by Megan Hart
To Chris, who’d taken out a bottle of beer and stood in front of the sink, looking out the window while he loosened his tie, Sunny said, “I can make some dinner.”
He turned, bottle at his lips. “Maybe we should just order a pizza.”
She didn’t blame him for being wary. “Chris, really, I can make us some sandwiches, and I know there’s pasta salad in the fridge because I made some yesterday. I learned how at work. I’m not so bad at cooking anymore.”
She wasn’t up to the challenge of anything complicated, but she wasn’t totally helpless, either. Chris drained his beer and tossed the bottle into the recycling bin, then nodded. He pulled his tie free of his shirt collar with a sigh and looked down at it in his hand like it might turn into a snake and bite him.
“Why don’t you go take a shower,” Sunny suggested. “Change your clothes and stuff. I can handle this. Really.”
He gave her a faint smile. “Sure, okay.”
He paused to kiss both Bliss and Happy on their heads as he passed and then stopped in the family room to call Peace over for a hug and a kiss. Watching them, Sunny’s heart twisted. Peace jumped into his arms with a cry of glee, her little arms and legs wrapped around him while he spun her.
This…was home. This was what a normal life was like, she thought as Chris put Peace down with a pat on her bottom to send her into the kitchen to help Happy clean off the table. Family who loved each other.
“Mama?” Happy tugged her sleeve. “What’s-a-matter?”
Sunny shook her head and took the time to hug him close and stroke his blond hair from his face. Liesel had taken Happy for a haircut that he’d asked for. It had broken Sunny’s heart to see him without his long curls, but apparently the other kids on the playground had called him a girl once too often. She kissed both his cheeks.
“Nothing’s the matter, my sweetheart. Let Mama make the tuna salad, okay? If you’re finished putting the toys away, you and Peace can go play. Turn the TV off,” she added when Peace headed straight for it. “Play a game or something.”
Happy sighed but nodded. Peace, on the other hand, stomped her feet and crossed her arms over her belly. She grimaced.
“Noooooooooo!”
Sunny’s brows lifted. “Peace, hush.”
But Peace didn’t hush. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Sunny straightened. In the drawer, the wooden spoon. Her child’s shoulder, bones small and fragile in her fingers. Soft hair falling down the girl’s back, covering Sunny’s hand as she shook the girl into sobs. Happy’s wide eyes, solemn face, and the pound-pound-pound of Bliss’s fists on the high-chair tray.
No.
No.
The angel’s voice that was really Sunny’s own whispered, soft in Sunny’s ear. A phantom touch on her cheek. She closed her eyes for a moment, listening, but there was nothing more to hear.
Sunny put the spoon away. She knelt to take Peace more gently by the shoulders and wiped her face with a napkin. “Peace. Hush.”
Peace let out another series of strangled sobs. Sunny gathered her close, rocking the girl back and forth while she shushed her. When Peace’s sobs had faded, Sunny pushed her away to look at her again.
“Go play,” she told her. “No television. Play a game with Happy, or with your babies. Do you hear me?”
Peace nodded, cheeks stained with tears, small mouth still pouting. “I wanna watch ’toons.”
“Later. But when you cry this way and don’t listen to me, you don’t get what you want, do you understand?”
Peace didn’t understand, clearly, but she nodded after half a second. She stomped away, not at all pleased with the situation, but in front of the TV she hesitated before pushing the button to turn it on. Instead, she went to the bin containing her dolls and pulled one out.
Sunny drew in a breath. Then another. There wasn’t time to think this over, because Bliss had started to whine as well as thump her hands. Upstairs, the hissing of water in the pipes stopped. Chris would be downstairs in a few minutes, and she hadn’t even started the sandwiches. There wasn’t time for Sunny to ponder how she felt about almost beating her child with a spoon for the sin of back talk.
That she had not done it was more important than the fact she’d wanted to, she told herself as she went from cupboard to counter to fridge. A can of tuna, some mayo, some mustard, a few stalks of celery and half an onion went into the mixing bowl and she stirred it up. She hadn’t done it.
The food was ready just as Chris, hair wet and wearing sweatpants, came into the kitchen. Sunny’d set the table and added a basket of sliced bread, a platter of tomatoes, some carrot sticks and fresh fruit. It wasn’t a bad meal at all, she thought as Chris called the kids to come to the table. In fact, it was as good as anything Liesel could’ve done.
“Looks good,” Chris said, and Sunny beamed.
Chris usually didn’t talk much, but without Liesel here to keep the conversation going, it fell on Sunny to ask him questions about his day and to share pieces of her own so they could find something to talk about. She’d seen her mother do it with John Second enough, this drawing out of a man who wasn’t in the mood for chatter. Sunny wasn’t nearly as good at it. Conversations were still so often like a field full of stones that stubbed her toes or tripped her up when she tried to be clever. Still, she made him laugh with a story about something that had happened at the coffee shop, and she considered that an accomplishment.
When he winced, though, rolling his head on his neck with a grimace, Sunny frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Neck hurts. Back hurts. Getting old, I guess.” Chris shrugged.
