’d make a pretty baby?”
“Only because the mama’s you,” Spencer said. He really had no impartiality about Elsie, and the way she preened told him she knew it. “Theo’s going to want kids someday.”
Elsie nodded thoughtfully. “That terrify you?”
“God yes.”
“Enough to send that perfectly adorable man who takes no shit and gives no fucks about your snarly asinine mouth to that perfectly adorable little guest room he set up for himself? He’s got pictures on the walls and everything, because he’s not a barbarian.”
Spencer smiled softly, thinking about the seascapes Theo had purchased for his room—and the big framed print of a WWII bomber he’d put up in Spencer’s bedroom, probably thinking Spencer wouldn’t notice. “No,” he said, not aware he’d spoken.
Elsie put her face down by his ear. “No what?”
“No, it doesn’t scare me enough to send him away.” But he was tired already, and dinner hadn’t been served. “Maybe not tonight, but….”
“Good,” she murmured, kissing his temple. “Good.”
DINNER after that really was a celebration. Theo rejoined them when it was being served, still a little damp and smelling pleasantly of baby products. Before they all dug in—and Belinda, it seemed, had gone all out with stroganoff, salad, garlic bread, and even bruschetta, which didn’t really fit in as a meal concept, but which she knew Spencer adored—Glen cleared his throat and gave Cash a rather grumpy look.
“Cash told me I had to talk,” he said. “Which is a mistake. But here it is. We all had to fly some turbulence to get here, and last year when we thought we were through it, Mother Nature burned down this house and we had to start from scratch, so that was rough. But we all know the worst kind of rough weather is when someone we love is missing and we’re not sure how they’re going to be when we find them. And that’s happened to a lot of us, and every time, everybody in this family has pretty much shit puppies until our people were home. So Spencer, you probably thought you got to avoid that. You work really hard to make sure nobody’ll miss you if you do something stupid like fall out of a fuckin’ helicopter into an apocalyptic flood or something, but I’ve got news for you, buddy. Every person here—and that includes my brother and Oscar and Belinda and Cash and Damien and me—all shit a litter when you were gone into the big wide wet. So we are really glad you’re back, and we hope your hurts heal soon, and if you had to go scare the puppies out of us, we are so glad you got to bring Theo with you when we brought you back, because if we ever lose him, we’ll probably shit kittens instead, and that’ll give us a break from all the dogs.”
Spencer laughed, his face on fire, and realized he had to say something back. He looked at Elsie in agony and she shook her head and gestured for him to go on.
“I, uh, never thought Elsie and I would land somewhere we wanted to stay,” he said. “But you all didn’t only hire us, you adopted us, and now Elsie and Josh love you, and since I shit some puppies last year when the fires came, I think it’s safe to say I love you all too. And I really love that, like a true family, you adopted Theo when you didn’t need to, and you gave him a place to land when he might have been adrift.” He gave Theo a sideways glance, and his mouth twisted. “And I’m super thrilled you all came back for us, I can tell you that.”
There was general laughter then, and Glen said, “Belinda, my love, dig in. I’ll get any damned thing you want from the kitchen, but just once I’d like to see you eat a hot meal.” And with that, dinner was served.
Spencer ate some and listened some and laughed a lot and wondered at the future a little. It was all cozy now when he was hurt and not flying and not gone four or five days a week, but would Theo be okay with that? Would they be able to make this work?
Still, as Theo passed the food to Spencer, making sure his plate was full and laughing with the people Spencer had grown to love like Theo’d lived there all his life, Spencer felt a truly alien emotion in his chest.