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There wouldn’t be any more poop-stained underwear. There wouldn’t be any more shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor for me to trip on.
No completely untouched Pop-Tarts thrown into the trash because they were the wrong flavor.
No half-full sippy cups found two weeks later smelling of rotten milk.
No more sloppy kisses and peanut butter stains on my shirt because a messy baby wanted a kiss in the middle of dinner.
I sniffled somewhat loudly and went back to my laundry, but I couldn’t help it.
I started to cry.
I’d never thought that I’d get babies.
Hell, at one point, I never thought I’d have Zee.
“Daddy, Mommy is crying again!” I heard Aggie cry out in alarm.
I heard the ottoman go back so fast that I knew it’d flown halfway across the living room in his haste to get up.
I used the towel that was in my hand to dry my eyes, but it was useless.
I was well and truly worked up at this point.
Zee filled the doorway, and out of watery eyes, I looked up to find him staring at me with love in his, not amusement.
“What set you off this time?” he asked.
I swiped away my tears.
Today was Annmarie and Aggie’s first day of kindergarten.
I’d seen them off on the bus—a bus they’d begged to go on despite both me and Zee being able to take them into school. When they’d gotten off the bus about an hour ago, neither one of them seemed to miss us in the slightest.
It also didn’t help that I was already an emotional mess because I was six months pregnant with our fourth. My mood swings were all over the freakin’ place.
“You didn’t open Aggie’s drink for her,” I muttered.
He grinned. “She didn’t bring it to me, or I would have.” He paused. “But why are you still calling her Aggie?”
I shrugged. “Her red hair paired with her soft white skin and her obsession with mermaids…it doesn’t bother me to call her that.”
“You’ll just do anything not to call her Agnes, won’t you?” he teased.
That was true…
“It just doesn’t fit her,” I admitted. “She doesn’t feel like an Agnes to me. She feels like an Aggie.”
Which was true. Aggie fit her. Agnes was just…old.
Not to mention the original Agnes was alive and kicking, and she hated me.
The day that I married Zee, she told me that I would never be good enough for her grandson, and she wouldn’t forget that there was a better version before me.
Which had hurt.
But, like always, I’d sucked it up and chosen to let it go, even if she didn’t.
When Zee had asked to name her Agnes, I’d agreed, only because he seemed so excited about using that name.
But then, at the twins’ birth, the elder Agnes had taken one look at her namesake and proclaimed her ugly.
Sure, she’d said it teasingly seeing as Aggie had a cone head to end all coneheads, but you didn’t tell anyone that their child was ugly. Not even jokingly.
They may be ugly but saying it and thinking it are two different things.
“Aggie doesn’t like that name anyway,” I jokingly said.
“Whatever,” Zee laughed and pulled me into his arms. “What are you going to name this one?”
I shrugged. “I figured that I’d leave it up to you. You’ve done a pretty good job at it the last three times you’ve chosen.”
He winked. “That’s because you’ve agreed with me for the most part, Agnes excluded. I’ll have to brainstorm and let you know what I come up with. I still have a few more months.”
I squeezed him tight around the waist, and then stepped back, my tears drying on my face.
“I have two more loads to get done today before I can leave,” I told him. “Aggie and Annmarie have gymnastics at four, tutoring at five thirty, and soccer practice at seven. You can handle the boy?”
Zee gave me a droll look. “I was born to handle that kid.”
I snorted and reached for another towel, not bothering to hand Zee one.
If there was one thing I’d learned over the last five years, it was that Zee sucked at doing laundry. So unless I wanted all my clothes to be wadded up and wrinkled seeing as he thought that was considered folding, I had to do it myself.
Not that I minded.
Where I did the laundry, he always did the dishes.
Where I vacuumed the floor, he always mowed the lawn.
We had a give and take relationship, and for the most part, we got along famously.
Most of the time.
We still had our moments, and when those moments came, neither one of us was worried about scaring the other off with our anger.
We fought. We made up. We fought again. We made up again.
There was never a dull moment in the McGrew household.
“You’re not wearing your ring,” he accused, jolting me out of my thoughts.
