He must like me.
Maybe he just doesn’t realize it yet.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“What other signs does Ellie understand?” Caden asks me from the front seat on our way to collect my things.
I look between Caden and Kyle, wondering how I ever got so lucky—how Ellie got so lucky—to have two accepting men in her life. Grant would never be happy with her. He’d insist she get the implant. He probably wouldn’t even bother to learn sign language. He would no doubt make her feel like less of a person.
“I know for sure that she understands milk, eat, more, all done, and no. I’m working on sleep, dog, cat and mom. But mom is hard since I’m referring to myself.”
Kyle glances back at me. “Maybe we can help with that, what’s the sign for mom?”
With my fingers spread open, I tap my thumb to my chin and show him. Then I watch him sign it back to me and my heart melts.
“When do you think she’ll start signing back?” Caden asks.
I shrug. “Who knows? She’s six-and-a-half months old and I’ve been signing to her since I found out she couldn’t hear. I know they say it’s pointless to sign to a baby younger than four months old, but it just felt wrong speaking to her knowing she couldn’t hear me. Even if I was only doing it for me, at least I felt like I was communicating with her on her terms.”
“Do you know a lot of signs?” Kyle asks, turning his head to speak to me.
“Yes, I pretty much know all of them,” I say and sign at the same time.
Kyle turns around in his seat. “You know all of them?” he asks.
“I’ve been practicing for six months, Kyle. Sometimes four or five hours a day. There isn’t much else to do in the country, you know. It’s not like I’m proficient at it or anything. I’m still kind of slow, but I’m improving every day.”
“In case you haven’t figured it out by now, my sister is pretty much a genius,” Caden says, with a proud smile. “Maybe now you’ll get to use those awesome brains of yours, Lexi. You know, get a real job like you always wanted?”
“Maybe,” I say, gazing out the window, knowing it’s anything but true. I can’t get any sort of meaningful job. Not if I want to remain anonymous.
After riding in Caden’s truck for more than an hour, we come up on the train station where I left my car.
“What should I do about my car?” I ask them. “I parked it there and took the train into the city.”
“You have a car?” Caden asks. “How?”
“It’s not a nice car,” I tell them. “I bought it for five hundred dollars off a nice old man who owns the corner grocery. Turn here,” I say, seeing my street.
“I’ve got GPS, Lexi,” Caden reminds me.
Of course he does. I sometimes forget about GPS, what with my twenty-one-year-old car that doesn’t even have working air conditioning.
Kyle looks back at me. “How did you buy a car without identification?”
“I gave him cash and explained I didn’t have enough left to pay for the tag, so he let me keep his tag that he had recently renewed. I guess I just figured I’d deal with it later.”
“What if you’d gotten pulled over or been in an accident?” Kyle asks.
“I only drove it when necessary. To Ellie’s doctor. To a big box store once every few months. We pretty much walked everywhere when the weather allowed. And we stayed at home if it didn’t.”
“We’ll take care of the car,” Caden says.
A few minutes later, Caden pulls into the driveway of my cozy little cottage. It needs a paint job. One of the shutters is falling off its hinge. And the yard is in terrible disarray. But it’s been home for over six months.
“How can you afford this, Lex?” Kyle asks, getting out of the truck.
“Do you remember how I told you I’d be okay, that I still had something to sell?”
He nods.
Then Caden says, “Your engagement ring.”
“Yes.”
“I always wondered if it was real,” he says.
“It was. And he never let me forget it.”
Caden shakes his head in disgust. “I should have paid more attention. I was so stupid. So focused on playing baseball that I let him . . .”
“You didn’t let him do anything, Caden,” I say, pulling Ellie from her car seat. “If anyone is at fault here, it’s me. I knew what he was doing to me was wrong. Yet I stayed. I have no one to blame but myself.”
Kyle kicks a rock across my yard. “I’d say there’s no one to blame but that bastard who calls himself a man.”
