by Noelle Adams
“Yeah,” she managed to say. “You too. I’ll see you before eight.”
She went inside and watched through the window until he disappeared into his house.
Seven
The next day, Alice was determined to keep following her rules and not over-analyze the evening before. She wasn’t going to rehearse every detail, examining what each little look, action, or word might have meant. And she wasn’t going to start to daydream about what might happen after this.
Anything that was going to happen, would happen whether she mentally obsessed about it or not, so she wasn’t going to work herself up into a state of romantic stupidity.
No more stupidity for her.
So she worked at the church for a few hours and then called up an old friend from high school, whom she ended up having lunch with at a cute bistro on Main Street. Then Alice, her friend, and Cara did a little shopping.
She took Cara back to Micah’s house afterwards, boiled eggs, and got everything ready to decorate Easter eggs. She set Cara in her bouncy seat some distance away so she could watch but not get her little hands on anything she shouldn’t.
Alice had dyed her first dozen eggs and was working on the decorations when the door opened behind her and a voice called, “Alice, I’m home.”
It was just after three, and she hadn’t expected Micah until dinner time.
“I’m down here,” she said, leaning back so he could see her. “You’re home early.”
“Yeah, it started to rain, so we had to give up on the Rogers’ place for today.” He blinked in surprise when he saw she was on the floor with all her supplies spread out on newspaper.
“I’m doing Easter eggs,” she explained with a smile, reminding herself that she could be perfectly happy without him, no matter how unbearably gorgeous he looked with his hair slightly damp from the rain.
He had his hands full, but he put his stuff down on the counter, leaned down to kiss and say hello to Cara, and then knelt down to the floor beside her.
“Wow,” he said, when he saw the egg she was working on. “How did you do that?”
The egg was dyed a dark red, and she was painting it with gold paint to give it an ornate look. “I’m just painting it.” She showed him her brush.
He gazed in awe at her collection of bowls with dye, her little acrylic paint set, and her other decorations. “How did you do this one?” He pointed toward the egg she’d just finished, with a lace pattern on pale blue.
“I wrapped it with lace before I dyed it. Then, when it was dry, I took the lace off and it left that pattern.” She gestured to a couple of others that were just getting dry. “These have stickers of them that I’ll take off.”
“What is the marker for?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I want to draw on an egg. I just do whatever I feel like. Didn’t you ever decorate Easter eggs before?”
“Yeah, but we always just dunked them in jars. We never did anything this fancy.”
She handed him an egg she’d died a darker blue. “Here. You can decorate this one.”
He stared down at the egg, turning it around as if it might reveal a secret to him. “What should I do with it?”
She laughed at his dubious expression. “Just decorate it however you want.”
She went back to painting her egg, finishing it and picking up one of the stickered ones. She could peel them off now to reveal two little white bunnies, which she finished off with eyes, noses, and whiskers using the black marker.
She was very pleased with the effect and showed it to Micah, who said, “Wow, that’s amazing.”
Then he showed her his, on which he’d painted a big smiley face with yellow paint.
She couldn’t help but laugh at his sheepish expression. “That’s beautiful,” she said, grabbing an egg dyed a lovely pink-rose color. “Here. Try another one.”
“This is about as good as I can do. If you want them to be pretty, you better do them yourself.”
“They don’t have to be pretty.” She nodded back at Cara, who was staring with interest at what they were doing. “Make that pink one for Cara to match her Easter dress.”
“What Easter dress?”
“Oh. Yeah. I bought her one this afternoon. I hope it’s all right.” She used tongs to pull out a few eggs that had been soaking in dye and set them on the rack to dry. “I was shopping, and the baby Easter dresses were just so pretty.” She sighed. “I used to love my Easter dresses when I was a girl.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in Cara’s room. I’ll show it to you when we’re not covered with paint and dye.”
He was peering at the decoration options, obviously trying to decide what to do with his pink egg. “I can pay you for it.”
“No. I bought it for her. I wasn’t expecting to be paid back.” Strangely, she felt a little hurt, as if Micah thought her regard for Cara was just monetary.
“Okay. Thanks. I didn’t even think about her needing an Easter dress.”
He was frowning as he started to paint what looked like flowers on Cara’s egg. Alice studied him discreetly and soon figured out why.
“Hey, she’s too young to know about an Easter dress yet. You’ll know she needs one by the time she’s old enough to be aware of what she’s wearing.”
He gave her a half smile. “Yeah. I guess. But how many other things am I not going to know?”
She gave a little shrug. “So you’ll learn. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You weren’t ever a little girl. You didn’t even have a sister. I’d be just as clueless about things if I had a boy.”
He smiled at her, a little more fully.
She smiled back.
Feeling too soft and fond, she made herself focus on her next egg. This was getting emotionally dangerous for her, and absolutely nothing was known at this point about Micah’s feelings or intentions.
He hadn’t even asked her out. He might never do so.
Her rules prevented her from assuming anything about his feelings from a few smiles and soft looks.
