Sidebarred

by Emma Chase

  pull her against me, kissing her temple. “I think that went well.”

  Chapter 5

  December

  By the first week in December, Chelsea’s sporting a small, firm baby bump. Her morning sickness has abated and she says she feels better than ever. Well enough to accept the extra work her boss has been sending her way at the museum—she’s been going in early and staying late whenever she can.

  She’s also slightly obsessed over what she eats—determined to stay away from anything processed or non-organic, but with some coaxing, she gives in to her craving for Double Stuf Oreos dunked in a glass of whole milk.

  Around the same time, I get a big case—that’s getting national media coverage. It’s a string of bank robberies, and despite my client’s alibi, the prosecutor has rock-solid DNA evidence on a ski mask that was worn during the crimes. It’s the kind of case I craved back in the day—a challenge. A gauntlet with the promise of legal glory at the finish line. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy digging into it, burying myself in motions and maneuvers to outsmart my opponent. It’s easy to do during the day, at the office, but when night creeps in and the sky turns black outside my window, the case feels more like a nuisance.

  Because I just want to go home. Pet my dog, see my kids, and screw my wife.

  One night, about a week before Christmas, I pack it in fairly early—about seven thirty. When I walk through the front door, Cousin It attacks my shoes, and the house smells of the fire burning in the den fireplace and warm gingerbread cookies. There’s loud laughs and shouting coming from the dining room, so I put my briefcase down and head in. The kids are all there around the table, and so are Stanton, Sofia, Presley, Samuel, Brent, and Kennedy.

  There’s bowls of white icing, and colorful candies, white-and-red-striped peppermint sparkles, scattered all over the table. And about two dozen rectangular pieces of brown cookie.

  “Honey, you’re home!” Brent greets me, then he sucks one of Kennedy’s icing-covered fingers into his mouth.

  Regan, Ronan, and Rosaleen attack me at once, talking at the same time, showing me what they’re doing. I can only make out every other word. Then Chelsea walks in, wearing a red-and-green apron and carrying a tray of more brown cookie rectangles.

  “Hey!” she says with excitement, putting the tray down and reaching up to peck my lips.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  She glances around the table. “I went overboard with the gingerbread. So instead of building a house, we’re building a town.”

  Stanton passes me a cold beer from the ice bucket on the end of the table. “Welcome to the party.”

  Two-year-old Samuel squeals as Sofia tickles him, murmuring something in Portuguese. Then he pops a candy in his mother’s mouth.

  “Check it out, Jake.” Rory motions to the half-constructed building in front of him. “Me and Brent are making the law firm. Becker, Mason, Santos, Shaw and McQuaid—has a pretty nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Kennedy answers before I can. “You should think about being a prosecutor, Rory. We have a great office building.”

  Brent scoffs. “Don’t listen to her—she lies. Her office is shit small.”

  Kennedy plops a glob of icing on Brent’s nose.

  But he’s not bothered at all. “Now you have to lick that off, Wife.”

  She adds a red M&M to the center of the icing. Taking the cue, Regan screeches, “Food fight!”

  “Noooo!” Chelsea laughs. “No food fighting.”

  Brent shakes his head at his wife. “You’re such a bad example.”

  Kennedy just sticks her tongue out at him.

  “Presley and I are making the capitol building,” Raymond tells me from the other end of the table. “Together.”

  Then, behind the seventeen-year-old’s back, he gives me a thumbs-up and wiggles his eyebrows. That crush is still going strong.

  Chelsea takes my hand. “Come on, grab a chair. What should we make?”

  Sometimes I look around and wonder, how the hell did I get here? How is this my life? It all changed so fast. But then I stop wondering. Because how this life became mine doesn’t really fucking matter. I’m just crazy-happy that it is.

  “Let’s make our house,” I tell Chelsea.

  Her eyes flare. “Good one. Let’s do it.”

