Page 39

While we bathed and fed the cat, the air mattresses and sheets that Art had ordered were delivered by a young man who left the boxes at the base of the stairs.

The kids hotly debated where they wanted us to set them up before agreeing—somewhat reluctantly on Viv’s part and very enthusiastically on Merry’s—to sleep together in the mural room, with the beds only far enough apart to nestle a milk crate with a towel in it for Pipsqueak.

We lined a second milk crate with two trash bags and filled it with dirt from the small yard behind the shop to serve as a makeshift litter box that we put in the tiny upstairs half bath.

Then, with the kids and the cat set up for the night, we did the only rational thing and ordered a pizza for dinner.

The same young man who’d brought the mattresses delivered the pizza in under thirty minutes, and we all tucked in like we hadn’t eaten in days. It wasn’t until we were all seated around the strange octagonal glass table in the kitchen, Merry precariously kneeling on the rattan chair so he could reach his plate, that the complete normalcy of the situation struck me as strange.

Suddenly a bit lightheaded, I dropped my pizza crust onto my plate and reached for my cup of water with an unsteady hand. Art caught my eye and mouthed, Everything okay?

I forced a smile onto my face and nodded. He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out in imitation of the cat before shooting me a look that implied that he’d be asking me again once the kids were out of earshot.

My stomach flip-flopped nervously. Years of having no one care how I felt about pretty much anything meant that I’d never had to give my feelings and thoughts much attention. Art was going to ask me what was wrong, and I doubted he’d let me get away with a partial answer or with redirecting the conversation. More surprisingly, I wanted to be honest. I just wasn’t sure what I was feeling.

It was all just so normal. Two kids and two adults around a dinner table, talking about their day, making plans for the coming week. The kids bickering over something inconsequential. The adults communicating silently through eye rolls and smiles.

It was the life I’d always wanted. The life I should have had.

As I blinked back tears, Merry bumped his cup reaching for another slice of pizza. It hit the table with a splash, and before the water could spread too far, I jumped out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box to grab the dishcloth hanging from the oven door handle. But when I spun around, ready to mop up the spill, Art shot me a questioning look, his arm darting out to right Merry’s cup as it started to tip.

I’d seen the cup fall and the water cascade over the table and into the platter of spaghetti in the center. I could still hear Viv’s outraged shriek about her wet clothing. But the cup was upright, and the table was dry. I shook my head, trying to reconcile the image in my mind and what was really in front of me, but only succeeded in giving myself a headache.

Art gave my hand a gentle squeeze that he accompanied with a worried glance when I sat back down with a thump, dropping the dishcloth next to my plate.

“You okay?” he whispered as I stared at my discarded pizza crusts for a beat before tearing my eyes away and smiling at him as reassuringly as possible.

“I’m fine,” I replied, picking up one of the crusts to nibble on. “Long day.”

His eyes dulled for a second, then brightened again when Merry asked him a question that I missed. Winking, he answered Merry, then turned to tease Viv about some internal family joke that flew right over my head and made me want to howl.

Watching him joke and play with his kids with such ease made my heart ache in a way I could barely articulate. I could picture him so easily holding my hand as I gave birth to our child, or wrapped around me as we gazed adoringly at our baby. A dozen more images sped through my head like a grainy film montage of the life we could have had if we’d found each other earlier.

Grief over everything I’d missed out on, everything I’d been cheated out of, clawed at my throat. As normal and easy as this felt, I couldn’t afford to forget that these were not my kids, or that while I knew deep in my gut that something special was blossoming between Art and me, I still barely knew him. It would be so easy to let myself fall in love with their entire family unit, let their energy and chaos swallow me whole, but where would I be if things took a bad turn and I lost them all?

“Hey! Where’d you go?” Art whispered into my ear, taking my hand in his and gently bumping my shoulder with his own.

I shook my head to dislodge the dark cloud of bad memories setting up camp and pulled my lips into a semblance of a smile as I turned my head to meet his gaze.

“Nowhere. I’m right here.”

He frowned, hearing the lie in my words. “You can tell me anything, you know, right? You don’t have to pretend around me.” His light brown eyes bored into mine, and I somehow knew that the fire flickering deep in them was protective rather than angry. “I know it hasn’t always been the case, but this is a lot. I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a lot of feelings, honestly.”

I narrowed my eyes slightly as I studied his face. Even though he seemed to mean what he was saying, it wasn’t necessarily true, just that he believed it was. Jim had said the same thing a few times, only to get bent out of shape when I opened up.

How about you try remembering that he’s not that worthless wet rag you called a husband? Grandma said, her voice as dry as a Ritz cracker. I glanced surreptitiously around the room and found her perched on the kitchen counter, wearing a pair of pale-pink satin pajamas I did recognize. She’d kept them in her nightstand drawer her entire adult life, saving them for an important occasion.

Wish I’d known then what I know now, she cackled. Would have done a whole lot of things differently, I tell you. Speaking of which, how’s your gut doing?

Despite the earlier weirdness, my gut seemed to be happily digesting pizza, which I took as a sign that I could take Art at his word. Which would have been more helpful if I’d been able to make sense of my tangled mess of emotions. What was I supposed to say?

“I want to enjoy this, really, but for a long time it was all I wanted, and now that it’s kind of here, it has me all twisted up inside because I cannot let myself forget that it could all be gone tomorrow. I feel like we’re playing house, you and me and the kids, pretending that this is our happy little life, but yesterday morning we were barely speaking and your kids had no idea that I even existed, so that’s weird.

“Then there’s the fact that the extent of our intimacy has been exchanging a few kisses. We’ve never even seen each other’s underwear, let alone what’s inside, so pretending to be a happy little family unit feels like we’ve skipped some key moments. Maybe even a little like we’re tempting fate. But, hey, pizza!”

There was no way to know how he’d react to all that, and it wasn’t even half of what was running though my head.

Instead, I smiled at Art and said, “I’m fine. Really. I just need a moment to process, I think,” and got to my feet to clear the table.