“Hey there, Miss Elizabeth,” Mrs. Peabody says, coming over from the main house next door. “Who are these fine-looking gentlemen you’ve brought with you today?”
Kyle holds his hand out in greeting. ‘I’m—”
“Joe,” I say, interrupting his introduction. “These are my brothers, Joe and John. And this is Mrs. Peabody. She rents me her guest house.”
Mrs. Peabody giggles. “Joe, John, and Elizabeth Smith. Your parents sure were simple folk, huh?”
“That they were,” Kyle says. “At least they didn’t name us after adult film entertainers.”
I cover my laugh and elbow him in the ribs.
Mrs. Peabody laughs at the joke she doesn’t understand.
“Well, Mrs. Peabody, we’ve convinced our sister to move back to Ne—”
“Nevada,” I say, glaring at Caden. “I’m moving back home to Las Vegas.”
I’ve had over a year to perfect my ability to lie to people on the spot. It comes naturally to me now. But Kyle and Caden—they don’t have a clue how harmful revealing even small, seemingly inconsequential details could be. Regular people might overlook that kind of stuff. Cops don’t. Grant wouldn’t.
“Oh, how delightful,” Mrs. Peabody says. “It will be nice for you and little Ellie to live close to family. But, oh, how I will miss this adorable face.” She pinches Ellie’s cheeks.
“Yes. I’m looking forward to it,” I say, looking at Kyle.
“Mrs. Peabody, how much does Elizabeth owe you for the rest of her lease?” Caden asks.
“Oh, I couldn’t ask her to pay six month’s rent. No, no. She is such a good girl. Always keeping to herself, but bringing me pies or cookies every Sunday.”
“How much is your rent, Elizabeth?” Kyle asks.
“Four hundred,” I say.
Caden gets out his wallet and pulls out a bunch of hundreds. He leans over to Kyle. “I’m a little shy, can you spot me?”
They pool their money and hand Mrs. Peabody a wad of bills that makes her eyes bug out.
“Like Elizabeth, we keep to ourselves,” Kyle says. “We like our privacy and we hope you’ll respect that if anyone ever comes around asking questions.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Peabody says, practically drooling over the stack of hundreds in her hand.
“It won’t take long to get our stuff,” I tell her. “I’ll leave the key on the counter when we’re done.”
Mrs. Peabody leans down to kiss Ellie and then she pulls me in for a hug. “You are the best tenant I’ve ever had. I will miss you.”
“We’ll miss you, too, Mrs. Peabody. Thank you.”
She walks back to her house, shaking her head at the wad of money in her hand. I imagine her walking to her kitchen and putting it in a coffee tin in her cupboard.
“I don’t have much,” I tell them. “The house came furnished. It’s just our clothes and Ellie’s crib and a few other things.”
Caden pulls the boxes he brought out of the bed of his truck and we walk up the porch steps.
“I’ll pay you back, Kyle. How much did you give her?”
“You don’t have to do that, Elizabeth.” He curses under his breath. “Lexi.”
“I do. I still have some money left from selling the ring.”
“You do?” he asks, looking surprised.
“It was a nice ring,” I say.
He studies me. “Where did you sell it
?”
“At a place down the street from the hospital.”
He nods. “That must be why Grant came looking for you there. After he found out where you sold the ring, he probably cased the entire neighborhood surrounding the pawn shop. Maybe he’d been circulating pictures of you or your ring to pawn shops since you went missing, hoping to track you down.”
“I knew he probably would. It’s why I left the city after I sold it. I knew he never believed I was abducted. He knew I ran away from him. But he couldn’t tell anyone that. They’d ask too many questions.”
Ellie starts to fuss. “Milk?” I sign.
That makes her happy, so I tell the guys what they can box up before I excuse myself to my bedroom to feed her.
I look around the room that has been my home for the past six months. It was quiet here. It was safe. But it was lonely.
I look down at Ellie. Everything I’ve done is to protect her. Am I risking too much going back? He knows I’m there now. He’s probably watching Caden. Maybe he even followed us and knows we’re here.
