Coming Home to a Cowboy

“Come on, you guys,” Cody said. “Let’s get this done. Otherwise I’ll be too anxious to eat the snack.”

Kade looked to Bridget for guidance, and she nodded her acquiescence. Cody had won both the cookie and the get-me-my-present battle, even with his supposedly strict mother.

“I’ll go out to my truck now,” Kade said. As he left the room, he felt Bridget and their son watching him, knowing darn well they were going to talk about him after he was gone.

* * *

Bridget sat next to Cody on the bed, and he sent her an excited smile.

“Dad is so awesome, Mom. He likes to draw and everything. He even took art classes in college. He thinks I could make a living with my comic books someday. Oh, and he promised he’d never go away and not come back. You were wrong about him. He’s not the same as your dad.”

“I’m glad you like him.” But she’d expected as much. Cody already had been building a preconceived notion of his father as a hero, and all Bridget could do was keep hoping and praying that Kade didn’t let him down.

“Did he tell you what my present is?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Do you think he’ll bring me something every time he visits?”

“I have no idea. But this isn’t about getting gifts.”

“I know. I was just asking what you thought. I asked him if he still likes you, and he said he still thinks you’re sweet and pretty. He wants to be friends with you again.”

She wished Cody hadn’t brought her into it. She was already feeling the heat of being near Kade, of being far too attracted to him. Thinking of him as a friend wasn’t on her radar, but she knew it should be that way, especially for Cody’s sake.

Kade returned with a medium-size box. He hadn’t wrapped it, though, not like Bridget’s dad used to do with her gifts.

He placed it on the bed next to Cody. “Here you go.”

Their son clutched it with glee. “Can I shake it first?”

“Sure. Go ahead.” Kade smiled as he stood beside the dresser, looking tall and dark and cowboy delicious.

Bridget warned herself not to gaze at him with stars in her eyes. She wasn’t a twenty-year-old girl anymore. She’d grown up since then.

Cody shook the heck out of the box, but nothing rattled. He got up and went to his desk and grabbed a pair of scissors.

“Be careful,” Bridget said as he attacked the tape on the box.

“I know, Mom, I know.” He glanced at Kade as if to say women, making her wonder if the temperament of females had been part of their father/son discussion.

Cody got the box open and tore away the packing material. The gift itself was another box, only it was made of aluminum.

“It’s a time capsule,” Kade said. “You’re supposed to put things in that are important to you. Artifacts from your life that you’d want historians to uncover years and years from now. Then you bury it someplace safe. You can even register it online with the company I bought it from so you never forget where you buried it.”

“Oh, wow. Thank you so much.” Cody was over the moon. “Check this out, Mom. A time capsule.”

Bridget figured that Cody would be excited regardless of what it was, simply because it had come from his dad. But she was impressed by what an unusual gift it was. “That was a very clever idea, Kade.”

He replied, “I made one myself when I was about Cody’s age. It was just a coffee can with a plastic lid, so there was no way it was going to stand the test of time. But I didn’t know that then.”

Cody was all ears, listening to his dad’s tale, and so was Bridget, caught in the fascination of it all.

He continued the story. “I got my brother, Tanner, involved. He would have been about seven at the time. I told him to gather up some things so we could put everything in the time capsule together.”

“What type of stuff did you choose?” Cody asked.

“Tanner had a truck-and-trailer toy set that he favored, but he wasn’t willing to part with it. Instead, he contributed one of the little plastic horses that came with it. He tossed in a tiny snap-on saddle, too. I put in a drawing of a palomino I’d done. It was the horse our mom was leasing for us to ride, and its name was Brandy. I signed and dated the picture to make it official. I also put in one of my report cards to provide more information about who I was. I grabbed one of Tanner’s report cards, too, to identify him.”

Cody opened the top of his time capsule and peered inside. Then he glanced up and asked, “Where’d you bury it after you were done filling it?”

“We went to the rental stables where Brandy was being boarded. It was within walking distance from our house. We brought a backpack filled with gardening tools and then found a spot where no one was around and buried it.”

“What do you think happened to it?”

“It probably got destroyed by groundwater. But it was a great memory, and I thought you might enjoy doing something like that, too, except with a time capsule that will last. This one won’t get corroded. It’s a professional model.”

“I totally want to do it.” Cody was bouncing on his heels. “Do you want to do it with me? We could both put stuff in here. It’s plenty big enough.”

“Sure,” Kade told him. “I’d love to participate. I already bought you a preservation kit to go with it. That’s still out in my truck. It comes with packets and pouches and envelopes so you can separate items. There’s a fade-proof pencil for labeling everything, too.”

Cody looked at Bridget. “How about you, Mom? Will you do it with us? It could be like a family project.”

A family project. To her, that was far more complicated than it sounded, making her and Kade seem like a couple. But she couldn’t refuse, not with the anticipation and excitement in her son’s eyes.

“Of course I will,” she said. “It’ll be fun. I’d have to think about what to put in it, though.”

Kade sought her gaze, and she felt a wave of attraction, which was particularly unwelcome because she was sitting on Cody’s bed. But at least it wasn’t her bed. She didn’t want Kade anywhere near her bedroom.

“I’m going to make a comic book to put in it,” Cody said. “A brand-new one. And it’s going to be about a mom, a dad and a kid who put stuff in a time capsule, like we’re going to do. But instead of historians finding it, I’m going to make it so aliens dig it up centuries later.”

“That sounds like a great comic,” Kade said.

Cody went silent, as if he was plotting the rest of the story. A few quick-thinking beats later, he said, “The aliens are here on earth because their planet was seized by intergalactic rebels. But what the aliens don’t know at first is that the mom and dad and kid are actually superheroes who are still alive, and they’re going to help the aliens save their planet.”

Kade replied, “That’s a perfect representation of your work, especially to go into a time capsule. I can’t imagine anything better.”

“I know, right? I’m going to start on it tonight.”

Bridget hated to be the bearer of bad news, but she said, “Cody, don’t you have homework to do tonight?”

“Yeah, but that can wait. This new comic book is way more important.”

She blew out her breath. “I’m sorry, sport, but homework comes first.”

“But this is a big occasion for me. Meeting my dad and preparing for our time capsule. We still have to decide where to bury to it.”

Kade interjected, “Your mom’s right about your homework. That should come first. We still have time to figure out the rest of it.”