Текст книги "Every Second With You"
Автор книги: Lauren Blakely
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter Seven
Harley
Trey paces from the window to the door of his studio. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. How many times do I have to tell you? I took, like, twenty tests.”
From the door to the window, and back again. He can’t stop moving, can’t stop shaking, and all I can think is that this is the start of the running. This jittery back-and-forth, like a caged animal, is a harbinger. He’s going to walk. He’s going to sprint, and leave me alone with a baby in my belly, and a kid in my life.
“Did you go to the doctor?”
He asked me that already. He asked me that on the way back from the store. He’d grabbed my arm, gripped it so tight his hand was a blood pressure cuff, and then practically dragged me to his nearby apartment.
“I told you. No, I didn’t go to the doctor. Pregnancy tests work.” I cross my arms over my chest, standing firm against the wall. I have no clue where my certainty is coming from, but it’s as if all that prior fear zipped out of me, and now I am resolute.
He shoves his hands into his hair, like they’re bulldozers. More pacing. Past the futon, wearing a tread to the bathroom, then he swivels around and back to me.
“Are you keeping it?”
My brain rattles, tries his question on again for size. But it’s like he’s given the computer a command it doesn’t understand. “What?”
“Well?”
His green eyes are dark, bottomless, and I can’t read them. All the gold flecks that sparkle are blotted out. “How is that even a question?”
He raises his hands defensively. “Because it is.”
“And how can you say it?” I spit back at him. My voice rears up like a viper, hissing. I press my hands against my belly protectively. My eyes follow my hands, and it hits me what I’ve done for the first time. Protected my baby. I’m winded by my own motherly instincts that materialized out of nowhere. “Of course I’m keeping the baby.”
He turns on his heels and stalks over to the window, gripping the windowsill so hard he could crack the wood in his hands. I march over to him, grab his shoulder, and spin him around.
My steely eyes glare hard into his dark ones. “And for the record, it is a baby. It is a he or a she. A boy or a girl. It’s not a fucking it, Trey.”
“You don’t have to get like that with me. It’s not like we’ve even talked about abortion. It’s not as if we sit around and debate abortion, or the death penalty, or anything like that. I mean, I don’t even know if you believe in abortion.”
I scoff, cold and dry. “Believe in abortion? It’s not a religion. It’s a fucking medical procedure.”
“So. Do you believe in it?”
I grit my teeth, wishing I had something in my hand—a glass, a phone, a hairbrush—that I could gun to the floor. “I am not having an abortion, and I want to smack you so hard for even suggesting it. How could you? You want to kill my baby?”
His eyes fall shut, and he rocks back on his heels, his shoulders hitting the window. His body sags, as if all the bones in him have crumbled to dust and he’s only air and tenuous breath. His lower lip trembles, then he licks it once, and swallows. I don’t know what’s going on inside him, and I wish I could crawl up into him, feel his heart, read his mind, and know what’s happening.
He opens his eyes, and then parts his lips to speak, but no words come. His apartment is starkly silent, and the quiet has become a living creature in this room, a shadow animal wedged between us. Then, he whispers, so low I’d need some kind of machine to pick it up if I weren’t staring at his lips, and the words that take shape on them.
“Our baby.”
He pulls me to him, and I tuck my face into the crook of his neck, placing a hand on his chest, his heartbeat wild and terrified under my palm.
* * *
Trey
Two words I never thought I’d say. Not now. Not yet.
But they’re here, levitating in the air between us, another presence in my apartment, and then inside me, an echo reverberating in my cells.
Our baby.
I can honestly say I never thought this would happen. Maybe that makes me stupid, but we were so careful, and I’ve never knocked up anyone before, so it makes no logical sense why it would happen now.
But there’s no point in trying to apply reason. Logic has been factored out of the equation.
So, what’s next? Are we supposed to talk about baby names? Parenting philosophies? What hospital she wants to give birth at, like responsible adults discuss? Or the fact that we’re in college and this is happening? That we’re recovering addicts, junkies, fuck-ups with the worst possible parental role models ever?
I don’t know, I can’t know, and my feet feel unsteady and my breath is thin, but there is one thing I can hold on to—that I don’t want to lose touch with her. She is my rock, she is my hope, she is my every-fucking-thing, and so I don’t let go of her. I cling to her, my chin against her hair, her body gathered in my arms.
