by Anna Scott
The following day was Monday and originally Aurora was going to take care of Kelly for me, thankfully we only had one more week until Kelly could be placed in the day care center owned by one of Reed's mother Belinda's friends. Aurora's doctor had called on Friday though, telling her that he wanted her to come in for an ultrasound. Everything was good, but he wanted to check her progress again. She had been going in once a month and then once every two weeks, but last week he noticed some effacing and a little dilating and he wanted to watch her more closely with the anticipated size of the baby and the position at last check. The baby had been in a breech position, and the doctor wanted to monitor her more closely as she began to approach her due date. With all that happening, I had called Belinda and asked if she would look after Kelly for me. Of course, as I had anticipated, she agreed.
Just then, while I was purposely ignoring her son, I texted back and forth with her, confirming the details of the following day and generally chatting about the cute things we had found shopping. She was easy to talk to and though she was generally quiet, she would fall into casual conversation with very little coaxing. It made the silent and tense drive back to my house slightly less awkward. I wanted to ask, wanted to know who the woman was and what Reed's relationship with her had been. Was I just some poor substitution for the stacked and beautiful model worthy woman? Of course, I didn't ask.
After getting back to my house, I took Kelly straight into the house and didn't wait for Reed to come around to my side of the truck to help me. I needed to stand on my own two feet, and even if he were around for the long haul, I knew that his presence couldn't be a constant one. His job, his schedule was unpredictable at best.
After talking to Aurora the previous week, when picking up Kelly, she told me how Luke often had to stay late at work, how he was called in at any time of the day or night. Plenty the call broke their plans and she had to be strong enough to roll with it. I knew that she was purposely giving me that insight because she was preparing me for what she thought would be in my future. I hoped that it would be, but with the new presence of the beautiful Sandy, I wasn't so sure.
Since Reed and I hadn't been dating long, it wouldn't be difficult for him to break things off with me, he hadn't made me any promises. We weren't committed to some permanent relationship or anything. Sure, we shared friends, but if I were honest, they were his friends more than mine. I'd become friends with Aurora and Amber because our shops were so close together and Amber especially was such a friendly person. It wouldn't be difficult for me to step back, only seeing the girls at work, as we had in the beginning.
I discovered soon enough that I didn't need to avoid Reed. By the time I got Kelly bathed and dressed for bed, Reed had carried in and deposited all the bags from the day. He placed them in a neat stack next to her closet. I could hear a game on in the front room, so I assumed he was watching TV. Just one more strange thing to chalk up for the day. We didn't have to be on top of each other, but if we were both in the house, we were usually together, even if I was reading or working on my laptop, he would watch something while I cuddled up next to him on the couch, or at most, was just behind the couch working at the table. Not once in the few weeks that we had been dating were we in separate rooms, both awake without even a word spoken between us in hours.
I had been paying attention. Reed spoke four words to me at dinner and that was it. While pointing at the burger place in the mall, he said, "This good?" After he paid the check he asked, "You ready?" That was it, four words and not one more since the moment he set eyes on the beautiful Sandy - a woman I now hated just because of the fact that seeing her had taken Reed away from me. Maybe he wouldn't be gone long, maybe he wasn't really lost to me, but in those hours he was lost to me and those were hours I would never get back, hours I would dream of later on, hours I would have killed to have shared with him.
"Uh," I grunted as I rolled out of bed and hit the button on my phone to make it shut up. It was my usual four-thirty, but this one seemed to come earlier than ever. I hadn't slept well and I had a nasty feeling that would bite me in the butt all day. The only good thing about the morning was that I did have to disentangle myself from Reed.
After putting Kelly's things away, I had showered and gone straight to bed. I never went in to the living room to talk to Reed, to kiss him goodnight, nothing. I went to bed alone, for the first time since the night I gave him my virginity. Well, that wasn't entirely true, there was one night the previous week that I went to bed early and he wasn't home from work yet, but shortly after I got into bed, he joined me there and made short work of pulling me into his body and holding me there all night.
When he finally joined me in my bed the night before, I laid on my side staring at the wall, completely awake but faking it while he laid on his back and messed around on his phone for a while. It was sometime after I started to doze that he moved me. He wasn't wrapped around me, shielding me from the world though, it was different. He held me loosely, nothing like he normally would and I had to wonder if Sandy the beautiful was taking that away from me too.
Since he was obviously still sleeping in my bed, I didn't need to send a text to Belinda. I promised her that if Reed got called in over night that I would let her know. She told me that when she became a mother, she stopped sleeping soundly and that habit never went away, even with her son grown and out of the house. She would come over and stay with Kelly if I needed her, otherwise, she would be over by seven-thirty so that Reed could go into work.
I stumbled over Blazer as I made my way down the hall toward the front of the house. The dog had decided to sleep in the open doorway to Kelly's room. Apparently, the protectiveness and loyalty he showed to me when I had that horrible headache a couple of weeks before, had been transferred to Kelly. I counted myself lucky though that he wasn't trying to sleep in her little portable crib with her.
