“Gabe, honey, what are you talking about? We invited Esther and the kids here—”
“Go,” Esther said, waving her hand, as though this wasn’t the weirdest suggestion ever. “Be gone.”
“No, of course we’re not leaving our own house! Whatever it is, it can wait until after we’ve all had dinner—” Skye gave Gabe her best pointed look but was silenced by his stare.
“One hour. Skye? Get in the car, please.”
Skye looked at Esther, who had managed to maintain an impassive expression despite the awkwardness of the situation. “Go! We’re fine here. We’ve got hot dogs and burgers and television if we need it. Seriously, go.”
“Okay, I’m, uh, I’m just going to get changed,” Skye said, glancing down at her bathing suit.
Gabe motioned toward her cover-up. “Come on, we’re just going for a drive.”
“A drive?”
He didn’t answer. She shot a thank-you look to Esther, told Aurora they’d be right home, and followed Gabe to the driveway.
“Have you lost your mind?” she asked.
He got into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“I don’t even have shoes on!” Skye climbed into the passenger seat, searching his face the entire time. “Are you dying?”
Gabe put the car in drive. “No.”
“Is it your parents? My mom? Cancer?” She whispered the last word.
“No.”
His refusal to elaborate was unnerving. Then it hit her, so hard it nearly took her breath away.
“You’re having an affair. You’re leaving me.” As soon as she said the words, she knew it was true. Not that things had been bad lately, but there had been more tension since Isaac’s arrest. Sex happened less often. They bickered more. There wasn’t as much spontaneous laughter and fun.
“Skye?” He glanced at her, and for a moment she stopped breathing. “I mean this very nicely, but shut the fuck up.”
“So, you’re not having an affair? I need to hear you say it.”
“I’m not having an affair.”
“But I have this strange gut feeling,” she murmured. He’d found out about the credit card bills. That must be it.
“Your gut is full of shit.” He pulled into the parking lot of a little French café.
“They’re closed for Labor Day. Everywhere is.”
“We’re not here for the coffee.”
“Gabe, honey, what is it?” she asked, leaning forward, wondering if her life might be about to change forever.
He reached across the car and took her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Tell you what?” Skye asked, her stomach tight with tension. “Aren’t we here because you have to tell me something?”
“I’m so…” He cleared his throat. And then said nothing.
“What? Gabe, I’m going to die if you don’t tell me.”
“I want the baby,” he said. His voice was so quiet that Skye wasn’t sure what he said.
“The what? You want the baby?” It took saying the words herself before she finally understood. “Oh my god, you do? You want the baby? Are you sure?” She didn’t know when she started crying, but the tears were there, pouring down her cheeks.
“I do. Of course I do! It’s Aurora’s biological sibling! How in the world could I not want that for her? But…but…” His face registered a swift pain, like a sudden stomach cramp.
“But what?” she asked, feeling like she was on an emotional roller coaster. Terrified, then ecstatic, and terrified again.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me. Why I had to find out from Susan and not from you.”
Skye’s hand flew to her mouth. “Susan told you?”
“She emailed us both, a few minutes ago.”
Skye wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue from the cup holder. “I made a mistake.”
“No doubt,” Gabe said, not unkindly. “But why?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to adopt another child—you’ve always said one was the perfect number, and whenever we’ve talked about adopting another, or trying ourselves, or whatever, you always shut it down. So definitively. Always ‘Aurora is perfect and let’s not press our luck. Our family is complete.’ And then this happened…and I wanted it so badly, and I knew you didn’t—or I thought you didn’t.”
“But I do want the baby,” he said softly.
A fresh wave of tears came. “What changed?” Skye asked.
Gabe considered this. “I’ve never wanted two kids in general, and I do think Aurora is all we quote ‘need.’ But this baby isn’t any baby—he or she is Aurora’s brother or sister! I don’t think any of us planned on this—especially her biological mother—but I can’t fathom a world in which we don’t give our Aurora’s sibling a home…with her.”
“Yes!” Skye said, her voice breaking.
Gabe squeezed her hands. He looked her straight in the eyes. “We’re having a baby.”
Skye felt like she could barely breathe. “We’re having a baby.”
“Here, call Susan right now,” he said, handing Skye his phone. “The email with her phone number is already up.”
“Oh my god. Now? I can’t believe this is happening.” Skye clicked on the number and watched it dial. It rang four times before going to voicemail. Skye switched the phone to speaker.
“Hello. You’ve reached Susan at Forever Families. I’m sorry I missed your call. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911. Otherwise, please leave me a message with your phone number, and I will call you back at my earliest convenience. Thanks, and have a great day!”
The machine beeped to begin recording. Skye opened her mouth but couldn’t say a single word. Gabe looked at her encouragingly, and she tried again, but she couldn’t find the words.
He slid the phone from her hands and held the microphone to his mouth. “Susan? This is Gabe Lee. I know this is a strange thing to leave on voicemail, and of course there’s lots more to discuss, but Skye and I are one thousand percent in. Can you call me back as soon as you get this? Thanks.” He hit End and grinned at Skye. “Congratulations, Mama.”
