“You won’t believe the day I’ve had.” I sighed as I set down my tote of cleaning supplies. Every muscle ached with a dull throbbing and if I didn’t get off my feet soon they were probably going to run away without me.
Neil came forward and pulled me into his arms. “Let’s have a glass of wine and you can tell me all about it.”
I looked up at him, resting my chin against his chest. “You really are the perfect man, you know that?”
He dropped a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll remind you of those words the next time you go nuclear at me.”
There was a spicy scent in the air. I sniffed like a starving bear climbing out of her den. “And you cooked too? That’s it, I’m calling MIT so we can clone you. You’ll be all the rage at Christmas, like Tickle Me Elmo.”
“That’s a horrifying thought.” He shrugged, though I could tell from the flush on his cheeks he was pleased by my reaction. “It’s not like I slew a dragon for you, just made a pot of chili. You know that and eggs are about all I can manage. And microwave burritos.”
I went to the stove and lifted the lid of the bubbling pot. “Mmm, smells great. Don’t tell Leo, but you out cooked him today. He made this dip and it smelled like Marty’s jockstrap.”
Neil popped the cork on a bottle of white merlot. “Should I ask how you know what your brother’s jock smells like?”
“You’ll probably sleep better if you didn’t.” I gave the chili a stir and then sat down on one of my ugly bar stools. “Well, first of all, Leo thinks Sylvia is pregnant.”
One eyebrow went up. “You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not. And to top it off, we don’t think she knows yet.”
Neil mock winced. “Awkward. Does that mean she doesn’t know who the father is?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, slick.” I took a healthy slug of wine. “And then there’s Sarah the psychic and her family.” Briefly, I outlined what had gone down at the Dale estate.
Neil opened his mouth to reply when a piercing wail rent the tranquility of the moment.
Our eyes met and Neil smiled. “Oh, by the way, Mae’s here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I hopped off the stool, before remembering I’d been out and exposed to germs and all sorts of nasty chemicals. “I’m gross.”
“Go shower,” Neil pushed me toward the hall. “I’ll get her.”
I raced for the bathroom and de-funked myself as quickly as possible. Mae had been a preemie and her immune system was still delicate. I wouldn’t expose her to whatever funk had hopped aboard the laundry hag bandwagon.
The sight of Neil cradling the baby in one arm while he stirred the chili in the other made my heartache. He was such an incredible father, had been from day one.
For a brief moment, I imagined it was our daughter he was holding, half him, half me, entirely unique
I hadn’t been lying when I told Neil I liked where we were though. It had never bothered me that Kenny and Josh weren’t my biological offspring, I’d raised them as my own, loved them the best I could and it was an ongoing job. The boys required so much less of me than they had a year ago and I had plenty of other family and friends to fill the time void they left behind. I wasn’t ready to push them out of the nest, but did I really want to feather another?
Having a baby at this point in our lives would be like starting from square one. No more date nights. Although considering the way it had ended maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. But what about our impromptu nooners or sharing our stories and a bottle of wine, instead we’d be hurtled back to the land of diapers and sleepless nights. Did I really want to make that trade?
Neil turned and spied me. His hazel eyes held that gleam I knew, the one that told me all I needed to know about his feelings on the subject. He wanted to do it, wanted to have another child. If only I could be so sure.
“I’m safe now,” I said, holding out my hands.
“I changed her but she’s probably hungry. I’ll warm her bottle.”
“Are you hungry, sweat pea?” I asked and shifted her into a more comfortable position in my arms.
She grinned at me and a little drool escaped her rosebud mouth.
The front door flew open with a crash. Kenny and Josh strode in, dropping duffels and soccer gear in their wake.
“Okay guys, you know the drill.” I chucked my thumb down the hall to the shower and the industrial size bottle of antibacterial body wash.
“Moooommmmm,” Kenny whined as if the longer vowel sound would force me to be reasonable. Good luck with that. “Do we have to do this every time we leave the house?”
I shifted my weight, rocking Mae back and forth while glaring at Kenny. “If you go out and interact with other people, yes. And why is that?”
“Because they are germ-riddled carriers of disease.” Kenny and Josh chorused.
Okay, so they’d heard my spiel a few times before. But considering we had a two-month-old as a regular visitor and I couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing about yet another case of Ebola or the Enterovirus, I’d hit DEFCON 1, full-scale war on germs.
