I grin as I think of Boone’s mother. I’ve never known anyone like her.
“What does your attorney say—besides the spiders?” I ask, grabbing the carrots and celery out of the fridge too. “Surely, you’ll be set up, considering he’s the one who screwed up.”
I bite the inside of my cheek as I contemplate how happy I am that I haven’t seen Ted around since the news of the affair. Or maybe he’s lucky that I haven’t seen him. According to Chuck, I have a violent streak. I personally think it’s just called low tolerance for assholes, and Ted is definitely one of those.
I glance at Rosie to see if she’s listening. She’s not.
“He promises me I will be. They call him the Rottweiler or kingpin or bulldog or some kind of aggressive name. He says he’s going after Ted’s balls.”
“Take a finger or two for good measure,” I say, finding the bag of potatoes I saw earlier today.
“I wonder if Ted ever went back home,” she says. “I have a suspicion that Kimmy was meeting him in California, but that’s just a hunch.”
I rifle through the kitchen drawers until I find a paring knife. “I think you might be right. We haven’t seen him at all. I snuck over there last night and grabbed more of your clothes and some of your nice pots and pans.”
“You’re the best.”
“I know.” I start peeling the potatoes. “I might’ve also added some Nair into a shampoo bottle by mistake. So if you’re ever back there, bring your own shampoo.”
“You did not!”
“Maybe.” I grin. “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” She blows out a breath. “So, enough about me and my misfortunes. What’s going on with you? Where are you? Do you forgive me for being a shitty friend and cousin lately?”
“You’re not a shitty anything. You’re a little preoccupied.”
“You can say that again.”
I glance at the table. Rosie seems perfectly happy with her finger paints, so I leave her be.
“I’m kind of glad you called because my life has taken a series of interesting turns, and I feel bad for not having told you.” I set a potato aside and grab another. “I didn’t want to burden you with my bullshit while you’re in the middle of a pile of your own.”
I cringe and look up to see if Rosie heard me curse. She seems oblivious.
I’m going to have to start watching myself.
“What’s happening, Jaxi?” Libby asks.
“Well, it turns out,” I say, turning away and lowering my voice so Rosie doesn’t overhear anything, “that Jeanette passed away.”
She gasps. “I’m so sorry. Oh, my gosh. You’ve been dealing with this and didn’t even call me?”
“Yes. It’s fine. You didn’t even know her—”
“But she’s your sister. I feel terrible.”
I roll the potato around on the counter. “I feel bad too. Apparently, she died of sepsis. I have a call in to her doctor to see if they’ll tell me anything else, but I don’t think they will with all of the healthcare laws and things.”
“This must be really hard for you.”
“It’s not a walk in the park, but I haven’t talked to her in ten years. It’s sad, and I wish things were different—that we’d had a chance to catch up before she passed, but we didn’t. I can’t fix it. I have to let it go.”
“That’s really mature of you.”
“I kind of have some other things going on that I have to be mature about.”
I hover the knife over a potato and look up at Rosie. She's painting purple paint on her forearms. Stopping her now won’t made a difference, so I just ignore it for now.
“What's going on?” Libby asks.
“Nettie had a daughter. Rosie. She’s four.”
“Have you had a chance to meet her?”
“You could say that.” I toss the peeled potato aside and grab another one. “It turns out that my sister named me as the custodian of her child just before she passed away.”
Libby's gasp pretty much sums up the situation. “You’re in Hawaii, right? I’ve lost track of time. Do you have to fly back to the mainland now?”
“So, Hawaii is canceled,” I say with a laugh. “And I am trying to figure out what in the hell I'm going to do.”
“I... I don't even know how to say it right now. You have a kid? Are you kidding me right now because this is not funny.”
“I’m standing in Boone's kitchen peeling potatoes for dinner while Rosie paints on her stomach with purple fingerpaint.”
Libby laughs in disbelief. “So, what's your plan? I mean, do you have one? No judgment, ’cause clearly I don't have one either.”
“Heck if I know,” I say, moving on to the celery. “We're staying with Boone right now until I can figure it out.”
I can hear the pause—a pregnant moment of silence as Libby tries not to squeal in the phone.
“Should I read into that in the way that I want to read into that? Because you know I’m already shipping you together.”
I laugh. “You probably should not read into that but …”
“Okay. Keep going.”
I set the knife and potato on the countertop and look around the kitchen.
None of this feels real. It feels like I'm playing house—like I'm Cinderella and the part where she's the stepdaughter and the part where she's the princess are all sort of blended together in some weird collaboration.
The more I see of Boone, the more I like him. And I know if things were different, I would already have folded at the way he looks at me or the heat in the glimpse of a touch as we clean up the table or sort laundry.
But things are not different. I can't use Boone to escape a situation the way that I escaped my mom and Pete by leaving with Shawn. If I'm ever going to have something real with someone, it has to be right. And now, not just right for me but for Rosie too.
I sigh.
I remember what it was like when my mom left the guy she was with before Pete. That guy wasn't my dad, but he was the closest thing to one that Jeanette and I had, considering neither of our fathers was even in the picture. I remember vividly the pain of watching my mom choose Pete over her two daughters and thinking that Nettie and I weren't worthy of being chosen.
In second grade, my teacher asked me if I had any siblings. I said a sister, and her name was Jeanette Hannigan. The teacher looked at me and said, “What is your mother's last name?” And it occurred to me for the first time that my mother's last name was Randolph. Jeanette was Hannigan. I was the only Thorpe that I even knew.
I don't know what all Rosie has gone through in her life, but something tells me it's just as bad, if not worse, than what I went through. And come hell or high water, that’ll stop with me.
I'm going to give her the permanence that she deserves. Boone is great to her and with her, but he is not bound to her. If something would happen between him and me, and things go sideways, it’s not fair to have her positioned to get hurt by my mistakes.
“We'll see what happens,” I tell Libby. “After everything that's happened in the past few weeks to me, I'm a little leery of making definite plans.”