She smiled back at him. The tears still flowed, but her voice had returned. “I love you.”
29
At Least the Ladies Are Loyal
“Good morning, girls,” Peyton said. At least the chickens were happy to see her. “Can I get anyone some breakfast?”
The loudest one, a redhead with significant girth, crowed back. When Peyton glanced in her direction, she flapped her wings and crowed again.
“I hear you, Firetruck. I’m moving as fast as I can.” Firetruck was the only hen Peyton had named, since she was the only one with enough personality to deserve one.
Peyton walked slowly back to the house, her legs tired and heavy, her boots wet with the early morning dew. She hadn’t slept more than a couple consecutive hours in the week since The Dinner. It didn’t help that she refused to take so much as a Tylenol PM because she wanted to be clearheaded and available should Max or Isaac—who’d been sleeping in the guest room—feel a sudden, middle-of-the-night urge to talk. So far, they’d only spoken to each other, and not to her, but she was determined to stay vigilant.
The fridge drawers in the pantry were stocked with neatly labeled snap-lock containers. Glass, of course, to ensure the fowl didn’t ingest even trace bits of BPA. Yesterday, when the chicken chef had dropped off a full week’s supply of home-cooked food, Max observed that the woman bore an uncanny resemblance to Carole Baskin from Tiger King. Peyton laughed aloud, not only because Max’s assessment was dead-on, but because she desperately hoped the joke was an olive branch from her daughter. It wasn’t. When Peyton asked Max if she thought Carole had murdered her husband and fed his body to the cats, Max raised her eyebrows an
d walked out of the room.
Surprised to find she was humming as she worked, Peyton pulled the top two containers from the fridge, grabbed a wooden spoon, and headed back to the coop. The clucking increased, led as usual by Firetruck, and Peyton worked as quickly as she could.
“Here, sweet girls,” she said, spooning out the vegetarian risotto into the coop’s food dishes. It looked and smelled delicious enough to serve to her own family, were it not six in the morning, and the hens went wild. “Just wait! Wait until you’ve had these.” Peyton plunged her hand into the second container and sprinkled a mixture of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and shelled hemp on top of the risotto. “Luckiest fucking fowl on God’s green earth,” she murmured.
When the food dishes were full, Peyton adjusted their AC and wiped down the French doors. It took six one-liter bottles of water to top off their water dishes, but their clucked appreciation made it worthwhile. She would miss them when the farmer took them back next week. It was inconceivable summer was already over, that in a few short days they’d head back into the city. Isaac was due to start his twenty-two-day sentence, and the prospect loomed above them all like a death cloud. Every time her mind landed on the thought of Isaac in jail, her rib cage felt like it was cinching her lungs. How was she going to cope with the actuality of jail when she couldn’t bear so much as a passing thought?
The screen door banged. Peyton turned around and was shocked to see Max walking toward her in a nightshirt, an inscrutable expression on her face.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” Peyton searched Max’s eyes.
But Max only held out her open hand, palm forward: Stop.
Peyton froze.
Max folded her arms over her chest, clearly feeling the morning chill, and it was all Peyton could do not to hand over her own sweatshirt. But something told her she shouldn’t move or speak or breathe.
“Please listen. Without interrupting,” Max said as Peyton furiously nodded. It felt almost surreal to have Max looking at her, acknowledging her, wanting to tell her something—in the most wonderful way—and Peyton wasn’t going to screw it up.
“I’m angry,” Max said quietly. And then, more loudly, “Not just angry. Infuriated.”
Peyton nodded again, but Max raised one eyebrow in a warning, and she immediately stopped. She would stand there silently and immobile, forever if she had to, if that’s what Max needed.
“I really could kill you right now. For what you did—for what you took from me. I’m hurt, too.”
Instinctively, Peyton opened her mouth to apologize, but she remembered and quickly shut it.
“Hurt that you had so little faith in me. When I think of how stupid or incompetent you must think I am…” Max’s voice caught in her throat, and, as though their two bodies were connected by a physical tether, Peyton’s throat also tightened. “Not even to mention how stupid or incompetent you were! A journalist! How could you not know better?”
Peyton opened her mouth, but Max held up her hand.
“But.” She let this word linger, a life preserver in an ocean of misery. Max took a deep breath. “But I have thought about it a lot, and talked with Dad about it, and written in my journal about it, and talked to Brynn. And while I’m not ready yet to forgive—and I will certainly never, ever forget—I do understand that somehow, somewhere, in some totally messed-up alternate reality, you were operating from a place of love. And besides, I’m so freaking tired of being angry. I’ve been angry for weeks, and it feels like years. I want it to stop.”
Peyton exhaled so forcibly that she felt light-headed. When had this person standing before her—probably the human being she knew best in the world—grown so wise? So mature? When had she shed her girlhood and assumed the role of a full-grown, thinking and feeling woman?
Stepping toward Max, Peyton could almost feel her daughter’s warmth, the softness of her nightshirt, that distinctive Max scent that no shampoo or moisturizer could ever mask, the smell Peyton would recognize anywhere.