  ****

  On Christmas morning the kids converge on our bedroom at 4 a.m.—it’s the one day they’re allowed to come in without knocking. When wrapping paper covers every inch of the floor, and the dog and the kids are busy figuring out their new toys, I set Chelsea up with a cup of tea on the couch, while Rosaleen and I start making enough strawberry-and-blueberry pancakes to feed an army.

  Rosaleen whisks a huge bowl of batter while I slice the strawberries.

  And out of nowhere, she asks, “Do you think you’ll like the baby more than us?”

  The knife in my hand freezes. “What?”

  She shrugs, blond curls jiggling. “We’ll understand if you do.”

  It takes me a second to come up with an adequate response.

  “You know how in school they tell you, ‘there are no stupid questions’?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re lying to you.”

  She snorts but doesn’t meet my eyes, focusing hard on her bowl.

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Well . . . the baby will be yours. Yours and Aunt Chelsea’s.”

  I put the knife on the counter, wipe my hands, and crouch down to her eye level. When those sweet blue eyes are on me, I give her the firm, irrefutable truth.

  “You are mine. Mine and Aunt Chelsea’s. Never doubt that.”

  The words sink in . . . and then, slowly, she smiles. And her grin is brighter than all the Christmas lights on this street put together.

  “Okay.”

  I nod and stand up. “Now let’s get these pancakes made before your brothers start eating the tree.”

  Chapter 6

  January

  After a relatively quiet New Year’s, the kids head back to school. Being home with them over the break, I noticed Raymond was really quiet. Too quiet.

  So, one day, when Chelsea’s boss calls her in early to the museum, and I’m in charge of getting them on the bus, I hold Rory back at the front door.

  “What’s up with him?”

  Rory follows my gaze toward his twin brother’s back. Then he shrugs. “Raymond worries.”

  This isn’t news to me. Like many intelligent children, Raymond has anxieties: global warming, droughts, nuclear war—if there’s a possibility of worldwide catastrophe, Raymond’s shitting a brick about it.

  “What’s he worried about these days? Specifically.”

  Rory’s gaze turns cautious, reminding me of a witness on the stand. “I can’t tell you. It’s a brother-code kind of thing. But . . . Raymond doesn’t have a password on his laptop. If I was a smart guy—that’s where I’d look to find out what’s going on.”

  Then he heads down the driveway. “Later, Jake.”

  “Yeah, have a good day, kid.”

  I wait in the front until they all get on the bus. Then I head straight to Rory and Raymond’s room. They’re twins, but from the looks of their room, you wouldn’t think they were even related. The top bunk—Raymond’s—is neatly made with hospital corners; the bottom is a ball of blankets, crushed pillows, and mangled sheets. One desk is a disaster area covered in papers, video-game controllers, empty soda cans. The other desk is just-dusted shiny and clean—save for the closed silver MacBook Pro laptop sitting dead center.

  I’m sure some parents would feel guilty about invading their kid’s private space, but I’m not one of them. Kids can have privacy when they move out.

  I fire up the laptop and open Raymond’s recent search history. What I read makes my stomach hit the floor.

  “Shit.”

  ****

  That afternoon, I come home early so I can talk to Raymond before
he slides any deeper into his black hole of anxiety. Chelsea is pleasantly surprised. I get a nice, wet kiss when I walk into the kitchen—with tongue. Her hands comb over my shoulders, and her eyes are shiny and teasing. “Wow, I almost don’t recognize you in the daylight.”

  I place my palm on her protruding belly and rub it hello. “I’m the guy who knocked you up—in case you weren’t sure.”

  She smiles against my lips when I pull her in for another kiss.

  Ronan abandons his crayons on the kitchen table and runs into the living room, squealing, “Regan, give me my turn on the Wii or I’m gonna knock you up!”

  Why do kids only hear the things you don’t want them to? Every fucking time.

  Chelsea hides her face against my chest. “That phrase is going to go over well in kindergarten tomorrow.”

  My hand glides down her back. “I’ll talk to him. But first I want to talk to Raymond—where is he?”