The boys sighed, and then trudged off to placate my neuroses.
“And don’t touch anything while you’re waiting for your turn!” I called after them. I shifted the baby to my shoulder and paced back into the kitchen. “Does he have to fight me on this every day? I swear, I could make a recording of myself saying the same thing and just hit play when they walk through the door.”
“He’s ten. No boy voluntarily showers at ten.” Neil extracted the fresh bottle from the pan of water and took the baby from me. “How long are you going to make them do this, Uncle Scrooge?”
“Until I can find a way to encapsulate our house and the house next door is a giant germ-proof bubble.”
“You really think that’s a reasonable reaction?”
I rolled my eyes. “Neil, I’m to the point where I’ve considered using Lysol like pepper spray anytime anybody coughs around me. At least the bubble won’t result in an assault charge.”
Neil’s eyes were glinting with mischief as his large hand patted the tiny back. “And how am I supposed to get out to go to work when we’re all living in the bubble?”
“I’ve got it all figured out. We’ll park the camper at the bubble’s entrance and hang a bunch of hazmat suits in there. Easy.”
Neil raised an eyebrow at my ready answer. “You’ve really thought this through. Have you given thought to anything else?”
I knew what he was asking. “I have, but the jury’s still out. I don’t want to rush into anything without considering all the advantages and disadvantages.”
Neil sat on the barstool, adjusting Mae in his arms. Her tiny hands reached up to clasp the bottle, though she couldn’t hold it herself yet. “Enlighten me.”
“Well, the first thing is that I’d probably have to put the cleaning business on hold. Between the chemicals and the germs, I’d be terrified we’d end up with a mutant baby.”
He smiled but didn’t say anything. I finished my wine and rose, needing to pace to help organize my hodgepodge of thoughts.
“I’d want to stay home, like I did for Kenny and Josh, at least until baby X is old enough to go to school. It would mean leaner times again, extreme couponing and another mouth to feed, not to mention that by the time baby X is starting kindergarten, Josh will be looking at colleges.”
Neil raised a brow. “Baby X?”
I waved him off. “Better than saying he or she all the time. The important part is that all the financial responsibility will be on your shoulders. Are you okay with that?”
Mae had drained the bottle and again Neil shifted her to his shoulder. When he spoke his voice was low. “Considering how well the boys are turning out and that I won’t die of a heart attack because you’re being stalked by yet another homicidal maniac, yes, I’m good with that.”
“We’d have to sell the Mini. It’s tight enough with four of us.” Damn, I loved that car.
“You’re grasping at straws, Uncle Scrooge. Tell me what’s at the heart of it.”
I threw up my hands in frustration. “I don’t know, okay? With Mae, we get to give her back after a few hours. We can cuddle her and feed her and watch her sleep but at the end of the day, she’s Marty and Penny’s responsibility. Baby X would be our responsibility and I don’t know if I’m at a point in my life where I want to take that on again.”
He studied me a moment, his expression unreadable. “You take on everything else. Family, friends, even strangers and their problems all the time, as a matter of course.”
“That’s different, I’m bailing the boat, not steering it into an iceberg.”
“So how is this different than when you took on Kenny and Josh? And me for that matter. You decided you wanted to be part of our lives and you steered that ship just fine.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t have a choice then. You know I’m not good at making decisions, I break out in hives when the bagger at the grocery store asks me if I want paper or plastic. When I don’t have a choice, I can just put my head down and do what needs to be done. But the times when I’ve picked something, well, I usually pick wrong. And it isn’t fair to ruin all of our lives because I’m indecisive.”
Though his face was impassive I could hear a thin thread of vulnerability in his voice. “Are you saying you didn’t choose me?”
“Not with my head I didn’t. You were married and, if you don’t mind me saying so, kind of a train wreck.”
His lips twitched. “I was separated and, if memory serves, you weren’t exactly a monument to mental health either.”
“The point is,” I huffed, “that I didn’t feel I had a choice once I got to know you. I just had to be with you. I’m sorry, I know you want this, part of me wants it too, badly. So badly it hurts to think about it but then all these other thoughts pop up and I’m just so—”
He handed me the baby and once my arms were full he covered my lips with his own, effectively cutting me off before the panic attack got a toehold. It went on for a long time and once the threat of hyperventilation lessoned, he pulled back, putting his warm hands on my shoulders to steady me. The scent of baby and chili and home enveloped me and I took a great, calming breath.
