His Best Friend's Baby. Molly O'Keefe
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mahogany bed frame that matched the old washstand in the corner and the five-drawer dresser on the far wall. She wanted the mirror hanging over the dresser that reflected the small window and the perfect California day outside.
Everything was so beautiful. So permanent and substantial.
She’d even take the Michael Jordan posters.
This is a brand new day. Opportunity was here, glimmering like dust motes in the sunlight. She could shed the past and try something new. Try to be someone new.
Try to figure out who I am.
She rolled over to see how her son had slept, but he was nowhere to be found. She sat up and searched the floor around the bed. Where did he go? How could he have woken up and left the room without her noticing? She didn’t trust him entirely on his own with stairs, and they had followed Agnes up a steep wooden flight last night to this bedroom.
Julia rolled out of bed and ran downstairs, her bare feet slipping across the polished hardwood floors on her way to the kitchen. She burst into a scene right out of Norman Rock¬ well.
Ben sat in an ancient high chair, cheerfully shoving blueberries in his mouth.
“Airplane!” he cried. “Big airplane.”
“And what else?” Agnes asked.
“On a bus.”
“You were on an airplane and a bus in the same day?” Agnes asked, her eyes wide as though no one had ever done such a thing.
Ben nodded.
“Such a big boy!” Agnes cooed and Ben smiled, his teeth blue. He lifted his hands above his head to show her how big he truly was. Julia loved this game, loved wondering if he was broadcasting how big he felt, the size of his cheerful spirit.
Ron laughed. “All done?” he asked.
Ben nodded, his blond curls waving, and Ron leaned in to wipe Ben’s face and hands. “Let me atcha.”
Agnes picked up a camera and took a couple of pictures of Ron attempting to clean Ben up.
“Smile, Benny,” she cooed and Julia tried not to cringe at that nickname.
Julia had only sent them one picture of their grandson. A family shot of her, Mitch and Ben taken six months ago—the night Mitch was on leave from Iraq.
Jesse had taken the picture.
Shame and regret trickled through her.
She should have been the bigger person, tried harder to breach the gaps between her and the Adamses. But she was too much like her mother, maybe. Too proud.
New beginnings, she reminded herself.
“Momma,” Ben cried, dodging Ron’s washcloth. Agnes and Ron turned toward her, their smiles radiant.
“We heard him wake up and knew you needed your rest so we brought him downstairs, hope you don’t mind,” Agnes said with a bright smile before focusing on her grandson again.
“Of course not,” Julia croaked, her voice rusty from nearly twelve hours of sleep. Despite her assurance, something in her chafed at the idea that they had come into her room while she slept.
Really, you’re gonna get mad because they let you sleep an extra hour? She tried to relax. Clearly she had been on her own for too long.
Ben struggled to lift himself out of the chair with one hand and reached for Julia with the other.
“Stay there, Ben.” She walked over to kiss his cheeks and his hands, rub her nose with his damp one. All of their morning rituals. He laughed and clapped in response.
“Hog heaven, huh, buddy?” she asked, letting him put his hands on her face leaving sticky hand-prints on her skin. “Pancakes and blueberries.”
“Nana,” he said, pointing to Agnes, but watching Julia.
“That’s what I told him to call me,” Agnes said with an embarrassed laugh, pulling at the neck of her yellow T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted to be a Nana.”
“Sounds good.” Julia swallowed a lump of emotion.
“Ron.” Ben pointed to Ron and everyone laughed.
“Grandpa is for old men,” Ron said with a grin. The metal frame of his glasses caught the sunlight and winked, making him seem particularly merry. “Besides, Ron is easier to say.”
He looked young, trim and healthy with his blond hair shot through with a little silver. He appeared younger than his wife and Julia wondered if Mitch would have looked that way. Respectable. Dependable.
She doubted it.
“Ron, it is.” Julia nodded definitively as if she were checking that off a list. What to call Grandfather—check.
“Ron,” Ben mimicked Julia’s nod and tone.
“He’s such a sweet baby,” Agnes said.
“The sweetest,” Julia said, smiling in agreement. She ran her fingers through her son’s hair to try and work out a knot of maple syrup near his ear.
“Look at us, forgetting our manners.” Agnes stood, suddenly a flurry of activity.
“Would you like something to eat, Julia?” Ron patted the chair next to him at the small kitchen table. “Some coffee?”
“Coffee would be a dream.” Julia sat and an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. They had covered the basics last night. Weather. Flights. How they must just be exhausted. This morning all the unsaid things and the hurt they had caused each other in the past pulled up chairs and sat at the table.
Julia curled her bare toes into the braid rug under the table and folded her hands into her lap, trying to look the opposite of a gold-digging whore. She felt shabby in Mitch’s old army T-shirt and pajama bottoms.
I should have worn something nicer, she thought, when unease and doubt slipped under her guard. I don’t have anything nicer.
“How did you sleep?” Ron asked.
“Like a rock,” Julia said brightly and wondered how she could stretch that answer for another hour of conversation. “Very well, thank you.”
More silence.
“You have a lovely home.” She hoped that didn’t make her sound like a gold digger. She was only telling the truth. Every room was filled with books and art and warm rich colors, rugs, beautiful wood floors, light stucco walls with dark wood support beams across the ceiling.
“Thank you.” Ron nodded and took a sip of coffee.
Kill me now, Julia thought.
Agnes cleared her throat and Julia looked over to where the woman, short and round, stood in a pool of light from the window above the double ceramic sink. Tears glittered on Agnes’s cheeks.
“I am sorry, Julia,” she whispered and shook her head. Squeezing her eyes tight. “I was horrible to you and—” She stopped and a single sob came out.
Julia leaped to take the coffee mug out of her mother-in-law’s hands. She wrapped her arms around Agnes’s curved shoulders. “I wasn’t the best, either,” she said.
“I was just so upset that you got married without telling us,” Agnes went on. “Mitch is—” another sob escaped “—was our only son and I know we expected a lot but it was just such a shock. The marriage and then the news of the baby—it was just such a shock.”
“Tell me about it,” Julia said dryly, relieved when Agnes gave a watery chuckle. “Trust me, getting pregnant and marrying a helicopter pilot was the last thing I expected to happen.” Or wanted to happen, she didn’t say. Her life tended to be made up of things she had to make the best of.
“You