What kind of mother puts her own child at risk for love?
I stare at the door and think of who is on the other side.
Maybe the kind of mother who wants her child to see what real men are. What real love is.
And maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking.
Chapter Forty
Caden and Kyle are setting up Ellie’s crib in Kyle’s spare room. The futon is still in there, but they had to move a desk and a chair into Kyle’s bedroom to make room. I’m busy feeding Ellie her dinner at the kitchen table where her highchair now sits at one end.
I look around the apartment that is now riddled with our stuff, and I smile. His place looks better with Ellie’s things scattered about. It was too clean. Too clinical. But maybe that comes from his being a doctor.
I don’t know how long we’ll be here. But what I do know is that baseball season is about to be in full swing and Kyle doesn’t want me staying with Caden when he’s on the road so much. Plus, there is the whole Grant wanting to break his arms and legs thing.
That gives me about six months to get Kyle to come around. Seven if the Nighthawks make it all the way to the World Series.
I turn back to Ellie. “More?” I sign.
She opens her mouth big in answer.
“What was that you just did?” Kyle asks me, coming into the kitchen. “It looked like you were clapping with your fingertips. Is that the sign for ‘eat’?”
“No, that’s the sign for ‘more.’ The sign for ‘eat’ is this—” I bring my thumb and fingers together and make it look like I’m bringing food to my lips.
He copies my movements, doing both the signs for ‘more’ and ‘eat.’
Ellie squeals.
“I think she likes that,” I say. “She doesn’t see many people signing. And especially not words she knows.”
He smiles down on her, her chin orange from drooling carrots. Then he brings his thumb to his chin, doing the sign for ‘mother.’
“Mommy,” he says, signing again and then touching my shoulder. He does it three more times since he has Ellie’s undivided attention.
This man. Does he work hard to be this charming, or does it come naturally?
“Thank you,” I say. “Nobody has ever done that for her before. I’m the only one who ever signs to her.”
He looks at me in disbelief. “Not anymore,” he says. “I know I work a lot, but on my days off, I’d love for you to teach me.”
“You want to learn ASL?” I ask, surprised.
“Of course. It won’t really be fair to Ellie if you have to tell her everything I say, now will it?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Good. Then it’s settled. I have a thirty-six-hour shift and then I have a night off on Tuesday. We’ll start then.”
The doorbell rings and ends our conversation. I’m teeming with excitement. He wants to learn sign language. He thinks we’ll be here long enough for him to need to communicate with her.
Caden comes out of the spare room—my room—and heads to the refrigerator to get a few beers. “The crib’s all done. Want a beer, Lexi?”
I haven’t had a lick of alcohol since the moment I found out I was pregnant. I look at Ellie and then over at Kyle.
“One beer is fine,” he says. “Doctor’s orders. You need to relax.”
“Okay,” I say, holding out my hand to accept it.
Kyle places a giant bag of Sal’s take-out on the table in front of me.
“Oh, my God. You remembered?” I ask, smiling from ear to ear.
He laughs. “How could I forget? I’m a bit surprised you didn’t name your daughter Sal.”
I sneer at him. “I’m not that obsessed with it.”
“Oh, but you are. Sal’s Chinese food and Hawks baseball.”
Caden pats me on the back. “That’s my sis.”
“You should have seen her, Caden,” Kyle says. “She wouldn’t even let anyone speak if you were at bat. Or behind the plate. Or even on a highlight reel—especially then.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” I say, reaching in the bag to get the boxes out and spread them around the table.
Kyle raises his eyebrows in objection. “Eliz—sorry—Lexi, you were. At first it was endearing, a woman so into baseball. But then as time went on, I became aware that it wasn’t baseball in general, it was one particular baseball player. And I’m not ashamed to say I was jealous as hell.”
Caden snorts beer through his nose. “Dude, that’s just wrong. Jealous of me and my sister?”
Kyle throws a pair of chopsticks across the table at him. “I didn’t know she was your sister back then.”
