by Quinn, Taryn
“Glad to be home again?” Hannah asked. “How was your trip?”
“Oh, it was lovely. Met a fine young man. We’re moving in together.”
“Excuse me?” A sharp breeze moved through the trees and it suddenly occurred to me that we were having this discussion in the driveway. I motioned toward the house. “Can we take this inside?”
“Oh my God, my roast.”
“And my granddaughter.”
They both took off, chattering all the while. The door slapped shut behind them and I stopped on the porch, digging into the bag of presents.
“Snug, get in here with that bag,” my grandmother called.
Busted again.
I followed them into the kitchen, depositing the bag in the foyer on the way. Hannah pulled out the roast pan from the oven, and the fragrant scent of the meat was nearly enough to make a man kneel down and beg. My grandmother had Lily on her hip, who was trying to pull off her dangling earring.
The quiet scene of domesticity nearly rocked me off my feet.
Hannah making dinner, my grandmother quietly chatting about her trip, my daughter bouncing and babbling to herself.
“So, I figured, why not move him in? I’m not getting any younger, you know. A woman has needs. I’d prefer not to place phone calls in the middle of the night when rolling over is just as easy.”
I shut my eyes. Pretty domestic picture shattered.
With a mallet.
Hannah nodded and stuck her long-handled fork into the roast a little too vigorously.
“I imagine the same happened here. You put two attractive adults in the same space and boom, sparks.” Gran shifted to use Lily’s hand to smack against her stomach when she said “boom” and Lily giggled as if it was the funniest joke ever. Her cheeks were smeared with something orange. More Spaghetti-Os? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I moved to the sink and wet a paper towel before moving back to clean Lily’s cheeks. She swatted at the paper towel, batting it away every time I tried to clean her up.
“Be still, Lily. I know you’ve been eating that pasta in a can crap again.” I kept my voice even as I tidied her up, but from my grandmother’s sigh, she didn’t find me amusing.
Hannah didn’t respond at all.
Then Lily fisted the towel and started chewing on it.
Well aware when I was outgunned, I stepped back. “Moving a man in you just met is rather sudden.”
“Uh-huh. It is.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t take some time?”
Gran pried the towel away from Lily and deftly wiped the baby’s cheeks. “I’m not getting younger,” she repeated. “I know what I want right now, so what, exactly, am I waiting for? Some prescribed time when proper society says it’s okay for me to move forward? Screw that.”
“Gran,” I snapped. “Language.”
My grandmother blew out a breath and passed the baby to Hannah, who had to drop her fork to take her. “I don’t know how you deal with him. I love him like the dickens, but sometimes I don’t like him very much.”
She stormed out of the kitchen and I stared after her, stunned into silence. I was even more shocked when Hannah walked over and passed Lily to me. “You look like you need a hug,” she said as Lily reached up with her chubby little arms.
Swallowing hard, I hugged her, holding on even as she started to fuss. She felt so good. Solid and warm and smelling of processed foods and powder and baby.
All the things that soothed me immeasurably right now.
“Should I be eating Spaghetti-Os too?” I wondered aloud.
Hannah snorted. “Let’s not go that far. But I think your grandmother might like to see some of that Asher who was badly singing ‘Lola’ in the car. Really badly.”
“I wasn’t singing badly. Just not well.” I wrinkled my nose at Lily. When she patted my cheeks and made the same face back at me, I would’ve sworn my heart squeezed. “Okay, badly. So, why would she want to hear it?”
“Because she’d know you weren’t perfect. That you know you aren’t perfect. That you’re human just like the rest of us and you’re okay with it.”
“But I’m not.”
Hannah gifted me with one of her rare half smiles. “Not what? Not human? I’ve had cause to question that myself a time or seven.”
“I’m not okay with being not perfect. Which is ridiculous. No one is. No one.”
“He’s learning.” Hannah tugged on one of Lily’s reddish-brown curls. “Slow but sure.”
