The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel

by Lennox, Piper

  I nod. Telling Caroline every detail isn’t possible, at least right now; rehashing the pregnancy, miscarriage, how poorly I responded to it all—it would only stoke the shame and guilt, and I’d chicken out of this whole plan. Whatever it’s going to involve.

  “She wanted to know if I was still planning to leave Hillford,” I tell her, fixing the tarp I draped over the mangled bumper from the accident. It upsets Caroline too much to see it. “Because, you know...I’ve been saying that ever since I got back into town. I told her that as soon as we started talking again.”

  Caroline picks up a screwdriver from the table and tests its magnetic tip, dragging it over a pile of screws in a butter container. “But you didn’t count on you two getting back together, then.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So when you did get back together, did you correct yourself?”

  “No, because it had literally just happened. I was focusing on the moment, you know? Just enjoying things the way they were. So when she asked if my plans had changed...”

  Caroline waits, giving me a look like I’m too predictable. Maybe I am. “...you freaked out?”

  “I didn’t freak out.” She snorts. “It was more like—shock, if anything, because I hadn’t thought about it yet. She expected my plans to have instantly changed when we got together, I think.”

  “And? Why didn’t they?” In the dim light of the lamp, Caroline traces the scar on her leg, mid-thigh, where a piece of glass cut her during the crash.

  “Bennett’s did,” she adds suddenly, and I feel the urge to fix the tarp over the bumper again. “As soon as I told him I was pregnant, that was that. He said he started saving for my engagement ring that same day. Before that, our plan looked a lot different.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nods. “We were going to travel first, when we got done with high school. Maybe move to the city for college, unless we found a place we liked more when we were traveling. Then get engaged at, like, twenty-four, married at twenty-five...kids weren’t even on the radar, yet. That was so far ahead of the plan.”

  Pausing, she looks at the monitor beside her. The little black-and-white screen shows Bentley, swaddled in the center of his crib.

  “Then I got engaged, lost Bennett, and had a kid, all in about six months. Two whole years before the original plan could even start.”

  She hops off the table. Slowly, she lifts the corner of the tarp with her toe, then lets it fall.

  “Plans have to change, sometimes,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean the new plan will be bad.”

  This observation wouldn’t have been welcome, a few hours ago. I’d have dismissed Caroline as being just a kid; she didn’t know how the real world worked. Outside a bubble of allowance and summer jobs, pom-poms on socks and seven minutes in closets, life was messy. Complicated.

  Now, I nod at everything she says. My talks with Hudson on the dock and Tanner in the booth primed my brain to hear exactly this. Caroline knows messy. She knows complicated. In some ways, she is still a kid—but in so many more, she isn’t. She can’t be.

  “When’d you go and get more mature than me?”

  “Day I was born.” She smiles, then lets out a breath and gathers her hair into a ponytail. “Okay, let’s brainstorm.”

  We sit on the stained concrete floor with more newspapers between us. Caroline makes notes in the margins. It feels like hours with us throwing memories, facts, and phrases back and forth, the sound of the carpentry pencil on the paper getting louder, as a new plan begins to form.

  I wake up at sunrise to a soft tap, tap, tap. Familiar, but hard to place.

  I rise and pull on my sweatshirt, already mulling over the same question I fell asleep thinking: how to fix things with Ford.

  Every possibility comes wrapped in doubt. I’m not sure things can be fixed. Maybe we lost our shot.

  The tapping starts again. I go to the window. It’s probably Ford in the garage, up early to fix something. Preparing his dad’s old truck, maybe, for his inevitable escape.

  I push aside the curtains.

  It is Ford. But he isn’t down in the garage; he’s in his room, looking at me. On the sill of his open window is a huge paper football, made from newspaper.

  “I’ve missed about as many shots as I’ve made.”

  We look down at the ground. I barely register the enormous number of paper footballs strewn through the yard, because I’ve suddenly noticed the mural.

