Bring Me Home for Christmas (Virgin River #16)(23)

“I understand completely. But it really works. Not that it’s what I’d call pleasant. Ah,” she said, opening his math book. “You’re working at fourth-grade math, just as I thought. Very progressive. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Well, I would be, except, it’s a lot harder to get an A on this math than at second-grade math.”

He was so right! It would be years before he’d appreciate having a teacher who had moved him along at his pace.

A half hour later, with Chris’s books spread around the table, Denny stuck his head in from the hall. “How you feeling, Becca?”

“Okay. You got a duck?”

“I got a duck. That lake was crazy with ducks this afternoon. Can I get you anything? Want a cola or hot chocolate or anything?”

“Cola would be good. Chris, do you get a snack after school?”

“I had it already. I get milk and whatever cookies my dad made. Today was peanut butter.”

“Hey, Denny. Can you snag me a milk-and-cookie snack? After all, I’m working on homework!”

Six

Becca wondered if it was weird that a little time with a seven-year-old put her right, but it did. And before they were done with homework, Dana was up from her nap and sat at the big dining table for a little while to color; Becca colored with her. For some of the time Paige sat on the sofa in the great room with a big pile of freshly laundered kids’ clothes that she folded and stacked in the basket to be carried upstairs to their bedrooms.

All this time, Denny was helping out behind the bar. When the folding and coloring and homework were done, Dana and Chris moved to the kitchen. Paige and John had worked all afternoon on dinner; now it was down to serving. Chris would have his dinner at the kitchen work island, while Dana had hers in the high chair. “When you run a restaurant, it’s hard to sit down together as a family,” Paige told Becca. “But we manage sometimes. When Denny helps serve and bus, the kids and I get a table in the bar, usually with Jack’s wife and kids. And every Sunday is reserved for a family meal at our own table—we have our family meal at two in the afternoon and Jack and his family have theirs at three-thirty. It’s harder for the Sheridans—Mel being a midwife and all. We have to be flexible.”

“It must be a challenge sometimes,” Becca said.

“Somehow it works,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.

Becca left the Middleton’s residence and went into the bar as the dinner hour approached. The bar was starting to fill up with hunters and locals. She found a table and no sooner had she gotten settled than her brother and his friends came in. They were exuberant; they had dead ducks in the back of the truck. Becca laughed as she secretly measured the merits of broken bones.

Denny was busy behind the bar, but only for a few minutes after his pals returned from hunting. He made sure his party was served, then sat with them. Since Becca hadn’t had a pain pill since morning, she thought a beer might serve her just as well, so she asked for a mug and poured one from the pitcher Denny brought.

The hunting party of Marines relaxed with their beer and reminisced about Iraq, about mutual friends, about what they’d been doing for the past few years, and she enjoyed it thoroughly. Men, she knew, weren’t too good about keeping in touch with each other. There were the occasional emails or phone calls, but it took a gathering like this to really put them in touch again. And these were men who had served in a war together, who’d kept each other’s backs, who had stood watch while their buddies slept on the desert floor in a faraway land.

They poked and jabbed at each other, made fun, and no one escaped. There were a few toasts to comrades past and one very solemn remembrance of a man named Swany—she made a mental note to ask Denny or Rich about him later.

It seemed they all but forgot she was there and this was very much to her liking. She sat at the end of the table with her foot up on the opposite chair, while Denny and Rich sat on one side and Troy and Dirk on the other. She was able to be an observer, taking in their easy rapport, their humor and even gallantry as they spoke up for each other, praising small acts of bravery in the field.

“That Seth—he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Didn’t you carry him, Troy, about two miles after he blew out his knee in Baghdad?” Denny asked.

“Yeah, it was me, and I’ve had trouble with my knee ever since.”

“I offered to take him,” Rich said. “I think you were looking for a medal or something.”

“And all I got was a bad knee. Seth, though—he’s fine.”

Denny served them a salmon and wild rice dinner, a culinary event that had the boys talking about fishing as opposed to duck hunting the next day. They had all come with empty coolers, prepared to take their trophies home to impress either girlfriends or mothers.

When Denny cleared the dinner plates away, the bar was taking on a slightly different atmosphere. The locals had cleared out and there were only a few out-of-towners, either fishermen or hunters. Jack wandered over to their group, pulled another table up close and sat down with them. He asked the guys about their hunting. A few minutes later, Preacher came out of the kitchen, checked to make sure their few patrons were fine, then went behind the bar to pour a couple of shots, which he carried to the table Jack had pulled up.

There was a little grousing about last night’s poker—apparently Jack had taken complete advantage of the younger guys and Preacher had folded before becoming a victim.