I gripped Hannah’s hand and drew her down the hall as I shifted Lily to my other hip. My grandmother was peering into the unlit fire, her lovely face marred with worry lines I didn’t like seeing. Ones I’d put on her face, not for the first time. Definitely not the last either.
When she looked over at us, I let it rip.
“Hannah’s pregnant.”
Twenty-One
Yet again, Hannah stared at me as if I was insane.
Perhaps I was.
My hold on her hand tightened as she tried to yank it free. “So, if you think I’m perfect, or trying to be, you’re wrong. I mess up timing all the time. I mess up fucking everything.”
Too late, I glanced at Lily. She was occupied with trying to dangle forward far enough to pull off her sock, so I probably hadn’t scarred her too much with my language.
Hannah covered her face with her other hand. “Remind me not to try to give you advice again, okay? Like…ever.”
Gran moved forward to pluck the baby from my hip and plunked her down in the playpen across the room. Then she turned back with narrowed eyes. “Okay, I’m no expert, but I do have a child of my own. I know it usually takes a period of time for such things to reveal themselves. I’ve been gone a week. Even if you pounced on Hannah the first day she came here for the interview—and thank you, Lord, because I had serious concerns about you, Asher—you must be like Superman.”
“That’s not exactly what happened,” Hannah began.
“What concerns?” Although I knew otherwise, it didn’t stop me from preening. I could use some Superman mojo right now.
“You live like a monk.” My grandmother shook her head and glanced at Hannah. “He was practically born again.”
“Christian?”
“Hardly,” I snapped. “Just because I don’t share information about my conquests with my grandmother doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”
She rolled right over that as if I hadn’t spoken. Probably everyone in the room knew that was bullshit. Even I did. Not that I told my grandmother about my love life, but I would’ve had to have one for that to be an issue.
Before Hannah, the most enduring affair I’d had in years was with my work.
“No, the other kind of born again. We both know when Billy died, part of you did too. You’ve been a corpse since, just walking around here hollow-eyed.”
I dipped my hands in my pockets and moved to the window. What could I say? It was a truth bomb of the same kind Vincent had laid upon me last week. More and more kept coming at me, and a guy could only duck and weave so much.
“Bess, I got pregnant on New Year’s Eve. Not this month.”
“What?” My grandmother’s voice lowered. “New Year’s Eve. The night Asher didn’t come home. The only night he’d been away from that baby since she was turned over to his care.”
Lily let out a squeal and flung out a squishy block that hit Hannah in the leg. She retrieved it and brought it back to the baby, who flung it right back at her again. Hannah knelt with a smile and bounced the block into Lily’s playpen. Lily plopped on her butt and brought the block to her mouth, gnawing on it with a contented gurgle.
I caught myself smiling and glanced at my grandmother to find she was smiling too, her eyes softer than I’d seen in a while.
“So, I’m going to have another grandbaby,” she said quietly.
Hannah rose and brushed off her apron. “Yes, one is definitely cooking in there.” She glanced down at herself. “
It better only be one.”
“Is there a chance there’s more?”
“No,” Hannah and I said in unison.
“One is perfect.” My grandmother beamed, all earlier traces of concern gone from her expression.
Grandbabies trumped everything. Especially for my grandmother, who clearly had assumed I would never even date again, never mind have a kid.
I was still working my way around to grasping that concept myself.
Throat tight, I nodded. “Yeah, looks like the corpse can procreate. Quite a trick, huh?” At Hannah’s pointed glance, I reached up to loosen my tie. “Hannah did some of the work too.”
When my grandmother started to laugh and Hannah covered her face again, I rushed ahead. “I mean, her eggs. Jesus. Must you always live in the gutter?”
Smiling, my grandmother walked over to Hannah and cupped her cheeks. “You’ve accomplished an amazing feat, my girl. You’ve made him smile again. Whether or not he realizes it yet.”
