“I’m hungry,” Katie repeated in an exaggerated whisper. “And you said we can make cookies.”
“Okay, cookies it is. Maybe Aunt Abbi wants to join us?”
“I think I’ll head out. Silvia, you know.”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “I do.”
“Lauren . . . Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, if your best friend can’t tell you you’re being a selfish j-e-r-k, who can?”
“No fair, Mommy,” Katie said. “I can’t know what you said. What did you say?”
“I said it’s time to make cookies.” Lauren scooped up her daughter and planted squishy kisses all over her face and neck, Katie’s chubby legs flailing in the air. “Call me if you need anything.”
Before going home, Abbi picked up a few things at the Food Mart, avoiding the pharmacy aisle, grabbed a couple of books from the library. Killing time. Her head buzzed with Lauren’s admonition. She’s right, she’s right. Abbi knew it could be done, being a half and a whole at the same time—Lauren did it. But it required dying to self, something she’d been unwilling to do. She had spent her entire marriage preserving her identity, afraid of melting into some black puddle of what Benjamin wanted, rather than who she was. A Stepford wife. A perfect, plastic, meat-eating, gun-toting Conservative.
She hadn’t taken her marriage seriously. To her, it had been a lucky coin, a worry stone in her pants pocket. Something she carried with her and rubbed without thinking; she knew it was there—always there—but she never looked at it. Never took it out unless she needed something.
She was tired of excuses. She wanted what Lauren and Stephen had had. She didn’t want to settle.
On the road, Abbi glanced in her rearview mirror, and she instinctively slammed on the brakes. Where is Silvia?
At home. At home with Janet.
The panic drained away, flooding her pelvis with warmth, and then it evaporated. Other than her evening jogs—down to three or less a week now—and a few hours in her studio when Matthew came, she hadn’t been without Silvia hanging on her body or within earshot. The baby had become a piece of her, a transplanted finger, a toe, grafted into her skin.
Her baby.
Benjamin, home from work and in jeans and a T-shirt, held Silvia in the kitchen. No, didn’t just hold her. Clutched her. His eyes, moist and bloodshot, didn’t move from the baby’s face. “Janet said you went to see Lauren. Is everything okay?”
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Us.”
He tilted his head toward the ceiling, sucked his lips in between his teeth. “I’m not in the mood for this now.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m going . . . out. Can I have the Volvo keys? I’ll take Silvia with me.”
Benjamin stepped around her, but she grabbed his arm. “You’re not doing this to me, Ben. You need to stay here and deal with this. I’m so sick of you checking out on me.”
“Me? Me checking out? Oh, you’re one to talk. You’ve been gone since we moved here.”
“You’re right.”
He stopped, keys hanging in his fingers. “What?”
“I said you’re right.”
“No you didn’t. You couldn’t have. I’m never right, remember?”
“Ben, please. I’m trying to talk to you.” She closed her eyes, sighed. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I couldn’t even begin to list everything.”
“Try.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Mmm, yeah,” he said.
“Stop it.” She swung her arm up to punch him in the shoulder— lightly, jokingly—but Benjamin caught her fist, drew it down to his chest, holding it there. She opened her hand, felt his heart beating against her palm.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said.
Pulling away, she said, “Why do you do that? You’re not supposed to be all sweet and understanding. Just let me say that I screwed up. I tried to sabotage our marriage. I couldn’t handle you loving me. Like you said, I pulled away. I think . . . No, I know one of the reasons I protested so hard was to hurt you. I mean, I meant it, but I didn’t want you to think I wouldn’t do it just because of you. I needed you to know I was still me—”
“Abbi—”
“—and I wasn’t going to change—”
“Abbi. Stop.”
“—and I certainly wasn’t going—”
“Just stop,” he said, not shouting, but close.
She didn’t. “Why can’t you just tell me why you’re angry? Last week we were doing better. Good, even. And now you won’t even look at me.”