  It stretches from the bottom of his garage to a few feet under his window, the entire length of the wall. Huge swaths of color unfurl across the siding like smoke—abstract and flowing, blended at their edges. Saturated, vibrant.

  Peach and mint and a deep, rich brown. Burnt red and searing royal purple.

  Forest green and warm amber, the color of sweet tea.

  Cobalt.

  “It’s ‘Hallelujah’,” he says.

  All I can do is stare. My heartbeat makes all the noise my mouth apparently can’t.

  “I mean, it’s probably not exactly how you saw it,” he adds, leaning outside to look for himself, “but I think I at least got the colors right.”

  Finally, I find some words. “Why did you do this?”

  “Because,” he says, sitting on the edge of his mattress, “I’ve been extremely stupid. And because I know you miss it. The seeing colors thing—not my stupidity. I’m sure you’d love it if that went away, huh?” He holds up his hands when I laugh. “Wait. Don’t answer that.”

  Gradually, my smile dims. I’m happy we’re talking. I’ve just suddenly remembered all the things we have to talk about. It feels impossible again, the idea that we could run through those landmines and come out on the other side, somehow okay.

  But maybe, if we don’t let that fear stop us—if we take that leap—the impossible could happen.

  Ford’s expression gets serious. He must feel the doubt, too. I watch him lean back out his window, hands braced on the sill. “Can I come over?”

  I glance at the ground. “Uh…I know these windows aren’t that far apart, but—”

  “I’ll use the door,” he laughs.

  Combing my hair with my fingers and straightening my nightclothes, I pace away from the window. I wait.

  My pulse climbs higher when I hear him on the stairs.

  “Good morning.”

  I offer him another smile, small and unsure.

  No: it’s sure. For once I know exactly what I want when it comes to Ford. I’m just scared to let myself hope I’ll actually get it.

  “Can we talk?” he asks, and motions to the futon. I help him fold it back into place, and we sit.

  “Last night...” He trails and picks at some of the paint dried on his arms: white, blue, and green, the colors he probably used to make the mint. “It wasn’t supposed to go like that. In my head. We’d never talked about the…the pregnancy, or the accident, and I knew we needed to if we wanted to move forward.” He pauses. “If we wanted a future together. Which was where me being stupid comes into play, because I couldn’t even see how ridiculous it was that I brought it all up for that specific reason...but then got mad when you wanted to know just what that future would look like.”

  I nod, tucking my hair behind my ear with one hand, tracing the tufts and lines in the futon fabric with the other. “That’s pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Minus the stupid part.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it for me, I know what I was.”

  My smile comes back. It’s probably not even visible to him, but I feel it more and more.

  “Your dad’s going to be really angry about the garage, when he comes home.”

  “He’ll get over it. And I’ll have plenty of time to paint back over it, if it bothers him that much.”

  I feel the doubt dripping back into my veins. Here we are, at the part I rehearsed in silence over and over again last night, until the question sounded like a foreign language in my head. This is probably going to be hard, asking him this, readying
myself for whatever answer he gives.

  And I’m going to do it, anyway.

  “Plenty of time,” I repeat. My breath comes in sips. It grows even more shallow and hurried when he puts his hand on my neck, behind my ear, and moves closer. “Does that mean you’re staying in Hillford?”

  “It means,” he says quietly, voice low as he drifts into the space between us, “I go where you go.”

  Not kissing him yet takes all my energy, but I have to know this promise to stay isn’t contingent on anything else. That even if plans change—even if we change—this thing between us, whatever it’s been and whatever it will become, won’t.

  “What about all the reasons you’ve always wanted to get out of Hillford? The rumors and gossip, people being in your business—”

  “Oh, I still hate that shit,” he says, his laugh washing the heat of his breath across my chest, flushing with color as his thumb finds my pulse in my neck. “But I’m starting to realize people talk less and help more, when you don’t shut yourself off from them. Hillford can be pretty friendly, if you aren’t expecting the worst.”

