As You Wish (The Summerhouse 3)

“And Uncle Freddy is an adult.”

“Right,” Kit said. “I should have added qualifiers. It had to be an adult who could jump in after them if they started to drown. An adult who is not in a wheelchair. One who is—”

She couldn’t bear to hear him blame himself. “But he found out he could swim?”

“Yes. His chair rolled into the pond and when he floated out of it, he began waving his arms around. That’s when he remembered how he used to swim. The exertion nearly killed him, but he did make it to the bank.”

“And that’s when Mr. Gates found him.”

“Uncle Freddy was so worn-out that he couldn’t move. A lifetime of no exercise takes its toll. When Mr. Gates saw Uncle Freddy lying facedown at the edge of the pond, he assumed he was dead.”

“And the poor kids...” She started to say more but she heard voices in the kitchen. It looked like the doctor had arrived. “I’ll go.” In the kitchen, Ace had wrapped his arms and legs tight around his father and was crying again. Letty was at the table, tears slowly running down her cheeks.

“Come on,” Olivia said to the children, “let’s go pick some tiger plants.”

Dr. Everett, a handsome man, midth

irties, looked at her in gratitude. There were dark circles under his eyes.

She took the hands of the children and they went outside. They weren’t their usual boisterous selves but wanted Olivia to push them in the swing attached to the big oak tree near the house. It was as though they wanted to revert to being a younger age.

About thirty minutes later, Kit and Dr. Everett came outside and stood by the car talking.

Then the doctor looked at his watch, waved in the direction of his son, and drove away. Olivia didn’t like it that he hadn’t said goodbye to Ace and her face showed it.

“It’s okay,” the little boy said. “His job is very important and my mom needs him.”

His very grown-up words and tone made Olivia feel that her heart might break. Every Sunday someone came to pick up Ace and take him to see his mother in the hospital. When he got home, it always took Letty quite a while to get him to go outside. Livie had developed the habit of baking a chocolate cake with cherry frosting every Sunday afternoon.

When the doctor was gone, Kit turned to look at the three of them and grinned, his teeth white against his tanned skin. “Uncle Freddy is out of the tub and he wants ice cream. Anybody else want some?”

“Me!” the kids yelled and ran ahead. But Ace turned back, took Olivia’s hand, and made her run with them.

That night, after they got all four kids into bed early, Olivia and Kit flopped down on the couch in the living room. He had made them Tom Collins drinks and she downed half of hers in one gulp.

“Slow down,” he said. “I’ve had enough disasters today.”

“You handled everything well,” she said.

“I did what needed to be done.”

“I thought Uncle Freddy was dead. He looked like it.”

“He nearly was,” Kit said. “He only swam about fifteen feet but it’s the most he’s done since his injury. All these years he should have been using an overhead bar, dumbbells. But he didn’t. He—”

Olivia took his hand and squeezed it. “You were great.”

When Kit picked up her hand and kissed the back of it, she jerked it away. She suddenly became aware of how alone they were. The men and Ace were tucked away in bed, and Nina had taken Letty home. Kit’s and Olivia’s bedrooms were across the hall from each other. Abruptly, she stood up. “I need some sleep. Today has been too much for me.”

He nodded but said nothing.

She paused at the doorway. “What did you talk to Dr. Everett about?”

Kit closed his eyes for a moment. “Ace’s mom doesn’t have much longer. She’s mostly on morphine for the pain.”

Olivia stood there, her mind full of what had happened and what was going to happen, and she could feel the tears coming back. She started to turn away, to take her sadness into privacy, but Kit put up his hand, as though telling her to wait. As she watched, he opened a door in a side closet that was full of beat-up old boxes and pulled one out.

“I brought these with me from home and I think that right now we need them.” He took the box to a big mahogany cabinet on one side of the room. Olivia had never been curious as to what it was, but then, it would take weeks to explore all the furniture in the rambling old house.