Chapter 32

Autumn did make it over to Howie’s for dinner the next day, and seemed positively glowing to be there. “This is sure different,” Barbara Erikson, Howie and Jack’s mom, commented when she walked in. “This is the first time we’ve had both of our boys have their girlfriends over for Christmas dinner. I sure hope it won’t be the last.”

“I’m just glad Howie invited me,” Autumn told her. “Thank you for having me.”

The dinner was more or less the standard holiday feast. Howie did manage to get Autumn off alone for a moment to ask if her mother had given her very much static about coming. “No,” she told him, “although I was darn good and ready to tell her what you told me to do. But it worked out that Summer announced she was going to be with Alan this afternoon, so I followed right along on her heels.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m just glad it didn’t come down to a confrontation.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “Now that you guys know about it, I keep thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to have one. But not right now, I think. I’d just as soon I held off until after I get out of high school.”

“That probably is the best idea,” he said. “Out of sight, out of mind. I’ll do what I can to support you, Autumn, and I’m sure Bree and Jared will as well.”

“That’s good to know. But Howie?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something we talked about yesterday that I’m not willing to hold off on till after high school. You were probably right to hold it off a month, but you’re not getting away after that.”

“If you feel that way in a month, I’m not going to try to get away.”

Linda Frankovich was feeling very frustrated over Christmas dinner. It didn’t feel like much of a Christmas to her at all.

At least Bethany was home, although it only was for the day; she’d have to head back in the morning, since she was going to be on shift at the Taco Bell in Grand Rapids the next evening. While it was nice to have her home, everything had turned out so disappointing! This time last year there had been a big wedding in the future, and a life of ease with Derrick. Linda had no idea what had happened with that, and was pretty sure Bethany was without a clue either. But whatever happened it had been a dismal failure out of what had looked like a win, and it was just absolutely wrong that a college graduate like Bethany had to be working the drive-up at a Taco Bell. She should have been doing a lot better than that. Why had she been going to college at all if not to find a man that would treat her right?

Misty was just about as big a disappointment. The girl hardly went outside of the house at all, except to school, and she wasn’t doing that as often as she should. She should have a boyfriend, learning how to handle men so that she could come out with what looked like Bethany had had going for her. It just wasn’t happening. Linda could understand why, at least a little bit; the way Rusty had ruined his sister’s reputation had to have gotten all over school, and the threats Walt had made – and was still making, as far as she knew – didn’t help matters any. Something was going to have to be done about that, and soon, but she wasn’t sure what. Maybe Misty could manage her final year of high school down with Bethany, but nobody was very happy with that idea, least of all Linda – she wouldn’t be able to guide her daughter the way she needed.

And Rusty – he wasn’t there, of course, which probably was good for him, since when Linda saw him again she was going to have to deal with the way he’d badmouthed his sister. There was no idea where he had gone; there hadn’t been a word from him, and from what little Linda had been able to pick up none of his friends had heard anything either.

Even Bob was getting harder to deal with. Linda felt like she didn’t have the control over him she’d had a year before. Back then, she’d been able to use the carrot and the stick with him, but slowly over the last few months he’d become less and less interested in the carrot. He was still reasonable, but . . . more distant. She wasn’t sure what that meant but it couldn’t be good.

All in all, her plans had truly gone to hell in the past year, and there had to be something she could do to get things back on the right track.

What with everything, it was not the cheeriest Christmas dinner ever at the Frankovich house. Every time Linda tried to get a conversation going on some subject, it seemed to fall flat. About the only thing that got conversation going, besides “Pass the butter,” was when Bob made the comment, “I see Shay Archer is back in town.”

“Probably just for Christmas,” Bethany said. “I sort of wish now I hadn’t broken up with him, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I don’t think it was just for Christmas,” Bob said. “I think he’s working for his father down at the Archer Agency. That’d be a good, solid job for him.”

“That’s a little surprising,” Bethany said, showing just a little bit of interest for the first time in a while. “The last I heard, and that was after we broke up, he was going to do some silly park ranger thing.”

“Maybe it didn’t work out,” Linda said, her ears perking up herself. Shay had been a pretty good kid, when you got right down to it, and Bethany had had him right about where she needed to have him. But she’d seen the brass ring out there, grabbed for it – and as it turned out, missed it. “You might like to see if he has a girlfriend or something, Bethany.”

“I don’t see how I could, Mom,” Bethany replied. “We, uh, we weren’t exactly on the best of terms when he brought me back from Cedar Point.”

“That was years ago,” Linda told her daughter. “Times have changed. Maybe if you talked to him nicely . . .”

