“Well, maybe he tried,” Ani murmured as we pulled into her driveway. “I mean, we don’t know what happened. Maybe she—”
“He abandoned his kid, Ani,” I shot back incredulously.
“You don’t know that!” She hopped out of the truck as soon as I’d shut it off, and climbed into the backseat to get Arielle. “Maybe he was trying—”
“No,” I cut her off, taking Arielle’s heavy car seat from her hands. “He left them.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she hissed, stomping toward the house. “You have no idea if he tried to see her or not.”
I followed her into the house and sat Arielle’s car seat on the floor in the living room, checking to make sure she was still sleeping before I followed Ani into the kitchen.
“He never once mentioned a kid to any of us,” I said as I reached her. “Why would he never say anything if he was planning on being Father of the Year?”
“Well, he’s not here to defend himself so I don’t fucking know!” she yelled, her hands fisted at her sides.
“He left his kid!” I yelled back, throwing up my hands. “He never planned on telling us shit!”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“Because if he hadn’t died, he’d still be a fucking dead-beat dad, and we wouldn’t know anything about her,” I ground out.
Ani’s hand flew up, and I barely had time to grasp her wrist before she slapped me across the face.
“How exactly do you have any place to judge Hen?” she asked, her words coming out hoarse.
“Are you shitting me?” I asked, taking a step back from her.
“You don’t want kids either.”
“I also didn’t get anyone pregnant!” I yelled.
“No, you just took off when you knew there would be a baby anyway,” she said quietly, crossing her arms over her chest.
“This is bullshit,” I murmured, shaking my head in complete bafflement.
“You have no room to judge Hen when you have no idea what was going on,” Ani pressed. “It’s easy to point fingers when the person you’re accusing is dead.”
I looked at her in complete astonishment. Ani was loyal, no doubt about that, but I’d never known her to stick her head in the sand about something important. She knew she didn’t have to defend Henry to me. I loved him. Nothing was going to change that—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed as hell at him.
She was hurting. I could see it so clearly in the way she held her body. The tilt of her head and the cadence of her breath. I knew her from the tips of her fingers to the ends of her toes. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that our argument was no longer about Henry.
“I love you,” I said quietly, watching her as she wrapped her arms around her waist. “I know I’m not good at it, but I’m fucking trying.”
“You can’t keep—” Her words broke off, and it took everything in me not to step forward and pull her against my chest. “I can’t keep doing this. You made your decision before we even got together.”
“Baby,” I murmured as her eyes filled with tears.
I didn’t know what she wanted me to do. I’d do anything. How could she not see that I was all in?
“You can’t stay here anymore,” she rasped, her words like a kick in the gut. “I’m sorry.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head. I knew I was an asshole for taking advantage, but since we’d gotten the news about Henry, I hadn’t been able to sleep without her. I needed her near me. I needed to hear the sound of Arielle’s little sniffles as she slept and feel the weight of Ani’s body against mine, or I couldn’t calm down enough to get any rest.
“Okay,” I murmured, opening my eyes again. “Okay.”
“Is Trevor telling Ellie and Mike?” Ani asked as I turned away from her.
I didn’t know if she was trying to keep me there or if she was seriously curious, but I guessed that it didn’t really matter.
“Yeah,” I said, not looking back. “I’m sure Mom will call you later with the news.”
I walked away while I still could. I wanted to beg her to let me stay—but that would make me such a fucking pussy. She didn’t need that. She was already so overwhelmed with everything that she looked like she was going to fall over at any moment. I’d laid it out for her. I’d told her that I loved her—but it didn’t seem to matter.
“Arielle’s awake,” I called as I checked on the baby girl, kicking her legs in her car seat.
I lifted up the entire seat and held it in front of my face, pulling back slightly when Arie’s little fingers went for my beard. “I’ll see you soon, princess,” I murmured, kissing at her feet while she kicked me in the face. She started to cry when I set the car seat back on the floor, but her mom was in the next room so I only froze for a moment before walking away.
I left Ani’s house with my stomach in knots and both of my girls with tears on their faces.
* * *
“Are you gonna sleep anytime soon?” Alex bitched later that night, lumbering into my room in a pair of sweatpants.
“Sorry,” I replied, tossing another pair of ripped jeans into the pile next to me. When I hadn’t been able to fall asleep, I’d decided to get some shit done, and I was currently going through my clothes to get rid of the stuff I didn’t use.
There was already a huge pile on the floor, because apparently I was a hoarder.
“Come on, brother. It’s three a.m. Go to bed,” Alex ordered, coming up behind me to set his hand on my shoulder.
I sighed heavily and dropped my hands to my knees, stretching my stiff neck from side to side. I was so fucking tired.
“I can’t sleep without her,” I confessed, shaking my head. I reached up to get another pair of pants out of my dresser, but before I could even look at them, Alex was pulling them from my hand and tossing them to the side.
“You gotta sleep. End of,” he ordered, pulling on my arm until I followed him to the bed. “Come on, you sleep on one end. I’ll sleep on the other.”
I chuckled a little and crawled in between my sheets, glad when Alex chose to sleep on top of my comforter. I loved my brother, but I’d rather his bare chest wasn’t rubbing all over my legs while I slept.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked after we’d both gotten situated. “You broke up with her.”
