Chapter Twenty-Three

They had decided that Rose’s baby shower wouldn’t be a female-only event. Instead, it would be a big, mixed-gender party with all of the trappings of a traditional shower—including the stupid games Rose was so looking forward to—but also with the music, beer, and barbecue more common to a regular get-together.

The deciding factor was that Will didn’t want to be left out, which all of the women thought was completely adorable.

They had worried that the weather might not work out for barbecue, given the date in December. But Mother Nature was cooperative, and the temperatures hovered in the low seventies with clear blue skies.

The party was held at Ryan and Gen’s house on the Delaney Ranch, because the rest of them had places that were too small for the number of guests Rose had in mind.

By the time Daniel rolled up in his SUV at two p.m. on that Saturday, the Porter-Delaney house was filled with Rose and Will’s friends, Rose’s mother, Gen and Ryan’s family, Will’s parents, various customers from De-Vine who had wheedled invitations, neighbors of the ranch, and just about everyone else in town who’d heard about the party and wanted to be included.

People were milling about on the big front porch, music was wafting out of doors and windows that had been left open, and Jackson was manning a big barbecue in the front yard, supervising a selection of steaks, chicken pieces, burgers, and brats.

Daniel was a little late. That was partly because he’d finally hired a new assistant, and the two of them had spent the morning working on the piece for the hotel in Los Angeles. But it was also because Lacy had called him when he was on his way and asked him to stop by the winery in Harmony to pick up a case of wine that the owner—who knew Rose well through her work at De-Vine—was contributing to the party as a gift.

He got the carton of wine bottles out of the back of the SUV and had hefted it into his arms when Lacy came out to greet him.

“Hey, you made it,” she said with pleasure as she leaned past the bulk of the box to kiss him.

She looked lovely, her cheeks flushed with happiness. She was wearing her usual jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, with no makeup, or at least none that Daniel could see. That meant that this impossible abundance of beauty was pure Lacy. Something in him relaxed when he saw her; some element of stress or annoyance, some unsettled thing in his chest, released and tamed itself with a sigh at her touch.

“I’ve got the wine,” he said, unnecessarily.

“Great! Come on, let’s take it inside.”

He followed her up the porch steps and into the big house, nodding his greetings to people as he went. He hadn’t put the box down yet when Rose came to meet him, grinning with infectious joy.

“Thanks for doing that,” she said, gesturing toward the box of wine. “Just put it in the kitchen. Look how many people showed up! This is going to be so much fun. God, it’s a nice day, right? I wasn’t sure how the weather would turn out, but it’s great. Jackson’s making brats. I love brats!”

Daniel had to grin at Rose’s bubbly enthusiasm. In honor of her baby’s gender, she had dyed her hair a cotton-candy pink. Somewhere, she’d managed to find a Ramones maternity T-shirt, and she was wearing it with black leggings and motorcycle boots. The piercings in her eyebrow and her nose glinted in the overhead lights.

Once he’d had a chance to put down the box, Daniel enveloped Rose in a hug. “You look great,” he told her when he’d let her go. “Not long now, huh?”

“Just a few more weeks,” she said. “God, I can’t wait. I know I’m going to be cranky and sleep-deprived and all covered in poop and baby vomit, but I can’t wait to meet her.” She rubbed her round belly with love.

Daniel, who’d heard about the Baby Name Derby from Will, asked whether anyone had won yet.

“Will won.” For some reason, Rose was beaming as she told him.

“So, the name’s Harper, then?” Daniel asked.

“Nope.” Rose bounced on her toes. “That was his shower gift to me. He won the derby, but he gave me the naming rights anyway. She’s going to be Poppy Wren Bachman.” Rose was grinning so hard that Daniel couldn’t help but laugh.

“A flower for you, a bird for him,” he remarked. Will was an evolutionary biologist who had done his doctoral research on a species of bird common to the Cambria area.

“Isn’t it perfect?” she said.

“It’s great. I’m happy for you,” Daniel said, meaning it.

Lacy had to rush off to get some of the games ready, so Daniel mingled among the crowd, greeting his friends, introducing himself to people he didn’t already know.

He grabbed a beer from the kitchen, popped the top, and went out to where the barbecue was set up to say hello to Jackson.

Jackson was manning the grill with typical Jackson-like intensity, turning meat and applying sauce with a basting brush, and Will’s father—a guy in his sixties with a balding head, a paunch, and studious-looking glasses that looked just like Will’s—was ferrying platters of raw meat from the kitchen to Jackson for grilling.

“Hey,” Jackson said, greeting him with a glance up from the grill. “You finally made it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel said. “I’d have been here earlier, but I had to go back for the wine.”

A group of kids that included Ryan’s nephews and Lacy’s nieces ran around on the lawn, playing some kind of game with rules that were incomprehensible to Daniel. Something involving a stick, an invisible line, a particular method of jumping on one foot, and a cape fashioned out of a dinner napkin.