“When?” Bethany spat. “I’ve got to get back on the road to the fucking taco stand in the morning.”

“Let Misty and I do a little investigation for you,” Linda offered. “Maybe if he’s not going with anyone, you might be able to make a trip up here and get in good with him. If things worked out, maybe you could move back here for a while.”

“I don’t know if I could do that,” Bethany protested. “It wouldn’t work like it did the last time. You know what I mean. Besides, if it works out that Misty is going to have to come back down and stay with me after school gets out, well, it wouldn’t do much good if I was here.”

“True, but if he’s back to stay he might be back for a long time,” Linda said. “A lot can happen between now and next summer. Maybe something will go our way for once.”

“There’s no big rush,” Bob pointed out. “If he’s working with his dad he’s going to be up to his butt in taxes as soon as the first of the year gets here. He’s not going to have much time for you or anything else until after tax season gets over with.”

Bree, Jared, Autumn, and Howie didn’t get together again as a foursome until a couple days after the holiday. Each of them had other things to do, family things mostly, and it was the first chance they’d had.

They got together at the Gravengoods, of course – once again, the hot tub was part of the attraction, but they didn’t get to it right away. Mark was at work and Jackie was at work on a sign out in the shop, but strangely, Becca was present, although it was clear she had plans to hang out with some old friends later.

It was the first time Becca had seen some of them since the previous fall. “So did everyone have a good Christmas?” she asked.

“Better than I expected,” Autumn said, and left it at that. After all, Becca wasn’t party to the secret she’d told her friends the day before Christmas.

“Can’t complain,” Howie smiled. “Of course, having Autumn over for Christmas dinner made it real special.” Once again, he was talking past Becca, although everyone else knew what he was talking about.

“I can’t complain, either,” Jared added. “We had a big family deal over at Uncle Randy’s, and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t get anything from my real father, so that made it extra special. How about you, Bree? When I talked to you last night you said you’d had something extra special for Christmas, but you didn’t explain what it was.”

“Oh, did she ever,” Becca said. “Pure Bree, through and through. Uncle Mark and Aunt Jackie have her figured out about five ways from Sunday. You should have been here. There have been times she hasn’t had much to say but this time she was well and truly speechless.”

“This sounds like some Christmas present, Bree,” Autumn grinned.

“I was kind of hoping for a ski jacket something like yours,” Bree grinned. “You know, the normal kind of Christmas stuff. But Aunt Jackie and Uncle Mark – my God, I’d never have expected it.”

“Well, what, for Pete’s sakes?” Jared asked.

“Airline tickets,” Bree grinned.

“What?” Howie asked. “Florida for spring break?”

“Better than that,” Bree beamed. “Colorado Springs.”

“Colorado Springs?” Autumn frowned for a second before she got the idea. “Oh! A visit to the Air Force Academy?”

“Yeah. Colonel Seasprunk, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Mark’s friend, has even set up a special tour for us. But that’s not the main reason for the trip.”

Howie shook his head. “If the Air Force Academy isn’t the main reason, then it’s got to be a dilly.”

“It is,” Bree laughed. “The real reason is to go flying. The date is a little loose since we want to wait till it looks like we have a good chance with the weather.”

Jared shook his head, until the light hit him. “You mean for a shot at your gold and diamond altitude gains?”

“There’s a darn good chance I can manage both in the same flight, in the mountain wave.” Bree smiled. “And most likely even in a 1-26, although I may be able to get a higher performance bird. We don’t know yet.”

“Wow,” Autumn said. “Becca, you were right. Your parents have Bree figured out right down the line. Anybody else would be thrilled to go to Florida for spring break, but Bree . . . and a visit to the Academy, too!”

“I sure hope the weather cooperates,” Bree said. “It usually only gets good a few days each month, but we can study the weather and go when we need to.”

“That is some Christmas present,” Howie shook his head. “I mean, I thought I did pretty good considering, but that’s hard to beat.”

“I don’t know,” Autumn grinned. “Howie, I think your present meant about as much to me.”

While all of the foursome had been in training for various sports in the fall, only Jared was competing in the winter, in wrestling. The season got started slowly, with only a couple meets before the holiday break, and one during it; that was pretty much a keep-in-practice thing. The friends went to that meet for the sake of something to do as opposed to having nothing to do, and were sitting in the uncrowded stands when Jared notched up his third win of the season, and by a wide margin. It looked like he was going to have a great season.

Bree had a second brief meeting with Congressman Lawton just to make the point that she was still interested in going to the Air Force Academy, and planned a visit there later in the spring. He told her that he remembered her from the previous year, that he appreciated her interest and would give her fair consideration when the time came. It still hardly seemed like a shoo-in for her, but she felt she might have a good chance.