“It’s not about you. Or us.” Benjamin buffed the top of his head, dug his fingertips into his scalp. “It’s Silvia.”
And all at once her anger disappeared. “What? I don’t . . .”
“We might be close to finding out who her moth— Who left her. There’s some new evidence, and it’s possible there might be some . . . other relatives out there, who might not realize she—I mean, Silvia—is part of their . . . well, part of their family.”
“She’s part of our family.”
“Look, we don’t know anything for certain. And I didn’t want to say anything until there was something more substantial.”
“Then why did you?”
“Darn it, Abbi. Don’t put this back on me. You asked. I answered. Period.”
She dragged a kitchen chair out from beneath the table, dropped into it, all rubbery-boned, like when she was in fifth grade and her class soaked a chicken skeleton in vinegar. “When will you know?”
Benjamin shrugged. “Tomorrow. Never. Somewhere in between?”
“That’s helpful.”
The cupboards stared at her—dark, whorled eye knots and shiny gold-handled noses. She wanted to get behind them, to eat, to think about the food swelling in her stomach and puckering the back of her thighs. She wanted Benjamin to leave so she could fill herself and hate herself, and feel something familiar. Not this uncertainty, this almost pain, not knowing if it should come or go. “Are you still going out?”
“No.”
“I am,” she said, jiggling the keys from her fingers. She unbuckled the car seat and threw it in the Durango. Then she drove the Volvo back to the grocery, bought a jumbo bag of baby carrots, and ate all of them sitting in the car on a farm road, sometimes shoving six or seven in her mouth at a time, sometimes slicing one into little rounds with her front teeth. She opened the trunk, unzipped the jumper cable bag, and from between the wires removed another small pouch. Unbuttoned that, and shook out four senna tablets—all that were left. She scrunched them in her hand and went home, downing them with a glass of water from the kitchen sink.
Benjamin was already in bed, curled around Silvia but not asleep. Abbi changed to her pajamas and said, “I’m going to read for a while. In the living room.”
“You can stay in here. I’m not tired. I’m just . . . watching her.”
“Nah. I’ll just be a bit.”
On the couch, she lay flat on her back, feet elevated on the arm. She brushed her hands over her face, still smelling the senna on her skin.
Matthew showed up Tuesday afternoon, like always. She was still in her robe and told him she didn’t need him. She hadn’t slept at all last night. Neither had Benjamin; she heard him up every couple of hours, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. She pretended to sleep, and did her pacing while he pretended to sleep. She didn’t go into the bedroom, didn’t want to be close to the baby.
She had spent the day floating around, disembodied, with Silvia on the floor, in the Moses basket, away from her. Abbi changed her, of course, and picked her up if she cried. Fed her. But when Abbi finished those things, she got away from her, looking on from a distance, willing the space between them to grow.
Are you sick? Matthew asked, as he stood at the door, smudges of sleeplessness beneath his eyes, too.
She nodded. “You don’t wan
t to catch this.”
I can stay, really. You go nap.Or shower.Or both.
“I look that bad?”
He shook his head. I didn’t mean—
Abbi put her hand over his. “Joke, joke.”
Please, let me do this for you.
Matthew itched his forearm, his upper arm, swiped at his neck.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded. Let me help.
“Yeah, fine. Whatever. Come in,” she said.
She did go take a nap, or tried to, and eventually her headache weighed down her eyelids, and she dozed for a while. When she woke, she didn’t bother to dress—it was almost five, and she’d be back to bed in a few more hours anyway. Matthew waited in the living room, in the recliner, Silvia bound up against him much the same way Benjamin had held her the evening before, tight to his ribs, arms rigid and protective. He jumped up, held her out to Abbi.
“Just . . . put her over there.”
He hesitated, and then rolled her from his arms into the basket. I’m going.
“Oh, Matt. Sorry. I’m just out of it.”
No. I’m sorry.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Thanks for the nap. It helped.”