“What I want,” he whispered, “Is for you to be happy, healthy and secure. If thinking about baby X stresses you out then don’t. Let’s drop it for now, have dinner and spend some time with the family we do have.”
“You’re going to use up all the hot water, butthole!” Josh shouted.
I raised an eyebrow at Neil. “Do we have to?”
I lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling. In spite of my physical exhaustion, my mind refused to settle into sleep. Neil murmured something indecipherable and Atlas snored loudly from the rug next to the dresser.
Insomnia had been a regular visitor over the past several months. I’d tried everything from a cup of hot milk before bed, to exercising myself into collapse but it didn’t seem to matter what I did during the day. More often than not, the darkness held only a frustrating emptiness with no reprieve until dawn when I’d pass out from sheer exhaustion.
I could get up, move around the house and fiddle with some quiet project. Go over the list of plans for Penny’s baby shower maybe, or lose myself in Outlander for the eighty-seventh time. Really needed some new episodes, stat. Neither distraction nor escapism would make the pang of emptiness go away.
Some women are born to be doctors or lawyers, like my mother-in-law, the cutthroat corporate attorney. Others are natural chefs or engineers, teachers or spiritualists. I’d never felt much certainty about any particular career path. I’d enjoyed taking classes and earning my business degree, though I didn’t have the drive to get an MBA. The only thing I really had passion for was my family and our home. A year ago that had been enough. So what the hell was my damage?
Restless, I flipped onto my side. Sensing my movement, Neil slung an arm around me, pulling me close. What straight woman worth her estrogen wouldn’t be passionate about such a man? He was handsome and heroic and he loved me as well as one human being could love another. So why did I hesitate about bearing his child?
If I were honest with myself, which I had not been lately, it was about more than money or responsibility. Neil had asked what the real problem was and in a nutshell, the real problem was me. I was afraid that this was all I’d ever be, just mom, just Neil’s wife, just the laundry hag. Call me selfish, but I wanted to see what else was out there and if maybe I had another destiny that didn’t involve these four walls and those who inhabited them.
As though he sensed my unease even through the veil of sleep, Neil murmured something indecipherable and pulled me even tighter against him. I smiled and put my cold hand around his wrist, squeezing it lightly. No, being Neil Phillip’s woman wasn’t a bad job at all but there was the pull of the unknown that called to me in the siren song in the night. I was glad he held me so I wouldn’t be dashed on the rocks I couldn’t see but were there all the same.
To keep from thinking about baby X—which sounded creepier every time I considered it— I focused on Sarah Dale. She reminded me so much of myself, especially after my parents had died. Rudderless and afraid to make a move unless I was forced into it, at least until I had Neil and the boys to help give me some direction.
I remembered the way Frank Finn had looked at her. I wondered if he would end up being her rudder. The detective and the psychic—now there was a kick-ass combination. I wished for a moment that I could draw because that was a fabulous concept for a graphic novel.
I was so lost in that idea that I didn’t hear the knocking at first. It came again, an insistent rapping on the window. I jerked upright and Atlas let out a rumbling bark.
“What is it?” Neil had gone from deep sleep to full consciousness in no time, a SEAL trick so that no one ever got the drop on him.
I turned on the light and shrieked when I saw the face in the window.
Neil threw open the window, popped out the screen and dragged the peeping Tom into the window. The whole maneuver took exactly five seconds. The body lay face down on the carpet, flanked by an enormous dog on one side and a pissed off SEAL on the other. Boy did that poor shmuck pick the wrong house to disturb at the plumber’s buttcrack of dawn.
“Damn it, Marty,” I said as the intruder’s hat fell off and I saw my brother’s face. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You didn’t answer the door.” My brother’s voice actually cracked.
Neil let out a string of salty curses, but he and the dog backed up.
“Are you all right?” I asked as I helped the idiot to his feet.
“I think I messed my pants.”
I rolled my eyes. “I mean, why are you here at oh dark hundred instead of next door?”
“Penny threw me out.”
“And why didn’t you use your key?”
“I left it here by accident.”
Neil and I exchanged glances and my husband ran a hand over his stubble. “I’ll get the couch pulled out.”
“What did you do?” I asked hands-on-hips.
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Marty…” I said in a warning tone.
“She just threw me out.”
“Same old song and dance.” This was getting ridiculous.
My brother shook his head. “No, I mean, this time is different. She threw me out for good.”