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Even this annoys me now. She wasn’t supposed to charm them; she was just supposed to be a warm body. I needed a living, breathing female to get my family off my back, and now she’s wooed them all and probably made my life ten times worse. I won’t hear the end of Madeleine and Mouse. Even the alliteration adds to my annoyance at this point.
“Adam, you coming over to join us?” Kathy asks with an amused smirk.
I realize then that everyone has taken a seat at the picnic table except me. I’m still sitting, stewing in my lawn chair.
“Girls, I’m sure Adam wants to sit by his girlfriend,” my mom says, trying to convince Allie or Payton to give up their seat beside Madeleine.
Neither of them budge. Payton even grips the table with her tiny fingers, daring one of the adults to pry her from her seat.
“It’s fine,” I reply gruffly, heading around to the other side so I can sit directly across from her.
This is better.
I can skewer her with my gaze all through the meal.
She finally glances up at me, all smiles and butterflies. The sunlight brings out the varying degrees of brown in her hair: chocolate, caramel, cinnamon—all edible. Even her eyes are beautiful. For the first time, I notice they’re the color of coffee with a touch of cream, that gentle brown color that usually gets overlooked for flashier shades. She tilts her head, probably wondering why I’m glaring at her. I narrow my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she mouths.
Such beautiful innocence.
I don’t reply. Instead, I accept the bowl of potato salad getting passed around the table and load my plate up with a heaping spoonful. I might not appreciate her meddling, but I do enjoy my mom’s potato salad.
“Do you want to go get a drink with me?” Madeleine asks, her voice a little shaky.
“I’m all set,” I reply, shoving the bowl in her direction so hard that it nearly spills in her lap.
“Adam! Jeez, what’s up with you?” Kathy scolds.
“Madeleine doesn’t mind, do you?”
She shakes her head, but her bare foot collides with my shin under the table. It’s a warning shot, and I don’t plan on heeding it.
My mom, meanwhile, is smiling like a fool at the head of the table. “Guess what I did while you all were setting the table.”
I don’t care to guess, but my nieces are too gullible to ignore their grandmother. They see her waving her cell phone like a pendulum and their little brains nearly explode.
“What?!”
“What is it Grandma?”
“Well, apparently there’s this app that merges two people’s faces so you can see what their baby will look like!”
My fork slips from my grip and falls to the grass. Mouse is on it within seconds, licking off what little potato salad is left. By the time I reach down for it and sit back up, my mom has turned the phone around to reveal the photo.
“Ahh!” I flinch.
She’s merged my face with Madeleine’s, and the result is nothing short of horrifying, a tiny gremlin thing that looks nothing like a human child.
Everyone cracks up, even the girls, but Madeleine sits silent across from me, obviously taken aback.
“I’m sorry, but no baby looks like that!” Kathy says, pressing her hand to her mouth to conceal her laughter. “Why did they give it Adam’s full head of hair?! And his stubble?”
“The proportions are all off,” Samuel adds. “What baby has a jawline like that?”
My mom tilts the phone so she can see the image again. I can tell she’s barely containing her laughter as she replies, “I think she’s cute, and the app was free, so what do you expect?”
When I peer back at Madeleine, her gaze is focused on her food, and beneath the spray of freckles on her cheeks, she’s sporting a healthy blush. She’s obviously embarrassed, and though I should, I don’t feel bad. This is what she wanted. She fed my mom lies and now the woman has gone off the deep end, merging our faces and planning our future family.
“Let’s hope she takes after Madeleine a bit more than that,” Kathy says with a laugh.
“She’s not pregnant,” I point out, since the table seems to have forgotten this minor detail.
My mom waves away my bad attitude. “Oh c’mon Adam, it’s just a little fun.”
“Maybe she doesn’t even want kids,” I point out.
“She does. She told me,” Kathy says confidently.
I’m baffled. We’ve been here for less than an hour and she’s talked to Kathy about kids and gone on about a wedding to my mom. Is she insane?
“Hypothetically,” Madeleine chimes in, her voice growing weaker by the minute. “In the future…”
“Oh, don’t let him spoil our fun,” my mom says, reaching over to grab Madeleine’s hand. “That app didn’t get it right. You two will make beautiful babies.”