Even without understanding the rules, Daniel would have put his money on the girls’ team, hands down.

“Nice grill,” Daniel remarked, gesturing toward the gleaming stainless steel behemoth that looked big enough to hold the parts of not just one chicken, but flocks of them. “This Ryan’s?”

“Nah. I brought it from the restaurant in my truck.”

Daniel’s eyebrows rose. “You do outdoor grilling at Neptune?”

“Sometimes,” Jackson answered. “We had that Fourth of July deal.”

The smell of the meat, marinated with some concoction only Jackson knew the mystical secrets to, made Daniel’s stomach growl, but he figured he should make an attempt to be social for a while before he dug into the food.

“Rose looks happy,” he commented, making conversation.

“She’s over the moon. She’s probably going to deck the baby out in punk rock T-shirts and temporary tattoos.”

“I’d like to see that,” Daniel said.

A big outdoor table had been set up with a white tablecloth, place settings, and a centerpiece of red roses, presumably inspired by the guest of honor. Some of the women, and Will’s dad, were bringing platters of food out to the table. Lacy came out of the house with a big bowl of some kind of salad in her hands, and Daniel followed her with his eyes.

Jackson said something that Daniel didn’t hear. “Huh?” Daniel asked, distracted.

“I said, it seems like you’re a goner,” Jackson said, looking pointedly at Daniel and then at Lacy.

“That’s not what you said.”

“No, but it’s still true.”

Daniel’s first impulse was to be annoyed and to deny that he was seriously hung up on Lacy, or anyone else for that matter. But what would the point of that be? He wasn’t in damned third grade, after all. Denying feeling for girls was no longer a matter of manly honor.

He sighed. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

“Well, you could do one hell of a lot worse,” Jackson said jovially, flipping a row of chicken parts.

“That’s what worries me.” Daniel watched Lacy as she put the salad on the table, exchanged a few words with one of Ryan’s relatives, and then went back up the porch stairs and into the house.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jackson looked up from the grill to squint at Daniel.

Daniel shrugged. “It means, I kind of feel like I’m playing A-ball and Lacy’s the Major Leagues. Like I’m out of my depth.”

“Ah, that’s bullshit,” Jackson said, gesturing at Daniel with his barbecue tongs. “It’s shallow as hell, and it’s unfair to Lacy, and it’s not what’s really bothering you.”

Daniel scowled, surprised. “What are you—”

“It’s shallow and unfair because it assumes that an especially beautiful woman only wants some European underwear model named Javier.” He pointed at Daniel with the tongs. “And that because you’re no Javier, she’s going to get bored and run off with some other guy.”

“Well.” Daniel had to admit that it sounded pretty stupid when Jackson put it that way.

“And it’s bullshit,” Jackson continued, “because what you’re really worried about is that this is the big one.”

“The big one?” Daniel said.

“The big one. The big L. And that doesn’t stand for Lacy.”

“Ah … you’re an asshole,” Daniel said, lacking a more trenchant response.

“I’m just saying.” Jackson turned his attention back to the meat on the grill. “You think it was easy for me when I fell for Kate? It took me a while to start thinking like part of a couple. It’s worth it, though. I’m just saying.”

Daniel scowled. “Ah … just cook your damned meat.”

 

After everyone had eaten and the plates had been stacked in the kitchen for some later cleanup, Rose opened her gifts, gasping and clapping with glee over each onesie, each diapering accessory, each piece of gear intended to make the baby sleep better, or stay safer, or look cuter. Daniel didn’t know what he and Lacy had given her, but it rankled him slightly that they’d given a joint gift. Like he was already losing his identity, becoming less Daniel and more Lacy and Daniel. Not that it was fair for him to be rankled. It wasn’t like he’d even mentioned the issue to Lacy. So why was he feeling pissy about it now?

After the gifts, the girls did their party games while the guys hovered around the edges uncomfortably, drinking beer and muttering about the incomprehensibility of women.

One game involved using streamers of toilet paper to estimate Rose’s girth. Another required the participants to wear necklaces made of diaper pins while trying to avoid saying the word “baby.” And yet another involved the timed diapering of a roughly baby-sized teddy bear.

As Daniel sipped from a longneck bottle and watched, Lacy got on her knees in front of the teddy bear and raced to diaper the thing’s butt while the other women cheered her on.

She won by a good five seconds, and received a prize of some bath salts and a scented candle.

“This is so much fun!” Lacy beamed, holding up her treasures so someone could take a photo. “I can’t wait to have kids of my own. I want at least six.”

Daniel felt like he’d been hit in the head with a hammer.

“You look a little green there, son,” Ryan observed.

Daniel looked at the beer in his hand and decided that wasn’t going to cut it. He wandered off into the kitchen to see if Ryan had anything stronger.

A little morphine would be soothing.