We stand there for minutes, our arms tangled so tightly together, our bodies snuggled close as if we can erase the distance and the fear if we’re entwined.
Soon, I pull apart, look her in the eyes, and opt for the naked truth. “I don’t have a clue what we’re supposed to do next. Or talk about. Or if I’m supposed to take you shopping for baby clothes, or touch your stomach all the time. All I know is, I fucking love you, and I’ll do whatever you need.”
Her shoulders seize up, and her eyes well, but she nods, seeming strong, steadfast. That’s my girl. My tough, badass, brave girl.
“I love you too. That’s all that matters, right? We’ll figure it all out somehow. As long as we’re together.”
“We will always be together,” I tell her, locking eyes with her, making sure she knows these words are the absolute truth. They are the foundation of how I live my life now. With her. With the certainty I have in this crazy love that we found in the most unlikely place. “Remember? Staying.”
“Staying,” she repeats, nodding. “Always.”
Then her hands slip up my shirt, and she runs her fingernails across my arrow tattoo. I rub her shoulder and bring my lips to kiss her heart and arrow. It’s like we’re sealing a promise. One that neither of us ever expected to make; not now, not like this.
But what choice do we have?
Somehow we manage through the rest of the day, and when her stomach rumbles in the evening, I laugh.
“Hungry much?”
“I guess so,” she says with a sheepish grin.
“Bet you didn’t know I am amazingly proficient at making grilled cheese sandwiches.”
Her eyes light up. “Ooh! I bet you didn’t know that’s my favorite kind of sandwich.”
I show off the extent of my skills in the kitchen, making her a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, the melted cheddar drizzling over the crust of the bread.
She takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure. “This is so good I’m going to call it the Cheesy Miracle.”
“That is an excellent name.”
I whip up a Cheesy Miracle for myself, and damn, it tastes good, and it’s almost enough—the dinner, and the banter—to make it seem like we are the same people we were this morning, or yesterday, or a week ago.
Almost.
But not quite.
Because as the hours turn into days, and the week ticks by, I start to feel uneasy, as if I’m living on borrowed time. Because that’s what we’re doing. We’re playing pretend, avoiding reality, talking about sandwiches and saying I love you so much we’re a broken record.
I want to live in this make-believe state forever and ever. But then time does what time does—it marches onward—and reality sets back in. The tape starts playing in my head, a highlight reel looped over and over, and I see myself at age fifteen with my baby brother, Will, dying in my arms when he was only three days old. His tiny chest, rising and falling for the last time. It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment when he left this world. Everything had slowed, all his breaths, all his blood, and he slipped from life to death sometime as I held him, his tiny little body no longer working, his heart no longer pumping blood.
I didn’t even know him, and still, it hurt so damn much. It hurt like someone was shoveling out my heart, scooping out my organs, the metal edges grinding against my bones.
The aching, the awful aching emptiness of those days. Of that life. Of no one to talk about it with. I’ve worked so hard to move on: to live, to love. To not see death in front of my eyes every time someone says words like pregnancy or baby, but now it’s all I can see. It’s the picture I can’t stop looking at.
My mind starts to agitate like a washing machine stuck on an endless spin cycle, as I feel the hope and the happiness and the future draining out of me.
On the first day of her junior year of college, and my final semester, I walk her to campus. Her hand is in mine, and it feels so right to hold her hand, so I know—I fucking know—that I shouldn’t feel as if my blood is on speed. I try to settle my hyperdrive heart. I look down and see her fingers in mine, intertwined. See? It’s all fine, I tell myself. I can do this. I can manage. I can survive all my fears. I don’t have to be scared. We can keep doing what we’re doing.
I grip her hand tighter, needing the familiar, as we press past throngs of our fellow students returning to school, chattering about their summers away from New York, or their summers in New York, or the classes they took, and the jobs they tried on for size. A guy in a brown T-shirt has his arm draped over his dark-haired girlfriend and they turn the corner, debating whether to bestow six stars or seven to the movie they saw last night.
They’re not talking about the baby in her belly. The kid they’re going to have. The child they might lose.
My lungs are pinching, and it’s like my organs are being crammed into smaller-sized storage containers.
We reach the building where she has her creative writing class. “Go write something good about talking animals,” I say, and I flash a smile, trying to keep it light so she won’t know I’m withering inside.
“I always love writing about talking animals. Meet me after class?”