Did it?
She fixed the collar of his rugby-style shirt. “Go on. Get out of here.”
I’m sorry.
“Matt, I just told you there’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
The boy hesitated, and then hugged her before running out the door.
Chapter THIRTY-FOUR
He woke with the same resolve he’d had that other Thursday nearly four months ago, the day he went to Pierre to speak with his mother. There was no heat today, no sun. Just the low rumble of traffic from the interstate and autumn on the wind’s breath, the smell of decay and earth puffing through the cracked window.
Lacie charged into the room, jumped on him, her knobby knees digging into his ribs.
“Wake up, wake up,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
Matthew rolled up his blanket and smoothed it over the humped back of the couch, threw his pillow into the corner, atop his clothing tote, and allowed Lacie to grab his index finger and pull him to the kitchen. “Pancakes,” she said.
He shook his head, pulled out a box of instant oatmeal and another of frosted cornflakes.
“Is there any apple left?”
He turned the oatmeal box over; a package of maple-flavored fell to the counter, another of peaches ’n cream.
Lacie scrunched up her face, bottom lip pushed out. “Cereal, I guess.”
He poured a bowl for her and one for Sienna, then fried three eggs, scooping each one onto a fork and eating it in a single bite. He dropped a couple slices of bread in the toaster; they popped up and he buttered them for the girls, made two more pieces for himself. Lacie wanted cinnamon and sugar on hers. And when Sienna clamored into the dining area, she reached across the table to snatch Lacie’s toast. Lacie flailed at her hand, knocking her own orange juice over, spilling it into Sienna’s bowl.
“Stupid,” Sienna said, hurling her toast at her sister. It stuck, butter side, to Lacie’s shirt.
Matthew stepped between them, sent Lacie down the hall to change her shirt while he cleaned the mess and then sat down next to Sienna. Do you have to instigate like that?
“I don’t even know what that means.”
It means start problems.
“Why should she get cinnamon toast and not me?”
You want toast? He pounded the sugar bowl onto the table, grabbed a fistful and flung it on her now-soggy bread. “There,” he said, not caring how it sounded.
“Matty, what’s got into you?” Sienna asked.
Closing his eyes, he inhaled, held his breath until he couldn’t anymore. Not long. Maybe thirty-five seconds.
How could she know her life, her family, would change forever today?
And this was why he needed to tell, because of his cousins’ lives without their fathers. Because of his own life. If the person who fathered Silvia had something to do with her abandonment, so be it. Abbi and the deputy would keep her and raise her with more love than Matthew hoped to ever know from human parents. But if he didn’t know, well, Matthew owed the truth to Silvia.
He wanted her to have better than he did. And he was fairly sure he knew the dad. If so, Matthew could say with enough certainty that Jared Whalen would want to be there for his daughter. That in and of itself made the gamble of telling worth it to him.
He only prayed Skye would forgive him someday.
He left the apartment, crossing the courtyard shoeless, his flannel
pants dragging in the dirt. He nestled into the swing, tracing circles in the sand with his big toes before digging his feet in and kicking up a cloud of dust. Lacie ran over to him, clean purple shirt matched with her pink pants, and plowed into his chest with a hug. Her face vibrated against his breastbone. He pulled her away, shrugged his whole body.
“I said I’m sorry Sienna and I was fighting.”
Standing, he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he sat on the swing again. Lacie grinned. Matthew saw the ripples of her new tooth poking up through the gum, in the empty space on the bottom. They held on to the chain together, his fists above hers, and pumped the swing, a four-legged beast rising higher into the air.
“Jump, jump,” she said, and he wrapped one arm around her, felt her legs tighten around him again, and at the peak of the swing’s arc, he wriggled off the seat, and for a moment they were flying. He couldn’t see the ground because her hair tangled over his face; his feet hit the hard-packed sand, knees buckling, but he kept his balance.
