Her question took him by surprise, and he waited a moment before answering, “Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie to her, but she wasn’t ready for the truth, and of course, he’d promised Georgeanne. “I had a little boy, but he died when he was a baby.”
“How?”
John glanced up at the kite. “Let out a little more string.” When Lexie did as he advised he said, “He was born too early.”
“Oh, what time?”
“What?” He looked into the small face so close to his.
“What time was he born?”
“About four o’clock in the morning.”
She nodded as if that answered everything. “Yep, too early. All the doctors are still asleep. I was born late.”
John smiled, impressed with her logic. She was obviously quite bright.
“What was his name?”
“Toby.” And he was your big brother.
“That’s a weird name.”
“I like it,” he said, feeling himself relax a bit for the first time since he’d driven into the park.
Lexie shrugged. “I want to have a baby, but my mommy says no.”
John carefully settled her more comfortably against his chest, and everything seemed to slip into place, like a smooth one-timer: slide, hit, score. He placed his hands on each side of the stick next to hers and relaxed a bit more. His chin touched her soft temple when he said, “Good, you’re too young to have a baby.”
Lexie giggled and shook her head. “Not me! My mom. I want my mom to have a baby.”
“And she said no, huh?”
“Yep, ‘cause she don’t got no husband, but she could get one if she just tried harder.”
“A husband?”
“Yep, and then she could have a baby, too. My mom said she went to the garden and pulled me up like a carrot, but that’s not true. Babies don’t come from a garden.”
“Where do they come from?”
She bumped his chin as she looked up at him. “Don’t you know?”
He’d known for a very long time. “Why don’t you tell me.”
She shrugged and returned her gaze to the kite. “Well, a man and a woman gets married, and then they go home and lie on the bed. They close their eyes really, really tight and think really, really hard. Then a baby goes into the mommy’s tummy.”
John laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Does your mom know that you think babies are conceived through telepathy?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” He’d heard or read somewhere that parents should talk to their children about sex at an early age. “Maybe you better tell your mom that you know babies aren’t grown in a garden.”
She thought for a few moments before she said, “No. My mommy likes to tell that story at night sometimes. But I did tell her that I’m too big to believe in the Easter Bunny.”
He tried to sound shocked. “You don’t believe in the Easter Bunny?”
“Nope.”