“Of course,” I say then I kiss her on the forehead, and she opens the door and disappears. When she’s gone, I slump against the wall and sink to the ground, my head resting on my knees.
My insides are threatening to pour out of me, to spill all sorts of fears, and that’s the last thing I want. I can’t handle that kind of mess right now. I clench my fists; I squeeze them tight. They’re a vise, holding in all the doubts that want to ensnare me. I picture the walls closing in, compacting this messy stew in my head.
Because I know how to shut down.
It is my greatest skill, it is the subject I’ve mastered, and the class I excel in. And, as I head off to my history seminar, it’s as if my veins have stopped pumping blood, and now there’s some kind of strange coolness flowing through them, as if the blood cells are made of blue liquid distance.
I don’t meet Harley after class. I don’t answer her calls. I send her a text telling her I forgot I’m meeting Jordan for lunch. I lie to her for the first time.
Then I do it again that night when she comes over after I return home from No Regrets. She tries to snuggle up close with me in bed, but I don’t want to be close to her, so I pretend I’m asleep. She wraps her arms tight around me, her warm little body against mine, and it’s almost enough for me to turn around and kiss her and tell her all the things I’m feeling, except I don’t want to feel anymore. Not a thing. Not for anyone.
Not at all.
Chapter Eight
Trey
There are five stages to grief: Denial. Bargaining. Depression. Anger. Acceptance.
I learned them all from Michele, my shrink. I went though some of them each time one of my three brothers died. I bypassed many of them.
But what the shrinks don’t tell you is that there is a sixth stage.
Faking it.
“Let’s break this down. Piece by piece, because that’s the only way to tackle something so big,” Michele says, folding her hands in her lap, taking my news so coolly, so calmly that I’d bet the house on her being on Xanax. How the hell else can you explain the fact that she’s not pulling out her hair, or sitting there with her jaw hanging down on the floor? She’s acting like this is all too normal. Have an emotion. Have a reaction. Fucking feel this with me.
Or don’t. Whatever. I don’t care. I can’t care. I don’t want to care.
“I need you to be straight with me right now, Trey.”
“Sure,” I say, settling into her couch. Her office, with its abstract paintings of red squares, yellow brushstrokes and blue lines, is my bomb shelter, safe from shrapnel. No bad news can hit me here. No one can touch me.
“I don’t want anything but the truth. Promise?”
“Got it,” I say, nodding.
“What is your biggest fear? Being a father? Committing to Harley? Or are you—”
I cut her off. “What? Committing to Harley? I’m committed. I’m with her. There’s no one else.”
She shakes her head, crosses her legs. “That’s not what I’m saying. But having a family and being parents is a huge step and it tethers you to someone for life. You’ve only just started having a relationship with her, it’s the first one you’ve ever had, and now this. You’re not even living together yet,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “Did you ask her like you’d planned to?”
The window of her office is suddenly fascinating. The way the afternoon light slants through it. How the glass is spotless. “Do you clean that window every day?”
“No. The cleaning crew does.”
“Damn, they do a good job. Don’t you think?” I ask, turning back to her.
She gives me that look. The one that says she knows I’m stalling. “So, what did she say when you asked her?”
“I didn’t ask. I meant to. But it didn’t seem like the right time.”
She nods. “I can imagine. But then, maybe it would have been the best time. Are you afraid to ask her to move in now? Afraid to be close?”
I sneer. “No. Not afraid of that whatsoever. We’re already close. It’s just . . .” I say, but my voice trails off.
“Just what, Trey?”
“I just need space to process this, okay? It’s kind of like a big fucking deal.”
“Right,” she says firmly. “It. Is. Like, the biggest deal of your life. That’s what having a kid is. So are you pulling away from her?”
“No! I’d never do that to her.”
“Then I need to ask you the next question. We need to talk about the elephant in the room.”
My chest rises and falls. I know what’s coming. I don’t want to know what’s coming. I hold up a hand, but she asks anyway.
“Are you thinking the baby won’t make it?”
Armor. I put on my armor.
I scoff, like that’s a ludicrous suggestion. “That’s crazy. There’s no way that would happen. I mean, how could it? We’ve done our time, I’ve fucking paid for it. That doesn’t happen. Does it?”
Michele sighs deeply, and fixes me a look I’ve seen before. One I know well. Kindness, laced with sympathy. She feels sorry for me already?