  “He’s in the back, shooting hoops. Anything I should know about?”

  Worries are contagious—they spread from one person to another like a virus. That’s the last thing she needs right now.

  “No—it’s a guy thing.”

  She pauses, reading my face—then shrugs. “Okay. Have fun with that.”

  I head out the back French doors and walk down the path to join Raymond on the blacktop, where he dribbles a basketball.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” I hold up my hands and he passes me the ball. I bounce it twice, then smoothly shoot it through the hoop.

  “What’s up?” I ask him as he retrieves the ball.

  He shoots, misses. “Nothing.”

  Raymond shoots again, and I catch the ball after it falls through the net. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

  “Yeah, I know,” he answers automatically.

  “About anything. Nothing you say would ever change what I think of you. Understand?”

  During my years as a pissed-off, defensive little punk, the Judge probably said those same words to me a dozen times. My mother—probably a hundred. But I never got it.

  Now I do.

  Because there really is nothing any of these kids could ever say or do—no outrage too great, no mistake too stupid—that would make me stop loving them with every fiber of my being.

  Raymond answers cautiously, his blue eyes squinting behind his round, black-wire frames. “You’re being really weird, Jake.”

  “I saw the search history on your computer, Raymond.”

  I pass the ball to him quickly. He catches it with two hands and stares at me.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.” I lift my chin toward the bench. “Sit down.”

  Raymond sits down on the bench, the ball in his lap, watching me as I take up the rest of the bench beside him. “You looked on my computer?”

  I nod. “Feel free to be indignant about that later, but right now, I want to talk about the things you’re looking up—why you’re so anxious, not sleeping.” I lean over, bracing my elbows on my spread knees. “What’s going on with you, buddy?”

  His throat ripples as he swallows. Then he looks away and his voice is hushed, like he’s afraid to say the words too loudly. “Did you know, the number one cause of death for pregnant women is murder?”

  I do know that. Just one of the fun fucking facts criminal defense attorneys get to know. A woman is never more vulnerable—in every conceivable way—than when she’s carrying a child.

  Raymond doesn’t wait for me to answer. “But one thousand ninety-five women died last year—in childbirth. Healthy women. And that’s not counting the thousands who died from pregnancy-related complications.”

  “Raymond—”

  “Diabetes, hypertension, blood clots—all kinds of things can go wrong.”

  “Raymond—”

  “Placenta abruption, infection, hemorrhaging—a human being can bleed out in under one hundred and twenty seconds. Sometimes—”

  “Raymond, stop.” My voice snaps the air, like the crack of a whip.

  He blinks at me, his pale lips going still. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “None of those things are going to happen to your aunt.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’m not going to let them happen.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “You can’t protect her from it.”

  “Yes, I fucking can.”

  Raymond shoots to his feet. “No, you can’t! If you want to lie to the other kids so they’re not scared, go ahead—but don’t lie to me. I know better. And so do you.”

  He breathes hard, looking at me like he can read my thoughts, see my deepest fears. I scrub my hand down my face, glance to the spot beside me, and say, “Sit.”

  After he’s settled back on the bench, I force confidence into my voice. Because optimism isn’t one of my better traits. But I have to say something.

  “There are dangers in pregnancy—yes—but obsessing over statistics and every freak possibility isn’t going to help anything. You have to think positively.”

  He stares down at the blacktop between his feet, and his voice falls even softer. Monotone.

  “The night my parents got into the accident, we were with a babysitter. She was in college, I think—one of my dad’s interns. She didn’t tell us they were . . . gone. Only that they’d been in a car accident, that Aunt Chelsea was on her way. She said we should think good thoughts, and pray.” He looks up at me with shiny eyes, drowning with remembered grief. “So I did. I prayed really hard, Jake.” His voice breaks, choking on the words. “It didn’t help.”

  Raymond turns away as his face crumples. Because he’s thirteen years old—and boys aren’t supposed to cry. But I wrap my arm around him, pull him tight against me.