Before Hannah could deny that fact—something I knew she would do—I stepped up behind her and laid my hands on her shoulders. She braced, but she didn’t move away. Little victories. “She also makes me sing off-key and eat ice cream in the middle of the night. Pretty sure canned pasta is our next frontier.” I kissed the top of her head. “I’m going to talk to Gran for a few minutes if that’s okay.”
“Sure. Of course. Absolutely. I’ll just wrap up the roast for later. Maybe we can do sandwiches. I made fresh bread...” She trailed off and fiddled with her updo. “C’mon, Lily, let’s get lost.”
“Hang on.”
She glanced back at me and I framed her face in my hands, much as my grandmother just had. The difference was I covered her mouth with mine, kissing her gently. Her breath shuddered out. “Don’t go too far,” I murmured, squeezing her fingers.
“Right. Okay. Yes. What was I doing?”
Lily lifted her leg and tried to scale the playpen wall, propelling Hannah forward. “Oh, no, you don’t. C’mere, Houdini.” Deftly, she snagged Lily and turned her upside down, making her laugh so hard that her face turned red. Then she righted her and gave her a smacking kiss. “Let’s go eat some mashed carrots so your daddy won’t complain about you enjoying canned carbs.”
With an arch look over her shoulder, Hannah flounced out of the room, baby in tow.
“I feel like I’m watching a soap opera, but somehow it’s Friday and I’m just about to get to the cliffhanger without seeing all the days of lead up beforehand.” My grandmother marched forward and poked me in the chest. “Do not cliffhanger that girl. Even more important? Don’t tease her and kiss her and confuse her then go all Asher on her and freeze her out while you process your feelings.”
I bristled. “I’m a man. We don’t process our feelings, we ignore them.”
“Maybe that’s your problem then, you big adorable dummy.” She grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the couch. “When are you going to get more furniture in this place?”
“I’ve been adding pieces as I go. When it was just me and an infant, I didn’t have a need for—”
At her look, I locked my fingers behind my neck and leaned back. “It’s not like that yet, Gran. We aren’t playing house. She’s Lily’s nanny.”
“And the mother of your child. Did you forget that part?”
“No.” I slid a hand down the sleeve of my jacket before tugging it off altogether. Was the room heating up or was it just me?
Oh, right, it was the weight of my multiple…situations.
“It’s just complicated,” I added into the silence.
“You care about her. I see it all over your face. And her face too. From the first moment you two ‘met’,” Gran pretended to cough, “you were sparking all over the place. At least now I understand why. She should have explained to me she knew you before I extended the job offer to her.”
“Yeah, well, remember that the next time you call me Snug all over town. She didn’t realize the position she was interviewing for was as my nanny.”
“You didn’t exchange contact information before you got biblical?”
“There was no praying involved, I assure you. But no, we didn’t exchange anything. It was a hookup, Gran. You know, like the ones you have on vacation that lead to you moving the guy into your house.”
“Hmm, seems like you did the exact same thing with yours.”
I frowned. “This situation is entirely different.”
“That’s true. I didn’t impregnate my young man.” She patted my arm. “You win, Snug.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You’re incorrigible.”
“What’s your point?”
“Hell if I know. I don’t know what the future is going to look like.” I smoothed my jacket over my lap. “I’m trying to be okay with that when every part of me is used to controlling things down to the most minute detail. But lately, that’s not an option.”
“It’s also not an option when you’re dealing with a smart, capable young woman who has a pretty good head on her shoulders and isn’t about to be herded.”
“Tell me about it. But I love that about her. She stands up to me every time.” Hearing myself, I frowned. “I like it. A lot.”
“Mmm-hmm. So, you moved her in here solely to help with Lily, not because you can’t keep your hands off her and want to see every moment of that baby’s development.”
“We aren’t—it’s not like that between us right now. Those kisses you saw are the bulk of what’s happening.”
“No, it isn’t. Anyone with eyes could see plenty more is happening than that.”