“Trey,” she says in a soft, gentle voice, “it’s unlikely it would happen again, but there are never any guarantees of that sort. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that prior loss is a hedge. That it preempts the possibility of any future problems. Because that’s not true. Anything can happen at any time, though I hope your baby will be fine.”
I draw a sharp breath, and push my palms hard against the couch. “It won’t happen. I won’t let it, Michele. Everything will work out fine.” The more I repeat it, the more it becomes true. “There’s no way that could happen. The universe won’t let it. Everything will be picture perfect.”
I try to impress this upon Michele for the rest of the session, and by the time I leave, I nearly believe it. I press hard on the down button in the elevator, then rest my forehead against the panel and close my eyes. It will all be fine. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or in my case, four times.
See? That’s the proof there. There’s no way on earth it could happen again.
I have immunity now. Absolute and utter immunity from loss.
The cool of the panel feels good against my skin, cocooning me in a protective bubble. Because I am safe. Even when I leave Michele’s building and the late August heat smacks my face, it doesn’t faze me because: Everything. Is. Fine. Here.
A cabbie slams on his horn, the crude sound blasting into my ears, but it doesn’t bug me. Because I know how to protect myself.
I have a shield from pain.
I turn the corner, and a burly guy smoking a cigarette crashes into me, nearly knocking me against a building, but I sidestep him nimbly. See? Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can touch me.
I make my way to Third Avenue and turn left, heading north, heading somewhere, passing familiar shops. Florists peddling bouquets that rich husbands bring their beautiful wives to say they’re sorry for working late, but then they do it again the next night, then the next, the lure of the deal, the boardroom, the negotiation more potent than her. Then they buy diamonds from the jewelry shop on the corner here. Or send them to this spa for the day, where it’s tranquil and calm, as the women lie with cucumbers on their eyes, drifting off to the memories of pleasure.
Then I walk past doormen I have seen before, town cars pulling up, ladies spilling out. And then, finally, the maroon-uniformed man greets me with a nod, and holds open the door, since he’s known me for years.
And I’m honestly not sure how I got here, but this is where I am: my medicine cabinet, where I keep my pills. This is where my robot feet have taken me, where my cool, perfectly modulated heart is beating. Across the rose marble lobby, into the elevator. Doors close, I press the button, fifteen floors later, a whoosh, and here I am. The plush brown carpeting, the cool quiet of the hallway, the doors ready to reveal naked bodies. What’s behind door number one? How about door number two?
Or maybe, just maybe, 15D?
That one. Yeah. The fucking painkiller that’s going to make everything fine, sliding down my throat like a couple of Vicodin. There’s only one thing that can that can erase uncertainty, that can take away pain, and it’s calling to me in its siren song that blots out the sounds and noises of old New York.
I step out of the elevator onto Sloan’s floor.
Chapter Nine
Harley
The key slides into the lock. Of course the key slides into the lock. The key is made for this fucking lock.
But my heart is sputtering, and I can hear it loud in my ears. I still feel like I’m slipping a credit card into a door, all clandestine and furtive, because I might have a key, but this is not my home anymore.
I used to come and go as I pleased. Not only when I was younger, but also my first two years in college. I’d stop by for dinner, or pop by in the mornings, or crash here at night every now and then.
The door groans as I open it, inch by inch. I glance down the stoop to the sidewalk, across the street, up and down the block, making sure no one sees or hears me.
The house is silent, except for the low purr of the dishwasher. She always sets it to run mid-day so the dishes are done when she returns home. My heart aches the tiniest bit as I remember this detail about her; a meaningless detail in the scheme of things, but one of the many pieces that add up to her. How she likes order. How she likes neatness. I know so many things about her. Too many things. Except not enough, and that’s why I’m here, sneaking in after my last class of the day.
“Hello?”
I call out, but am greeted by my own echo. Instinct kicks in, and I leave my purse on the table in the living room where I always leave it, then I find myself heading for the kitchen to grab a soda. But I stop in the doorway. Nature is a powerful force, and I fight back. I’m not here to make myself at home with a Diet Coke. I’m here to find things she kept from me.
“Anyone home?” I try again, just in case.
One of the last times I came here in the middle of the day I ran into her latest suitor. Naked. I cringe at the memory of Neil’s furry parts. I don’t even know if she’s with him anymore.