Other than that there wasn’t much going on for the four of them between Christmas and New Year’s Day. They hung around with each other a lot, made a couple trips to Camden for movies, and things like that. Bree continued her martial arts training at about the same rate as before, and as far as she could tell she was coming along fine with it, although she was a long ways from trying for a black belt. Twice over the holiday, Gil Evachevski took her out to the Sportsman’s Club’s indoor range, and worked on her handgun shooting; she was getting to be a fair shot. The girls continued their visits to the Women’s Fitness Center to keep working on their training – track season wasn’t that far away, although in the early part of the cold months it sure seemed that way.

All too soon the holidays drew to a close, and the four of them had to be back in school for the second half of their junior year. Although they had a year and a half to go, they were now thinking more and more about college, although not much had happened in the way of decisions. Jared was still thinking in terms of construction management and architecture, possibly at Northern Michigan University, but possibly not, too; he was researching the possibility of going somewhere a little more prestigious, and maybe doing something different.

Howie was thinking in terms of Northern, too, but only if a football scholarship somewhere else didn’t come through, and it would be a year or more before that issue was settled. He had, however, more or less made up his mind, he wasn’t planning on walking on for a football team if he didn’t have a scholarship; there was no point in going to all that effort without some form of reward. And, for that matter, Autumn was also thinking about Northern, although she didn’t have any idea of what she wanted to study. It was pretty clear that the scholarship situation for Howie would have some effect on where she wound up. So, for all of them, there was still the possibility for considerable change.

Bree, well, as always, Bree was different. Her college plans mostly concerned back-ups if she didn’t get the nomination to the Air Force Academy, and the first question she had about any possible college was if they had an Air Force ROTC program. If she failed to get her appointment the first time around, she could always wait out another year or two and try again, but learn what she could along the way.

Jack, Vixen, Alan, and Summer had another week of break before they had to be back at school, but both Howie and Autumn could see they were getting antsy to leave; there was studying to be done, and some things to be prepared around the apartment. Or so they said – but at least Howie detected there were other things on their agendas too, things that couldn’t be done very well in Spearfish Lake where their parents were watching. In the end, the four decided to head back several days early.

With the four of them gone, winter well and truly set in around Spearfish Lake. It was on the mild side for once, without a great deal of snow or cold, and day followed day without much to differentiate one from the next, except for Jared’s wrestling meets. Jared continued his winning ways; he was still unbeaten for the season as the month drew to a close, and while his friends couldn’t make it to all his meets, they made it to as many as they could.

Toward the end of the month they had one of those mystery days where there was only half a day of school; “In-Service Day” it said on the school calendar, whatever that meant, but to them it meant they’d have the afternoon off. During a break in classes that morning, the four of them happened to get together in the hall. “You want to do something together this afternoon?” Jared asked Howie and Autumn, as Bree looked on.

“Not this time,” Autumn said mysteriously. “Howie and I have something we have to do.”

“Well, whatever,” Jared said. “Catch you tomorrow, I guess.”

As Howie and Autumn walked off, he turned to Bree. “I wonder what they have in mind,” he commented lightly.

“It’s pretty clear to me. Remember what they agreed on a little over a month ago? This has to be their first good chance.”

“You mean?”

“I don’t doubt it in the slightest. In a way, I sort of envy them for it, too. What would you say to going out and spending some time in the hot tub this afternoon? I mean, just the two of us?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”

They spent a good part of the afternoon in the hot tub, cuddling and making out a little more than they normally did but not going any further than that – at least partly because Jackie was out in the barn working on a sign. But both of them knew what their friends were up to, and wished them well. “I’ve thought about it,” Bree admitted as they held each other close in the warm water. “In fact, I’ve thought about it a lot since that deal came down with the two of them. Jared, there’s a big part of me that would like to be doing just exactly what they’re doing this afternoon, but there’s a part of me that isn’t ready quite yet and may not be for a while. But when it happens, I think I’d like it if you could be my first.”

“Whatever you want, Bree. I know you have your own agenda and have to do things your own way, and that your plans about the Air Force Academy get mixed up in it quite a bit. Don’t think I don’t want to do it with you, because I do, but not until you’re ready. When you’re ready, I am.”

“Thanks, Jared. I know I’m being a little bit of a sissy on this, but well, you know how I am. I’ve tried to keep from letting things get quite that close between us, since I doubt there’s much of a chance we could stay together in the long run. Unless things screw up a lot for me, I’m going to be doing a lot different things than you are, and probably in places pretty far away from you.”

