Page 65 of Frog

“Oh, I agree. One red card isn’t enough of a deterrent for him or his father.”

“Is Lily playing in the concert?” I asked him.

“Oh no, my younger daughter, Jane.” He smiled at me. “She’s the same age as Micah.”

I nodded, rising, picking up Pip and lifting him with me. “Lemme introduce everyone. This here is Carolyn Easton, Tristan’s mom, and my partner, her brother, Dr. Cyrus Benning, and you know Pip.”

“Nice to meet you all.” He nodded, shaking both of their hands, but really, you could tell, not giving a crap. His attention was back on me fast. “So, Weber, Thursday the bus for soccer camp leaves at eight in the morning, so I’ll meet you and Tris there at seven thirty.”

“We’ll be there.”

“I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to make any of Tristan’s games,” Carolyn said quickly, getting his attention. “It feels odd to just now be meeting the coach of my son’s team.”

“Everyone’s busy,” he told her. “But you have Weber to stand in for you, and for that you’re very fortunate.”

“I agree.” She smiled at him.

James turned back to me. “And again, I can’t thank you enough, Web. You’re the only guardian that everyone agreed could go. Everybody else has a stick up their—” he remembered Pip was there “—has something to say about some other parent, except you.”

“Well, I appreciate that.” I smiled at him.

He squeezed my shoulder and left us then.

“Lemme take him to the bathroom,” I told Carolyn and Cy before I started across the floor. “You too, Tris.”

The three of us headed for the restroom, and we would have made it quicker, but I was stopped by Micah’s second grade teacher, who wanted to tell me how wonderful his three-dimensional diorama of the inside of a potato bug had looked. I thought it was disgusting, but apparently she had liked it. She was also looking forward to seeing me at the parent-teacher conference since Carolyn would be out of town on business that week. I was waylaid by Tristan’s teacher as well, then Pip’s, and several parents who just wanted to say hello.

The boys and I barely made it to our seats before the lights dimmed and the curtain rose revealing the three rows of kids. The Easter concert was beginning. At Christmas, the whole school participated in the program, but for this one, only the school chorus, of which Micah had become a member at the start of the New Year, performed.

There had been changes. The first thing I had done was ask Cy to invite Carolyn and the boys to live with us. He had all that room, and she was alone with her boys in a house she didn’t love and no longer felt comfortable in. She had been cheated on in what was supposed to be her sanctuary. It wasn’t a good place for her. And having her drive across town every morning to drop off her children and her car with me was just a pain. This way she could go at a slower speed in the morning, collect herself, sit, read the paper, and ready herself for her day instead of jump-starting her heart with the blare of her alarm going off.

Cy was unsure. We had just become an us, and he didn’t want anything to wreck that, wanted to make sure we had the best chance of survival.

“But I’m here,” I told him, staring into his eyes. “And I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You can’t get rid of me no matter what.”

“I’m not worried about that,” he promised. “You’re never leaving me. I won’t let you.”

“So then?”

He agreed because, above all, the man was logical. It just made good sense.

Carolyn didn’t resist me. She wanted her life to be solid again, have a new foundation. She, too, was ready to build it on me, and I was humbled by her faith.

The boys lost their minds, and even as we set down ground rules, they were too excited to take them all in. They got a new house, their own rooms, and when Cy brought home a stray that had been found behind the dumpster at the hospital, we were a complete family of six plus a dog named Reba (after my favorite singer in the world) that the vet said was probably half Labrador retriever, half malamute, and would eat us out of house and home. She was big and friendly and sweet until the one day a guy come up on me a little too fast, and there was suddenly snarling, the show of teeth, and her hair standing on end. Apparently, Reba was ten kinds of even tempered as long as you didn’t threaten her family. I was much the same, so I understood.

Christmas had been amazing. We stayed home, and Cy’s folks came to us. They were both thrilled that I was there for good, even more excited by the living arrangement of their children, and when Owen took me for a walk, his arm across my shoulders, I understood that we were going to be friends. He and his wife were crazy about me. It was overwhelming but nice.

Cy put my name on everything, which I didn’t want him to do, but to him, again, it was logical. If, heaven forbid, he died, he wanted me taken care of as well as the boys. He also liked his name and mine together on any official documents, like a deed to a house, a domestic partnership agreement, and things like that. It made him sublimely happy. He emptied my storage facility in Abilene and had everything shipped to me. I appreciated it more than I could say. I had it all stored at a new place close by so that when I was ready to go through it all one day, I could. I wasn’t prepared yet, but there was no rush.

In February, when he was supposed to go on his trip with his friends, he cancelled. I had told him to go, but he didn’t want to leave me or his sister, the boys or his home. It wasn’t the right time. And I understood. It had taken so long to get to the place we were at, savoring it was still new.

Carolyn had to move a lot of things—beds, television sets, and game consoles—but a lot of it, like the rest of her old furniture, she sold with the house. To get rid of it, she made the price tag a steal, but that was fine. Her husband Mark had signed over everything to her in the divorce. He just wanted his freedom and not to have to pay alimony or child support. She told him she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“Thank you, Cy,” she told her brother as she bawled the day the divorce was final, clutching his hand in the kitchen, which had become the center of our house. “If it wasn’t for you and Web I would have had to fight him for child support, and I don’t want anything from him ever again. I just want him to stay in Vegas and never come back.”

“I know, sweetie,” he told her, hand on her cheek as she got off the stool and came around the end of the bar to launch herself at me.

“I would have had to go to court if it weren’t for you and my brother, Web. Thank you for letting me have my life and my self-respect. Everyone needs help sometime, but you have to deserve it and treasure it. And I do. I love you both so much.”