by KT Morrison
So if Pete wanted another baby that was fine for her. She would love another little one. She could always pick up substituting in a few years and try and get back in the swing then if she wanted.
Frankly, she was enjoying being at home so much with the kids. Planning their schedules, helping with their homework, making meals. Her little babies were getting well-prepared when they were receiving the full attention of a very organized Teacher of the Year.
For an hour after her family had left she cleaned. Vacuumed, ran the dishwasher, and put on a load of laundry, folded one that just came out of the dryer. Then she took Annie up to the master bathroom with her and she got herself in the tub.
This Colonial they were in was luxurious and spacious. Even nicer than the home she’d grown up in. It wasn’t even that expensive. Pete was so good with money that they were able to get themselves into this quaint little neighborhood in one of the nicest spots outside the city without a blink from the bank. They’d be paying for this place until they were sixty but it was really feeling like home.
The tub she took her bath in every morning was a freestanding oval under a tall window that looked out over the front lawn. She had a leafy palm on either side and it was like her spa break every day. The tub was even heated, she could lay her back against it and let the warmth work through her back, her neck, and her shoulders. Annie lay for a nap in her crib and Jess could watch her from the baby monitor she left at the end of the counter near the foot of the tub.
Once she was cleaned and dressed she bundled little Annie up and got her into her car seat in the back of the Tahoe and she headed to the Kroger. There was shopping to do for this weekend and she’d been dreading it. They had company coming and, while she was excited, it was still tough. She’d been trying to patch the relationship with Patty. Patty hated her. Had physically threatened her twice when Pete and she had got back together. Had fought and cried with her own brother for taking her back when she had a big round belly, another man’s baby in it.
How can you do this to yourself, Pete?
She was right. Pete was a special man. She told that to Patty. Cried and poured her heart out how sorry she was and how good her brother was. It was met with stone. It wasn’t until this last Christmas that they’d tried to get together. Enough time had passed, she thought. Though, how much was enough time considering what she’d done? There wasn’t enough time. It would never be forgotten. All of them would just have to get over it.
As she got out to Orange Street she signaled right to get out to the highway, then changed her mind, easing the big SUV through the intersection at an awkward angle, turning across two lanes and then heading west along Orange Street and into the Village. It was all right, no cops around, and the pickup truck behind her did the same thing, butt itself right up to her bumper. No one honked. She would go to the Heinlens instead of the Kroger. Pete hated it when she shopped at the grocer in the Village because it was so expensive but they just had nicer things and she wanted this weekend to make a good impression on Patty.
This Christmas Pete had broken his sister down and they’d spent Christmas Eve together at a restaurant. It went well. There was nothing left to say. Small uncomfortable talk for sure, but no bad words were exchanged, though Patty’s eyes shot black daggers at her. She was on her best behavior. She wanted Pete to be happy. Wanted his sister in their son’s lives.
The biggest fear she had going in was that Patty and Russ would bring gifts for Petey and Andy but bring nothing for Annie. That would have killed her. That would have made her cry. But they didn’t. They were thoughtful. It was a sign of hope. Maybe Pete had told them it was possible Annie was his. It was possible. Highly unlikely. Given the circumstances, which she hated to consider, that baby was not her husband’s.
Old Pete never missed a step. He took Annie as his own. Sometimes, especially in those first few months back together, she would lay at night and cry at how forgiving he was. At what a good man he was. When Annie was born he treated her as he treated his own sons when they were born. He doted, he changed diapers, he got up at three in the morning and let her sleep. She was very lucky to have her family.
With Annie kicking her legs, dangling out of the slots in the seat of the shopping cart, Jess poked through the selections of appetizer trays. She got an antipasto platter, charcuterie and artisan cheeses, and one with grilled veggies and a peppercorn ranch dip. She bought the roast beef and some chicken breasts and a ham for Easter dinner. Stocked up on vegetables and some lunch meat for the boys, black forest ham for Pete.
She bought chocolate eggs and some bunnies for the kids so they could hide them on Easter morning and bought some egss they could decorate. She’d already gone down to the Michaels just outside the city on Monday and bought all sorts of colored paper, felts, dyes, packs of cartoon eyes, and pipe cleaners and paints and egg decorating kits. She had a whole host of activities planned for the kids on Saturday afternoon and Sunday.
The lineup was long and she had to wait forever with her packed cart. The Heinlens was in the Village, an awkward sort of spot and had cramped aisles but it was nicely decorated and they carried better quality things. Usually it was quiet and they almost always had enough employees present, but three days before Easter it was very busy. She scrolled through her phone, played peek-a-boo with Annie who laughed and giggled and then said mom-mom-mom, over and over and when Jess said What? she launched into a long tale that at times made sense then other times really didn’t—the whole while she kept Jess engaged with her enormous crystal blue eyes. She caught the attention of an older woman in the next line over and made her laugh.
She said, “How old?”
Jess said, “She’s three,” and the woman said Gosh, she looks just like you, she’s so pretty. Jess laughed and said Thank you. Then in the silence after the exchange her smile faded and she felt suddenly very sad and very scared. She didn’t know why. A rolling torpor, a sadness tinged with dread. She looked up around the grocery, felt like she was watched, felt guilty for some reason.
