“His sister is his best friend,” Polly explained, eyes shining with happiness. “He’s only just become ours.” She paused. “Well, he’s been ours since the second we saw him, but we’ve been having a tough time with adopting him. He’s been legally our son for just under a month.” Her voice was low, happy. No, happy was too light a word for it. Because her eyes were deep too. Carved out with pain, filled up with happiness.
Heath put his arms around his wife and kissed her head. “He’s only just started getting comfortable talking around people,” he explained.
“Well, I’m sure Nathan will do enough talking for the both of them and the rest of the people at the party,” I said.
Lucy and Keltan arrived then with their beautiful little girl, Amelia.
Everyone made themselves at home, and I loved it. It felt like home.
Lance and I hadn’t spoken.
Not one single word since I’d called him an asshole in front of a supermarket cashier.
I knew I wasn’t angry with him. I knew that it was my own issues that made me angry and ashamed enough to project onto him.
That didn’t make him any less of an asshole.
I was sure he knew his fair share about male pride. About the human race. The way he looked at people told me he was collecting information, making all sorts of deductions, learning everything about someone by the way they tied their shoelaces.
He worked as a private investigator, or security guard or whatever. I was sure knowing and reading people was part of his job.
Therefore he was likely to know about female pride. About a mother’s pride. How powerful that was. How penetrating. Whatever he’d deduced about me, about my situation, should have told him to know better than to do what he did.
Therefore I was mad at him.
In between smiling at my kid, at the people who surrounded me and filled me with joy, I glared at the man in question.
He didn’t seem at all affected by my glare, or me at all. But every time I happened to look in his general direction, my stare locked with his empty and hard one.
I tried to tell myself he hadn’t spent the entire night staring at me. And if he did, it was likely because he was watching for me to do something insane as I’d acted like a total crazy person every time I was in his presence.
That and it was his job.
Obviously neither Nathan or myself needed protection tonight since the entire Greenstone Security team was in my back yard, but he had made it clear how seriously he took his job. And without humor. Or emotion.
I was totally talking myself into thinking it was anything more than a job to him.
Luckily, I was distracted by the happiness, the warmth, the company and the laughter of the evening. My friends blended in seamlessly with everyone from Greenstone Security. Nathan lapped up the fact there were other kids around, and the males who taught him how to grill a hot dog. I was right, he hit it off with Ziggy, who wasn’t as outgoing or outwardly as nuts as my little boy, but it worked. My kid was kind. Sensitive. He saw that Ziggy was different in beautifully painful ways, so he made sure to treat him exactly how he’d treat any other kid.
My heart hurt a little seeing Keltan hand him the tongs and stand beside him while he grilled.
I’d always promised myself I’d do everything with my son, I’d play catch with him, I’d go to any sports game he decided he liked. He would know how to change a tire and the oil in his car before he was allowed to drive it. I’d teach him the things that a father would teach him. I’d make him into a good man. Nothing like his father.
But there was a gaping hole in any young kid’s life when they didn’t have a father. Different for girls and boys, but with Nathan, it was that male role model to look up to.
I couldn’t let myself dwell on it because I wasn’t allowed to. My happiness didn’t let me. The women around me didn’t let me.
It was in the midst of my pure happiness that my cell phone rang. It was a surprise I even heard it since we had music playing, laughter, and chatter drowned out the low vibration. But I’d just happened to walk into the house and heard it on the kitchen counter.
I snatched it up and answered without looking, heading back into the back yard.
“You made a mistake, pumpkin.”
I stopped in my tracks, the smile that had been almost constant for the entire night frozen on my face.
“Which of them are you fucking?” Robert continued, his voice cold, even.
My body responded to that tone, erupting in shakes, bracing for the hit that would always accompany the faux calm.