I head straight for her office. Her laptop is gone, but that’s not a surprise. She probably took it with her to the office today. I take a deep breath and picture myself as some cool, calculating Angeline Jolie soulless spy. I imagine slipping on leather gloves, then methodically exploring each drawer with ruthless efficiency till I find what I need.
I open the top desk drawer, and flip through papers, Post-its, scissors, and tape.
Nothing.
The next drawer is crammed with old bills. Another one contains folders full of her pay stubs over the years, then her royalty statements from her publishers for her bestselling books. I narrow my eyes at those, because her editor is a witch.
But that’s it. Nothing out of the ordinary. No letter from my grandparents. No telltale note from my dad. Nothing special, just the necessary documents to run her business. I scan her bookshelves, run my fingers over the edges, hunting for a card, or something poking out between pages.
I don’t even know what I want it to say. But I know I want more. I want something more than her.
The books are only books though. Stories of politics. Tales of war-room negotiations. Tell-alls about campaigns marred by bad behavior.
I try the drawer under her fax machine, even though I rummaged through it the other day and it only included paper. I yank it open, but there’s still only paper.
And a package of batteries, now.
Double A batteries.
My stomach curls. She always bought them online. Kept herself well-stocked in batteries. And the things her batteries go in aren’t in her office. They’re in her bedroom.
Her room.
The one room I stopped going into when I was a teenager. I didn’t hang out in her bathroom anymore to prep for parties; I didn’t help her pick clothes for parties. I had my own room, my own bathroom, and we’d meet in the hall.
If I were her, and I were trying to hide something from me, I wouldn’t hide it in the office. That’s a harmless room. And I wouldn’t stow it away in the kitchen. It would be in her bedroom. Sure, the card I found the other day was hidden under the laptop; but that was a way station, I bet. She hadn’t yet shuttered it away.
I reach her room and the door’s wide open. I walk in, and my nostrils are assaulted with her lingering perfume, the scent marking her territory: Obsession.
Her bed dominates the room, a huge king-sized creature that has claws and a heartbeat. It’s living, breathing, and watching me from beneath the red satin sheets. I tiptoe around the bed on quiet feet, keeping a distance, as if it might bite me. I reach the nightstand, wishing I had rubber gloves from the doctor’s office.
Because I bet the cards are in here. Her private drawer. Her secret hideaway.
I pretend I’m wearing a nose mask as I gingerly tug on the handle, sliding open the drawer. I peer out of the corner of my eyes, terrified of what I see: thick purple plastic, a red one with metal balls, a slim blue number with ten different speeds, one with straps, another with leather.
I gag, and slam the drawer shut.
I can’t do this. Whatever she’s hiding from me isn’t worth seeing this. I broke away from her for a reason, so I’d never have to know about her sex life again. I rush to her bathroom, crank on the faucet and scrub my hands, lathering up to my elbows like a surgeon, as I cough. It’s like I’m choking on fumes, and it’s merely from the sight of her pleasure toys. I wash harder, as if I can slough off all the layers of dirt.
Then my stomach clenches, and a wave of nausea hits me again.
Just my luck. I breathe deeply, as if I can will it away with a calming inhalation as I finish washing my hands. But the nausea is stronger, so I drop down to the toilet and yak up my breakfast.
Great. Just great. So far, pregnancy is really fucking fun.
I return to the sink and wash my face, cupping water in my hands to clean out my mouth. I squirt some toothpaste onto my finger and scrub it against my teeth. I turn to the towel rack to dry my hands, but it’s empty. When I open the cabinet to hunt for one, I spot a wooden box tucked under the fresh linens. It’s the kind of box that holds mementos.
Shrugging, I take a chance.
What have I got to lose now? I open the lid, and there’s a small padded manila envelope inside. On the outside of the envelope my mother has written 21 in a sharpie.
21?
The envelope isn’t sealed, and a thick pang of guilt stabs me, but I ignore it and peer inside. My heart springs inside my chest—I’ve found the buried treasure. I nearly squeal as I paw through more cards. All have different designs of animals in that vintage raised ink. I open one quickly; it’s a card for my thirteenth birthday. Then my ninth. Then my seventeenth. All with strange little notes and tales from the grandparents who supposedly never kept in touch with me, but always did.
They kept their promise.
I take the manila envelope, close the vanity, and race downstairs, my heart skittering angrily in my chest. She crossed so many lines, but this is something she took from me—the chance to know them. To know someone else in my family besides her.