She started to think about what she’d just said to him. She hoped it hadn’t sounded like she was talking about Cara as if she were hers.
She hoped she wasn’t feeling like Cara was hers.
She glanced back at the baby and couldn’t help but smile when she saw Cara had gone to sleep, her head hanging to the side.
“Why are you on the floor?” Micah asked.
“Because you don’t have a table big enough, and I was afraid of staining that gorgeous granite with the Easter egg dye. It’s easier on the floor anyway, since I can spread everything out as much as I want.”
“I guess I should get a bigger table,” Micah said. “That little thing probably won’t work once Cara is big enough to sit at a table.”
“Probably not.” Alice glanced around the kitchen, which was as sparsely decorated as the rest of his house. “You might need to actually buy some grown-up furniture.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Or I can make some. It just never seemed worth it, since I was always moving from house to house.”
“Are you going to keep doing that? With Cara, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“It might be worth thinking about. This house, for instance, isn’t set up very conveniently for having a baby, with the master bedroom upstairs and her bedroom down here. You probably want the bedrooms on one floor and maybe have a bigger yard, where you can build her a swing set when she gets older. And maybe the house could have a family room or something, instead of just the formal living room.”
He was frowning thoughtfully.
“Not that you have to,” she said hurriedly, afraid she’d sounded too pushy. “I mean, kids can be happy anywhere, as long as they’re loved and taken care of. But since you’re almost done with this house, it’s worth considering. It might be hard for a little girl to always live in a house that’s being redone and then have to move somewhere else every six m
onths.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess so.”
She looked at him closely. “Aren’t you tired of always living like this? Don’t you want to settle down a little—I mean, just in terms of having a home? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place that was genuinely your own? For the long-term?”
He met her eyes. “I…I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. It was always just…whatever.”
“You spend so much time fixing up homes for other people. Don’t you want one for yourself?”
“It just never seemed like it was worth it. For me.” He shrugged away the words, but she could tell he’d meant them, and they made something in her chest ache painfully.
It had clearly never crossed his mind that he was worth having a home.
“Oh.” She swallowed hard and tried to think of something to say—something that didn’t reveal the depth of her feelings. “Well, I’m sure whatever you decide will be just fine for you and Cara.”
She looked back down at her egg, wondering why she’d felt compelled to bring up such an intimate subject, when it would be much smarter to get some emotional distance.
Neither of them spoke for a couple of minutes. Then Micah put down his paint brush.
She looked over at his completed egg. “That’s really good,” she said. “That’s perfect for Cara.”
He’d covered the pink egg with white and red flowers. They were simple and not particularly sophisticated, but the overall effect was quite pretty.
“She won’t even know it’s her egg,” he said, glancing over at his daughter.
“Well, you’ll know it’s for her. I like it.”
They worked on the eggs for another half-hour, until they’d decorated all the eggs she’d prepared. The last one he worked on, Micah wouldn’t show her until it was all the way done.
He’d painted a little gray mouse on the lavender egg, with huge eyes, tiny nose, and long whiskers. “It’s for you,” he told her.
“Oh, you…you…” She was torn between impatience and affection.
“Me what?”
“I thought I’d left that nickname behind years ago.”
“Sometimes things we think are lost aren’t really lost at all. Sometimes they come back to life.” His eyes were deep and full.
Suddenly, it felt like he was saying a lot more than the topic of conversation. She held her breath, waiting to see if he’d continue.
He didn’t, though. So they just cleaned up the mess and washed their hands.
“Now come see Cara’s Easter dress,” Alice said, leaning over to pick up the baby, who had already started to wake up from her nap with a few whimpers.
Micah followed her into the little bedroom, and he walked over to the dress she’d spread out on the railing of the crib.
It was white and frilly, with pink and purple ribbons threaded through it and embroidered flowers on the hem and bodice.
Alice thought it was the prettiest dress she’d ever seen. It had been more expensive than she could easily afford, but she was in better shape now that she was getting a paycheck from Micah. She just hadn’t been able to resist the little dress.
Micah picked it up and held it with a sober expression. “It’s really pretty,” he murmured.
“It might be a little over the top,” she admitted. “But little girls should be able to wear over-the-top dresses for Easter. And Christmas.”
He gazed at it some more, until he finally laid it back down, as if it were made out of delicate crystal. He met her eyes gravely. “Thank you.”
She felt ridiculously like squirming and hugged Cara to hide it. “She’s worth it,” she murmured, kissing the baby on the cheek.
Micah stuck his hands in his pockets. “I guess they’re having this Easter play at the Miner Theater.”
“I heard about that,” Alice said, glad to move onto a casual topic. “I had lunch with Jenny Lend today, and she said she took her kids to see it last night. She said it was great.”
“I thought I might take Cara,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. “She might be kind of young to know what’s going on but—”
“Oh, you should definitely take her. She’ll have fun looking around at everything, anyway. It’s a great idea to take her.” She was smiling, thinking it was really good that Micah was starting to get into fatherhood in such an intentional way. He was really trying.
