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“What the fuck? You can’t give a baby away!” I glance at Henry to back me up, but as usual, his face is impassive. He’s paid far too much money to have an opinion on anything that my family does.
She shrugs. “I don’t care what you do with him. He’s your problem now.”
There’s no blood in my veins anymore. It’s all lava, hot and sticky, threatening to erupt. Despite all the crazy shit she’s pulled while she’s on drugs, I’ve always been able to convince myself that it wasn’t Katie acting this way. It was a chemical reaction to the medication she’d been putting in her body.
But this is different. She’s stone-cold sober, and she’s rejecting her son. She turns to walk away, and I grab her arm. I’m desperate to get through to her, to stop her from rejecting him. “This means you’re signing over your parental rights to me.”
I think the words are going to get through to her. I think they’ll make a difference. But the same dead look is in her eyes when she nods. “Let me know when you have the paperwork together.”
With those words, she melts into the crowd.
I stare after her for a long moment before I finally realize there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make her want my nephew. With a deep breath and a silent prayer that I can be what he needs, I unbuckle the car seat. My hands are shaking so I have to try it twice. Then I’m pulling little Ollie into my arms. “Hey, buddy. It looks like it’s you and me again.”
3
HALE
“So,you’ve seen my office and the gym. Now, this is the library,” I tell Ollie as we stand outside. He spent a month here after he was born, and we were constantly together. But I took that month off and stayed in the cabin.
The entire time she was here, Katie never ventured into town. She crashed at my home and let me wait on her hand and foot. Any time I tried to encourage her to go out and make friends or find a hobby to fill her time, she’d insist that she didn’t feel well and claim the stress wasn’t good for the baby.
Despite Katie’s behavior, the month that Ollie was born was the happiest one of my life. I’ve always loved this little boy. It amazes me that I have him back in my life. I wish the circumstances were different. I wish Katie could be a mom to him, but since she won’t be, he has me. I’ll always be the one in his corner.
Now, I wander through the stacks of books, talking to Ollie quietly before we come to the children’s section. I’ve never been to this part of the library before. The wooden train in the corner looks sturdy and has a bench seat designed so that parents and kids can read together. I settle there with Ollie in my arms.
I spent a week in Colorado, with Henry, working out the details of my new parental rights. When you have access to millions, it’s easy to send things through the system and get a judge to sign off on them. Ollie officially became mine yesterday.
I talked several times with Katie over the past week. I begged for her to accept her son. But in the end, she insisted she was done with him.
Somewhere during our conversations, she let it slip that she’s been keeping Ollie on antihistamines. She claims it’s because he has terrible allergies. I think she was keeping him asleep so that she could party whenever she wanted.
I’ve weaned him off the meds, but the poor guy is having a tough time of it. His nose constantly runs, and he doesn’t sleep for very long. Every time I look at him, he frowns at me. I’m pretty sure he blames me for how miserable he’s feeling.
The only time he seems to relax is when I’m walking around and talking to him, so I spent the day hiking my mountain. Eventually, I walked around town and showed him the sights. He’ll grow up here with me, so he should know what his home looks like.
Ollie starts to fuss because I’ve gone quiet.
“The thing about it is when the world stops making sense, you go back to the last place it did. For me, that place has always been the library.” I put my hand on his back. “But you won’t have to worry about that. You won’t have to hide in the library from the bullies like I did.”
No, my little Ollie will never be some boarding school kid who’s teased because he has seizures. He will be safe and protected. He’ll have a father in his corner that he can count on.
Ollie starts to whine again, and I rock forward. I’m learning that motion soothes his little body, and I’ll do anything to keep him happy. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way because I’m glad you’re here. I think…you’ve always been meant to be mine. But you definitely weren’t in the plan. I’m not sure what to make of the plan anymore.”
Up until this past week, I planned to ask out Ivy and make her fall madly in love with me. Then I’d put a ring on her finger and give her all the babies she could ever want. I’m not so sure how she’ll feel about me now. Ollie and I are a package deal. I’m not like my sister. I won’t ever turn my back on the boy.
As I’m thinking about Ivy, I hear a squeal, and a little blonde girl in the children’s section rushes toward Ivy. My breath catches in my throat when I see my woman. It’s been a week, but it feels like it’s been six months since I’ve seen her dazzling smile.
Ace and Grizz met up with me today when I showed Ollie around the gym. Grizz told me that Ivy was fired from her job at the dessert shop. She’s now unemployed, which is another problem I need to solve. I’m not sure how to do that. If I had my way, I’d marry Ivy on the spot and take care of her for the rest of our lives. I’m not sure that my stubborn, independent woman would go for that.
Ivy drops to her knees to talk with a little girl and doesn’t even mind it when a boy shoves a dinosaur book at her. She’s patient and kind with both of them. I know that she reads to the kids every week at the library, but I didn’t know what day.
From our place on the little wooden train, Ivy can’t see me or Ollie. It gives me the chance to observe her, and I relish the opportunity. I’ve never seen her in action with one of the story hours.
She settles with the children on a collection of beanbag chairs and flips open a book about a fire-breathing dragon. The little boy sits in her lap, and she smiles at him, ruffling his hair. Several more kids crowd around her, drawn to her soothing voice.
She takes her time with the story, making it come alive. She acts out the parts, giving voices to all of the characters and inviting the children to ask questions and participate. It’s less of a story hour and more like a theater production. By the time she’s done, I know one thing for certain: there’s no one sweeter in all of Courage County. No one that I would trust with Ollie the way I trust her. An idea forms in my head and the more I think about it, the more I know it’s the perfect solution.
* * *
