She was not going to cry. “Too true.”
“Okay. You send me your ideas, and we’ll go from there.” He grabbed his empty mug. “Anything else?”
Oh, just a complete public breakdown. “I think that’s it.”
“’Kay then. I’ll get going.” He picked up his mug, hesitated and grabbed her bowl. “I’ll take that for you.”
“Thanks. Talk to you soon.”
He nodded and headed for the exit. She busied herself with putting her things away, hoping she could make it to the car before the day finally caught up with her and she fell apart.
That soup had hit the spot. Maybe she would get some to take—
She stopped, frozen in place as the reason for Hank’s bowl fetish became clear.
When she was pregnant with Millie, she hadn’t been truly sick, but she also couldn’t stomach most of her usual favorites. The one item she had craved, the one thing she would make Hank hunt for in the middle of the night, was—
Oh hell.
* * *
I’LL THINK ABOUT IT.
Heather couldn’t help but laugh at the irony—that her answer to Xander’s question had been the same as Hank’s initial reply to her custody request.
I’m trying to ask you to marry me.
His proposal—and her promise to consider it—jumped up and demanded her attention every time Xander called or texted. When she returned to the doctor and heard that everything still looked good. Even now, on a sunny Saturday morning with Millie bouncing at her side and both of them frowning at the mess bubbling in the saucepan.
“It’s not working, Mom. Why not?”
“Are you sure?”
“Mrs. Weaver’s didn’t look like that when she helped Abby make her volcano. Theirs was thicker. Like glue. Ours looks like soup.”
Hundreds of dollars on parenting classes over the last eight years, and not one of them could have covered arts and crafts?
Heather gave the pot another stir. “Maybe we need to try a different recipe.”
“But we already tried! Twice!”
“Look, Mills. Just because we didn’t get it right the first time, that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to—”
It’s a lot easier to tell yourself you don’t love someone than it is to admit you’re afraid of failing again.
Heather tried to shake Leah’s voice from her head.
“There’s five million recipes online for papier-mâché, hon. Maybe we need different ingredients.”
And I’m a whole different person. Than Hank, I mean.
Dear Lord, there was no escape.
Eventually, they found a recipe that hung together. They soaked newspaper strips and molded chicken wire and, finally—and not without a few panic attacks—created something that resembled a volcano.
When you make up your mind to do something, you give it your all.
Except she had given it her all, once. She had really tried.
I won’t pretend that I’m not nervous, but I’m not that same person.
But was she different enough to make a marriage work?
And what if she decided to take the chance and she failed, and she ended up hurting Xander? Not the way she had hurt Hank. She would never run away again. She knew that the way she knew the sound of Millie’s voice. But there were about as many ways to mess up a marriage as there were recipes for papier-mâché.
Maybe it was just because she’d lived it once, but the thought of hurting Xander, of seeing him look at her with anger and hurt and something that verged on hatred—
No. She couldn’t do that. Not to him, not to their baby. She needed to keep things calm and stable and under control.
Control. That was the ticket.
Sunday was the last day before starting the new job. Heather resolved to put everything else out of her mind and focus on Millie. It was a glorious mid-September day. Tomorrow would bring the start of a new adventure, but for now, there were bikes to ride and games to play and the secret anticipation of more time together very, very soon.
First, though, there was a volcano to paint.
Heather sent Millie to the garage to fetch the volcano while she started lunch. She zipped around the kitchen, tossing Millie’s favorite frozen chicken into the oven, pulled salad parts from the fridge, set potatoes to boil.
Potatoes.
Millie loved mashed potatoes, especially with fried chicken. But Heather hadn’t been able to eat them since the night she called a halt with Xander, telling him that she couldn’t trust herself around him.
You’re afraid of failing again.
No. Not today.
She opened the fridge, grabbed the bottle of sparkling grape juice she’d picked up along with the chicken and set it in a bucket of ice.
Special. She was going to make this special, for just the two of—
“Mom!”
Millie’s horrified cry had Heather dropping cherry tomatoes into the sink and racing for the garage, where Millie’s sobs were growing louder and more heart wrenching by the moment.
“Mills? What’s wrong, baby? What’s the matter?”
As soon as Heather stepped into the garage, she saw the problem.
The volcano.
Half of it was missing.
“Oh no!”
She took the creation from Millie with one hand while pulling the sobbing child against her with the other.
“Mommy! It’s ruined! I have to hand it in tomorrow and it’s dead, it’s all messed up and I worked so hard and now it’s horrible!”
Heather set the display on the hood of the car and examined it, hoping against hope that it could be salvaged. Maybe, if it had simply collapsed in on itself, they could glue it back together.
But as soon as she turned it for a thorough inspection, her heart sank. As did her stomach.
“I think something ate it.” Sure enough, the closer she looked, the more certain she was. The fact that chunks were totally absent as opposed to having simply fallen over, the crumbs...
Oh hell. Those weren’t crumbs.