  Because as far as I’m concerned, he can cry all he fucking wants.

  His shoulders shudder and his face presses against my shirt. I rest my lips on his dark hair—which smells like grass and still-childish sweat. And my heart breaks for him, because there’s nothing I can say. No words to make this better. It’s just something he has to feel. Go through.

  All I can do is hold on to him.

  When the worst of it seems to pass, when his shaking turns to sniffling, I crouch down in front of him, my hands on his bony knees. “Raymond, sometimes, in life, brutal, unfair things happen to us. You don’t need me to tell you that. But there’s a lot of good, too. Unexpected, beautiful good. And if you spend all your time worrying about the bad stuff, you might miss out on enjoying all the amazing things. I don’t want that for you—your parents wouldn’t want that for you, either.”

  He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Are you scared? For Aunt Chelsea?”

  I tilt my head. “Well, I am now. Thanks for that.”

  He snorts—a wet, clogged sound—because he knows I’m teasing.

  But, then, I realize I’m not.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I get scared.”

  “What do you do when that happens?”

  I blow out a breath. “I focus on the things I can change, on the things I can do to make a difference. I mean, you have to know that your aunt is young and she has the best doctors—so the odds that this will happen without a single problem are really good.”

  He nods. “Yeah, I know that.”

  I squeeze his leg. “Then here’s what we’re going to do—you and me together. We’ll take care of her, make sure she rests and eats right, and we’ll think about how nuts and awesome it’s going to be to have a baby in the house again.”

  That prompts a small smile.

  “And when you get scared, when those dark worries creep up on you, you don’t look at your computer in the middle of the night. You bring those worries to me, okay? Because you’re not alone, Raymond. We’ll talk about it and figure things out together. Can you do that for me?”

  Raymond takes his glasses off, dries them on his T-shirt, then slides them back on.

  “Yeah, Jake, I can do that.”

&n
bsp; “Thanks, buddy.”

  I give his head another hug as I stand—smacking him on the back.

  “Let’s head inside for dinner.”

  Raymond peers out into the backyard. “I’m gonna stay out here for a few minutes if that’s okay?”

  “Sure. Totally okay.”

  I walk back toward the house but only make it a few steps before Raymond calls my name. When I turn around, he says, “You know, Jake, my dad was a really great dad.”

  I smile. “I know. I can tell by how you guys are turning out.”

  Raymond thinks for a moment, choosing his words. “You’re pretty great at the dad stuff, too.”

  Kids are incredible—their insight, their capacity to adapt and accept, grow and love. They’re powerful, too. We’d all be in some seriously deep shit if they ever realized just how much power they have over us. Because the warm, tingling, insanely proud, totally devoted feeling that spreads through me—it’s indescribable. And Raymond did that. He gave me that.

  I clear my throat. “Thanks, Raymond. That . . . means a lot.”

  He nods. And then goes back to playing basketball.

  And I head into the house to kiss my wife again, and help take care of the other minions.

  ****

  Later that night, after homework is done, the dishes are clean, and the kids are all tucked in their beds, I sit alone at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch and a half-empty glass in front of me. Chelsea walks in, her hair pinned up from her bath, dressed in cotton, pastel-pink pajamas. Her steps slow when she sees me. And I feel her eyes drift to the bottle, then back to me.

  She knows me, inside and out—knows I’m not a drinker. Unless there’s a reason. So she pulls out a chair and quietly sits down. The crystal-blue eyes that own my dreams, hold me in their grasp.

  “What’s going on, Jake?”

  I sip the scotch, then watch the amber liquid bob when I set the glass back down on the table. My voice comes out hushed but certain. “I would pick you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Finally, I look up at her, and I know my face is clouded with guilt. “In that scenario that always plays out on TV shows, when the doctors tell the father he has to choose between the life of the baby or the life of the mother . . . I would pick you.”

  Her head tilts to the side and her voice is so soft. “I would want you to pick the baby.”

  “I know. I know that.” I stare into her eyes. “But I would still pick you.”