“I didn’t want to,” I replied, reaching out to shut off the lamp next to my bed. “I just wasn’t down for having a kid.”
“How’d that work out for you?” Alex asked snarkily.
I huffed, rolling onto my back. “Yeah, I didn’t think that through.”
“What was going on in your head? I honestly don’t get it.”
“You remember when we were little—”
“Barely,” he cut in.
“You remember when Mami got pregnant?”
“Ah, yeah,” Alex said after a minute.
“You ever wonder who the dad was?”
“Not even once,” Alex muttered, stuffing his pillow under his neck so he could see me.
“I just remember her going into labor and not letting us call 911.”
“I don’t remember that,” Alex said, leaning up a little farther.
“You don’t?”
“Huh uh.”
“Fuck, I wish I didn’t.”
“The baby died, right?” Alex said, his voice almost a whisper.
“Yeah, man. She was crying and praying and trying to keep her voice down for so long, it felt like she was in labor for days.”
“I sort of remember that,” Alex said with a nod.
“You remember when she fucking bit me?”
“What?” Alex asked, his brows drawn together in disbelief.
“Pretty sure it was an accident. I don’t remember how it happened, but I remember her catching my arm. It hurt like hell.”
“Holy shit.”
“You were there when it happened. I remember you being there.”
“I must have blocked it out or
something,” my brother mumbled, dropping his head back down.
“That whole night was so fucked up, and then the baby came and it was dead. All for nothing.” I closed my eyes and sighed, resting my head on my arms.
“She was different after that,” Alex said quietly, “I remember that much.”
“She completely fucking lost it,” I corrected, clenching my jaw against the memory of my mother sitting at the kitchen table staring at nothing.
She’d tried to get her shit together. There had been times that I’d thought things were back to normal, but it hadn’t ever lasted for long. She’d still taken care of Alex and me, still worked and provided for our family, still loved us, but it was like she wasn’t even there half the time. She’d just go off in her own head, quiet for hours while Alex and I tried to keep our voices down and whispered about why she was so sad.
As I got older, I sometimes wondered if she’d deliberately walked in front of the car that killed her.
“Is that why you’ve been stuck to Ellie like a burr on her ass?” Alex asked after a few minutes of silence. I’d thought he’d already fallen asleep.
“What?” I asked, leaning up to look at him. “I have?”
“Yeah, you’ve been watching her almost as much as you watch Ani—though I’m hoping for different reasons or Mike is going to be pissed.”
“I didn’t even notice I was doing it,” I said, feeling like an idiot.
“It’s cool, Bram. Everyone’s been keeping an eye on Ellie,” Alex replied.
“I didn’t ever want to be in that position,” I said after a little time had passed. I didn’t even know if Alex was still awake, but I kept talking anyway. “She lost it, man. Just completely checked out.”
“You didn’t want kids because you were afraid you’d end up like our mother?” Alex asked, startling me.
“No.” I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut even though the room was already dark. “I didn’t want Ani to end up like her.”
“Apples and oranges, Abraham,” Alex said, reaching out to squeeze one of my feet, shaking it from side to side. “Nothing is going to happen to Arielle.”
A few minutes later, I knew he’d finally fallen asleep by the soft, rumbling snores coming from the other end of the bed. He was right—Ani and our mother weren’t anything alike. Comparing the two was stupid.
But it had made sense at the time. When Katie had Iris, I’d felt a little of the same fears, but they weren’t nearly as bad. Maybe it was because Katie was already a mother to the other four by the time Iris had come along. She’d sort of worked her way into that family, first just helping Rachel and Shane out and later becoming the kids’ sole caretaker after Rachel passed away and Shane had deployed. It had been a gradual thing, which made the entire scenario easier to accept.
I punched the pillow under my head, then froze, braced on one arm as someone started pounding on my front door.
“The fuck?” Alex blurted, sitting straight up in bed. “Is someone at your door?”
We hopped out of bed in a hurry and stumbled down the stairs as the pounding continued. Nothing good came from someone knocking at your front door at nearly four in the morning. Alex stopped behind me as I unbolted the locks and swung the door open.
My jaw didn’t even have time to drop before Ani’s small frame pushed past me, Arielle’s car seat hanging from her arm.
“Ani?” I asked dumbly, swinging the door shut behind her.
“You can’t just do this!” she said shrilly, spinning to face me with her back to Alex.
Her face was pale, and dark circles shadowed her eyes as she railed at me. Her jaw was clenched tight but her lips were trembling.
“Baby, what’s—”
“You can’t just keep saying you love me when you’re the one who left!” she shouted, making Arielle jerk awake with a startled cry. “And now the baby’s awake!”
She rocked the car seat a little, trying to calm Arielle down, but it wasn’t having any effect on the screaming baby girl.
Then Ani began to cry, too. Big, body-shaking sobs as she tenderly shushed Arielle.
“Why don’t I take Arie?” Alex asked, reminding me that he was still in the room. He reached out and took the car seat from Ani and walked away into the kitchen.