* * *
Joanne pours ample amounts of cream into her latte, stirs in some sugar, and takes a drink.
“Are you sure they’re really from your grandparents?” Joanne asks. She leads the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous Group I still attend regularly, and she’s also my sponsor, so we meet one-on-one after the meetings.
“As opposed to?”
“Maybe they’re notes your mom wrote.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to look at all the angles.”
“They are definitely from my grandparents. I don’t remember details, but I know they told me they’d write to me every year. And they are signed Nan and Pop.”
“So, what do you think you should do about it?” Joanne asks, her hands wrapped around the mug, both her pinkies tapping the ceramic. She’s not knitting right now, and it’s strange to see her needle-free, but her fingers seem to cry out to be busy. Tap, tap, tap.
“I wish I knew what the cards meant. I don’t even know how to find my grandparents. I don’t know their last name, or my dad’s. She never told me.”
“She kept that from you? Your father’s last name?”
Even Joanne, cool, unflappable Joanne, seems perturbed by this.
I nod. “Yep, and there are no envelopes with the cards, and it hit me why as I was walking to the meeting. She doesn’t want me to know the return address. She doesn’t want me to know my grandparents. Not only did she keep them from me, she never wanted me to know.”
“But, to play devil’s advocate, if she wanted you to never find them why not throw out the cards? She kept them,” Joanne says pointing to the evidence, the manila envelope inside my purse.
“All I know is she hid these cards and my grandparents from me. For my whole life.”
Her finger taps the handle. “How does that make you feel?”
“Like she wanted to own me,” I say, narrowing my eyes, the words tasting sordid. “She wanted to box me in and make me hers, and not let anyone else near me.”
Joanne nods. “I agree. But the thing is, you don’t want to slip in your recovery and start letting these new discoveries about her cause you to return to your drug. You’re at a very critical time. You’ve been doing great battling your addiction, all while moving forward in a new relationship, and moments like this can cause a relapse.”
I look at her like she’s crazy, because that’s how she sounds. “You think I’d go back to being a call girl because of this? Give me a little credit, please.”
She shakes her head, her pink hair swinging back and forth. “No. But I’m saying it’s tempting at times of uncertainty, when we are hit with information that rocks us, to want to use sex, or love, or romance as a drug. You’ve only just broken free from her, but clearly she still has claws in you somehow. With each new discovery it can feel like another loss of control, and losing control can be a trigger. We crave control, and now, when your world feels unsteady, you could be tempted to get it back through old habits. But you want to be able to break your patterns. You want to end the cycle.”
“Okay. I get that. So what do I do?”
“You know you can call me anytime to talk. Pick up the phone, fly the Bat flag, I’ll try to help you. But you should also decide if these letters are important right now. Are you going to drop back into your mother’s life to learn about these cards?”
I don’t have to think about her question, because I already know the answer deep in my gut. It feels terribly important to find my grandparents. “I need to understand my family. I can’t be like my mom. I want to know what they’re saying to me,” I tell Joanne, then I decide now is as good a time as any. “Especially since I’m pregnant.”
She blinks several times, like a machine processing new data. Her index finger twitches faster against the mug. “Oh, my. Is that good or bad?”
I shrug, and a tear threatens to escape, but I manage to keep it together. Each day, each time it’s getting easier to say. “It is what it is. I guess it’s bad and it’s good, and you take them both. You can’t just say it’s bad. Because it’s this life inside of me that’s scaring the shit out of me, but it also must have happened for a reason.”
“Are you keeping the baby?”
I nod.
“What about college?”
“I have to find a way to finish it.”
“And how is Trey dealing with this?”
I smile once, flashing back to the other day in his apartment. Our baby. He’ll be a great father. “Surprisingly well.”
“That’s good then. And like I said, there’s a lot going on in your life. So be aware of triggers and temptations. And in the meantime, I’ll knit you some booties.”
“Good,” I say glancing at her hands. “Because I can tell you’re jonesing to be knitting something right now.”
“Like you can’t even believe.”
When I leave, I look at one of the cards, and the words written on the eggshell paper, wondering what mysteries lie behind this story that they promised to tell me . . .
Once upon a time there was a girl from the city who had sand and seashells in her hair, sun-kissed cheeks, and a smile as wide as the sun . . .