He leans over me to grab his favorite egg roll, and when he catches Ellie watching him, he does the sign for ‘mother’ and puts his hand on my arm.
He has no idea what his doing that just meant to me.
I watch him take a bite of the egg roll and then wrinkle his nose at it.
“What?” I ask. “Is it not good?”
“It’s fine,” he says, putting it down on his plate. “It’s just, I’ve had a lot of them over the past several months. They may have worn out their welcome with my taste buds. I might have to move on to spring rolls or something.”
“You’ve eaten at Sal’s a lot, huh?”
“Uh, I guess once or twice,” he says, looking embarrassed.
He went there. He went there for me. It was the only place outside the hospital that he associated with me. I can’t help my triumphant smile.
“What?” he asks, annoyed with himself for revealing what he did.
“Nothing,” I reply. Then I turn to Caden. “So, are you going to keep number eight, or go back to twenty-seven?”
“I think I’ll stick with eight,” he says around his food. “It’s brought me a lot of luck. I had seven home runs last season. And now you’re back. Lucky number eight.”
“Why did you change it?” Kyle asks him. “I thought it was kind of unusual for a player to change a number.”
“It is,” Caden says. “I grew up being number twenty-seven. It was the first number they ever assigned me when I started playing T-ball at age five.”
“Every year, he just kept getting better,” I say. “He impressed his coaches. The other players. He thought it was the number. It got to the point where if he couldn’t get number twenty-seven, he wouldn’t play for a team. I remember a few travel ball teams he turned down when he was twelve just because they already had a kid with the same number.”
“Really?” Kyle asks Caden in amusement.
“It’s a superstitious sport, man. People do crazy things in baseball.”
“But you changed it halfway through your first year with the Nighthawks. What happened?”
Caden nods at me. “Lexi went missing. It was a tribute to her.”
“How was it a tribute to Lexi?”
“Alexa Octavia Kessler,” Caden says. He looks over at me and we
share a nostalgic smile. “My big sister always thought I should be number eight, not number twenty-seven. She said eight was the better number and that I should listen to my big sister and if I didn’t, bad things would happen. I guess my superstition about that overrode my superstition about baseball.”
“No shit?” Kyle says. “You’d think that story would have been all over ESPN. I never heard about it.”
Caden shakes his head. “I never told anyone why I changed the number. I’m sure my teammates thought it had something to do with my sister going missing, but I kept it to myself. Lexi was the only person who needed to know why I did it.”
I reach across the table and touch my brother’s hand. “The dynamic duo,” I say.
He laughs. “The dynamic duo,” he repeats.
“It’s what we used to call ourselves when we were little,” I explain to Kyle. “Our father took off shortly after Caden was born and our mother bounced around from man to man looking for her next husband—of which she had four. Nobody had time for us. It was us against the world.”
“Darn,” Kyle says, looking overly dramatic. “You guys are a walking-talking Lifetime movie.”
Caden and I both pelt him with fortune cookies.
Kyle catches them and winks at me. “Still my favorite part,” he says, keeping one and tossing the other back to me.
“Mine too,” I tell him, ripping open the plastic to get to mine.
I can’t help but smile as we both hide our slips of paper while we eat our cookies. Caden looks between us, not understanding the private moment.
I read mine first. “You will be hungry again in thirty minutes.”
We all moan and chuckle as Caden opens his. “Made in the USA,” he reads.
“Boston!” Kyle and I shout at the same time, laughing.
“Now you,” I say nodding at Kyle.
He opens the slip of paper and reads his fortune to himself. Then he shakes his head and gets up from the table, throwing his food in the trash.
“Dude, did it say you were going to kill a patient or something?” Caden asks, laughing.
Kyle doesn’t respond to Caden’s laughter. He just keeps walking to his bedroom. We’ve reminisced a lot tonight about the month I was under his care in the hospital. But it was evident to me that the more we walked down memory lane, the more uncomfortable he became. Maybe all those good memories just reminded him of how I left him without even a word.
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