“I couldn’t sleep!” Ani sobbed as soon as Alex and Arie were gone. “I just laid there and laid there and thought about you all alone, and I couldn’t fucking sleep.”
“Anita,” I whispered, taking a step toward her.
“Why do I even care?” she asked, her eyes wide. “You left me! You made your choice.”
“I was an idiot.”
“You were honest.”
“Maybe at the time—”
“No.” She shook her head, her entire body shaking. “You were clear that you don’t want kids, and yet I still keep coming back. She’s the most important thing, but I still keep waiting for you.”
“You’re exhausted, baby,” I said gently, moving toward her even as she put her hands out to stop me.
“Everything is so messed up,” she whispered as her body sank against mine. “And I’m so tired.”
“Come here,” I murmured into her hair, reaching down to sweep up her legs so I could carry her into the living room.
She was still weeping quietly as I sat down on my couch, cuddling her to my chest. Her face rested against my throat, and I could feel her hot breath against my skin as she hiccupped and sighed.
I rubbed up and down her back with one hand as the other pulled her even closer, holding her tight as she shuddered.
After less than five minutes, Ani’s body went limp against mine, proving just how exhausted she was. I didn’t move though. I could hear Alex murmuring to Arielle in the kitchen as I laid my head on the back of the couch, holding Ani securely while she slept.
“Hey, I’m gonna run out to Ani’s rig and get the diaper bag,” Alex said quietly, carrying a wide-awake and happy Arielle into the living room.
“All right,” I whispered. “Just put Arie next to me. She doesn’t need to be outside in the cold.”
“Good call,” Alex agreed, laying Arielle next to my thigh so I could rest a hand on her little belly. She wasn’t rolling from her back to her front yet, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
“Hey, baby girl,” I said quietly as she kicked at me. “What are you doing wide awake?”
Her hands went to her mouth, and she made a loud sucking noise as her little tongue came out to lick at her fingers.
“It’s a good thing you’re not really touching anything yet,” I teased, smiling as she kicked excitedly at the sound of my voice. “Otherwise those hands in your mouth would be pretty disgusting.”
“Good thing Ani had her shit together enough to bring the bag,” Alex said, rushing back in the front door.
“She was tired,” I said, looking over the back of the couch at him. “She wasn’t stupid.”
“True,” he replied with a chuckle. “I’m going to change Arielle and make her a bottle. Hopefully she’ll sleep after that.”
“Where the hell are we going to put her?”
“Can’t I just buckle her back in her car seat?” Alex asked, picking Arie back up off the couch.
“Oh, sure,” I agreed with a nod, giving Ani’s back a soft rub when she muttered something in her sleep.
“You should probably bring her to bed,” Alex said kindly, watching Ani as her knees pulled even tighter to her chest.
“You sure you’re good with the baby?” I asked, standing up with Ani in my arms.
“Yeah, piece of cake.”
I nodded and carried Ani upstairs to my room. The blankets were already pulled down so I didn’t bother with a light as I climbed onto the bed and pulled the sheets and comforter up around us. As soon as Ani was on her back, she rolled toward me, her hands searching and finding my skin before she relaxed again.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep almost instantly with her hot breath on m
y chest.
The next morning she was gone when I woke up.
Chapter 16
Anita
You and me, kid,” I said to Arielle as she sucked on a washcloth. “Mama’s going to get it together. I promise.”
She didn’t reply. Obviously. But I felt better saying it out loud.
We were in the bathtub, and Arielle was resting on my bent knees, both of us waist deep in water. Usually I just gave her a bath in the kitchen sink, but after my little meltdown at Bram’s the night before, I needed a relaxing bath. I wondered vaguely if Arielle had peed yet in the water, but figured it didn’t matter.
What I didn’t know couldn’t gross me out.
“I have to go back to work soon,” I said, spreading the warm washcloth over Arie’s chest like a little blanket while she stared at me. “But you’re going to stay with Nana. That’ll be fun, right?”
Arielle’s foot slid up my belly and pressed against the bottom of my boob. “Hey, now,” I said, laughing. “Feet to yourself, miss.”
I cupped a handful of water and poured it carefully over her head, laughing when she sputtered. I didn’t even get any on her face, the big wuss.
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t want to leave you,” I said seriously, running my fingers through her wispy hair. “But Mama’s gotta keep you in formula and diapers, ya know? Have to pay the bills and all that boring stuff.
“It’s kind of nice when it’s just me and you, right?” I said when Arie grabbed at my hand and pulled it to her mouth. “I like seeing all your uncles and aunties, but they steal you all the time.
“Yeah, I get it.” I nodded when she looked at me with wide eyes. “You never have to be put down when they’re around. But it’s not like I ignore you. Sometimes Mama has to sweep the floors and you have to hang out in your swing. That’s life, dude.”
I jerked hard when someone suddenly knocked on my bathroom door, my heart beating frantically as Arielle froze at my movement.
“Ani?” Bram called through the door, making my eyes close in dread.
“Yeah? I’m—” The door opened before I could tell him to stay out. “Shut the door,” I called, curling my body around Arielle’s. It was warm in the bathroom, but I knew it was probably ten degrees cooler in the rest of the house.