Keeping Claudia (Toby & Claudia Book 2)

by Suzanne McKenna Link

  “No,” his clipped reply was pretty much what I expected. We sat quietly for several miles into the ride until he said, “That’s why I can’t have a kid.”

  “Because you worried?”

  “I didn’t just worry. I lost it.”

  “Listen, no one becomes a parent automatically knowing exactly how to do it. There’s probably some who it comes naturally to, but most of us learn through trial and error. Yeah, maybe you overreacted, but you were scared you’d lost something precious to you, something irreplaceable. Personally, I don’t think your response was all that bad. If you’d gotten out of control, I would’ve intervened and stopped you before you went off the deep end.”

  He quirked a brow at me. “How would you’ve stopped me?”

  “Karate chop, power kick, maybe a body slam. Whatever it took.” I flicked my hair over my shoulder and smiled. “You can be tough, Faye, but I’m not afraid of you.”

  When he laughed, a little piece of me melted inside. I didn’t want the day to end.

  Chapter 33 • Toby

  Dylan woke up hungry when we neared Sayville, and we stopped for hamburgers.

  Eating out with a half pint was chaotic and messy—spilt milk on the table, fries on the floor—but Claudia didn’t seem to mind. She’d been patient as a saint with Dylan the whole day, but as we finished up dinner, she grew noticeably quieter.

  It was Dylan who first saw her crying.

  “Corda is sad.” My nephew pressed his little body onto her lap, his pudgy little fingers stroking her wet cheek.

  “I’m okay. I had so much fun, and I’m sad the day is over,” she whispered, stroking his hair like she’d used to do mine, a half smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

  I paid the bill, refusing to take the money Claudia pushed my way, and we walked to the car. After I strapped Dylan in his car seat, I caught her arm.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “This whole day, watching you with Dylan together—I can’t stop thinking what it could’ve been like for you, me, and Bella—” her voice choked off.

  “Bella?”

  “Bella, the Italian word for beautiful.” Her eyes dilated with the flush of her cheeks. “That’s what I called our baby because I was sure she was a girl—a beautiful girl. But she wasn’t mine to keep, and neither is any of this.” Her voice broke, and something inside me broke with it.

  “Come here,” I said, tugging her roughly to me.

  She resisted at first, but as my arms tightened around her, her shoulders went limp. She sobbed openly into my jacket. I shushed her, swishing little circles over her back and rocking her until Dylan wiggled and whined restlessly in his seat.

  “We should get him home.” She pulled away from me, and we both mechanically took our places in the Jeep for the short ride home.

  Her words put me at a loss that quickly tipped into anger. “You never talked about it—the miscarriage—or Bella, at least, not to me.”

  “How could I? You were so above it. Relieved really,” she said, shaking her head. “I haven’t talked about it to anyone. I can’t.”

  I pulled up in front of the house, my hands still gripping the steering wheel. I didn’t know what to say and stayed silent.

  She stared out the front window, miles away. “I know I said I didn’t want kids because they’d mess up just about everything we planned, but being pregnant changed me. Suddenly, I understood the appeal of marriage and family. It’s silly, but I dreamed of you, me, and Bella living happily ever after. I wanted her, Toby. I wanted Bella more than I can explain.”

  The air got sucked from the car.

  “I didn’t realize you felt like that.” I wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but it didn’t feel like it would be enough, like anything I could do would ever be enough. “I was too freaked out to pay attention. I wasn’t ready.”

  She bridged the distance, laying her hand on mine. “I know.”

  Out of words at the same time, we both looked into the backseat at Dylan. He was busy playing with a couple of dinosaur figures.

  “You should get him inside, and I should get home and see how my father fared,” she said, but neither of us moved.

  “That whale made it out to the open sea,” I said.

  “Our whale?” She peeked up at me.

  Our whale.

  “Yeah, someone spotted it passing through the inlet. Months ago. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It makes me feel better knowing it got out okay.”

  “Yes, despite getting lost, it found its way back. It's nice to hear of a happy ending,” she said wistfully.

