“I wish she hadn’t died,” she says quietly.
“Me too, kiddo. Me too.” Miles starts to fidget, which either means he’s hungry, sleepy, or he needs a diaper change. Now I just have to figure out which one. I lift him up so his butt is next to my nose and give it a sniff. He smells like shit. “I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll change his diaper,” I say to Sam.
“Not a chance, dude,” she replies.
I chuckle. “It was worth a shot.”
“No, it really wasn’t,” she shoots back at me.
“See?” I tell her. “You’re more like your mother than I ever thought.”
“I’m going to go set up the cat’s litter box and his food bowls.” She grabs the bags we left on the porch when we sat down, and she goes into the house, taking her kitten with her.
“She’s so much like Lynda that sometimes it hurts to look at her,” Aaron says as he approaches from around the corner. He slowly trudges up the steps and sits down next to me. “She got all the sass, and Kerry-Anne got all the sweetness.”
“And Miles got the smelly butt.” I hold him out in Aaron’s direction, and he takes him from me.
“So I get you back when you’re poopy, huh?” Aaron buries his face against Miles’s stomach and blows a raspberry, which makes the little arms and legs flail as he tries to grab handfuls of Aaron’s hair.
“He’s probably ready for a nap. He’s been up since around six thirty.”
“I heard you’ve been up even longer than that,” Aaron says, but he’s really not paying attention to me. He has it all on Miles. “Thanks for watching him during the night.”
I laugh out loud. “Mr. Jacobson came over all freaking out and saying, ‘It woke up!’ I figured I was obligated to help.” I reach over and touch the top of the baby ‘s soft head. “Me and this little guy have a deal. As long as he doesn’t cry, I won’t either. It seems to be working so far.”
“He agreed to this arrangement?”
“He did. And so far, he’s held up his end of the bargain.”
“Well, thank you for spending so much time with him. I know you’re not used to having babies around.”
“We had one once,” I admit. I almost want to take the words back because they hang there in the air between us, tangible and real. “But only for a few days.”
Aaron finally looks at me. “What?”
“We signed up to be foster parents. Our first placement was a three-month-old baby.”
His surprised gaze turns into a mock glare. “How did I not know this?”
I give him a shrug. “Bess didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out. And the goal with foster parenting is reunification with the parental figure. We knew that going into it. It still stung a little when they took him back, I’m not going to lie about it.” It was harder on me than on Bess. Bess had kept her distance, only holding him when she had to. I, on the other hand, had fallen head over heels for the little guy right away. I’d even tried to check on him after he went back to his home, and we’re not really supposed to do that.
“Did you foster again?”
I shake my head. Bess had refused to do it again. “No, we never did.”
“Do you think it would have fixed you two…if you’d had a baby?”
“I sincerely doubt that having a baby with her would have made her like me any more than she already did.”
“Babies have a way of making life harder and yet sweeter all at the same time.” He grimaces. “Speaking of sweet, this one needs a diaper.”
“Better get on that.”
“I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll do it,” he says, which makes me laugh.
“Not a chance, dude,” I say, repeating what Sam had just said to me.
He leaves and goes to his own cabin. Our door opens and Bess steps out onto the porch. “Did you agree to keep a cat for a month?” she asks.
I nod my head slowly. “I did.”
Her brow furrows. “Just to be clear, you know you have to keep it when the divorce is final.”
“Okay, Bess, sure,” I reply. I’ll keep the cat. But I’d really rather figure out a way to keep her.
18
Bess
The next morning, I wake up when there’s a knock at the front door. My neck hurts because I slept on the couch again since Eli was in the bed. I rub my neck and walk to the door, open it, and find Aaron standing there with Sam. Sam walks past me and into the house and starts looking for her cat.
“Try the kitchen,” I tell her. “The cat was up around five this morning playing with a bread tie on the linoleum floor.” I shudder and scrub my eyes with my hands.
“You ready to go?” Aaron asks me.
“Go where?” I say, still sleepy.
He pulls his shirt open a little to expose his port.
“Oh!” I say, awake now. “I forgot that we’re doing that every other day.” I hold up one finger. “Give me just a minute to get dressed.”
I open the door to the bedroom and stop short when I see Eli standing there in nothing but a towel. He’s in front of the mirror in the bathroom, shaving.
“Sorry,” I say and I turn away quickly. “I just need to get my clothes.”
“It’s fine, Bess,” Eli says. “Get what you need.”
He walks out of the bathroom and goes to the closet, and then he starts to take his clothes out for the day.
“It’s not like you’ve never seen me naked,” he says with a chuckle.
“It’s been a while,” I mutter.
He says nothing because there is no adequate response. Eli and I stopped sleeping in the same room more than a year ago, and we’d stopped sharing those tiny intimacies long before that.
He sits down on the edge of the bed so he can put his socks on. “Are you going with Aaron?”
“Yes.” I get my clothes out of the drawers and go into the bathroom to change.
“Will you be gone all day?” he calls through the gap in the door.
“Probably a few hours, just like last time. Why do you ask?” I freeze and wait for his answer because if I’m moving around, I might not hear him.
“Just curious,” he calls back.
I brush my teeth, and then I pull my hair into a ponytail. Aaron certainly doesn’t care what I look like. I’ve never had to pay too much attention to my appearance for Aaron. And we all know that Eli isn’t going to look in my direction long enough to even notice what I look like.
I walk out into the bedroom and find him pulling his shirt on. “What are you doing today?” I ask him.
He pauses. “You haven’t asked me a question like that in a really long time,” he says, his voice quiet, almost reverent.
“What?” I sit down on the edge of the bed so I can pull on my socks and shoes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t cared enough to ask me about my plans in a long time, Bess, that’s all. It just shocked me.”
“Oh.” I dab a dash of perfume to my wrists and turn to leave the room. “Well, never mind—”