“Again,” Lacie said, but he put his hand on her shoulder and walked her back into the apartment.
Matthew hurried to dress, not bothering to rinse his feet, downed his pills and slapped some water on his face from the kitchen sink. Once the bathroom was free, he had just enough time to brush his teeth and hair before Skye told him the bus had come, and they climbed onto it in size order—Lacie skipping up the steps in front, he in the back, shoulders sunken beneath the weight of his backpack, and his secret, which by eleven tonight he guessed would be broadcast across all of South Dakota.
He somehow made it through his classes. Ellie knew something was eating at him. “Do you want to talk about it yet?”
Tomorrow.
“Always tomorrow.”
I mean it this time.
By the final bell, Matthew’s resolve had faded to a wisp of hesitancy. He told Jaylyn he was staying after school, and when the buses pulled away he walked to the county courthouse and sat against the trunk of an elm across from the sheriff ’s entrance until his feet went numb from the pressure on his tailbone. He stretched his legs; they slipped over the fallen yellow leaves, smooth as skin, and sweet, like an overripe apple. Dead but not dead. Not crispy corpse brown, but heading there soon. A day. A week. Nothing could save them.
A deputy stepped out of the building. Not Benjamin. He drove away. Matthew screwed his fingers into the ground, digging wormholes. He couldn’t bring himself to stand. The door across the street opened again, and this time it was Benjamin. He started his squad vehicle, and Matthew folded his knees to his chest and tucked his head down. If he drives past me, Lord, I’ll go home. If he stops, I’ll tell him. If he sees me. I promise.
Drive past, drive past. Oh, please, drive past.
He saw the curb of the road from beneath his hair, and tires, slowing in front of him. And then boots in the grass and a hand on the top of his head. He looked up.
“Matt, you okay?” Benjamin asked.
Matthew sucked his lips between his teeth, bit them. He stood, using the tree trunk as support, and flipped open his pad. If someone knew who Silvia belonged to, would you want to know?
“Yes.”
Even if it meant you’d lose her?
Benjamin pressed two fingers against the outside of his ear, dragged them down the side of his f
ace, his neck, skin puckering
around the pressure, turning pink, like the precursor to a bruise. “Tell me.”
But Matthew couldn’t yet, not before speaking to Skye. He went to the deputy first because, if he hadn’t, he would have gone home and put off the confrontation. For a day, perhaps, a week. Longer. And the more time that passed, the easier it would be to ignore, like sand in an oyster, the irritant coated in calcium carbonate, each concentric layer drawing him further from the truth. Still, he needed to warn his cousin.
He wrote, Wait in the office. I’ll call you. In an hour.
“Matthew, you can’t . . . Please, who is it? Just say it.”
An hour. I promise.
He walked home, head empty. He tried to think, to pray, but couldn’t keep a single word contained; they floated up into the darkening sky. He turned to the numbers. To pi. Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six two six four three three eight three two seven five zero . . .
Skye was sitting on the stoop at the apartment, watching Lacie build castles in the sandbox with Tara Blye, the second-grader three doors down. She sucked on a cigarette, blew the smoke out her nose.
Since when do you smoke?
She shrugged. “Since I started.”
He settled next to her, pad on his knee, tapping the pen on the paper.
Skye ground her butt out on the step, tossed it. “I know you know.”
Matthew saw only the side of her mouth, and wasn’t quite certain he’d read her lips right. He scooted around, in front of her. What?
“You know.”
About?
“Her.”
How?
“The picture. You took the picture.” She dug another cigarette out from somewhere down her shirt, the lighter from beneath her thigh. She flicked the button once, twice. No flame. Her arm fell to her lap. “I knew you’d figure it out, once you started working for them.”
She’s Jared’s.
Skye nodded.
Did he know? Does he?
“No. Have you told?”
Not yet. Not really. I’m going to. Tonight. Deputy Patil is waiting for my call.
Watch Over Me Page 23