“I realize that,” he said. “That’s why I’ve tried to keep us from being anything more than just good friends. I don’t think I’d like to see things going badly enough for you that would allow us to be together. It’d be a lose-lose, either way.”

“I’m sure glad you’re so understanding, Jared.”

“We went into this with the understanding that we were just going to be close friends, and that’s all we were ever going to be. I think we’re pushing that envelope pretty well, but maybe we don’t want to push past it just yet. We both are going to have other things to do. Maybe someday things will change. Maybe not. But I think we’ll have some good memories.”

A couple weeks later, tax season was proving to be about as much of a drag as Shay Archer had expected. He’d watched his father mostly withdraw from the family for months on end every winter for the dozen years they’d lived in Spearfish Lake. Even on the evenings when he came home, he brought tax work with him and fiddled with that in his little office down in the basement, totally ignoring the basement full of the model railroad he’d put together on evenings and weekends over the rest of the year. While he’d known that the tax work represented the bulk of the family’s income, as dull as it was and with much of it concentrated into a few short months, it was nothing he’d wanted to deal with.

But here he was dealing with it anyway, he thought as he sat over a beer in the Back Street Bar, not too far from the Archer Agency. The place was quiet – it was always quiet – and even at this hour of the evening it was a good place to have a couple to unwind before he went back to his parents’ house, went to bed, and got up to do it all over again. He could count the days until May first, when he had to be back in Vicksburg, and he kept careful track of them. There were still too many of them, and that would be the case until the count reached zero. Maybe he could manage to do something else next year, he thought as he watched the bubbles rising in his beer glass.

“Hey, Shay,” he heard a voice say, “how’s it going?”

He looked up to see Bob Frankovich standing next to him. That was a face from the past, back when he’d been going with Bethany. He’d always liked Bob, even though he’d always seemed to be in the background. “Slowly, very slowly,” Shay replied neutrally.

“Yeah, winter gets like that. Can I buy you a beer?”

“Sure,” Shay replied. He hadn’t talked to Bob for several years and he’d never talked to him much back then. “This one is getting empty. What do you have in mind?”

“Shay, I think I need to apologize to you,” Bob said as he slid up onto the next bar stool and signaled the bartender to bring another couple of drafts. “I know Bethany and Linda really got you out on a limb and sawed it off. I should have seen it coming but I didn’t realize exactly what they were up to until it was too late.”

“Thanks,” Shay said, still trying to be neutral. “I guess you know that burned my butt big time.”

“Yeah, they really did you dirty on that one. At least Bethany got put in that situation herself, and found out she doesn’t like it that much.”

“I heard, and I don’t think I have to tell you I’m not very sorry about it.”

“Don’t be,” Bob told him as the bartender set the beers down in front of them. “She had it coming and she’s paying the price. I saw you sitting here, and thought I’d better let you know that she’s thinking about taking another run on you.”

“No way,” Shay shook his head. “Been there, done that, learned my lesson in the process, and don’t need another T-shirt.”

“I don’t blame you in the slightest,” Bob told him. “But the thought crosses my mind that if you knew it was coming, you might be able to get her out on a limb and saw it off behind her. I mean, to sort of even the score, you know?”

Shay looked at his beer, then drank a big sip of it as he thought. “I have to admit, the idea has potential. There is some unfinished business there, after all.”

“I thought you might think that. My advice is to not let it drag out too long or she could get her hooks into you again. Make it short, and let her think she’s getting somewhere before you take your turn.”

“Like I said, the idea interests me,” Shay replied, thinking hard about the possibility. It was an angle he hadn’t considered before. “It’d have to go pretty quick, anyway. I’ll be busy for a few days after the fifteenth of April, but I have to be at my other job by May first. I’ll tell you what, she’s going to have to be the one to come to me. I’m not going to her. I don’t want her to think she’s getting an opening.”

“Wise idea,” Bob smiled. “Let her be the needy one. She is right now. Don’t you be the needy one. Keep control, and push her hard.”

“Sort of like she did with me when the situation was reversed.”

“Exactly. Have your fun and leave her squirming.”

Shay took another sip of his beer. “I can see how it might work,” he said after a moment. Something he didn’t understand was going on, but there was the thought in the back of his mind that it might be an interesting way to celebrate tax season coming to an end. “What’s in it for you?”

“Mostly, enjoying watching her and her mother get what’s coming to them. Shay, look. If you do this, I didn’t tell you about it, did I?”

“Not a word,” Shay smiled, an evil – but perfectly understandable – thought crossing his mind. “I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

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