Tracy Kelleher - Family Be Mine

Sarah swallowed. Just the thought of Cheetos and smelly socks was enough to make her nauseated.

“What I wouldn’t give for a bag of Cheetos now,” Julie said. She scrounged around in her hobo purse on the floor and came up with a packet of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

“Can I tempt anyone?” she offered. Katarina and Sarah shook their heads, and Julie wasted no time consuming the candy. How the woman managed to live off junk food and still remain rail-thin was a mystery to Sarah.

The owner, Erika, approached them. “Well, ladies, we have one room ready now, and the next two will be free in a few minutes. Who wants to go first?” Her voice had that melodious lilt of some unidentifiable Eastern European language. Her skin was flawless, as well. Clearly, there was something about sour cream, cabbage and potatoes.

Katarina held out a hand toward her friend. “Sarah, I don’t want to hear any objections. This is your evening after all.”

“It may be her evening, but she still hasn’t given us the gory details about yesterday’s water aerobics partner.” Julie stopped munching and texting long enough to speak. “Though considering the pool of candidates who would have signed up—yes, I meant that terrible pun—it can’t have been anyone all that interesting.”

“Oh, he was all right,” she said with a shrug.

All right?! her inner voice objected. Tell them about Hunt Phox’s steady stream of irreverent banter, how it had helped to pass the ninety minutes of class with surprising ease, it demanded impatiently.

Because then I’d have to tell them that not only was he trying to allay our mutual awkwardness, but that fifteen minutes into the workout of stretching and bouncing with Styrofoam noodles and floats, the guy was exhausted.

So what?

Because it was clear from his determined look that he didn’t want to be babied, didn’t want to admit his limitations.

So?

So I respect his pride and his privacy.

Respect nothing. You call the tingling sensation you felt when he gripped your forearms during isometric exercises “respect”?

“Earth to Sarah,” Julie called, interrupting her internal debate. “Are you still with us?”

Sarah shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to flake out there. My thoughts just kind of got away from me. Chalk it up to general tiredness and pregnancy muddleheadedness, I guess.” She blinked a few times, warding off the light-headedness she was feeling. It was a little hot in the shop.

Then she gripped the arms of the chair. “I really have been looking forward to this all day. It’s just the logistics of getting up that seem a bit daunting.” She pressed down to hoist herself up.

Which is when a weird thing happened.

Because instead of heaving herself into an upright position, Sarah became strangely conscious, almost out-of-body conscious, of pitching forward. And her nose—it really was her nose and not someone else’s she kept thinking—seemed to be getting closer and closer to the rug. This isn’t part of the playbook, she told herself.

And that thought came right before her left temple made contact with the cream-colored rug.

HUNT 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.”