She felt better in the fresh air.
Pushed the cart with Annie in it to the Tahoe, got her groceries loaded, stacked her cart through the others against the supermarket brick, and walked Annie back on her hip to the truck. Stopped at a Starbuck’s drive-thru on the way home and got herself an iced cappuccino hoping the cold would settle her stomach.
Patty and Russ would be driving to Cleveland from Columbus on Friday afternoon, staying over Friday night and Saturday night. She had two guest rooms made up for them. One for Patty and Russ, one for Tammy, she figured Jacob might want to be in with the boys but that was up to him. If he wanted his own space there was a pull out couch in Pete’s office. They had Petey's hockey game on Saturday morning and then afterward there was a farm out on the edge of Peavey Falls that was offering a fun Easter Egg Hunt and they would go to that. Dinner on Saturday night, that would be their Easter dinner, she was prepared for that. Then an Easter Egg Hunt of their own on Sunday morning, then a brunch (she’d shopped for that too), and hopefully there would be peace when they left on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully there would be another stitch in the tear in her husband’s relationship with his sister. She'd ripped it. She was responsible. She liked to help mend it.
Once home, she backed up the driveway and unloaded the groceries through the garage, put on some music and started thinking about what she would do for dinner. She got a pot boiling to cook potatoes and had the fridge open when she thought she heard the front door open.
Annie was behind her, banging plastic pigs together in front of her open playhouse. She heard it too. She looked up and smiled and said, “Daddy.”
“Don’t think so,” Jess whispered and her hands went cold. No one came through their front door except Stuart. He wouldn’t come here now.
She listened, held onto the fridge door and strained to hear.
There were footsteps in the hall. Someone was in her house.
He stood in the hall of t
heir home like he’d only been away for days. A photo of Annabelle held in his hand, lifted from the table that sat below the angled slash of stairs leading up to the bedrooms.
“Tyler,” she whispered and fell down in a dining room chair.
He smiled and set the frame back where he’d found it, turned then and put his hands in the pockets of his pants, said, “Hi, Jess.”
He wore a suit. No tie, just a jacket and pants and an unbuttoned white shirt. His hair was much the same, thick sandy brown and combed off his handsome face.
She was steel. Her insides churning molten metal. Her mouth opened to say something and she had no air. The hinge of her jaw worked but no voice came out and she didn’t even know what to say.
His shoes made hollow sound against the polished wood as he came to the step into the dining room. He looked around her home. Annabelle babbled, Daddy from the kitchen, behind her baby gate.
She stood, unsteady benumbed movement on languid legs; she still had failed to breathe. He stepped down, fixing his eyes on hers, that smile still there. She stepped back wordlessly. He stepped again and she took another one backward. Her back pressed to a six foot tall mirror fixed to the wall, it’s gilded frame touching her calves, her shoulder blades to the glass.
She exhaled, then whispered, “Don’t.”
But he came to her, a smirk twisting his mouth, his head cocked, studying her as he took the final steps to bring them together, face to face. One hand in his pocket still, he leaned the other against the mirror above her head, she looked up into his blue eyes.
“It’s been a long time, Jess,” he said, his breath whispering against her cheek.
“What are you doing here?” she sighed.
“I’m here to see you.”
“Don’t, Tyler. Get out.”
He laughed, his eyes never leaving hers. “I think about you all the time, Jess. I think—”
“Stop, Tyler,” she said.
“Every time I come through Ohio—anytime someone says the word Ohio—it...” he made a fist and punched the center of his chest, “it gets me, Jess.”
“I don’t want you here,” she said, her hand coming to her chest and closing the lapels of her open shirt.
His face got closer, he loomed over her, his eyes boring into hers. A slight smile tugged at those plump lips. He was clean-shaven, he smelled of leather and spice.
“Don’t,” she said.
He touched her thigh. His big hand smoothed the front of her left thigh, working higher. She shivered.
“Tyler, please...”
“Turn for me, Jess...”
“What?”
“Face the mirror.”
Facing away was easier than facing him and she turned on shaky feet, her house slippers working in little circles and she faced the mirror. She saw herself with him. His handsome face looming over her shoulder. Confident and masculine. Filling out his suit jacket, the ridge of his muscular chest evident under his dress shirt.
She whispered, “What are you doing here?”
“I think about you every day, Jess. Today’s the day I came for you.”
His hand went to her hip, and her eyes lowered to it, watching in the mirror. The backward letters of LIVE on the first knuckles of his fingers. FREE would be on the other hand, the one still pressed over her shoulder against the mirror. She had the same phrase, his phrase, tattooed below her breast, pretty script across her ribs.
The hand slipped around her, coming to her tummy and then fixing its grip on the buckle of her belt. He worked the leather out of the pewter, let the two ends hang and he undid the top button of her pants.
“Take them down for me, Jess,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m not going to do that, Tyler,” she said, fixing his gaze now over her shoulder looking at his reflection in the mirror.
