Kathleen Creighton - One Summer’s Knight

“Whatcha got in the box, Mr. Riley?” The boy was standing in front of him, fidgety, torn between curiosity and good manners. Riley set the box down on the floor and folded back the flaps.

“Books!” David yelled as he sank to his knees on the rug. “Oh, man-Mom, lookit this! Here’s Stuart Little and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Indian in the Cupboard… and a whole bunch of Black Stallion books, Mom! Isn’t this cool? Now you can finish readin’ it to us. Will you read to us tonight? Huh? Please?”

Summer had come slowly, incredulous and silent, to peer over her son’s shoulder. Now she straightened to give Riley a dark, desperate look. “I can’t let you do this.” She muttered the words for him alone.

He shrugged and answered her the same way. “Fine. If you don’t want ’em, you can just use ’em while you’re here-or not, that’s your choice. After you’re gone I’ll find some children’s hospital to give ’em to.” And he felt disappointed without knowing why.

He bent down to scoop up a great big picture book about dinosaurs and handed it to Helen, who was watching round-eyed and, for once, silent “Here, little girl, this one’s for you.” He left her looking as if he’d just conked her with a mallet and turned to tap her brother on the head. “You-come with me. I’ve got some things in the car you can help me with.” And he walked out of the room.

With his longer legs and a head start, he made it to the stairs before they’d all untangled themselves enough to follow. He could hear them coming behind him on the stairs, like a small elephant stampede, but at the bottom David passed him and got to the car first. Riley heard him shout. ‘Oh, cool!” while he was still making his way through the kitchen.

“Is this a computer? It is, isn’t it? Did you buy a computer?”

“Sure did,” said Riley, joining him at the Mercedes’ open trunk. “You convinced me. Okay, now-”

“Mom! Mr. Riley bought a computer! Isn’t this cool?”

“Okay, here-you can carry this one. It’s the keyboard, I think. And you, kiddo-’ he fished a smaller box out of the trunk and thrust it at Helen “-think you can manage this? It’s the mouse.”

“Mouse.” She giggled.

“Okay-you can take those to my study. And don’t run!” They went running off at top speed. And that left Riley alone and face-to-face with Summer.

She was standing beside the car, one hip leaning against it, arms folded on her chest, her face, with the light from the kitchen behind her, in shadow. She’d gathered her hair up and scraped it back into that damned ponytail again; suddenly he wanted to take the rubber band, or whatever she’d used to hold it together, rake it off and throw the damn thing away somewhere where she’d never find it. And then he wanted to comb his fingers through her hair, bury his hands in it…let it fall like cool silk against his skin.

“I can’t let you do this,” she said again in a gravelly voice.

It was the second time she’d said that. The first time, he’d felt it like…fingernails across his skin, raising his hackles and a few goose bumps. This time, it got under his skin. He felt himself go cold and still. Leaning his hands on the edge of the trunk, he raised his head and looked at her and said softly, “Mrs. Robey, are you telling me I can’t buy myself a computer if I choose to do so?”

She shook her head and gasped, “I didn’t… ” then turned and walked into the house. And he felt as if he’d slapped her.

He didn’t see her again until later that evening. He was in his study, surrounded by various pieces of computer hardware, scowling through his glasses at an instruction manual the size of a dictionary and counting teeth in a multitoothed plug when she appeared in his doorway.

He put aside what he was doing at once; he’d never seen her look quite like this before, and he didn’t know whether to be alarmed or stimulated. Her body seemed tense, as if, he thought, she’d rather be anywhere than where she was. Her expression was multilayered and indecipherable.

“Excuse me,” she said softly, “I’m sorry to bother you…”

“You’re not What is it? Something wrong?”

She shook her head. “Everything’s fine. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. And-oh damn.” She closed her eyes, took a breath and started again. “I really hate to ask this of you-”

Riley’s heart beat faster. Ask something? Of him? He could hardly wait to hear what it might be.

“Do you suppose-would you mind if…” Another dead end. Another deep breath. And then out it came in a rush. “The children would like you to tuck them in.”

“Tuck…them in?” Riley shook his head, not because he hadn’t heard or understood the meaning of the words, but because they made no sense to him.

Summer sagged against the door frame and folded her arms across her waist “You know, in bed? It means-”

“I know what it means.”

And sometime during the second or two it took him to say that, his mind had exploded with images…of com-silk hair on crisp pillowcases, of rosy-cheeked faces with sweet, smiling mouths and sky-blue eyes full of trust and questions, soft skinned arms and plump little hands reaching up to him… And with the images, came a white-hot, blinding flash of fear . He’d faced violence and even death, gone up against cutthroat lawyers and hostile judges with millions of dollars on the line, and worse, stared down Southern mamas hell-bent on making him a son-in-law, and he’d never known fear like this. And for what? An act millions of men all over the world performed every night of their lives-were probably performing right now, in fact, at this very minute?

Millions of fathers. But he was not a father. Had never been one. And for his entire life had reconciled himself to the vow he’d made never to become one. How in the world had he come to this?

“I know it’s a lot to ask…” Her lips formed an unstable smile. “They can be very insistent.” She turned to leave. “I’ll tell them you’re in the middle of something. They’ll understand.”

The hell they would. “Not at all,” Riley said in his Trusted Family Solicitor’s voice-Southern, confidence-inspiring, just a little unctuous. “Don’t mind a bit. Be right there.” He couldn’t have felt more fraudulent if he’d been about to step onto center stage at Carnegie Hall and attempt to perform the Brandenburg Concertos.

“You don’t have to do this,” Summer said in a low voice when he joined her. “Really.” She faced him bravely in the narrow confines of the doorway, eyes clinging to his, liquid and impenetrable as ponds.

He gazed into them for a long time before he murmured, with a thickening tongue, “Look, I don’t mind sayin’ goodnight. It’s not a major deal, is it?”

She shook her head and her lashes fell across her eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Well, then.” But all his senses vibrated with awareness of the lie, and from the tension he felt in her, even across the inches that separated them, he knew that she recognized it, too. It was a big deal, he just didn’t know exactly what kind of deal it was. Some sort of mileage post, perhaps, on a journey for which he had no road map nor known destination. He only knew that once he passed this post-or had he already done so?-in either case, there could be no going back now to the safe, secure place he’d started from. That place was lost to him forever.

The children were sitting up in their side-by-side twin beds, waiting for him. And holding their breaths, it seemed, from the way they released them when they saw him, in gusts of excited giggles. Beatle leaped down from David’s bed and came to meet him, dancing on her hind legs and shadowboxing in delighted greeting.