  I struggled to find words, something to let her know that now that I was aware she wasn’t alone. I dug under the collar of my shirt and unclasped my gold chain. “Here,” I said, my knuckles brushing her warm skin as I secured it around her neck.

  She lifted the silver oval pendant, staring at it in surprise. “Your St. Jude necklace?”

  “It’s been three years since you gave that to me. Told me St. Jude was the patron saint of lost hope. You wanted to encourage me to think forward and not let setbacks undermine me. Every time I saw it, felt it around my neck, I remembered to let myself hope.” My words felt heavy and thick in my throat. “I think maybe you need it now to remind you to have hope for—” A baby. A family. A future that didn’t include me. “—for what you really want, to know that whatever is in your heart is possible.”

  Caressing the silver metal with her fingertips, she lifted her shimmery blue eyes to me. “Thank you. I promise to give it back.”

  “Whenever. No rush.” I waved it off like it was no big deal. “I’m probably not the first person you’d think of, but if you need to talk, I’ll listen.”

  Her hand covered mine and gave a gentle squeeze.

  I gave her a tight smile before nodding at Dylan. “Felicia’s picking the little man up late tonight, but I have to get him washed and into his pj’s.”

  We parted ways out front of my house. It’d been a good day despite how much I was against it at first. It was tricky to navigate being around Claudia, to keep her at an arm’s length when all I wanted to do was pull her close.

  I got the little guy into a bath, and he could barely stand while I helped him into his dinosaur pajamas. I shut off the lights in Julia’s room and lay beside him on the bed, watching his pint-sized chest rise and fall with his breaths.

  I liked how it felt when I picked up my nephew and he latched onto my neck, how he held my hand and depended on me to take care of him. The way I felt about this kid was a powerful thing. I would protect him at any cost. I couldn’t imagine that feeling being any bigger. I reached across to him and stroked his hair, down to his warm, baby-soft cheek. That gelatinous little sea creature I’d seen on the screen of Claudia’s computer on Christmas Eve, the one I’d made fun of, would’ve grown into a little person like this.

  If I loved Dylan this fiercely, how would it be with my own? A tightness wedged in my chest, and I flounced back onto a pillow and stared into the darkness, imagining Claudia stroking a round, swollen belly, a baby equal parts of both of us.

  We were both paralyzed with uncertainty when we’d found out she was pregnant, but then she stepped up her game, resolving to make the best of the bad situation. I, on the other hand, had been rushed, scattered, fighting with her dad, and terrified at the thought of being stuffed into a role that would never fit me.

  Remaining kid-free seemed the best way around a repeat of the abuse I’d grown up with, but earlier, when Claudia had witnessed me lose my cool with Dylan, she hadn’t seemed overly concerned by it. Whereas my mother fell to her knees in prayer and cried whenever my father went on a rampage. My mother and Claudia were both kind-hearted, spiritual women, but those were the only traits they shared. Claudia was tough, and I was convinced she wouldn’t have caved in under the same situations that reduced my mother to a reclusive, grieving widow. Claudia would act—a karate kick or a body slam. I smiled as I recalled our conversation. Eve
r since the day Claudia walked into my house to care for my mother, she challenged me to be better, to act with thought and purpose. She walked a straight and narrow path, painstakingly erring on the safe side—not the most exciting way to travel through life, but I was learning there was comfort to be found in the expected. There was something freeing within those perimeters. I was an idiot for ever doubting that raising a kid with her wouldn’t work out. She’d never allow me to botch up the job. Not on her watch.

  She’d been pregnant such a short time I figured she’d taken the miscarriage in stride. I thought about the way she cried because she’d seen me acting dad-like with Dylan, feeding him, playing with him, and worrying about his safety. Was it possible that she already felt for that incomplete baby what I felt for Dylan? She’d said she wanted the baby, went so far as to name it. Bella. She hadn’t been trying to be stoic like I’d thought. She’d been ready. After the miscarriage, when I’d been relieved and wanted to concentrate on getting back to it being just about us, she had been stuck, lost in her grief.

