CHAPTER SIX - NICK
BIRTHDAY #18
6 YEARS AGO
Priceless, exquisite, remarkable, extraordinary, exceptional…
The cabin at the end of the wooded lane is a place I could live.
I haven’t spent a lot of time there over the years, but whenever I rolled down that road it always felt like coming home. Which is interesting because if someone asked me where home was, I would not be able to answer. I grew up on a superyacht in the ocean. We would stop places—Bali, Bora Bora, Hawaii, Indonesia, Southern California—but that’s all they were. Just stops.
And none of them felt like home. So I guess if I had to choose a home, I would be forced to choose a room on the yacht instead. Not my bedroom. The cabins were nice—it is a superyacht—but they are not home.
I would choose the swim beach, which is really just a platform on the back of the yacht where you can dive off and get back on. This is where my twin sister, Harper, and I used to spend most of our time if the yacht wasn’t moving.
I think about her a lot these days. I miss her. And I wish I could be a part of her life. I wish I could watch her raise that baby with James and teach Angelica how to behave.
But I gave her up. I gave them all up.
This is what it means to be me. Nick Tate.
I have no home, I have no family, I have no friends.
Of course, I stay somewhere. I own a legit corporate farm in Nebraska and a small house on the edge of one of the far fields.
Harper is still alive, of course. And she has a family, so yeah. I have that family. But my real family—Lauren—she’s been gone for almost a decade now. She was the one who counted.
I know a lot of people. And if I needed something—even something big—probably twenty or thirty of them would help me out, no questions asked.
But they are not friends.
So Wendy Gale and her cabin at the end of the lane in the Kentucky woods smooth almost all of this over. She erases all the asterisks on the words home*, and family*, and friends*. All the qualifiers disappear when I’m with Wendy.
I have been thinking about her a lot this past year. How things between us have changed since Chek died in the last job we did taking out the Company leadership. She is alone now too. But unlike me, she has this place. This home that Chek made for her.
The cabin is old, authentic, and even though there is almost nothing special about it in the traditional sense, everything is special about it in the ways that count. The big porch, the knotty pine, the way the oversized floor boards creak with every step. The woodburning stove, the tin roof, and the woods, of course.
Wendy is the woods.
If anyone asks me from now on where my home is, I will still lie. But in my head, I will be picturing this place. This cabin on the lane in the woods.
I got in last night even though I wasn’t sure Wendy would even be coming home for her birthday this year. She’s a wanderer, like me. And I guess that’s probably my fault. It was the life I gave her when she was a child. So different than the life Chek gave her out here in the woods. When I showed up at the airstrip back when Lauren was just a baby and begged Chek for help, he came through and gave me Wendy.
She made all the difference.
She didn’t have to do anything to make this difference, either. She didn’t have to change Lauren’s diapers, or bathe her, or feed her, or even play with her. It’s like Lauren just knew that two kids and one guy was enough. Me alone, though? Even a baby knew that wasn’t gonna work.
We needed Wendy.
And I would like to think that Wendy needed us. But I have never been convinced that she does.
And OK, here’s a bit of truth for ya. The reason I make such a big deal about her birthday, and, when she lets me, Christmas, is because I want to give her the perfect gift.
Even if you know someone intimately it’s very hard to find them the perfect gift and I have yet to do it. I’ve come close a couple of times. But that one, perfect gift has always eluded me.
One of these days though, I’ll get it right.
That’s why I show up, even when she doesn’t.
The cabin was musty and had that not-lived-in smell to it when I broke in the back door last night. But it only took minutes after opening the windows for that scent to fade.
I woke up early this morning, not really knowing when Wendy might appear, if at all. Maybe she’s done with this place? Maybe she’s got someone else in her life now? Maybe she doesn’t need me anymore?
Maybe it’s always been me who needs her?
Wendy didn’t show for breakfast. Or lunch. And I was just about to start talking myself into the idea that she might not show at all when I heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. Then I didn’t know what to do.
Go outside and open her door, be the first thing she sees upon her return?
Meet her on the porch?
Let her come to me?
In the end, I take too long and when I open the door, she’s already climbing the steps with a garbage bag in her hand.
Smiling.
“Happy birthday,” I say.
She pauses on the top step. And did she always have dimples in her cheeks when she smiles?
I dunno. But she has them now.
“You look surprised,” I say.
“I mean…” She tilts her head at me, cocks it questioningly, like a dog might. “I left pretty unexpectedly last summer and when I came for Christmas, you weren’t here. So…”
“Christmas in the cabin is a thing?”
She nods. “It’s a thing.”
“Huh. I’ll make a note of that.”
She comes forward, stops in front of me. Leans up on her tiptoes, kisses my cheek, then politely pushes me out of her way so she can go inside.
Wendy Gale has never kissed me before. And now that I think about it, she never kissed Chek, either. Maybe she’s getting better at emotions?
Wendy sets her garbage bag down on the table and turns all the way around to face me, leaning against the side of the table as she crosses her arms. “But you’re here.”
“And so are you.”
“And I’m eighteen.”
I nod. “Yep. You are.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“Don’t go there,” I say. And I mean it too. She can tell because her smile drops.
“OK,” she says. “I won’t.”
“Good. Because that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here, Nick Tate?”
“I missed you, Wendy Gale. I like you. We’re friends, remember?”
“I’m the only thing you have left, right?”
And yeah. This girl hits the bullseye every time. Without fail. But I’m not gonna lie, so I nod. “Yep. You’re all I have left. And I don’t even care how that sounds, that’s not what it is. You’re all I have left because you’re the one thing I wasn’t ever gonna give up.”
This makes her laugh and turn away again. “OK.” She shakes her head as she opens the garbage bag and starts dumping birthday cards onto the table. “You’re holding on to me even though you let Lauren and Sasha go?” She’s not looking at me. She’s pushing envelopes around.
“I had to let them go. It was for their own good. But you’re better with me than without me.”