Autumn's Child

  “Is she going to keep the baby?”

  “Yeah. My dad really thought that she ought to give it up, and this social worker came and talked to all of us. But Trina and my mom...so it’s going to live with us. They’re trying to figure out stuff like health insurance because the military will go on covering Trina, but not the baby. That’s all anyone talks about, Trina and the baby. So that’s why,” she finished, “I’m not going to let a guy do stuff to me.”

  “It’s okay. I get it.”

  “Good. Then we don’t have to talk about it again.”

  Seth went home and looked up rainbow parties...and then since the whole family used the same computer and his sisters knew how to check browser histories even if his parents didn’t, he instantly did some searches on rainbow photos and rainbow physics as if he were suddenly interested in meteorological phenomena, which actually were pretty cool when you learned about them.

  But the rainbow parties thing...why would a girl be willing to do that at all, much less on a bunch of guys and in public?

  One afternoon at the skate park he looked up and saw that his dad was watching him work with Caitlin. Usually in this part of town you could hear the factory whistle signaling the shift change; Seth must have missed it.

  For someone who couldn’t afford to come to any competitions, his dad was stoked about Seth’s career. Early on he had taken Seth’s cheapie boards and tinkered with them in his garage workshop, putting better edges on them and the like. Now he was making them from scratch, layering and laminating the wood.

  He also made the skateboards Seth used in the summer, and a week after coming to the park his dad gave him a skateboard he had made for Caitlin. “She’s small for her age. This is a better board for her.”

  And it was.

  She had to leave in the middle of August. She was taking the bus to Charlotte, and her parents were driving to meet her there. He rode his bike to the bus station to say goodbye. She was going to keep her skateboard on the bus with her, and her grandmother suggested that Seth carry it out of the terminal for her. Mrs. Thurmont turned away as if there were something on the station’s bulletin board that she just had to read. She was chill for an old lady—although it wasn’t like he was going to kiss Caitlin goodbye or something. He walked out to the bus anyway, handed her the board, and punched her lightly on her arm.

  “Next summer?” he said. Her eyes really were something. He had gotten used to them so he didn’t notice them all the time, but now, standing here...

  “You’d better believe it,” she said.

  About the Author

  Kathleen Gilles Seidel is a bestselling author of contemporary romances¸ two of which have won RITAs from the Romance Writers of America. She has a PhD in English literature from Johns Hopkins. She grew up in Kansas and lives in Virginia. She and her late husband have two adult daughters.