  He quiets; his smile fades as his other hand rises to my face and holds it.

  “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me when I say things are different. That I’m different. I know it’s going to take a hell of a lot more to prove it than some paint on a garage.

  “And I also know, if you give me another chance to make us work, I’ll be damn lucky. Luckier than I deserve. No more shutting down, no more ‘seeing where things go.’ Because the only reason to ever do that, is when you have no idea what you want.” He swallows, eyes flickering between mine. “And I know I want you.”

  Ford kisses me. For the first time since I was a child, I see that overwhelming, enveloping wash of color. But it’s not the shifting, see-through shapes I used to see, now commemorated forever on his father’s garage.

  It’s color on the inside, behind my eyelids and projected through my head, melting into the bloodstream until it feels like it’s spreading out of my feet, just to have someplace to go. The kind of color you feel, more than see.

  It spills and trickles through the floor, drilling down into the foundation. Into the dirt, like tree roots, grounding us where we belong.

  Epilogue

  “Caroline, will you chill? He won’t even remember this.”

  In the year that my sister has been a mother, I’ve learned a lot about her I didn’t know. Example: she takes “multitasking” to levels that make me scared of heights. It’s nothing for her to come home from work, pick up Bentley from the Lawrences’, and proceed to clean her entire apartment before Skyping her advisor, one hand on the laptop while the other stacks Duplo blocks with her son.

  Another example: she despises being told to “chill.”

  “He won’t remember it? Oh, okay.” She grabs another pack of balloons and tears it open with her teeth. “In that case, let’s just dress him in burlap sacks and let him watch mafia movies all day. I mean, he won’t remember, right?”

  “Okay, for the last time: I have no idea how he changed the channel to Scarface. I was out of the room for maybe fifteen seconds.”

  “All it takes.”

  I tie off my last balloon, pass it to Annika for its ribbon, and take a handful of new ones from Caroline. “I’m just saying, don’t sweat the small stuff. You’ve got cake, balloons, games—that’s more than enough for a first birthday party. So the clown isn’t showing up, is it worth a meltdown?” I pause as a half-inflated balloon flies off the spigot to the helium tank, spitting its way to the ceiling fan before dive-bombing the table.

  “And anyway,” I add, “clowns are fucking terrifying.”

  Annika laughs, but Caroline barely smiles. “I just want things perfect. It feels like...if I get this party right, it’ll prove I’ve done everything else right.”

  “Resting the merit of all your motherhood efforts on a single birthday party,” I tell her evenly, “is stupid.”

  “You know what I mean. This is where people see me being a mother. They don’t see the stuff I do every day. They see this. There’s so much pressure to get it right, and not in a ‘I care what everyone thinks of me’ way, but in a...a validation way. Reassurance that I’m doing things the way I should.”

  “You are. If you need reassurance, all you have to do is look at that kid.”

  She calms a little. This smile is brighter, but still subdued.

  “It’s frustrating, that’s all. I had such a specific plan for today, and now part of it’s been ruined.”

  “Not ruined,” I tell her, “just changed.”

  Her sigh sounds annoyed, but I know better: she’s simply accepting that I’m right, a rare occurrence she hates having to endure.

  “Ice cream delivery.” Tanner bustles into the dining area with two buckets of ice cream, Hudson following with paper bowls and plastic spoons. In the living room, we hear Bram bitching at them for messing up the banner he’s been trying to hang above the door for ten minutes, exactly centered.

  “Thank you so much, you guys.” Caroline hugs them and leads them into the kitchen. I look at Annika.

  “Think we have enough balloons?” I whisper.

  She laughs. We look at the fifty or so already floating around us.

  I gather up the unfilled ones we have left, no more than twenty, and shove them into my pockets. Annika plays lookout.

  “Done with the balloons,” I call, and push out from the table before Caroline can come and inspect.

  I go down the hall to Bentley’s room. He’s supposed to be napping, but I find him wide-awake and jumping in his crib like he’s already gotten into the cake and ice cream.

