Never Have I Ever(29)

I stalled. “All right, all right, I can take a hint. Run up and get the iPad, Maddy, and you can have the keeping room. I’ll get out of your way.”

I evacuated to the living-room sofa to finish The House of Mirth. Oliver rolled around on a play mat, making sleepy noises. I’d need to rock him if he didn’t drift off on his own soon. He was still on three naps, and he needed every one of them to stay his cheery self. The teenagers got louder and less self-conscious once I was out of the room, their conversation drifting down the hall. I couldn’t make out individual words, just tone, but it was clear they liked each other. Maybe boy-girl like, maybe the friendship kind, but the talk sounded easy and lively on both sides.

Tig and I had been like that. Both outsiders, we’d defaulted into lab partners, but we’d found each other strangely easy to talk to. There’d been instant, simple chemistry—that odd, almost audible click that happens when you meet your kind of person. It had happened for me with Charlotte, too. She was smart, and funny, and endearingly fussy, and there was never an awkward lag when we were chatting. What was happening in the kitchen sounded like that kind of connection. I shook my head, then went back to reading until Oliver started making grumpy sounds.

As I carried him upstairs for his bumper nap, I could hear Maddy still chattering happily, though 4:00 p.m. had come and gone with no call from Laura. Normally Maddy would be wrecked, waiting and listening and pretending not to do either. I paused, hearing Luca’s baritone say something that made her laugh. Not a coy giggle either. Maddy’s real, full-throated, head-thrown-back guffaw.

In the nursery I tucked Oliver against my shoulder and sat down in the rocker, a lump in my throat.

So this boy was going to be a thing.

Well, Madison was a normal, healthy teenage girl. At some point some boy or another was bound to be. I wished Luca weren’t quite so beautiful. I hoped Maddy wouldn’t get her heart crushed. I wished, most of all, that Luca weren’t Roux’s kid. The very thought of Roux got me agitated, both worried and intrigued.

Oliver stirred, rearing his head up, fighting nap. I patted him and hummed, soothing us both.

Just wait, I told myself. Pack it away and let it sink.

Tomorrow I would feel less anxious. Less anxious the day after that. The stirred silt of my past that was choking the air around me would settle. I would shift all my anxiety to Charlotte. She was the one with an unimaginary problem. I would concentrate on helping her, and in a week or two I’d run into Roux at the CVS or Publix. I would be cool and calm. We would talk kids and yards and movies, in the way of neighbors. I would see that my fears had all been mostly in my head, that her game had not been aimed at me.

Over the next week, I stuck to this plan as best I could. It was hard not to think about Roux, given that I could hardly spin around without finding her son. Luca was at our house every afternoon, even on the weekends, from two-thirty until almost five, every day. He didn’t bring up diving again, but he was always hungry. I fed him carbs and forced myself to not ask questions about his mysterious mother, treating him like any other neighborhood kid. Davis and I talked, and we decided together that boys in the basement were okay, as long as the door at the top of the stairs stayed open.

The tightness in my chest did ease. I helped Char put together the neighborhood newsletter, and she picked yet another Austen novel for book club. I taught a one-day refresher course for out-of-practice divers. Oliver let go of the coffee table and took one staggery almost-step toward me before tumbling back onto his butt.

Everything is settling. Everything is fine, I told myself.

I even believed it, right up until the moment Roux got bored of waiting for me to break. Right up until she came to see me.





5




The doorbell rang not five minutes after I’d packed Davis and Maddy off to their respective schools. I perched Oliver on my hip and went to get it, wondering who was stopping by so early. It was still half an hour before it was time to meet Char for our walk, and she always let herself in anyway.

I opened the door to find Roux standing on my porch, exactly as she had the very first time I’d seen her. Hip cocked, hands empty, wearing a different long, sheer maxidress. An ombréd aquamarine this time, gauzy and expensive-looking. I found myself tugging down the hem of my rumpled T-shirt, splattered as it was with bits of baby oatmeal, as if it could hide the last eight clinging pounds of Oliver weight.

“Hi there, Amy Whey,” she said, and her lips twisted up on one side in a half smile. Instantly the last week fell away. I felt my spine lengthening, a small current of excitement running through it. At the same time, an anxious drumbeat started in my chest.

“Hi, Roux,” I said, my voice as casual as I could make it.

“Mind if I come in?”

She was inside almost before she finished asking. I wasn’t entirely sure how she did it. She stepped forward as if there were room for her, and my body melted back and made it true.

“I have a spare minute,” I said.

This was what I’d been waiting for anyway, I told myself. I’d wanted our paths to cross, for us to have a normal conversation about kids or recipes. I hadn’t pictured her slithering into my house to have it, but here she was.

I closed the door, but moved to block the way out of the foyer, because a conversation could be both normal and very, very short. Oliver would help. He sat quietly on my hip, regarding Roux with serious eyes, but this was a very active playtime for him. He would want down soon. “What can I do for you?”