  An ugly, shameful feeling crawled up and took residence inside my ribcage. Looking at myself from a different perspective, I couldn’t blame her for bailing on me. No one in their right mind would commit to such an obviously insensitive, blind, stupidly selfish fuck up. Rolling over, I tucked Dylan into my side and pressed my nose to the top of his head. He smelt of the baby shampoo and powder Felicia had packed in the little dinosaur bag. As his little kid scent tickled my throat, I was struck with the loss. Emotion clogged my nose and filled my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered into the still air of the bedroom, hoping my apology found the right ears.

  * * * *

  I’d brought home empty cardboard boxes from work, and early Saturday after finishing a small side job at one of Abe Bernbaum’s friend’s houses, I started packing up my house.

  The basement needed to be tackled. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but the realtor said it would look better to potential buyers if the house weren’t so cluttered so I’d set my mind to getting it done. I marked the boxes with permanent marker, giving each of them one of three labels: Donate, Move, or Throw Out. I had a lot of stuff to go through and only about a third of it mine. The rest belonged to family members who were no longer alive or were in jail indefinitely.

  The whole workweek went by, and I hadn’t heard from Claudia. It wasn’t like I expected her to call or that there was even a reason for her to call me, but after Felicia had picked up Dylan, I was alone with my thoughts. I thought about calling her countless times.

  She’d been closed mouth about her and Berger, which told me there was something between them. There was a real chance she’d follow him to Boston. When Claudia was away at college, it appeared El Capitán had reformed his controlling ways, but since the accident, he’d returned to those old habits. She was right; he had changed since the shooting. She was too busy being the perfect daughter and catering to him to see how he was rebuilding his fortress with her inside. While I hated that she was leaving, I was proud of her for not letting her father hold her back.

  With her leaving, it’d really be over between us. It was better that way. If she stayed, in a town as small as Sayville, we would continue to cross paths. It would be torture to be repeatedly tempted by something I wanted but knew I could never have. If it wasn’t Berger, it would be another guy. She was gorgeous, smart, and kind. It wouldn’t be long before someone picked up where I’d left off. She’d look at him as she once had me. I couldn’t be a witness to that. If not fed, would the craving eventually fade away, I wondered, or would I be forever haunted by what I couldn’t have?

  In the past, after a bad breakup or any sudden, unwanted shift in my world, I’d retaliate by doing something masochistic to validate my worthlessness. However I wasn’t going to let this situation send me spiraling out of control. I’d worked too hard to get to where I was, and I was going to keep moving towards my goal.

  It didn’t matter that I was the only one who would see it.

  I cranked up my music and attacked the basement with vengeance. It helped. A little.

  I was covered in a layer of sweat and dust when my cell rang, the notes of "Your Song" decipherable even over the blasting rock beats of the Bluetooth speaker. I knocked the volume off and answered, my heart thumping in my chest.

  “Hey,” she said, and in that one simple word, I could feel her smile. “I don’t know if you’re taking on any more side jobs, but Sterling is looking for someone to redesign a storage room in our office. It’s nothing fancy, but I wanted to offer it to you first.”

  “As long as I can do it on a weekend, I’m definitely interested.”

  “That can be arranged. When do you want to come in to look at it?” she asked.

  “I can be there in a little while.” Christ, I sounded too eager.

  “Great! See you soon.” She sounded excited, too, but I suspected I was reading into it.

  I glanced down at my grimy clothes. Shower, I thought, and winged it up the stairs two at a time.

  Getting work with commercial industry was a major plus and could potentially lead to more business. I needed the extra dough. Julia’s insurance money was all gone, and with the home improvements and upgrades, until the house sold, money was going out faster than I could bring it in.

  On the drive over, a Christian rock crossover song played on the radio. That kind of music had never really been my thing, but thanks to Bones, I held a new appreciation for it. Earlier in the week, he’d asked me to come with him to check out a new band he was pushing me to join. Imagine my surprise when I showed up and found out the group was a Christian church group. I didn’t do church, and Bones knew it.