Max stepped back. “I’m not finished. I want you to know that I’m open to the idea of working on our relationship, so long as you are willing to work on all the parts of it.”
“Of course,” Peyton said, nodding.
“Do you even know what I mean?”
Peyton looked down at her mud-splattered boots. “Not really.”
“See?” Max hugged herself even tighter. “This is part of the problem.”
“Tell me!” Peyton urged. Then, lowering her voice, she said, “I want nothing more than to be close to you. Please, tell me how. Be patient with me. I will try my hardest to do whatever you ask.”
Max appeared to consider this. “You need to butt out of my life for the foreseeable future.”
It felt like a kick in the stomach, but Peyton worked to keep her expression neutral.
“I mean, like, be there as a supportive mom and not as a controlling, over-involved one,” Max said. “Try to understand that I’m not you. I don’t care about clothes and makeup. I want to go to college to learn more about the subjects I love, not because a bunch of other people will be so impressed by the school’s reputation or whatever it is about Ivy League schools that makes you all go so fucking crazy.”
“I hear you,” she said. “I think I finally get that one loud and clear.”
“I want to go to film school,” Max said. “And I want you to be there for me, cheering me on, telling me I can do it, and not the mom who makes it very clear through every word and action that you think art schools are for losers or misfits or other kinds of weirdos who can’t get into ‘real schools.’ ”
“I don’t think that!” Peyton said.
“You actually said all those things last year when I was applying to colleges!”
“Yes, but…” Peyton thought back to the previous summer, when she and Max and Isaac had sat around their kitchen table, debating the merits and pitfalls of at least a dozen schools. She wasn’t proud of it—and she didn’t specifically remember saying it—but she had to admit that Max was probably right. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
For the first time since she’d walked outside, Max’s face softened.
Peyton felt the knot in her throat tighten even more. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “For everything. For all of it. I’ve failed at the one job I have as a mom besides keeping you safe and fed—making you feel loved for the person you are.”
Max shook her head, and it was obvious she agreed.
“I hear you. Probably for the first time in way too long. I hear what you’re saying, and I’m going to change,” Peyton said, looking into Max’s eyes.
Max offered the smallest smile and Peyton felt an involuntary rush of tears. “You better,” Max said. “Because you’ve been a complete fucking psycho, and I want my mom back.”
“Don’t you think ‘complete fucking psycho’ is a bit harsh?” Peyton asked, with a tearful laugh.
Isaac’s voice rang out, surprising them both. “No, I’d say that’s pretty accurate.” He was standing on the porch in a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt, a cup of coffee in hand.
Peyton’s and Isaac’s eyes met. She could tell, in the way that comes from being married to someone for many years, that something in him had softened.
She gave him a look. Thank you.
“Okay,” Peyton said, wiping underneath her eyes, trying not to think about the fact that her hands were covered in chicken germs. “Well, this complete fucking psycho has a proposal. What do you both say about going to the diner for breakfast? I haven’t had a pancake in decades.”
Max’s eyes darted to her father, who nodded. “Chocolate chip pancakes,” Isaac countered.
“With a side of extra-crispy bacon,” Max added.
“Make that two sides, and you have a deal,” Peyton said.
Isaac looked first at Max and
then at Peyton. He reached a hand to each of them. “Let’s all go together.”
* * *
—
Was it the early September heat or just nerves? Peyton wondered, as she jogged toward Skye’s house, still smiling from the breakfast with Max and Isaac. For the first time in as long as she could remember, the three of them had laughed. There was still a long way to go, she understood, but she finally felt like she could breathe again.
Aurora answered the door with a huge grin. “Aunt Peyton!”
“Hi, sweetheart. I love, love, love your hair. Look at how gorgeous you are!” Peyton said, following her niece inside. Aurora’s usual braids were gone, and her hair was a wild, glorious afro.
“Can Max go swimming with me today? Please?” Aurora begged, yanking on Peyton’s arm. “Pretty pretty please?”
Peyton followed Aurora into the kitchen, where Gabe sipped coffee.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s your day going?”
“Please can we swim? Pretty please?” Aurora hopped up and down.
“You’ll have to ask Max, sweetheart. I think she’s working later tonight, but I’m not sure. How about I ask her when I go home?” Peyton asked.
Aurora nodded. Gabe closed the copy of Rosie Revere, Engineer and pushed it aside. “Aurora, why don’t you get changed into your suit? We can do the sprinklers together while we wait to hear from Max.”
Without another word, Aurora bounded out of the kitchen.
“How’s it going here?” Peyton asked, glancing around the kitchen, which looked, unusually, like a disaster area.
“Just great,” Gabe said. “Skye has taken to her bed with what she’s calling a cold, so I’m trying to pick up the slack. We’ve done a lot of reading. Some Magna-Tiles. And we started on her ‘All About Me’ poster.”
“I cut out a unicorn and a heart and a star from a magazine!” Aurora called from the stairs.
“Homework in second grade?” Peyton said.
There was quiet for a moment and then Gabe said, “If you want to see her, you’re welcome to go up.”
Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty Page 33