She let it drop back to the hood with a bang. She was pregnant. She shouldn’t be inhaling mouse crap or squirrel crap or—
“Come on, kiddo. We need to scrub our hands really well.” Would bleaching them be excessive?
“But Mommy, what am I going to do?”
Heather marched Millie to the bathroom and started the water. “I don’t know.” Honesty was the best policy, right? “But we’ll figure out something. I’ll go online and look for ideas. I promise you, we’ll have a volcano for you to take to school tomorrow.”
“But how? I hafta go home by five, and then it has to dry. And we have to paint it.” Millie slammed the tap, turning it off. “We can’t do it all, and Mrs. Wilcoxin is going to think I forgot, or that I waited until it was too late, and she’s going to give me a bad grade and this is science, Mom. I can’t get a bad mark in science!”
Heather was about to offer to email the teacher and explain the situation when a new sound hit her ears—the unmistakable hiss of water boiling onto a hot burner.
“The potatoes!”
She shoved a towel into Millie’s hands and ran for the kitchen. Sure enough, a mass of white bubbles had overflowed the pot and spilled all over the stove.
No, no, no. She turned the burner off, grabbed a pot holder and lifted the lid. Still a little water. Yay. The rest of the day might have been knocked sideways, but they could still have Millie’s favorite meal.
Except as she poked a fork in the spuds to check their level of doneness, something stirred in the back of her mind. Something about Xander. And mashed potatoes.
And volcanoes.
“Mills?”
Millie slumped into the
room, wiping the tears from her cheek.
“Sweetie. Your volcano doesn’t have to be papier-mâché, does it? Can it be made of anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like mashed potatoes?”
Millie tipped her head. She seemed doubtful, but some of the abject despair left her eyes.
“I think it can be anything.” Her nose scrunched up, wiggling her glasses. “I think Aidan said he was gonna make one out of Legos.”
“Do you want to go totally wild and crazy and blow Mrs. Wilcoxin’s mind?”
“Would I still get to eat some? I’m kinda hungry.”
Laughter bubbled through Heather, lifting her, making her feel lighter and more hopeful than she had in days. Which made no sense at all. She was still pregnant. She still had questions and worries. She still needed to give Xander an answer.
But as Millie skipped out of the room to check her teacher’s website—“Just in case, Mom”—Heather grabbed her phone and shot off a quick text.
You just saved Millie’s volcano. Thank you.
The answer came almost immediately.
You’re welcome. Would love to know how I did it.
She considered her answer. She could tell him about the potatoes. She could describe the scenario.
Or she could give him the truth.
By being on my mind.
As soon as she sent the message, she realized she had left out the most important part.
And by being you.
Because that was the key. Xander took chances, yes. He bent the rules and suffered the consequences. But he also saw things in a different way. He was quicker to roll with what was dealt him. He could come up with a solution where she saw none.
And he had come through for her kid, even without trying.
Maybe she couldn’t trust herself when she was around him...but maybe that wasn’t so horrible. Because maybe, just maybe, he was capable of picking up where she fell down.
She still needed to give him an answer. But for the first time since he’d asked, she was no longer so certain that the answer would be no.
* * *
I’LL THINK ABOUT IT.
Xander held those words close as September slipped into October. It killed him that words were the only thing he could hold right now, but he forced himself to give Heather space. He was asking for a lifetime. Surely he could give her three weeks—especially when it seemed that she might, perhaps, be coming around.
It was nothing dramatic. He couldn’t pinpoint a day when he felt a shift. But by the first weekend in October, he had a sense of change, and not just in the seasons. Her answers to his texts were longer now. There were phone calls, too, half the time coming from her, and even a lunch date after her last doctor appointment. By unspoken agreement they didn’t talk about the baby or the future. The here and now, that was the key—Heather’s love of the new job, Millie’s joy at hearing that she was going to have more time with her mom, Xander’s ongoing adventures in potty training Cady.
He made it clear that he would be ready to talk about the future whenever she was, and then he let it go. The one indulgence he allowed himself was when he enrolled her in a fruit of the month club. After all, babies needed lots of vitamins, right? The fact that Heather would be the one eating the mangoes and berries, that she would be the one thinking of him as she bit into the peaches and pears, well, that was just a bonus.
The first Sunday in October was a picture perfect autumn day, the kind that felt like a reward after the humidity of summer. He and Cady were planting bulbs in the front yard. Well, he was attempting to plant. Cady, on the other hand, was doing her best to dig up everything he planted. Except, of course, when she was trying to convince him to let Lulu come out with them.
“Dada! Lulu out! Lulu come out! Me play Lulu!”
Maybe encouraging Cady to speak a lot wasn’t such a great plan after all.
“No, Cady. Lulu can’t come out. She might run into the road and get hit by a car. Here.” He dropped a bulb into the freshly dug hole. “Can you cover this up, please?”
She eyed the mound of dirt, eyed her little plastic shovel—and whopped him with it.
“Ow!” He rubbed his arm. Who knew someone so little could pack such a punch? “That hurt, kid. No hitting.”