“Great. I think I will. Maybe Wednesday. Did you…” He cleared his throat. “Did you want to go with us?”
“Oh. Yeah, sure. I’m not at the library that evening. I’m happy to help with Cara, since you’ve never taken her to a setting like that and we don’t know how she’ll behave. It’s a good idea. I’ll be happy to come and help out.” She was babbling a little because her first thought was that it would feel like a date, and she needed to be careful not to think about it that way.
He frowned and looked a little startled. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting for you to work.”
“You weren’t?”
“No. I just thought it might be fun if you came too.” He sounded strange. A little stressed.
Now she was frowning as much as he was. “What do you mean? Of course, I’d want to help out if…” She trailed off, suddenly realizing what was happening. Her heart gave a little jump. “Oh. You wanted me to…to come?”
He still had his hands in his pockets, and he looked half-amused and half-embarrassed. “Yeah. If you want to. No pressure, of course.”
She was shuddering inside now, hardly believing this was happening. But she managed to say, somewhat casually, “Thank you. That would be fun. Thank you.”
“So you’ll come with us on Wednesday?” His face had gotten quiet and serious, the smile disappearing.
She thought she’d already told him that, but she nodded, “Yeah. I’ll come. Thanks.”
He let out a breath. “Good.”
Alice took a jerky inhale and tried to give herself a lecture about how it was just a casual date and absolutely no big deal. She couldn’t—couldn’t—make a big deal about it. The only future being offered was next Wednesday evening. Absolutely nothing more. “I guess it’s about time for Cara to eat something.”
“Yeah. I better feed her. I’m sure you want to take off.”
“No, I can help. I don’t have anything going on this afternoon.”
He carried Cara as they walked into the kitchen, and Alice noticed all the bags that Micah had laid down. “Oh, you’ve got groceries,” she said. “We should have put them up earlier.” She immediately started to unpack the bags.
“I think they’ll be okay,” he said. “There’s nothing that needs to be cold.”
Cara was starting to pull out the bread and coffee from one bag when she noticed something else, half hidden by another bag.
“Oh, what beautiful flowers.” She left the bread and coffee and went to pick up the bouquet of cut tulips. “You should have told me you had flowers. They need to go into water.”
She took them over to the sink and started to unwrap them. “Do you have a vase?”
“Oh. I don’t think so.”
She supposed it wasn’t surprising that a guy would have no vase and no idea what to use for one. She stretched up to a high shelve and grabbed a large drink cup. “This will do. These are beautiful. Where did you get them?” She started to trim the stems.
When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder at him. He was just standing there, and he looked stiff and awkward.
The Micah she used to know had been very rarely awkward.
Feeling rattled again, she guided the flowers into the makeshift vase and kept babbling to cover the weird moment. “Pink tulips are my favorite. There. See? This cup works just like a vase. Why don’t we put them right here?”
“Um…”
She suddenly understood his expression. She gasped. “Wait. Are the flowers—”
“For you?” His mouth twitched just slightly. “Yeah.”
Overwhelmed with
pleasure and surprise, she kind of hugged the vase of tulips to her. “Oh. Thank you. I had no idea—”
“Yeah, I got that. But I promise I don’t normally just pick up flowers for myself because I think they’re pretty.”
She giggled and stared down at the delicate blooms. “Pink tulips are my favorite.”
“I didn’t know that. I just thought they looked nice and Easter-like, so I grabbed them.” He sounded intentionally laidback, casual.
She realized she needed to be careful again. She couldn’t make such a big deal about this. Not only would she make him uncomfortable, but it would be woefully foolish.
It was a nice gesture. It was not a declaration of love.
Men bought women flowers all the time without it meaning anything significant.
She wasn’t going to be stupid about a man again. She just wasn’t.
“Well, it was really nice of you. Thank you for thinking of it. Did you want to try some peas with Cara today?”
Eight
Alice had a mild panic attack trying to decide what to wear to the Easter play on Wednesday night.
She’d been to the Miner Theater many times, and she knew most people would dress up a little but not really wear evening clothes. She did want to look pretty, however.
As pretty as she possibly could.
She settled for a flowing skirt that looked feminine but not too dressy—Bill had always called it her “hippie” skirt—and a flattering top. She decided she looked nice but not like she was trying too hard.
Micah said they’d leave around five-thirty, since the play started early—at six, as it was designed as much for kids as for adults. Alice wasn’t sure if she should go to the house or if Micah would come to get her at the apartment. At exactly five-thirty, when he hadn’t yet made an appearance, she headed over to the house.
He had Cara, after all, so there was no reason for him to come knocking on her door to pick her up.
The side door wasn’t shut, so she opened the screen door and walked in.
No one was in the kitchen, and she was about to call out when she heard, “Oh, shit—I mean, shoot!”
She was torn between concern over Micah’s distressed tone and amusement over his trouble in taming his language for Cara’s innocent ears. She wandered into the living room and then toward his voice, which was coming from Cara’s room.