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I had no idea what she meant and clearly she knew something I didn’t, and wasn’t about to share it.
Madelyn still hadn’t moved from her position on the island and Daniela was starting to wiggle around in the playpen Hailey had set up in the dining room. Her little face stretched into a gummy grin when I leaned over the side and picked her up. She was an affectionate baby and rewarded me by leaning immediately into my neck when I cuddled her close, something that wrapped warm fingers around my heart. I’d fallen in love with this little girl the instant I saw her and already I knew which of us made the rules.
Daniela wasn’t a fussy baby, something that had surprised both of us. In fact, when she woke in the middle of the night for a feeding it was the sound of her rustling in her crib that woke us. By the time one of us showed up with a bottle she was always trying to sit up, waiting and smiling. It was a little unsettling sometimes, that she just sat there so patiently and was always pleased to see us. She was never angry or crying or inconsolable, though she always wanted to be picked up and cuddled, and neither one of us could get enough of that.
Cuddling Daniela against my shoulder, the two of us walked down the hallway and into the master bedroom.
Madelyn didn’t talk about things until she was good and ready, and she had to be relaxed before she opened up and started spilling words. So the baby and I leaned over the tub and closed the drain, flipped the handles and adjusted the water to the perfect temperature before dumping in some of the bath salts Kennedy had probably left.
Back in the kitchen, I set Daniela in her little bouncy seat and I rinsed out Madelyn’s cup. It smelled like paint thinner–she hadn’t gotten the good stuff–and it was clear she hadn’t been able to handle more than a few sips.
Steve had left a few bottles of wine in the rack on the counter and I grabbed one, pouring a generous portion into a stemless glass before I set it on the counter and gently pulled my wife up from her seat and into a hug. It was as much for me as it was for her, as holding her was comforting, and she buried her face in my neck and I felt something hot drip down the front of my shirt.
“Come on, baby,” I said gently. “Let’s help you relax a little.”
I looked over my shoulder at Daniela, who sat watching me from her seat and I said to her, “You hold the fort in here, little lady. I’ll be back to start dinner in just a minute.”
The animals clearly thought I was talking to them, because Lucy climbed up into Daniela’s seat with her and folded her small body into the space next to the baby.
Bailey took his protection duties very seriously and he circled the seat four times before deciding which position gave him the best vantage point, lying in front of her so he could keep an eye on all the exits.
I very nearly had to carry Madelyn down the hallway and she stood staring blankly at the bathtub.
“Can I help?” I asked, slipping one hand under her shirt to rest on her smooth stomach and she jumped, a tight expression on her face that she tried rather unconvincingly to turn into a smile. It told me that I was on thin ice, even if I didn’t understand why, and I removed my hand, backing away slowly after I set the glass of wine near the edge of the tub.
“Junior Beckman and I will get dinner going,” I said. “Just come on out whenever you’re ready.”
Madelyn didn’t say a word to me the rest of that night, and I didn’t push her even though it just about killed me. She’d been on two overnights in the past week and I knew something big was happening in the city, but she wouldn’t talk about it and I worried with the way she was acting that if she had to pull many more of them, she might never speak to me again. It was clear she was processing something difficult and I wondered what she could have possibly seen in an urban jungle that she hadn’t seen in a million worse ways in combat.
I was dead on my feet, but I gave Daniela her dinner and her bath, then took her to the bedroom where Madelyn had padded off right after dinner and put herself to bed, curled into a little ball, her back facing my side of the bed.
“Here she is, Mama,” I said quietly. “All fresh and sweet and ready for little baby dreams.”
Madelyn unfurled a little and rolled onto her back, and I slipped the baby beneath the sheet to rest on her chest. Both of us loved skin-to-skin contact with our sweet little girl, and most mornings Madelyn was up first to fetch Daniela from her crib and settle her into our bed with me, right on my chest.
I showered and got ready for bed, then I carried the sleeping baby back to her crib and kissed her sweet smelling head before tucking her in. How it was possible to love such a tiny thing so much was something I hadn’t yet come to fully understand, but in a short period of time she’d become the air I breathed, just like her mother.
Madelyn wasn’t sleeping when I crawled in behind her, and I scooted close to her back but didn’t try to touch her, concerned she hadn’t made any moves to touch me that night. It felt like she’d given me a glorious taste of everything and then pulled right back, retreating suddenly into a shell I hadn’t known existed.
I sighed quietly, said a prayer in my head and crossed myself, then fell into a troubled sleep.
17
Madelyn
“Oh,hiiiiii!”
The voice was high-pitched, falsely bright, and my stomach dropped to my toes, because I’d recognize that voice anywhere: Leia Batabor, or whatever her married name was now, the bringer of darkness and misery. I’d done so well to avoid her for decades. Why did the universe have to put her in front of me now, of all days?
“It was Maddy, right?”
My father was the only person on the face of the earth allowed to call me Maddy. Anyone else gotonewarning.
“Leia.” My voice was almost as flat as I felt inside as I turned to face her. “Not quite. It’s Madelyn.”
“Oh, right.” Her nose wrinkled up in a way I supposed she thought was cute and I wasn’t surprised to find she still had the face of a twelve-year-old girl, except that when her nose wrinkled nothing else moved. Botox, probably, or maybe something more extreme. My guess was that she had a plastic surgeon on the side. “VanBuren, right?”
“Beckman now, actually.” I felt a victorious grin tugging at the corners of my mouth, because she sure as fuck knew that name. She’d chased Adam and my brother until the day they left for the Army.