The meal finished, Bliss put to bed and the other kids sent to play in the family room, Chris grimaced again as he was helping her load the dishwasher. Sunny gestured. “Sit down. I can help you with that.”
He tried to put her off, but she insisted until he sat in the kitchen chair, still protesting. “Hush,” she told him, and surprisingly, he did.
She felt the knot as soon as she put her hands on his shoulders. A thick bulge of too-tight muscle just at the base of his left shoulder and a spot just a little higher on his neck that made him hiss when she pushed on it. She eased the pressure and used the tips of her fingers to find the edges of the tension.
Chris groaned, leaning forward with his hands loose and open on the table in front of him. “God. Ouch.”
She paused, but he shook his head. “No, it’s a good ouch. Right there, it really hurts.”
“John Second,” she said, and stopped herself short before she could tell him John Second had been the one to teach her just how to squeeze and roll her fingers to soothe sore muscles.
Chris suffered her attentions in silence for a minute or two before he said, “John Second was the man who convinced your mom to leave me. Right?”
She was glad she didn’t have to look at his face when she answered. “Yes.”
Beneath her working fingers, Chris’s shoulders tensed again. “Was he good to you?”
The angel whispered again, another single word. The same as before. Sunny spoke it aloud. “No.”
Chris twisted in his seat to look at her, one of his hands pressing on hers to keep it from moving. “You want to talk about it?”
Sunny pulled her hand away, gently, not a yank. “No. I don’t have anything to say about it. He wasn’t a good man. That’s all. And he’s gone now.”
She didn’t want to think about John Second, or Sanctuary, or her mother, but Chris who hardly ever spoke had found his voice and came after her with it.
“Was she happy? Your mom. Was she happy?”
Sunny leaned against the counter with her arms crossed over her belly. She thought of her mother, laughing at something the children had done. Her mother’s eyes closed, mouth moving but
curved in a smile as she said the blessings in silence.
That was the worst of it, she thought, remembering how Mama had lit up from inside when she listened to Papa’s words, or when John Second had pulled her aside to whisper in her ear. She’d had a glow around her, her eyes full of love for him and the life he’d brought her to. She’d turned those eyes away from him though, when he did bad things, so she could pretend she didn’t see.
Her answer caught in her throat, hooking it like a thorn. “Yes. She was happy.”
“I should’ve been there for you, Sunshine.” Chris closed his eyes, swallowed hard.
“It’s all right. You didn’t know.”
Chris shook his head, and she could see even after the few minutes of work she’d done on his neck that he was moving more easily. “I should’ve known. I knew she was pregnant when she left me. I knew you could’ve been mine. I just didn’t want to know, I let her tell me lies…”
Sunny backed away with a shake of her own head. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to hear how her mother had lied and stolen Sunny away from her real father and her real family, or how different Sunny’s life could’ve been had her mother not been shown the light.
She didn’t want to talk about the things John Second had done to her.
Chris was on his feet though, coming after her to snag her wrist and keep her from getting away. “Sunny. Listen. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, Chris. It’s not your fault.”
He shook his head again, his fingers loose enough she could pull away if she tugged just a little. “I know you miss her, too.”
Sunny didn’t want to know this, either. She backed up a step. Then another. His hand fell from her wrist, and he didn’t try to reach for her again.
“I don’t miss her,” Sunny said. Then, louder, “I don’t miss my mother.”
Liar’s tongue.
The angel’s voice was hard and cold. Unkind, the way the truth could be.
The cell phone Chris had given her buzzed from Sunny’s pocket, and she put a hand over it, startled. Chris looked at it. He shook his head, passed a hand over his eyes. He rubbed the spots on his neck and shoulders she’d massaged, then he looked away.
Sunny pulled the phone from her pocket. “Hello?”
She listened for a minute, the words coming through the phone stringing all together into sentences that made sense and yet she still had trouble understanding. She murmured an answer and closed the phone to slide it back into her pocket.
“Tyler,” she said. “The boy from the coffee shop. He wants me to go out with him and a group of kids to a carnival tomorrow. He said he’ll pick me up after work and bring me home.”
Chris cleared his throat, his gaze bright until he blinked and blinked again. “Sure. Okay, that’ll be fine.”
“It’s time for me to put the kids to bed.”
He nodded, silent. Sunny took her children and bathed them, dressed them in their pajamas and tucked them into their beds. She whispered the blessings her mother had said to her every night in their ears and kissed their foreheads the way her mother had always kissed hers. Peace fell asleep before Sunny’d even finished, sprawled across her mattress without a care. Happy, though, curled tight onto his side and clutched his pillow as she stroked his hair over and over until at last his eyes reluctantly closed.
“Finally asleep?” Liesel had come up the stairs just as Sunny left Happy’s room.
Liesel had complained often about her hair over the past few months as it grew longer. It hung to her chin now, and she’d done something different to the shape of it. Soft bangs, some layers cut so that it framed her face. She’d colored it, too. Lighter.
“Yes. Your hair looks pretty,” Sunny told her, wondering why Liesel had felt the need to change it.
