As they left the airport with Jake and Amber, Cindy looked out the window of the borrowed van at the palm trees and thought about how similar to southern California southern Florida looked. As the vehicle pulled into the circular driveway in front of the Sterns' home, she had to gasp.
"Wow, Mom, their house is really big!" Rebecca exclaimed.
"Jake's other grandparents must be really rich," Jonathan observed.
"I guess they do all right," Gary said sardonically.
"Quiet, you two. I don't want to hear another word about it," Cindy scolded. "It was very kind of the Sterns to allow us to stay with them so that we wouldn't have to pay for a motel."
Jake parked the van, and the group got out and walked toward the front door, where Ruth Stern greeted them.
"Gary! It's been years!" She embraced him warmly. She was a short, plump woman with curly white hair and bright blue eyes.
"This is my wife Cindy and our children, Rebecca, Jonathan, and Carmen," Gary told Ruth.
"Oh yes, the twins! How old are they now?"
"They just turned eleven."
"Well, now, you'll be ready for your bar mitzvah in just a couple of years, won't you, young man?" Ruth said to Jonathan. Cindy and Gary looked at one another. They hadn't even talked about whether or not Jonathan would have a bar mitzvah yet.
"Well, come on in," Ruth said, stepping aside so that they could enter.
Jack Stern was tall and slender, with sparse grey hair and a mustache. He looked up from where he was sitting on the sofa as the Greenbergs entered. "Well, hello there! How are you folks doing?"
Ruth led the family up the grand circular staircase and down the long hallway to the bedrooms that would be theirs for the endurance of their visit, and they unpacked and got settled and then went back downstairs.
At the evening meal, the conversation quickly turned to Carly and her baby daughter.
"I'm just so happy she named the baby Jacqueline," Ruth gushed. "You should have known her," she said to Cindy. "She was the best daughter anyone could ever hope to have. She was easily the most beautiful girl in her school. From the time she was eleven or twelve, boys were always calling her, wanting to take her out. We practically had to fight them off. And smart! She made the honor roll almost every single time. Won numerous spelling bees. I can't begin to tell you how many times a teacher of hers told me they wished all their students were like Jackie."
Cindy felt a bit awkward. Gary squeezed her hand underneath the table, and she felt much better. "Gary's always spoken very highly of her."
"As well he should," Ruth replied. "She was the best housekeeper and cook anyone could ask for, and she loved Gary and those kids with all her heart. It was just such a loss. Such a loss."
"Gary's always said that Carly's a lot like her mother."
"Oh, she is, she is!" Ruth exclaimed. After the meal, she got out the photo albums and showed Cindy numerous photos of Gary's first wife as a baby, child, and teenager, and later as an adult with Gary and Carly and Jake as young children. Cindy had already seen some of the photos, but not most of them.
Gary was very quiet as he and Cindy prepared for bed that night. Cindy noticed that he looked very pensive. "You're thinking about Jackie, aren't you?" she asked gently.
"Yeah." His voice was very low. She went to him and hugged him tightly. "Thanks, I needed that," he mumbled into her hair. He held her tightly all night long.
Jake and Amber's wedding went off without a hitch. The weather was perfect, and Jake was so handsome in his navy blue suit. Amber was simply gorgeous in her white wedding gown.
"You're my sister now," Rebecca said to her after the ceremony was over.
"That's right!" Amber gave the younger girl a quick hug.
Cindy enjoyed meeting Jake and Amber's friends and the members of the extended Stern family, as well as Amber's family. She heard many stories of Gary's first wife and explained over and over again how she and Gary had met and fallen in love. Everyone made a big fuss over the twins and Carmen.
"Uncle Phil's a great guy," Jonathan said as they were on the way home.
"He isn't our uncle," Rebecca corrected him. "He's Jake's uncle, but to us he's just Mr. Stern."
"But Jake's our brother, so wouldn't his uncle be our uncle too?" Jonathan was confused.
"It's kind of hard to explain," said Rebecca.
"I'm sure he won't mind at all if you want to call him Uncle Phil," Gary told his son.
Everything went fine until later that afternoon, when Carmen took out a piece of candy and began to unwrap it.
"Where did you get that?" Cindy asked her.
"Officer Gomez gave it to me," Carmen replied.
"Gomez? Let me see that!" Ruth snatched the candy away from Carmen, glanced at it quickly, and then threw it into the trash. "It's drugs, you know," she said. "It looks and tastes just like strawberry pop rocks, but it's really ecstasy. That's how they get kids hooked. How do you think they get so many new customers?"
"Who's 'they'?" asked Gary.
"He's a security guard at the airport, for crying out loud!" Cindy exclaimed.
"I don't care," Ruth replied. "It's always the ones you'd least suspect."
"I'm getting to the bottom of this right now." Gary fished the candy out of the trash. "I'm taking it to the police department."
"Give me back my candy!" Carmen demanded.
"Come on, sweetheart." Ruth held her hand out to the little girl. "I'll take you to the drug store, and you can pick out any candy you want."
With Gary and Carmen both gone, Cindy decided to take the twins to the beach. She lay on a blanket dozing in the sun while Rebecca and Jonathan frolicked and played. Jonathan tired quickly, of course, and lay in the sun with his mother while Rebecca went in search of new playmates and soon returned disappointed.
"We're not gonna end up staying here for two years like when we went to New York, are we?" she asked her mother.
"Of course not! Why should we?"
"Good! I hate it here! There aren't any young people here at all. Everybody's about a hundred!" She frowned and threw herself down onto the sand.
"Jake and Amber are young," Jonathan reminded her.
"They're about the only ones," Rebecca muttered.
They returned to the Sterns' home not long after that. Carmen sat on the sofa holding a huge bag of candy and grinning happily. Gary had returned with news as well.
"It wasn't ecstasy after all," he told his family. "It was just candy."
"Look, Daddy! Grandma Ruth got me more pop rocks, strawberry, orange, and grape, too!" Carmen announced.
"That's nice," said Cindy. "Just don't eat enough to get a stomachache."
"I won't," Carmen promised.
The rest of the day passed without incident. That night Cindy tucked Carmen in, kissed her good-night, and started to leave the room.
"Mama?" Carmen asked when she was almost out the door.
"Yes?"
"Why would someone close all the churches in a country?"
"Well, sweetie, some people don't believe in God or going to church."
"But they should leave the churches open anyway, for the people who do like to go."
"You're absolutely right. They should."
"Mama?"
"Yes?"
"Fidel Castro really was a very bad man, wasn't he?"
Cindy went back to the bed and sat on the edge. "What happened in Cuba could never happen here, sweetheart. Most people like the way our government is run and don't want to change it. A few people might disagree, but the government's much too strong for them to overthrow it."
"Mama?"
"Yes?"
"Do some people really pretend that drugs are candy and give them to kids?"
"Yes they do, Carmen. That's why you have to be super careful who you take candy from. We tell you that every Halloween, but it's true for the rest of the year as well."
Cindy returned to her own bedroom to find Gary sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for her."Is everything all right?"
"Yeah." Cindy yawned. "You know, Ruth didn't think there was anything wrong with Carmen having candy until she found out the officer's last name."
"Yeah. I know."
"It would have been a completely different story if his name had been Jones or Smith."
"Or Goldstein or Rosenberg," Gary added.
Cindy giggled.
"What's funny?"
"I was just remembering something that happened not too long after I met your mom. She told me gentiles couldn't make chicken soup. I didn't know what a gentile was and thought she was insulting me. You just about split your pants laughing."
Gary snickered. "That was pretty funny."