I rubbed my hands over my bleary eyes. “I don’t know how to be a father to one baby, never mind two. But I’ve got to figure it out. Lily and Hannah deserve it.”
“As does your new baby.”
“Yeah.”
“No one knows how to be a parent. Some people never learn, but that doesn’t keep them from having kids. Sometimes a baker’s dozen of them. They just don’t put the mountains of pressure on themselves to do it all perfectly like you do.” She scooped a hand through my hair. “I still remember when you were a little boy, Snug. Your father was teaching you to ride a bicycle. Then he went in the house, but you wouldn’t stop. You kept trying over and over again, that grim determination on your face.”
“I finally learned.”
“You did and got a boatload of scrapes and bruises for your trouble.”
“I did. And I kept coming back for more.”
“As you will with this. You’ll probably have six kids by the time you’re forty.”
“Bite your tongue.”
Shaking her head, she smiled. “Stop looking for the handbook on how to do it right and enjoy the little moments. And always, always do everything with love.”
I swallowed deeply. She couldn’t have given me a better segue if I’d asked for one. “Do you think that applies to work as well?”
“It applies to every-damn-thing, Snug. Are you going to tell your mother?”
“Well, I’ll have to eventually, won’t I?”
“Not necessarily. How many times has she stopped by to see Lily?”
I didn’t reply, because I didn’t want to think about anyone else who had let Lily down. My mother had never given two whits about parenting me, so why would she care about Lily?
“Christ, am I like her? Is that what this is?” I jerked to my feet and flung my jacket on the couch. It was a good thing I didn’t have a much larger object to toss. I just might have. “I should warn Hannah not to expect anything more from me. I’m a decent provider, but anything else is off the table. Even the provider part is in question.”
“Shut up and sit down.” My grandmother patted the cushion beside her.
I sat. For once, I absolutely did not want to be right.
“You are the exact opposite of your mother and when you’re lucid, you know that quite well. The reason you get so tied up about doing the right thing is because you don’t want to
let anyone down. Like she let you down, over and over again. Like your father did.”
I said nothing.
“You can try to do well without driving yourself crazy that you make mistakes. No one gets it right the first time or even most times. Especially not when it comes to children and family. How many family events end up with someone in handcuffs?”
“Have you been watching those cop shows again?”
“You’re scared witless to fail Lily. Instead of looking around and seeing that you’re the one who stepped up for her. You have turned your whole life inside out to be that little girl’s father. So what if you screwed up now and then? You didn’t have any warning you were going to be a dad. One day you weren’t, then the next you were.”
That summed up what had happened in a nutshell, that was for sure.
“And in the meantime, you were also grieving your best friend. The only person who ever helped you to live for yourself and not just for your responsibilities.” Her voice gentled. “Billy squeezed every drop out of every day. Maybe he knew something we didn’t. He didn’t have that long, so he was going to make the most of it.”
My eyes prickled and I would’ve jerked to my feet again if her hand didn’t come down on my upper arm to clamp me in place.
“You deserve to have love in your life. To love and be loved. To adore the hell out of that little girl and know that any screwups you make won’t matter compared to how much love you have in your heart for her.”
I knew she wasn’t just talking about Lily. She was referring to Hannah and our baby too.
“We started everything backward.”
“So, you begin where you are right now and take the steps you missed. Maybe find some creative new ones.” She winked and I found myself laughing despite the constriction in my throat.
“I just don’t want to let him down. To let down Grandad. Hannah. Lily. The baby. A thoughtless moment that became so much more.”
“Was it really thoughtless? I doubt that. She wouldn’t be looking at you the way she does if you two hadn’t made some magic that night, even if you’ve tried to extinguish it since.”
“I don’t want to extinguish it. I was singing tonight, Gran. Even in the midst of everything, with all that’s so fucked up, I knew I was coming home to Hannah and Lily and it made the day bearable. So much more than bearable. Just thinking of them made me happy.” I let out a long breath. “And I couldn’t tell you the last time I truly was.”