“You want to tell me more about that yet?”
I grin at her. “I like that you like me. I’d like for it to stay that way a little longer.”
“So you’ve said. Am I going to have to stop liking you to find out?”
I clutch my heart. “Please don’t.”
“Will you ever explain it to me?”
I nod. “I think I’ll have to. I’m just not ready to do it yet.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
She shrugs. “I figure you’ll tell me when you want me to know.”
“And you trust me, without even knowing about my past?”
She stares into my eyes. “Without question.”
“Abigail, I was head-over-heels for you when I was thirteen, and I’m going to go ahead and warn you that I’m probably going to do it all over again, if you spend very much time with me,” I say. I don’t beat around the bush. I just come right with it. Ever since that night in the rain, I’ve thought about her at random times, wondering what she’s doing. I can’t get her off my mind.
“Is it a thirteen-year-old kind of love?” she asks.
“Is there any other kind?”
“You don’t even know me,” she says. Her cheeks are rosy and pink all of a sudden.
“I know you. Without question.” I use the same words she used on me a moment ago.
“I think you’ve had too much cake. The sugar has gone to your head.”
“Something has gone to my head, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the cake.” I stare at her. Hard. But I need for her to know where my attention lies.
“Is this how you hit on women?”
“I haven’t hit on any women in a really long time. Not since my wife. So I don’t really know how you’re supposed to do it.” I scratch my head.
“A haircut and a cake are not worthy of falling in love over,” she says succinctly. “They’re only worthy of a simple thank you.” She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a folded handful of fabric. It’s lumpy and wrinkled. “Sorry I didn’t wrap it,” she says.
I unfold it and laugh when I see the slogan on the front. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
I reach back and grab the back of the shirt I’m wearing, and I pull it off over my head. Her eyes fall to my naked chest and she licks her lips.
“So all I have to do to get you to take your shirt off is give you a new one?” She gives me a thumbs-up. “You can expect a new one every damn day.” She grins at me.
I pull the new shirt over my head and let it fall down around my waist. I look down. “I look hot, right?”
“Sorry,” she says. She shakes her head like she’s coming out of a trance. “I was still looking at you without a shirt in my mind.” She laughs, which makes me laugh too. She jerks her thumb toward her cabin. “I had better get back.”
“Thank you for the cake,” I say. I hand her the empty cake plate and she accepts it with a nod.
“It was worth it just to see Mitchell enjoy it as much as he did.”
“He’s really something, isn’t he?” I ask quietly, still in awe of the fact that I made something as perfect as him.
She leans close to me and presses her lips to my cheek, lingering long enough that I can smell the lemon scent that always follows her around. “You’re really something too,” she says, and then she turns on her heel and leaves me sitting there, watching her as she walks away.
I look down at Wilbur. “Well, that was a shit-show.”
He quacks back at me and settles down to nap on my foot.
“That was my kid, Wilbur,” I explain softly. “He’s mine.”
Wilbur says nothing. And that’s okay, because there are no words that can ease any of the worries I have going on in the back of my mind. I’m going to have to step up and just take the leap, and then deal with the fallout—and there will be fallout—later.
I crawl into the tent, and as I lie there beside a battery-powered lantern, I open the card my mother gave me. Inside is a coupon book for babysitting, with twelve coupons for free babysitting inside. There’s a sticky note on the front that reads: For when he comes to live with you permanently. The last coupon in the book says Renewable for twelve more, at your request.
Tears brimming in my eyes, I look at Wilbur, who of course has followed me into the tent. “My mom plays hardball, Wilbur,” I say. But I’m so glad she came by tonight. I want my son. I want him with every breath in my body. I just need to make it happen.
11
Abigail
The rain doesn’t start until around two in the morning. I get a weather alert on my phone and wake up to check it. The weather app says the rain will last about a half hour and it will be light. Immediately after I get the alert, my phone rings.
“Gran?” I say as I sit up on the edge of the bed.
“It feels like rain,” she says.
“Yeah, I just got an alert. It’s just supposed to be a sprinkle.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know.”
I smile to myself. “Thanks, Gran. You doing okay?”
“Just fine,” she says, her words short. “I ran into Charles’s mother at the grocery store today.”
“Oh? How did that go?” I can already see the scene in my head. My gran probably gave my soon-to-be-ex mother-in-law the what-for.
“It went fine,” she replies. And I immediately know that something happened that she doesn’t want to tell me about.
“Gran… What did you do?”
She makes a noise in her throat. “Well…I might have…just a tiny little bit…told her what was going on.”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand even though I know Gran can’t see me. “She didn’t know?”
“No, she had no idea. So I congratulated her on the upcoming grandbaby. She went white as a sheet, I tell you. She sputtered like a leaky balloon. Then she went from white to red, and she told me I should keep the family business within the family.”
Gran snorts, and I know she’s not done yet, so I just wait.
“So I told her that since he shacked up with that other woman and knocked her up, I didn’t have to claim any of them as family anymore, which suits me just fine because I never did like his bony ass anyway.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said his ass isn’t bony, he just exercises a lot. I swear to God, Abigail, when God was giving out asses, he skipped right over that boy. He’s got nothing back there to hold his pants up. It’s almost like he has negative ass. So yes, I can call it bony if I want to.”
Gran is filled with righteous indignation. I love it.
“Then she had the nerve to tell me that wasn’t very charitable of me.”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum, biting back my laughter. I can just imagine Gran standing there in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly telling my mother-in-law off. I can see it all playing out in my head just like if I was there.
“So, was she happy about the baby?” I ask, and inside, my heart tweaks a little.