Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(77)
“Aren’t you warm in that sweater? It’s mid-nineties today.”
“Not in here, it’s not. I’m good.”
Cory held her look for a second, then nodded. “Okay, then yeah. You can dry. These two are going to need to spring for a dishwasher, now that they have Joey and Millie. Doing a ton of dishes by hand is not the most fun ever, especially with little ones around.”
Adrienne picked up a green-and-white striped dishtowel. “I like it. Reminds me of my mom.”
“Shannon told me just a little about that. Sounds like she was pretty special.”
“Yeah. She was. She was smart and funny. Kind of a dork.” Adrienne laughed. “She wore a fanny pack whenever we traveled. And socks with Teva sandals. I used to get really annoyed and embarrassed.”
Smiling, Cory rinsed a plate and handed it over. “She was a professor, too, right? Like your father?”
Adrienne pushed away the storm cloud that threatened at the thought of her ex-father and just answered Cory’s question. “Yeah. She taught math.”
“Wow. Lots of brains in your family.”
Adrienne shrugged. “Not like I inherited those genes, though. I’m all Shannon, as everybody can see.”
“She’s no slouch, either.”
“No. She’s awesome. Sometimes I wonder…” Crap. What had she been about to say? “Never mind.”
Cory shut off the faucet and turned. “You can tell me anything you want, hon. In confidence, if you want. I know everybody still walks on tiptoes around me, but I’m okay—or I’m figuring out how to be okay, at least. So if you need someone to talk to, I’m around.
“Thanks.” Adrienne smiled and nodded toward the dishes, hoping to start up their chore again and get the focus off her.
Cory turned back to the sink and they worked quietly for a while. The confession that had leapt unbidden onto Adrienne’s tongue refused to go away. She had no idea why she felt driven to open up to Cory, of all people, but finally, she couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if Shannon had kept me. I never used to wonder that. I really never did. But lately, since I’ve been here, I wonder. What would it have been like to have been raised in this life?”
“Well, you know Shannon didn’t come to Signal Bend until like five years ago, so I don’t think you would have been raised in this life then, either.”
“I know. None of it’s real. Just aimless wondering. But the life I had totally fell apart, and I don’t know what this life I’m in now is.”
Again, Cory turned off the faucet. This time, she took the towel out of Adrienne’s hands, wiped her own hands on it, and led her to sit at the table.
“Well, that I know a lot about. I can’t tell you how many times my life has fallen apart and left me with nothing but rubble to rebuild from. This last time was by far the worst time. Losing Hav—I won’t ever get over it. I only had him for a year. One lousy year. And he changed everything for me. For Nolan, too.”
Tears topped over and ran down Cory’s cheeks, but she spoke on, ignoring the streams down her face and the drops on her blouse. “But he did something for us that we still have. He gave us a life that was still standing when he left it. We have Loki. We have this family. There will always be a big, bald hole in our lives, but there was more than rubble left, and that’s because he gave us this life. We’re not alone, and we never will be. Hav gave us that.”
Watching Cory feel her loss made Adrienne’s heart ache, and she felt her own tears coming. Cory reached out and took her hand. Adrienne could see the long scar on her wrist, moving from her hand toward her elbow. She knew what that scar was.
Then they were both crying. Cory continued, still ignoring her tears. “You have that, too. This life is scary, no question. But you will never be alone. There will always be somebody to share with you—your fear, your pain, your loss. And, like today, your happiness, your peace.”
Sniffling, Adrienne wiped her own tears with her free hand, unwilling to let go of Cory. “Shannon said something like that the night my father dropped my things off. The night she went into the hospital.”
“Well, like I said, she’s no slouch. You know, all us women, and most of the guys, have…complicated histories with our parents. I think Badge is the only one who has two good, living parents. Maybe that’s what makes us so tight. This is the family we chose when the one we started out with broke.”
oOo
The party wound down fairly early, just past dark. The townsfolk had headed on their way shortly after cake, and the Horde without families of their own went over to the clubhouse for less child-centered enjoyments. Isaac and Lilli took their exhausted children home. Cory took Nolan and Loki home. Then Len and Tasha left for the house Len had finished building not too long ago, and it was only Badger and Adrienne, and Show and Shannon, with the babies. They were becoming a family in their own right, the six of them.
Shannon had already taken Joey up to bed. Adrienne held Millie, who was sound asleep on her chest after taking a bottle of breast milk. Millie had not managed to figure out how to nurse. Shannon called it “nipple confusion,” and their pediatrician had told her that the twins’ time in the NICU, when they’d both been bottle-fed both formula and expressed milk, might be the cause. Joey didn’t seem to be confused at all. But Millie wanted only a bottle. Adrienne knew not being able to nurse both babies was causing Shannon some stress, and the breast pump looked like a torture device, but she liked feeding Millie. She liked everything about these babies, from their little bald heads to their tiny pink toes. When she was still living in New Paltz, she’d nannied for a family with an infant, and she’d enjoyed it. But she hadn’t felt about that little boy the way she felt about Joey and Millie. She felt something physical, like a pull in her chest. She hadn’t worked out yet what it was, but she did not mind even a little that she had to spend so much time here with Shannon and the twins.