Her little mouth pursed. “Want Lulu.”
“Well, you’re not getting her. And you can’t hit people. Give Daddy the shovel.”
She backed away. “No! Mine!”
“I know it’s yours, but you can’t use it like that. Now come on. Hand it over.”
He reached for the shovel, but the little stinker sent it sailing behind him to land in the bushes.
“Cadence Joy, you are in a world of trouble.”
Oh God. He really was a parent. He had just quoted his mother.
“Come on, kid. We are going to get that shovel, and then we are going to have a talk.”
Smart kid that she was, she immediately dropped to the ground and let out a lungful of wail. Too bad for her that even he had his heartless moments.
“Sucks to be you,” he said, and tucked her under his arm football-style. This, of course, led to louder wailing and some beating on his butt by tiny fists.
“Cady! Come off it. Stop hitting Daddy. We’re going to find the shovel, and then it’s naptime.”
At the dreaded word, she burst into even louder sobs.
“Noooooooooo!”
“Oh yeah.” He lowered himself to his knees—no easy task while carrying a wriggling mass of toddler—and reached past the lower branches of the bush for the shovel.
“Hey! Watch the kidneys!”
If her brother or sister had a punch like hers, he could be in big trouble someday.
Maybe to get used to taking a hit, he should invest in some boxing lessons, or jujitsu. Anything to give him a leg up on—
The wailing stopped abruptly, only to be replaced by a voice he hadn’t heard nearly enough lately.
“Did you lose a contact?”
Heather?
It was ridiculous, the way one little amused question could make him feel like the world had suddenly tilted toward the sun.
He twisted as best as he could, catching a glimpse of—yes—Heather and Millie. All of a sudden, bruised kidneys weren’t such a big deal.
He set Cady on the ground, pushed to his feet and brushed dirt from his hands. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We’re on our way to the library. Someone needs to research Jacques Cartier.” She nodded toward Millie, who was sitting cross-legged on the grass playing peek-a-boo with Cady. “Millie saw you two outside and asked if we could stop. I hope we didn’t, um, interrupt anything.”
God, he had missed her. The catch in her voice when she was trying to hold back laughter. The slant of her head as she took in the scene. The way she shimmied her shoulders as she waited for his answer. All those little habits and behaviors he would have sworn he hadn’t memorized until this moment, when every one of them was like a long-awaited reunion.
If this wasn’t love, he wasn’t sure he could survive the real thing.
“Well, yay for Millie.” He hoped Heather could hear what he didn’t dare say, not when they had company.
“Yeah. She...usually has very good ideas.”
“I always have good ideas, Mom. Except when my brain goes on vacation.”
“On vacation?” He hadn’t heard that one before.
Millie spoke first. “You know. When you don’t want to think anymore, so you pretend you’re someplace else. My brain goes on vacation all the time.” She launched a sneak tickle attack on Cady’s belly, eliciting a wave of giggles.
Xander took advantage of the shrieks and laughter to lean a bit closer to Heather’s ear. “My
mind’s been traveling a lot lately, too.”
“Has it now?”
“Mmm-hmm. Funny thing, though. No matter which way it flies, it always lands in the same place.”
She closed her eyes, but she didn’t seem distressed. In fact, if he had to guess, he would say she looked...pleased. Like he had said exactly what she had needed to hear.
“How are you doing?” Silly to ask, he knew, given that he had texted her a variation of the question at least three times a day since learning about the baby. But he needed to hear her say it.
“Okay. No big changes yet.”
“No pressure? No pain?”
“Not a—”
“Mommy?” Millie’s eyes were sharp and worried. “Why would you have pain?”
“Nothing, honey.” Heather leaned down to ruffle Millie’s hair. “I was telling Mr. Sorenson about having a tooth pulled.”
“Oh. Do you have a toothache?” Millie asked him.
“I—uh, no. Not now. But I did yesterday.”
Millie nodded. “Can we play with Lulu?”
Heather rushed in. “Honey, we can’t just barge in and—”
“Absolutely,” he interrupted. Yeah, it would probably undo every point he was trying to make with Cady, but sometimes, a man had to take the long-term view. “But we’ll have to go in the back.”
“Okay!” Millie grabbed Cady’s free hand—the other, he saw, clutched the instrument of torture known as the shovel—and skipped toward the corner of the house. Heather tugged at his sleeve.
“Are you sure? This is your time with Cady. We don’t want to intrude.”
“Heather.” With Millie and Cady so far ahead, he dared say a bit more. “I’ve been waiting to see you again. Do you honestly think I’m going to turn down this chance?”
She didn’t answer. Not with words. But the pink in her cheeks made him suspect that he had stumbled onto the right phrases once again.
God, he wanted her.
Not just to re-create the magic they’d found on the sofa, or the bed, or at the Cline place. He wanted her laughter in his mornings. He wanted her teasing in his kitchen. He wanted her smile in his every minute, and her tears in his heart, and her life in his home.
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