Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(7)
“Thank you for talking to me,” he said. “Goodnight, bug. Sleep well.”
Then he was gone, and Antsy was alone. She changed into her nightgown, quickly, and climbed up to the top bunk of her bed, shivering as she crawled under the covers. It was a long time before she fell asleep, but she didn’t even stir when her mother came in to tell her to brush her teeth. It was unusual enough for Antsy to go to bed early that her mother looked at the sleeping child for a long moment before she frowned and let her be.
She could talk to Antsy about the way she was reacting to the idea of a baby in the morning.
3
EVERYTHING FALLS APART
THUS BEGAN WHAT ANYONE looking in from the outside would probably have assumed was one of the most exciting times in Antsy’s life. Her mother finally told her own parents she was expecting a baby, almost two whole weeks after telling Antsy, and they couldn’t have been happier for her. Antsy wondered sometimes if that had something to do with her grandma being her mother’s mother and not her father’s; her father’s mother was much less enthusiastic when they finally called her to give her the news.
Antsy had never been particularly close to her paternal grandmother, but in that moment, she felt like they were the only two members of the family who understood each other. She would have crossed the country to join her in her small, safe apartment in Manhattan, if she’d been able to figure out how to do it.
She was trying as hard as she could, trying every single day, and it made her happy to see her mother so happy: her mother’s friends liked to say that she was glowing, and while she wasn’t—she didn’t light up a room in any way other than the ordinary ones—she was smiling more, happy and healthy and beautiful, even as her belly grew larger and more pronounced by the day. Antsy wanted to be excited about the impending baby, but she couldn’t figure out quite how.
It didn’t help that now, with a baby coming, all the kids in her class whose parents had gotten divorced and remarried liked to tell her about how Tyler was never going to leave. Sometimes they seemed unnaturally gleeful about her presumed future unhappiness. Once the new parent made a baby with the existing parent, that was it. They were there forever.
Antsy didn’t want Tyler to be there forever. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to be there for now. The more time passed with nothing bad happening, the more unreasonable her dislike of the man felt, but she still called him by name, and she still refused when her mother tried to nudge them, however gently, toward finding their own version of her much-missed daughter-daddy trips to Target. She didn’t like the idea of being alone with him even more than she didn’t like the way he looked at her sometimes.
She still didn’t have the words to explain why she didn’t like those things, just the slow and septic understanding that it wasn’t about him trying to replace her daddy, and that she didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t learn to like them. They were a part of who Tyler was, and as long as she could make nice well enough to let him be a part of their family, did it really matter if she liked the man? She didn’t like broccoli, either, but she ate it when it was on her plate, not like peppers. She hated peppers so, so much that her mother didn’t even cook with them anymore.
Antsy didn’t hate Tyler, not yet, and maybe not ever. And he was kind to her mother as her belly grew bigger, bringing her drinks, rubbing her feet, doing more and more of the grocery shopping and driving Antsy to school like there had never been any question that he’d be willing to do those things.
It was about a month before the baby was born when things got really bad for the first time.
Antsy’s mother had been feeling icky all day. Her head hurt and her back hurt and her ankles hurt and her list of things that hurt was so long and detailed it seemed like every part of her must be in pain. Antsy was afraid to ask any questions about it, because what if she said her hair hurt? That would be a horror beyond all understanding or accepting. Antsy wouldn’t be able to handle hearing that from her mother, so it was better not to ask. She had been sitting at the table, placidly coloring a picture of a unicorn in a field all full of flowers, when she smelled hamburger frying in a pan. She looked up, and then behind herself. Her mother was still stretched on the couch, her belly jutting up like a boulder, a warm washcloth on her forehead.
Antsy turned, slowly, to look toward the kitchen. The smell of hamburger continued, and she could hear faint sizzling sounds. Someone was cooking.
Carefully, she put down her crayons and slid out of her seat, padding silently toward the kitchen and peeking inside. There was Tyler, standing over the stove with a spatula in his hand, stirring something. She must have made a sound, because he turned and smiled at the sight of her.
“Let your mother know dinner’s handled,” he said. “And if you’d set the table, that would be fantastic.”
His tone made it clear that he wasn’t actually asking. Antsy was used to setting the table for dinner. She nodded solemnly and moved to begin collecting plates, taking herself farther into the room. She usually did her best to avoid being alone in a room with Tyler, but this was a specific task, and if there was a way to set the table without getting dishes down from the cabinet, she didn’t know what it would be.
“No,” he said sharply, as she was pulling down plates. “Not those plastic things. Real plates.”