Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(5)
And she still didn’t like him, and she still didn’t know why. At Christmas, when they did their school talent show and she looked out to see him sitting with her mother in the audience, another kid from her class said, “There’s your new daddy, Antsy,” and the wave of rage she felt was almost a relief. She didn’t like him because he was trying to take her father’s place. That was all. That was a completely reasonable and understandable reason not to like someone she barely knew, and if her mother asked again why she didn’t like Tyler, she’d have an answer.
She sang beautifully that night and went home smiling. She still didn’t like Tyler, not one bit, but now she felt like she understood why, and understanding a thing was the first step toward conquering it.
She could learn to like him, if she knew why she didn’t. She ate dinner and she kissed her mother on the cheek and she nodded to Tyler and she went to bed, and everything was going to be fine.
Two things happened that weekend. Her mother sat down with her on the couch, the same way she’d done on the day she said she wanted to marry Tyler, but this time she was smiling like the sunrise, like she had the best secret in the whole world. So her mother wasn’t going to ask for her permission to get divorced, then, if that was the sort of thing that mothers asked for permission to do. Antsy didn’t know. She hadn’t known mothers asked permission to get married in the first place, so would her mother ask for permission to stop being married?
Instead, her mother took her hands and said, that sunrise smile melting into a look of profound seriousness, “Sweetie, you’re going to be a big sister. Tyler and I are going to have a baby.”
Antsy frowned. Antsy tilted her head. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Well, honey, I’m pregnant.”
“But why would that make me a big sister?” she asked. “Tyler’s not my daddy.”
Her mother frowned, the sort of frown that started with her eyes and made a furrow between her brows, so she looked sad and disappointed all at once, like she didn’t know how to swallow the rock she’d just been handed. “Tyler is your stepfather,” she said. “He’s never going to replace your father, but he’s not going anywhere. You’ll have time to learn how to love him. Maybe he’ll be your daddy someday, and since I’m your mommy now, and this baby is going to be my baby, too, that means they’re going to be your family just as soon as they’re born. They’re already your family.”
Antsy had never been particularly interested in being a big sister. The kids in her class who had little brothers and sisters mostly seemed to view them as unwanted complications rather than the guaranteed friends the adults in their lives always tried to paint them as. Little kids grew into bigger kids, and bigger kids could be fun to play with, but little ones were sticky and loud and unpredictable in ways that didn’t make any sense, because making sense wasn’t a thing they knew how to care about yet.
At six, Antsy was old enough that the wild illogic of infancy and toddlerhood was starting to fade into hazy memory. She wouldn’t be able to understand a baby. She wouldn’t be able to reason with them. “No, thank you,” she said politely.
Her mother squeezed her hands tighter. “I don’t think you understand,” she said. “I’m having a baby. It’s not something you get to agree or disagree with, it’s something that’s happening, right here and right now.”
Antsy’s eyes grew wide and alarmed. “You’re having a baby now?” she squeaked. She had seen pregnant women before. They had hard, round bellies, not soft and squishy like her teacher, Mrs. Baker, who she absolutely and entirely adored, and who had laughed and said, “No, honey, I’m just fat,” the one time a student had asked her if she was going to have a baby. Pregnant women were so full of baby that they looked like they had swallowed a whole watermelon the way her class corn snake swallowed mice, putting the entire thing inside themselves, rind and all. Her mother didn’t look like that, didn’t look pregnant in any way that she could recognize.
To her relief, her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’m having a baby in about six months. I just wanted you to know before I told anyone else.”
“Not even Tyler?”
“Except for Tyler. He’s my husband now, sweetheart. When I learn something important, he’s the first person I tell.”
Hearing it said—not just implied but said—that Tyler was more important than she was made Antsy’s stomach sink all the way down to the bottom of her toes. She nodded slowly, tugging her hands away. “Can I go to my room now?”
“Of course, darling. Thank you for letting me tell you my big news. It’s not for public yet, so please don’t tell your grandparents.”
Antsy had never kept a secret from her grandparents before. Oh, there were things she didn’t tell them—they didn’t know about all the games she played at school, or all the things she did with her Barbies, or every time she used the bathroom—but she’d never been told something and then asked specifically not to share it. She blinked, trying to incorporate this new piece of information into her ideas of the way the world worked. Adults could ask her to keep things from other adults.
Antsy frowned, uneasy. “All right,” she said. “I won’t tell them. I’m going to my room.”