Redwood Bend

She frowned. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Katie! Stop making me work so hard!”

She laughed at him. “All right, park the bike and come with me.”

“I’ll drive,” he said, running his bike up alongside the school, turning it off and following her. And didn’t she get right in the driver’s side. He held the door for her and tried again, saying, “Come on, I’ll drive.”

“No, thank you,” she sweetly answered. And in a whisper, she added, “My car.”

He gritted his teeth into a smile and said, “I’m a pilot, let me drive.”

“No. Boys, this is Dylan. Do you remember Dylan? I don’t think you met him, but he helped change the flat tire. Dylan, jump in the car.” She smiled again. “Go ahead.”

With a grrrr under his breath, Dylan walked around the front of the car and got in the passenger side.

Katie twisted around and peered into the backseat. “This is Andy,” she said, pointing left, “and that’s Mitch behind you. Dylan suggested we go out for burgers or something and if you eat a nice dinner, there will be dessert.”

Dylan looked between the boys and Katie a couple of times. Without being asked she said, “You’ll figure it out.”

Dylan could not tell them apart. “There’s not even a stray freckle,” he said. “Seriously!”

“It’s subtle,” she said, putting the big SUV in Drive. Then she looked over at Dylan and said, “Seat belt.”

He did as he was told.

Even though Dylan had spent many hours with Lang and his family, often with kids aged two to ten climbing all over him, he still marveled at Katie’s ability to multitask. She drove that big SUV down the mountain with its winding roads while keeping her boys relatively manageable and trying to carry on a conversation with Dylan. It went something like this:

“Andy, seat belt stays on or I stop the car. So, Dylan, this is how you want to spend your time—by yourself in a town of six hundred, just riding around on your motorcycle? Mitch, window up, please. Huh, Dylan?”

It was kind of hard to know when to jump in with an answer. He gave the short one. “We don’t have any charters right now, so I thought I’d spend the time visiting local airports.”

“That must be a little uncertain on the pocketbook,” she said. And then she peered into the backseat and added, “Andy, if you don’t stop bouncing around, you won’t get ice cream. No, Mitch, I didn’t bring movies. Well, Dylan?”

“Sheesh,” he said, running a hand over his head. “We should’ve put harnesses on ’em and run ’em behind the car.” He turned to face into the backseat. “What did you do at school all day? Color? Nap?”

“It’s not school,” Mitch informed him.

“It’s summer program,” Andy explained. “So we don’t have to be really quiet or spell things.”

“It’s like babysitting,” Mitch said.

“And there’s some little kids who are like two!” Andy added with some disgust. “One of ’em bit another one today and everybody freaked out.”

“We definitely need a little more running and jumping in that program,” Katie muttered. “Well, Dylan? You didn’t answer me.”

He looked at her and, shaking his head, said, “I don’t remember the question!”

And she shot him a grin just as she reached one hand over the seat to snatch a plastic gun that made a very annoying racket out of Andy’s hand while she was maneuvering a curve in the road. “We’re not having that right now,” she said, bringing the weapon to the front seat and cradling it in her lap.

Dylan closed his eyes.

When they got to Fortuna, she was leaning over the steering wheel to look around as she drove and finally she said, “Aha! McDonald’s! You’ll thank me later.”

Dylan had no idea what she meant. They wandered in like a family of four, except that Katie took the lead and did the ordering for the three of them, getting her opened wallet in her hand. She looked over her shoulder and said, “Dylan? What would you like?”

He wasn’t having it. He nudged her aside with a hip, closed his hand over her open wallet to prevent her from pulling out her money, placed his order and paid the bill. “Thank you,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I invited you,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, but I get the impression you had no idea what you were getting yourself into.”

It was pretty close to what he expected, but he didn’t share that. He’d had the McDonald’s experience a number of times, but they were his best friend’s kids. Never the kids of some woman who had him doing crazy things!

When their food came, Katie sat on one side of the booth, sandwiched between her boys while Dylan sat on the other side alone. While Dylan worked on his Big Mac and fries he watched with admiration as Katie managed her boys. When Andy laid out and aimed a ketchup packet toward Mitch, raising his fist high to bring it slamming down to fire on his brother, she caught his arm in midair while she was telling Mitch he had to eat at least half of his McNuggets to get dessert. When Mitch pulled a fistful of straws out of his pocket and began firing the paper covers into the air like rockets, she confiscated them while disarming Andy of more concealed ketchup packets. As she did these things, she kept them from blowing bubbles in their drinks, made sure they were eating and explained to Dylan how the town put together and assembled the schoolhouse—men taking time off from work and volunteering their services. And then…

“I have to pee.”

“Me, too.”

“Okay,” Katie said. “Let’s go.”

“Aww, I don’t wanna go in the girls’!”

“Please, I don’t wanna go in the girls’, either!”

“In public places, you cannot use restrooms without an adult you know with you,” Katie said calmly. “It’s a rule and it’s for safety.”

“So no one gets us,” Andy blurted, far too loudly.

“Well, if they’d had dinner with you, they wouldn’t want you, but still…”

“I’ll go,” Dylan said. He shrugged. “I need the restroom anyway. And I used to hate going in the girls’.”

“Sucks, huh?” Mitch asked.

“Anything special I should know?” he asked as he was sliding out of the booth. “Like, should I watch for cherry bombs in toilets?”

“Just watch for water sports,” she said. “Of all kinds.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “Come on.”

But they weren’t coming with him, they were way ahead of him, running through McDonald’s to the men’s room, slamming into said facility, so that he had to pick it up a notch to keep up with them. When he got into the bathroom, they were standing there, waiting. He just stared at them for a second. “I thought we had to pee,” he said. “Let’s do it.” And he held open a stall door because these guys were big for five-year-olds, but not quite tall enough for the urinals. “Seats up, please.”

And, being twins, they gathered around the same bowl together rather than taking separate stalls. He just shook his head and laughed.

Andy looked over his shoulder at Dylan. “You gonna watch?”

“S’cuse me,” Dylan said. He made his way to the urinal and prepared. In just seconds the toilet in the stall flushed and there were two little boys, one on each side of him, which went a long way to creating an embarrassed bladder. He lifted a brow and peered at them. “Are you? Gonna watch?”