  “Hey, little man,” I laugh, when he turns his mostly-toothless grin on me. I scoop him up and kiss his cheek. He’s got dried juice or something stuck there—I hope to God it’s juice—and laughs when I pull a face.

  “Can’t believe it’s been an entire year.”

  I turn. Easton leans her head against the doorjamb, smiling at us.

  “Hey.” I kiss her, relinquishing Bentley as soon as she reaches for him. “I know, I was thinking the same thing. It seems like he was just born.”

  “Oh, no, I wasn’t talking about that.” She combs his hair with her fingers, then licks her thumb to wipe the mystery smudge from his cheek. “I meant I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since I slapped you in the face.”

  My laugh is loud, softened only by the ridiculous amounts of stuffed animals and picture books on the nursery shelves. “Wow. Yeah, I guess it has been an entire year, hasn’t it?”

  She nods, smiling as she bounces him on her hip. “Twelve months to the day.”

  “Well, happy slap-iversary. But now I feel bad. I didn’t even get you a present.”

  Easton presses some wrinkles out of my shirt with her hand, standing on her tiptoes for another kiss. “Maybe you’ll do something stupid,” she teases, “and I’ll have to slap you again.”

  “Sorry. I don’t do many stupid things, these days.”

  “Ford?” Caroline shouts from the dining area, as Easton and I pull apart. “Are these all the balloons? I thought I had a few more.”

  “Duty calls,” I tell Easton, starting for the door. “Let’s revisit this anniversary of ours, though. We need to celebrate. Later tonight?”

  Easton laughs and sets Bentley on his rug; he beelines for the pyramid Caroline arranged out of his blocks, demolishing it into chaos. “Maybe,” she says.

  I wink and push off from the doorframe.

  “Oh, and Ford?”

  She jogs after me. “One more thing,” she whispers, looking up at me from behind her hair, forefingers hooking into my belt loops. Pulling my hips close.

  I swallow. Now I really do want to celebrate. I’d even let her slap me again, if I had to. “Yeah?”

  “Might want to fix this, before you go out there.” She drags her thumb across my belt, down the stitching along the waist...
r />   ...and tucks a balloon back into my pocket.

  It takes me a minute to register what just happened, even as she smiles again and walks away, curves shifting in just the right rhythm under her dress.

  “Thanks,” I sigh, laughing, when I finally get my lucidity back.

  I expect to find Caroline in full freak-out mode. Guests are beginning to arrive, and even Aunt Tessa’s hyper-organized, slightly power-hungry attitude can’t get the last touches finalized in time.

  Instead of fluttering back and forth on the verge of hyperventilation, though, my sister’s on the patio, picking at the soil around an aloe plant.

  “You all right?” Something tells me to slide the door shut behind me as I step outside.

  She takes a long, swelling breath, nodding. But when she exhales, the tears fall.

  I hug her. I know why she’s crying.

  “I miss him, too. Remember what Dr. Marshall said, though? It’s harder on holidays, especially the first ones. First Christmas, first Easter…but we got through those. We’re gonna get through this, too. And then it’ll be over, and we’ll never have to face it for the first time again. Right?”

  “I know. I was doing okay, actually—like, I wasn’t thinking about him at all. Until I saw what Aunt Tessa brought.”

  “What?” I look around, noticing, for the first time, the wrapped present at our feet.

  To Bentley, the tag reads. Love, Grandpa.

  “She said he sent it to her house the month before he died, and told her to keep it until today,” Caroline explains. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about it; it was sweet of him. I just wasn’t expecting it at all.”

  The shock hits me, too. I know what she means: it’s a good surprise, but a bit like seeing a ghost.

  I crouch and inspect the present. “Did he do this for every year? Like, does Aunt Tessa have seventeen more presents hoarded in her house, or something?”

  Caroline laughs, sniffling. “No. I asked the same thing.”

  I sit and read the tag again.