Thinking about her crib, reminded me of the furniture argument from the day before. I appreciated that he wanted to help out, that he wanted to buy those things for Kelly, but I was her guardian, and though Kelly wasn't a burden to me in any way, she was my responsibility. It was my job, not his, to provide for her. I knew that with his strong sense of chivalry, that he had been conditioned to act like a gentleman, to pay for the woman's meal, to help out where he could, but this was getting ridiculous. In light of wherever our relationship stood now, it didn't seem appropriate either, that he would pay for things for either of us.
With everything that had happened, or more aptly not happened the night before, it was pretty clear to me that we were headed for a break up, one I preferred would come sooner than later. Kelly was already attached to Reed and the more time she spent with him, the more difficult it would be on her when he decided that he'd had enough of the drama riddled woman for the one he apparently couldn't stop thinking about.
Work was busy, as Monday's often were, so I was hopping from the minute my foot hit the back door until it was finally time for me to leave. The whole thing with Reed and the unknown Sandy from the day before was never far from my mind, no matter how hard I fought to push the whole mess away. The more I thought on it, the more I wondered just how serious their relationship had been. Just that short time in their presence told me they had been something to each other once, I just had no idea what that something was.
"Gilli!" Kelly called out as I walked through the front door a few minutes after three. Belinda was busy in the kitchen, but followed close behind Kelly as she made a break for it and ran toward me. The house was neat as a pin, and I had a feeling that Belinda wasn't one to sit idol while Kelly napped. The faint scent of lemon polish hung in the air, brining back happy memories from my own childhood. My mamaw used lemon polish too and her home always smelled clean and fresh.
"What's this?" I asked, leaning down to pull Kelly into my arms.
"It's my apron, me and gama made it."
My surprised eyes met Belinda's happy ones. She smiled and explained, "We were doing so
me laundry down in the basement and found your sewing machine. I hope you don't mind, this fabric was in the extras bin."
"That's wonderful, thank you, and no I don't mind at all. Mamaw left me all her old fabrics, I've used some, but she did so much quilting, there's more there than I could ever use."
"Do you like it?" Kelly asked, stepping back and holding the bottom out so I could get a better look.
"I love it; you look so grown up. Are you being a big helper today?"
"Mmmhm, I'm a biggest helper."
Without another word, Kelly looked around like she was missing something and bolted off toward her bedroom. I took that moment to put my things away and grab a glass of tea. As I walked through the house, I realized that Belinda had cleaned just about every surface, including finishing a ton of laundry. The woman was a marvel. Checking on Kelly in her room, I discovered that she was playing on the alphabet rug we had found the day before, she was instructing her puppy and baby doll, telling them the different colors and the few letters she recognized. It sounded rehearsed and I assumed that Belinda had done that as well.
"I put a pot of stew on the stove, it will be ready in another hour, the dumplings are done and ready to go in about twenty minutes before you're ready to eat it."
"Thank you, you've done so much for me, I feel like I'm taking advantage of you."
"Nonsense, I'm glad to be able to help out. She's such a delightful little girl."
"She is, thank you."
"If you're not busy tonight, why don't you stay and eat with us. I was going to eat early and go to bed soon after Kelly does. Thankfully, I don't have a ton of school work this week."
"That would be wonderful, thank you. Reed said he was working late tonight, so it will be just us girls." Belinda's smile was radiant and I could see a glint of mischief in those blue orbs that were so much like her son's. Her words were spoken so off handedly, that she didn't see the involuntary wince when she mentioned Reed working late. He hadn't mentioned it to me, but then again, I hadn't heard from him, not even once.
We shared a simple dinner, watched a video with Kelly and Belinda helped me bathe the little girl and get her to bed. Somehow, she had already taken Belinda's measure and coerced her into reading her three stories instead of the two I usually did.
It was a while later, when the house was quiet, Blazer was asleep once more in the opened doorway into Kelly's room when Belinda and I sat together on the sofa in my living room and began to talk. She was more than the mother of the man I was seeing, she was becoming a dear and trusted friend. My mother and I had never done anything like that, we didn't sit and chat or spend time together, not ever that I could remember. She was all about my dad and all about my brother, and though my father was loving and kind, he had been busy on the farm and then in the cafe when he and mom took it over from mamaw.
"How was shopping yesterday? Kelly showed me her new things, especially the little tulle skirt that you found. So adorable."
"I loved that, it isn't very practical, but it was just too sweet to pass up." I replied, a wide grin playing across my face.
"Did Reed behave? I know how much he likes to shop," she said wryly, rolling her eyes and obviously knowing her son well.
Realizing my golden opportunity, I decided to see what information I could glean from Belinda. I didn't want to pry into Reed's personal life, but he had been so strange, so closed off the night before, dread had begun to creep into my heart. "He was fine, mostly." I hesitated on the last, kind of dangling it out there, seeing if she would take the bait.
"Mostly?"
