Taz
“Auntie Taz?”
“Yes, Spencer?”
“How come you don’t have kids?”
I almost drop the knife I’m using to spread cream cheese on the bagel he wanted to take for lunch. Where on earth did that come from?
“Well…” I start, turning to the boy sitting at the kitchen table, “…I’m not married, and you need a mom and a dad to have a baby.” I have no idea whether Spencer knows even the basic logistics of making a child, but I figure my response is safe enough.
He does not seem satisfied. His face scrunches up and he appears to be thinking hard. “But you don’t really need a dad. Colin doesn’t have a dad, he has two moms.”
Oh boy.
I lick my upper lip when I feel beads of sweat pop up. “It’s possible. Sometimes, if a woman badly wants a baby, there are doctors who can help with that.”
“So why don’t you get a doctor to help you have a baby? Don’t you want kids?”
I hear a muffled sound behind me. Throwing a glance over my shoulder I see Rafe leaning against the door opening, a grin on his face and one eyebrow raised high.
“I didn’t say that.” I focus back on Spencer and try to ignore his father behind me. “The truth is, I love kids, which is why I’m so lucky I get to help look after you two.”
“All right, Son. Enough with the interrogation,” Rafe finally speaks up behind me. “Are you almost done with your cereal? Sofie’s already brushing her teeth. You may wanna hurry up or she’ll beat you to the bus stop.”
I press my lips together to hide my grin when Spencer shoves two huge spoonfuls in his mouth, leaps off the chair, and bolts past his father out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
“You’re cultivating their competitive nature,” I accuse him, turning around.
“Absolutely I am,” he says unapologetically. “And I’ll keep doing so as long as it serves me.”
I turn back to the kids’ lunches and snicker. “We’ll talk again when they hit puberty and both of them run circles around you.”
“Are you laughing at me?” Rafe leans his body against the counter beside me, and I try to ignore my body’s now almost Pavlovian response to his proximity.
“No more than you laughing at me during your son’s inquisition,” I fire back, as I zip up the kids’ lunch totes and reach for my coffee.
“Fair enough.” He grabs the travel mug I’ve started filling for him in the morning and takes a sip. “What does your day look like?”
I’m a little taken aback by the casual question. It feels almost…domestic. Something has shifted these last few days, since our run-in upstairs. Who am I kidding? Since our almost kiss in his bedroom. I may have run, but in my mind I’ve felt his lips on mine over and over again. I give a little shake to clear my head. “Uh, I’m picking up my uniform at the Shannon County Home Health Care office and meeting with my coordinator this morning, and after that I thought I’d finish clearing Nicky’s stuff out of the dresser. That is, if you don’t mind? I just figured—”
“Fine by me. Thank you for doing that, by the way. I realize it isn’t an easy task.”
I smile at him and shrug my shoulders. “It seems so final, getting rid of her things. It’s a little invasive. At times it feels like I’m getting rid of her, but then I remind myself I’m merely cleaning up things that clutter her memory.”
“Mmm, that’s a good way to look at it.
The thunder of a pair of footsteps racing down the stairs has me stick my head out of the kitchen. “Guys, slow down. One of these days you’ll be a pile of broken bones at the bottom of the stairs.”
“I win!” Spencer announces proudly, clearly not having heard a single word I said. I cast an accusatory glance at Rafe who winks at me, apparently finding the situation amusing.
“Only because you skipped half your teeth brushing,” Sofie stomps past me, snatching her lunch bag off the counter.
“Put a sweater on or something, it’s still chilly in the mornings,” I call after them when I feel Rafe right behind me in the doorway.
“It’s already almost sixty-eight degrees out,” he whispers by my ear, his breath stroking my skin. “All those years in a tropical climate has thrown off your thermostat.”
“Whatever,” I mumble, but a shiver runs down my spine as his body brushes past me.
“I’m out on farm visits again today, but call my cell if you need me,” he announces over his shoulder, as he herds the kids out the door.
This is also a recent development, the reminders to contact him. It’s like he’s heeding his own comment about better communication. Instead of keeping himself distant like he did before, he’s now clearly placing himself in the middle of the household. He’s making it hard to ignore him.
It’s already lunchtime when I get home.
I struggle to get the door open and stumble inside; dropping half the load I’m trying to manage with one arm.
My meeting ran a little longer than I’d anticipated when Nathan, my new boss, asked a million questions about my work with Doctors Without Borders. He admitted, once upon a time, he’d fantasized about working in underdeveloped countries, but he’d met his wife and started a family, which effectively ended that dream.
He’s a nice guy, a little older—I peg him at mid-forties—but with an obvious love for his job. When he went over my schedule with me, he briefly described each of the patients and informed me he’d be tagging along the first week to introduce me.
I was relieved to see the uniform: navy blue scrub pants, navy T-shirts with a logo, and a zip-up sweater in the same color. I’d been imagining something more hideous I’d be forced to wear. I’m not one for uniforms of any kind—never really had to wear one—but I can live with simple scrubs and a tee.
When I walked out of the office, I had a large bag of clothes and a big binder with details on the patients I’d be seeing. Something to familiarize myself with over the weekend.
I haul the bags into the kitchen, put away the groceries I picked up on the way home, and eat a quick sandwich while flipping through the binder. A glance at the clock tells me I barely have two hours left before the kids get off the bus, and I still have one task to finish.
Steeling myself, I dump my plate in the sink, grab the bag with my uniforms, and make my way upstairs.
