“Sorry. I didn’t think.”
“It’s okay. Those days were hard, but I had Kelsey, so everything we went through was worth it. I have great memories of that time, too. Kelse gave me lots of them. And then your dad came back to us, and we made everything exactly right.” Her smile beamed love at him. “And then we had you.”
He smiled back. “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you. My sweet teddy bear.”
He rolled his eyes at her old nickname for him. “Mom, I’m a grown man.”
“Son, you will be my teddy bear until the day I die, even if I’m a hundred and you’re almost seventy. Deal with it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckled and returned to the hunt.
He didn’t need a lot; Phoebe’s house was pretty full. Most of her stuff was old, but he liked the cozy vibe and didn’t want to disrupt it. However, he needed some kind of dresser, and the one in his room at home was way too big to fit in her room. And now he wanted that rocking chair, too.
“Can I take the rocker?”
Again, Mom didn’t answer right away, and he looked back at her. She was going through a box of somebody’s school papers—Hannah’s, it looked like. He saw a coloring page with the outlined image completely obscured by black crayon—yep, definitely Hannah’s.
“Mom?”
“Oh—sorry. You want the rocker? Sure, I guess. You know those glider rockers are made for rocking babies.”
He’d been reaching for the rocker, but now he pulled back. “It can’t just be a chair?”
“Sure, it can. But ... you know. As long as we’re on the subject ...”
“Fuck, Mom! We’re just moving in together. We’re not planning on babies at this time.”
“I know, I’m obnoxious. No pressure. You’re young. I was just curious.”
“We haven’t talked about kids at all yet.” He was still reeling from the Tokyo Drift his life had taken in the past few months, and Phoebe was still dealing with her own shit. It had been only a few days since that scene in the stable, and since they’d decided Duncan should move in. They still didn’t know if the staged accident was going to pass as a real one. That was just about all the massive life shit they could handle right now.
“But you want kids,” Mom said.
“Yeah. Someday.”
“Does Phoebe?”
He set the rocker down on the little bit of floor before him. “Mom. I just told you we haven’t talked about that stuff yet.”
“I know, but you’re moving in together. That’s a step toward building a family. It’s good to know if you both want to build the same kind of family. I mean, are her roommates staying?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t they?”
“And that doesn’t seem strange to you? You won’t have any privacy.”
Apparently, standing here in this overcrowded locker, he was going to have to give his mother a lesson about twenty-first-century families. “It’s not strange, Mom. The time of mom and dad and two-point-five kids and a white picket fence is over. Families are whatever works for the people in them. Right now, at the ranch, that’s me and Phoebe and Vin and Margot. Maybe someday Vin or Margot will get with people and want places of their own, or maybe they’ll bring partners into the house. I don’t know. But no, it doesn’t seem strange.”
“And if you do have kids?”
“Then there will be a lot of people around to help.” He leaned back against a shelving unit full of clear plastic tubs. “Why are you so hung up about this? Our family is weird by the white-picket-fence standard—and it’s you all who made it that way. You, Dad, Simon, Uncle Rad and Aunt Willa, just about everybody from your generation came from some kind of big family damage. You all had shitty parents or dead ones or both.”
“Jesus, Dunc! That’s harsh.”
“Yeah, that came out nastier than it sounded in my head. Sorry. But I’m not wrong, am I?”
She thought for a minute. “No. I don’t like lumping in the families that broke from loss with the families that broke because somebody broke them, but you’re right. We were all a mess.”
“But you made a great family. All that damage, but you didn’t pass it on. None of you did. My generation? We’re good. We all grew up in tight homes, with parents who love each other and work through their shit without dumping it on the kids. We all grew up knowing that our parents and a whole lot of other people love us like crazy. There’s been a lot of loss, but nobody broke anything on purpose.”
Mom studied him for a while; he could see her combing through her own memories. “I’ve never actually sat down and thought about it, but you’re right. Everybody who’s in a committed relationship, married or not, is totally committed—and healthy, as far as I know. All these years, and we’re all still together, if we can be. Wow.”
Wending his way over to her, Duncan set his hands on his mom’s shoulders. “I know how to make a family. You taught me.”
His mother smiled up at him, tears rising in her eyes. “You’re a good boy, Duncan.”
He kissed her cheek and whispered, “You taught me that, too.”
~oOo~
Bop it!
Pull it!
Flick it!
Bop it!
Flick it!
Twist it!
Twist it!
Twist it!
Ugh, game over. Do it again, but better.
Duncan groaned.
With some fresh batteries and a couple swipes with a shop towel to clean it up, the old Bop It worked just fine. He’d forgotten how much fun the thing was.
“Okay, my turn,” Jay said and snatched the old toy from Duncan’s hands. “I’m taking you down this time.”
“Don’t get cocky ‘til I had my turn,” Monty said. “We both kicked your ass last round, and I only missed Dunc by one.” He leveled a look at Duncan. “I’m comin’ for you.”
“Go ahead and come,” Duncan volleyed with a laugh. “Wanna make it interesting?”
“Always,” Monty said. “How much?”
“I’m in,” Jay added.
Before Duncan could respond, a familiar, gruff voice said, “The fuck you all doin’?”
They all turned to face their president, who stood just inside the door with his arms crossed.
“Playing Bop It,” Jay answered. “Wanna try it?”
“No, I do not want to try your little toy. How ‘bout you try some fuckin’ work?” He waved pointedly at the three cars in the bays.
Duncan answered before Jay could say something snarky and get them all trouble. “There’s no work. We’re done with all three, just need to put them on the lot.”
“It’s fifteen minutes till we close up the bays, anyway,” Jay said, because his favorite hobby was poking the bald bear who sat at the head of their table. He started a new round on the Bop It, like Eight wasn’t still glowering at them.
Jay washed out on the sixth action. By then, Eight had come fully into the bays and was close enough to watch over Duncan’s shoulder.
“Let me see that,” the president said.
Jay clutched it to his chest. “You’re not gonna fuck it up or anything, are you?”