Liesel touched the fringes around her jaw and gave a self-conscious laugh. “Oh. Thanks. I thought I needed something a little different, easier to take care of. It’s not quite long enough to pull back, but at least I don’t have to worry about getting to the salon every month to keep it short.”
“It looks nice.” She didn’t look like Liesel anymore.
“Where’s Christopher?”
Sunny paused, listening for the sound of him downstairs. “I don’t know. I guess he went out.”
Liesel sighed and put a hand on the wall, her head ducked for a moment before she pushed past Sunny to head for her bedroom. In the doorway, she paused to murmur, “Good night,” before closing the door behind her.
Chapter 34
“Welcome to the world of motherhood.” Becka winked as she said this, then pulled out a bottle of tequila from behind her back. “Look. The good stuff. Patrón, honey, not some cheap-ass bottle of Cuervo or whatever that swill is you think counts as booze.”
Liesel had been hanging over the sink, gripping the stainless steel and fighting back a scream or sobs—she still wasn’t sure which—when Becka let herself in through the back door. She turned now. “Oh. God. I can’t drink that.”
Becka frowned and looked at the bottle. “Huh? Why not? It goes down like silk, I promise.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.” Liesel pressed the heel of her hand to her eye socket, just briefly, then cocked an ear to listen for any sounds coming from the den. The kids had been quiet for the past ten minutes. Too quiet, too long.
She couldn’t face going in there just now.
Becka set the bottle down and helped herself to a couple of glasses from the cupboard. She looked at Liesel over her shoulder. “Does not compute.”
“If I get started—” Liesel’s laugh came out more like a growl “—I might not stop.”
“That sort of day, huh?” Becka sounded sympathetic, but she gave Liesel another wink as she poured a finger of tequila into each glass. She handed Liesel one, kept the other. Lifted it. “Cheers. Down the hatch.”
That sort of day? Talk about that sort of year. Liesel looked at the glass. “I don’t think—”
“Listen. Some days a shot of tequila is the only damn thing that kept me going. Drink it. One isn’t going to kill you. It won’t even make you drunk, unless you’re a pansy lightweight, and girl, I know you can handle your booze a little better than that. By the way, love the new hair.”
Liesel clinked her glass against Becka’s, and before she could stop herself, she tipped it back. Oh, that was good tequila, smooth like gold. It left a line of fire down her throat and into her gut, but it was a good kind. She licked her lips.
“Thanks. At least you noticed it. Christopher didn’t say a damn word about it.”
“Typical male. Are you surprised?”
Liesel held out her shot glass for another, but for sipping this time. “Pissed off, more like it. I should know better. Any time a woman does something to her appearance for a man instead of herself, it’s always a wasted effort.”
“Deep. Very deep. A little bitter, but deep.” Becka put the cork top back in the bottle and pulled open the drawer of Liesel’s freezer to tuck it in behind the bags of frozen green beans. “There. My gift to you. Keep it in there, nobody will find it.”
Liesel’s laugh was only a little better this time. “I can’t be drinking tequila every day.”
“I’m not kidding, hon, that stuff saved my sanity.”
Liesel paused before pouring. “You’re not kidding?”
“Nope. Children are seven kinds of pain in the ass.”
“Only seven?” The words came out before she could stop them, and Liesel shut her mouth tight before anything else could slip out.
“Maybe it should be sevenfold. It’s a lot, that’s for sure.” Becka laughed and shook her head. “Your hair’s super cute, by the way, though I have to say I never pictured
you as a blonde.”
Here it was, the moment of truth, but if you couldn’t admit your stupid motivations to your best friend of forever, who could you admit them to? “She was blonde.”
Becka’s brows lifted. “The first wife?”
Liesel nodded, ashamed. “Yeah. Blonde and tiny and pretty, just like her daughter, who I’ve been so encouraging my husband to spend more time with. He took her out driving last night. I mean, she needs to practice so she can get her driver’s license, of course she does. But he takes her out, they’re gone for hours…”
Liesel stopped, even more ashamed. “I sound like I’m jealous of her.”
“Are you?”
There were some things that couldn’t be admitted to.
Becka didn’t push. From the grocery bags she’d brought along, she pulled out a loaf of frozen garlic bread, a jar of spaghetti sauce, a box of pasta. Some bagged salad.
Earlier, Peace and Happy had been jumping on the couch in the living room, even after being told not to. The collision of their heads had resulted in a bloody nose, two screaming kids and a woken-from-nap baby. Liesel had spent forty minutes getting them all cleaned up and calmed down. She’d be able to shampoo the rug, but the white couch was probably ruined. She wasn’t thinking too hard about it now because she might just cry. That couch had been the first piece of “real” furniture she’d ever bought.
Becka had called somewhere in the middle of everything and had listened for half a minute to Liesel’s description of the scene before simply saying, “I’ll be over in half an hour.” True to her word, here she was, with booze and food.
Liesel still wanted to cry.
“How’s she doing with the GED?”
“Good. She needs some tutoring. There’s only so much Chris and I can do. I mean…new math, forget it. They have math so new I don’t even know where to start.” Liesel found another laugh. This one hurt her throat. She thought about another shot of tequila…but no. That was trouble. “She’s a bright girl—”