The top drawer is underwear and socks, none of which I particularly care to keep or hand off to Goodwill. It would appear my sister had a taste for lace, which doesn’t surprise me. She started ordering from Victoria’s Secret when she got her first job at the grocery store in town. I don’t share her love for lingerie and generally buy my cotton panties in bulk.
The whole thing ends up in the garbage pile.
The second drawer yields tops and T-shirts, some of which date back to our high school years. I smile when I come across a familiar concert tee.
I had a crush on the lead singer since I first saw the local band play at a school function. I think I was about fifteen, which would’ve made Nicky seventeen. When I found out they would be playing an open-air concert in a park in Mountain View a few weeks later, I begged my sister to take me, knowing there was no way Mom and Dad would ever allow it. I would’ve asked Kathleen, but Mountain View is a forty-minute drive and neither of us had a driver’s license. Nicky did.
She never would’ve agreed to it if I hadn’t caught Andrew Fryer with his hand up her shirt behind the restrooms at the practice fields the week before. A little blackmail went a long way.
It hadn’t been hard to sneak out, since my parents were usually in bed by nine thirty, ten o’clock. Unfortunately they were wide awake when we tried to sneak back in at two in the morning, giggling our asses off. Apparently Dad was getting ready to go out on an emergency call.
It hadn’t been the first time—and would definitely not be the last—I dragged my sister into my adventures. It was, however, the first time my parents clued in, which is probably when I earned my label as troublemaker. We were grounded for a month, but at least we both had a concert T-shirt to show for it.
I put the shirt to the side. I’m keeping it.
The bottom drawer nets a stack of sweaters and some yoga pants. I may want to keep some of those. I don’t have much in the way of cold-weather clothes. I sort through the stack, until I get to the last sweater, a gray zip-up hoodie. I lift it up to check for holes when a large manila envelope falls out.
It had been hidden inside.
Rafe
“Two more visits next week and then you’re done,” Lisa says when I hand her the updated files.
“Until September,” I point out.
“Yeah, well, that’s three months away. A whole summer. Which reminds me, do you want me to block off vacation time on the schedule?”
Vacation time? I can’t remember the last time I took time off in the summer.
Not since that disastrous week when Sofie was maybe three, or four. She’d been an adventurous little thing, often bringing me critters—frogs, worms, and even small snakes—when she came in from spending time playing outside. It had been my idea to go camping at Table Rock State Park on the Arkansas border, about three hours away.
Sofie had taken to camping right away, but it didn’t take long to conclude sleeping in a tent and cooking over an open fire was not Nicky’s idea of a good time. Come to think of it, it may have been around then I started to sense perhaps we weren’t as well suited as I convinced myself we were.
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Maybe you should,” Lisa insists. “The end of this month the kids will be home for the summer.”
Well, shit. I haven’t really thought about that either. I know the past two years Nicky had Sofie signed up for some kind of day camp for most of the summer, while she kept Spencer at home. That won’t be possible with Taz starting her new job.
Jesus. Mark me down for another parent fail.
“I’ll talk to Taz this weekend, figure it out. I’ll let you know Monday.”
I walk out of the clinic—waving a distracted goodbye when Lisa wishes me a good weekend—wondering if I should contact my alma mater to see if there are any third-year students looking for practicum placements during the summer months.
“We need to talk,” I announce, walking in the back door to find Taz in the kitchen.
“We sure do,” she snaps, surprising me with her tone. “After the kids are in bed.”
During dinner Taz engages with the kids, but freezes me out completely. Very different from this morning, and I struggle to figure out what might have brought about the change.
Unfortunately, I have to sit through a Disney movie the kids wanted to watch, get them ready for bed after, and read Spencer a chapter from his book, before I turn off their lights and make my way downstairs.
Taz is sitting on the couch, clasping a manila envelope against her chest.
“Were you even planning to tell me you were divorcing my sister?”
I narrowly catch the envelope she tosses in my direction, but I don’t need to see the contents to know what it holds.
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I tell her honestly. I’ve uttered that same line a few times today. Perhaps it’s time I start thinking about stuff.
The divorce papers I handed Nicky four months ago hadn’t even been on my radar, given how things turned out.
I’d filed the application, but only after a mutual agreement that our marriage was null and void. Heck, for the last year we’d been sleeping in separate rooms. For the sake of the kids we weren’t obvious about it, but every night I’d do my thing in the master bath before heading down the hall to the spare bedroom. Sofie had questioned us once, and Nicky quickly covered by saying Daddy sometimes snores. I don’t even know if that’s true or not, but it seemed to satisfy Sofie for the moment.
I sink down in one of the club chairs and rest my elbows on my knees, my eyes on an obviously angry Taz.
“To be honest, I’m not sure I would’ve. It was a mutual decision to end things.”
“Easy to say. She’s not here to argue it.”
That was a low blow, and I know she sees the impact it has on me when she briefly winces.
“Which is why I probably wouldn’t have brought it up.” I’m torn, on one hand I don’t want to say anything bad about her sister, but I’m also the one insisting on better communication. Transparency would be a good start. “A year ago, I discovered Nicky was having an affair.”
Taz’s eyes grow big and she blurts out, “Again?”
“Right. I discovered about her prior indiscretion a few days before she died. Which is another discussion we should have, but let’s stick with this one first. I’ve come to realize in this past year that her affair—although still not excusable—was not so much the cause of our differences, but rather a symptom.”
“Puleeze…” Taz rolls her eyes for good measure and I bite down a grin at the dramatics. “I didn’t get it the first time, I certainly don’t get it now. Why make excuses for her? She had everything. Why would she throw that away?”
She had everything.
I let those words burrow under my skin, giving me courage.
“Because she never really had me.”