Somewhere Out There(96)
“I’m not!” Hailey replied, and Natalie watched as her daughter shifted her weight away from her brother, as though to prove her point. But her motion tilted the stool, and before Natalie could stop it, Henry lost his footing and fell to the floor. He landed on his side on the hard wood, and Natalie saw his head bounce when he hit. He was quiet a moment, likely stunned, trying to register what had just happened, and then began to wail. She rushed over, dropping the bag of chocolate chips she’d taken from the pantry onto the counter.
“Hailey!” she said in a sharp voice. “You have to be more careful!” She knelt down next to Henry and gathered him into her arms. “It’s okay, baby,” she murmured. She ran her hand over his entire head, checking for blood, but found only a bump above his right ear, about the size of a quarter. He cried on her chest, rubbing his wet face against her.
“I’m sorry!” Hailey said, and Natalie realized that her daughter was crying, too. “I didn’t mean to, Mommy! It was a accident!”
“It’s okay,” Natalie said, feeling panicked. She could feel her heartbeat hammering inside her skull. She stood up, still holding Henry, grabbed her cell phone from the counter, and quickly found the number for the nurse line at their pediatrician’s office. “Hey, Susan,” she said, when the nurse answered. Over Henry’s now-whimpering cries, she explained what had happened. “Do I need to bring him in?”
“Probably not,” Susan told her. “Just watch him, and make sure he doesn’t seem too drowsy or disoriented. If he does, or if he vomits, you can take him to the ER to have him checked for a concussion. Otherwise, it’s probably just an old-fashioned bump on the head. Put some ice on it, and give him a little children’s Tylenol if he’s hurting.”
Natalie thanked her and hung up, turning to see that Hailey had gone upstairs to her brother’s bedroom, coming back with his favorite blue fleece blanket. She held it out, and Natalie couldn’t help but think of Brooke and her lavender “soft side,” and the muscles in her throat thickened. Henry snatched the blanket from her, no longer crying but still snuggled tightly against Natalie.
“That was very nice of you,” Natalie told Hailey, whose bottom lip stuck out and was still trembling.
“It was a accident,” she said again, sniffling, and Natalie nodded.
“I know, baby,” she said. She sat down at the table with Henry in her lap and her daughter pressed up to her side. Natalie put her free arm around Hailey. “I’m sorry if I snapped at you. I was just scared when I saw your brother fall. You didn’t do it on purpose. You don’t need to feel bad.”
Hailey nodded, but in that same moment, Natalie thought about Brooke. She wondered if her sister would ever be able to get over seeing the background check—if she would believe that Natalie never meant to hurt her. But Natalie feared that the damage was done. Whether a window is shattered by accident or by a deliberate strike, its jagged pieces cut just as deep. The injured party still bleeds.
Brooke
Before Brooke left for her dinner shift at Sea to Shore, her cell phone buzzed. She glanced at the text message, having guessed correctly that it was from Natalie. Over the past month, since the day of their argument in Natalie’s kitchen, her sister had left messages and sent her multiple texts, begging Brooke to please call her. “I’m so sorry,” Natalie said in her last voicemail. “I can only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Please. Can we just talk?”
Too little, too late, Brooke thought as she climbed into her car and began her short drive to work. She was doing well at her new job. Nick was happy with how quickly she’d caught on to the way the restaurant functioned, and her fellow employees seemed to like her.
Ryan had sent her a few texts as well. “I’m not just going to disappear,” he told her, and even though she didn’t respond, she didn’t block his number, either. If she had, he might simply show up at her apartment again, and she wasn’t sure how she’d handle that. After what had happened with Natalie, Brooke was less inclined than ever to take Ryan up on his offer of help. Other than her baby, she wasn’t going to let anyone close to her, ever again. Still, she thought about Natalie every time she delivered a beautiful dessert to one of her tables at work, but she decided it would be easier at this point if she pretended that she never had a sister at all.
Today, once she parked and entered the restaurant through the back door, Brooke punched in, then went to the bathroom to check her appearance and scrub her hands. She had purchased several work-appropriate outfits at a local thrift store, making sure all of her skirts had elastic waistbands and her tops were loose and comfortable. She wore her curls up in a twist with a few black tendrils down around her face and bought several pairs of supportive shoes so her back wouldn’t hurt so much at the end of her shift. According to the obstetrician at the clinic, her pregnancy was progressing well, but she still hadn’t found out the sex of the baby.
Now that she was twenty-three weeks, the biggest struggle she faced was how to hide her pregnancy under empire-waist tops. Nick hadn’t mentioned it, so Brooke decided to wait until closer to her due date to discuss the short maternity leave she would need to take. Until then, she would focus on being indispensable and saving up as much money as she possibly could. She’d been right about the flow of tips—on her weekend shifts, she was making up to five hundred dollars a night. Over the holidays, the restaurant had been so busy, Brooke couldn’t believe the amount of money she was bringing home. For the first time in her life, Brooke felt truly competent, grateful to be compensated so generously for the work she was doing. She decided she’d stay in her tiny apartment until the final weeks before the baby came, but she had begun looking on Craigslist for rental houses.