His hand slipped under her waistband and he pushed her zipper down with the back of his hand as his fingers stroked over top of her panties.
She pushed his hand away, and yelled, “Tyler!” She spun then, faced him, looking up in his yes, his real eyes. She said, “Get out of my house.”
He rested his hand on her collar, his thumb stroking her clavicle. “I’ve missed you, Jess.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“We had something.”
“Pete will be home soon,” she said.
“No, he won’t. He doesn’t come home for lunch. Doesn’t even have a car. What’s he going to do, take the train home for lunch? He won’t be home until after six. We’ve got a long time. We’ve got all afternoon. A lot of catching up to do.”
He leaned to kiss, his lips poised to take hers and she turned away from him. He kissed her neck, kissed her just below her ear. She put her hands on him, one on his chest, the other touched his neck, felt that familiar strength, that hard feel of the man who she’d almost ruined her life for. The boy.
“I’ll call...the police,” she gasped.
His face changed, his hand came off the wall and he stood upright. He watched her, his head nodding almost imperceptibly. He turned his back to her, put both hands in his pockets again. He was looking out to the hall where he’d come in.
He said, “I thought this would be easier.”
“What would?” she said, buttoning up her pants, pulling her zip.
“I thought you’d want to see me.”
She didn’t answer him, did her belt up, looked at his big body, how it filled out the suit, watched his profile as his eyes went around her house.
“Pete’s doing well, I see,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not doing too bad now, Jess, either.” He still spoke away from her, spoke to the room. “Six figures. Salary and commission. Maybe I never should have been a teacher.”
“Why would you come here?” she said, folding her arms over her chest so he wouldn’t see her nipples standing out.
“Got the nerve, finally. Coming through Ohio again. I travel all over. Coming through here...I looked you up.”
“We’re over...”
He huffed. “I find you. I watch you. Can’t believe what I’m seeing. I’ve been here three days now...”
She felt a cold tingle of dread, a thatch of fiery needles rushing up her neck and through her hair, all over her scalp. She didn’t speak.
He turned, not to her, but a fraction away from her. Pointed to the kitchen.
“Tyler, no,” she whispered.
He went to the baby gate and she followed him. Tyler squat down, his fingers weaving through the rungs, draped over the top and he peered at Annabelle.
She said, “Hi-ii.”
“Hi,” Tyler said, “What’s your name?”
“Annabelle,” she said.
“Hi, Annabelle,” he said. He held his big index finger out to her and she gripped it.
Jess collapsed to her knees behind him, her knees cracking on the maple.
“Don’t,” she cried, “please, don’t.”
Tyler said to Annabelle, “You’re so pretty, Annabelle.”
“Fank you,” she said and she held the top rail of her baby gate, either side of his hand that read FREE.
He turned to Jess then and put a knee on the floor, he looked at her with a serious firm look. “Is she mine?”
“No, Tyler,” she said, looking as fierce as she could. “She’s Pete’s.”
“She has my eyes,” he said, looking to Annabelle again and giving her his finger to hold.
“She has my eyes, Tyler. She has my eyes,” she hissed.
Tyler shook his head angrily, stood up and reached over the gate and hoisted baby Annabelle up to him, hands under her arms so he could look in her face. He kissed Annie’s cheek.
Jess covered her mouth and her nose as she watched. Exploding inside, wanting to cry but afraid to do anything, afraid to speak, afraid to move. She watched in horror. He settled her then against his chest, held her to him and she rested.
“How could you, Jes
s?”
“She’s Pete’s. She—”
“Jess, how could you?”
She shook her head and breathed into her hands, felt her lips tremble against her palms.
“You know,” he said, his head shaking, mad, stopping, then continued, “You know...my time with you...that was the best time in my life...”
“Don’t say that,” she whispered through her hands.
“If she’s a product of that, Jess...” He shook his head and looked up to the cathedral ceiling of the kitchen. His eyes were wet with emotion.
“Get out,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat. Said, “I’m going.” Then to Annie, he said, “You want to say bye?”
She smiled and hid her face against his chest like she was shy and she said Bye-e into his suit jacket.
“Oh man,” Tyler sighed. “Nice to meet you, Annabelle. I’ll see you.” He set her down on the other side of the gate and she plopped to her butt then crawled to her piggies.
Jess’s tears came now and she cried, “She’s Pete’s baby, okay?” She brushed them away.
Tyler said, “Don’t cry, Jess.” He reached out to hold her shoulder with his hand but she pushed it away.
“Just go,” she said, more tears streaming down her cheeks.
He put his hands back in his pocket and he headed for her hall. She followed him, went past the picture he’d held when he came in, followed him right to the door getting angrier at him with every step. Coming in here like he did. Thinking he could say the things he said.
At the door he turned to speak and she lashed out in fury. She thumped his shoulder with her balled fist, striking him four times like she had a hammer. She yelled, “You never came back! You never came back! I don’t want you any more! Get out, just get out!”
He flinched and raised his shoulder to protect his face, held a hand up to block her if she tried. “Stop, Jess, stop,” he said and he watched her hands, grabbed her wrists then and held them steady, looking in her eyes. “Stop,” he repeated.