"Well, we had a bit of an argument over who should pay for things, like the new furniture, but he didn't seem to mind the mall too much. I think the store where we got the tulle dress gave him hives though." I smiled and Belinda burst out laughing. Her hand slapped across her mouth as she looked toward the mouth of the hall. We both waited with baited breath for a moment, wondering if Kelly would hear us and think she was missing out on the fun and want to get up. Thankfully, her room stayed quiet.
"I'll bed," she finally replied with a quieter giggle.
"We did run into a friend of his." I let the sentence hang, hoping it would intrigue her enough to ask more, and I wasn't disappointed.
"Do you know who he was, someone from work?"
"No, it was a woman, Sandy I think."
Belinda's face instantly blanched and a look of complete fury crossed the woman's normally sweet tempered expression. "That girl, oh I can't believe her. Did she speak to him?"
"Yes, for a few minutes, she seemed to want to talk to him longer, but we needed to get Kelly some dinner so they had to cut their visit short." My toes were right on the edge of out and out lying about the encounter, down playing it, hoping she would explain her out of character reaction.
"He actually spoke to her?" I nodded in confirmation, trying to appear confused by her question and watched her nostrils flare, noticing that her fists clenched in her lap. I worried for a moment about the wine glass she was holding, wondering if she was clenching it so tightly that the stem would break and cut her hand.
"After everything that girl did, I can't believe he even gave her a passing glance. She ripped his heart out when she called off their wedding. Such a coward she was." Belinda's face had turned pink, her eyes glassed over and she looked vacantly at the blank wall behind my head as if she were remembering that time.
Their wedding? Realizing what she'd just said, I worked hard to wipe any reaction from my face, but I was horrified, teetering on devastated. I'd sensed that they had been together, but engaged? I listened to Belinda rant on and on about how Sandy had apparently taken up with a boy she had previously claimed was just her friend and nothing more. How she and Reed had dated through high school and sometime before his first deployment he had fretted about buying her the perfect ring. Belinda went on and on about how in love Reed was with the beautiful woman and how terrible it had been for him when she sent him a Dear John letter when he was stationed in the Middle East. The minutes ticked by agonizingly slowly as my head was in a fog of complete shock.
Not only had Reed planned to marry her but he was apparently deeply in love with the amazing, gorgeous woman and she had broken his heart to such an extent that Belinda had wondered if he would ever get over her. Had he? By the way he reacted to seeing her again, I wasn't so sure.
Sandy had gotten married quickly after breaking up with Reed and moved away with this other man. I wondered how stupid the woman must have been to leave Reed. I couldn't imagine that the other man could possibly be half as attractive as Reed was and though I hadn't seen him back then, he was a hero, driven and dedicated to his work. He had a great relationship with his mother, no way would I believe that some other man could be half as amazing as Reed was. It was a sad thought though that he had loved her - or still loved her. I knew it had been several years ago, I understood that things had happened between us so quickly, with Kelly and everything that he hadn't told me about his past relationships, but I worried that he still had feelings for her.
Thankfully, just before I pulled all my hair out Belinda stopped talking about Sandy when she noticed me begin to yawn. She quickly helped me tidy up the kitchen, which she had already mostly done after dinner and said her goodbyes. I was relieved to have some time to myself after the unexpected revelations of the night.
I laid in bed that night, pretending to sleep when Reed slipped inside. I kept my eyes tightly closed and worked to keep my breathing even as he moved quietly through the small house. I heard him greet Blazer, then move inside to check on Kelly and finally make it into the bedroom. I didn't want to talk, didn't want him to see the confusion and hurt that was certainly apparent on in my eyes. I didn't want him to so easily dismiss me as he had the night before. At some point, I would have to come to terms with the reaction he had to seeing the woman he had intended to spend the rest of his life with, or I would have to let him go, those were my only options.
E
veryone had a past, I knew that. Reed wasn't a twenty-one-year-old kid or even a twenty-three-year-old one like me, but the knowledge Belinda had bestowed on me, and my subsequent realization that Reed may still be very much in love with his ex, the ex who was now available made my tender heart sink and maybe even crack a little. I needed time. I needed to come to terms with all I learned and all I had seen. It wasn't only his immediate reaction to the woman, but the way he withdrew from me and even from Kelly the rest of the night.
It was the lack of any communication throughout the day that concerned me too, usually he at least called or texted me even if it was only a quick "hello." I had nothing from him all day. We would talk eventually, but I didn't want to do that until I had my head together and knew what I should say. The last thing I needed was to fly off the handle and say things I would regret, so as much of a coward as it made me, the entire time I heard Reed moving around my bedroom, I stayed silent and feigned sleep.
It was only a few minutes before I heard Reed move from the room and into the bathroom. I used that time to turn onto my side, and face the wall. I waited for him to move the covers back and pull me into him as he had done every night since the first night - except last night of course - but he didn't. A few minutes later, I heard him quietly close my bedroom door and then his steps taking him back down the hallway. He wasn't coming into bed; he was again going to stay away from me. What did that mean?