  Despite my ambivalence, I stayed for the rehearsal. The group turned out to be incredibly talented—the kind of talent that you couldn’t help but get better playing alongside of. When they asked us to come back, Bones happily signed on. I said I’d think about it. But the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a good idea.

  I couldn’t have been more than three steps inside Sterling when I heard her voice.

  “Hi there!” Claudia jumped to her feet from behind a staff desk and came around to greet me at the door. Her smile engulfed me, and for a moment I was speechless. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed her until I saw her smile.

  She took my arm and introduced me to the office manager, Liz, who gave me this sort of weird, knowing smile. I returned the smile and said hello, only then noticing Claudia wasn’t wearing her usual professional clothes but was instead dressed in form-fitting workout gear.

  “Come on,” she said, drawing me down a narrow hallway, introducing me to a few other people we passed, to a storage area. I couldn’t help checking out her ass in the stretchy black pants. And it looked pretty darn good from where I stood.

  “This is it.” She waved her arms around the inside a small, dark file room. The floor was covered with stacked boxes. “We need shelves to make storing those file boxes a little more orderly.”

  “Easily doable.” I unclipped my measuring tape from my belt and slid the metal tape out, preparing to get the room’s dimensions and figure out a plan of action. “I got some good news this week. Joe and Sal are promoting me to provisional foreman. It’s temporary for now. I have six months to prove myself, and if all goes well, they’ll make it permanent.”

  “Oh, my God!” She yanked me forward and hugged me, initiating what I hadn’t. “I didn’t know you were applying for the position. That’s wonderful.” I hung onto her, coils of exhilaration springing to life inside me. We separated, both of us still smiling. “I sort of have similar good news as well. Sterling offered me a staff position after I graduate.”

  Hope roped its way up my spine and spiraled in my chest. “So you’re not going to Boston?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I love Sterling, but the position isn’t the health wellness manager I want. In Boston, I’ll have that. The facilit
y is a big step up from this. Lots of money and prestige. I’d be working with seniors in a position that would allow me to initiate new programs, the kind I always imagined.”

  “Tell Sterling about Boston. Give them a chance to make a counter-offer.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I haven’t told anyone that I’m interviewing elsewhere, not even Liz. Maybe after my interview with the Boston board next week.” She raised a hand to chew at a fingernail.

  I pushed her hand away from her mouth. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured unconvincingly, and inhaling, she stepped back. “I wish I could stay with you, but I have an activity planned with the seniors in the rec room. If you have any questions, Liz can answer them.”

  Nodding, I watched her leave. It was a small project, but I was glad for it. It gave us a reason to see each other again.

  It didn’t take me long to measure the room and find Liz to go over a materials list. After getting the information, I assured Liz I’d price out the supplies needed and get back to her with an estimate in the next day or two.

  “Claudia said you used to play baseball,” Liz said. “The men’s league my husband belongs to has a few openings. Interested?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I haven’t played in years.”

  “It’s like riding a bike. Once you slip on the glove and get out in the field, it’ll all come back to you.” She tapped a notepad in front of her and smiled. “I’ll give Kellan your number. I already have it here for the estimate.”

  Liz was pushy, but likeable, and after I agreed to talk with her husband, I had her point me in the direction of the rec room so I could say goodbye to Claudia.

  Other than the muffled sound of televisions, it was fairly quiet as I headed down the halls of the senior complex, my boots squeaking on the clean, waxed floors.

  As I drew nearer to the rec room, I heard the music. It was a Latin beat, one of those line-dancing songs they play at weddings. I stopped at the closed double wooden doors and peered through one of the narrow rectangular glass panels. The rec room was a fairly large. Tables were pushed aside and lined up against the pale green walls. There were a lot of people inside—lines and lines of old people, shaking their hips and waving their arms. I glimpsed Claudia through the sea of bodies. She was at the front of the room, speaking into a wireless microphone headset, instructing the dance steps.