“You’re not coming, Daddy?” Jake asked through his giggles.
“Not this time, sport. I’m on diaper duty.”
“And bottle duty!” Candice said.
Jake got the two mixed up and came out with, “Bopple duty!”
He loved those moments when the kids’ antics made everything else fade away. Again he wished he could run off and spend the afternoon with them. Rosette was by the door, watching, smiling with shiny eyes.
Then they headed out the door, waving happily. The house was silent, almost a creepy silent after the boisterous noise of their family. Alex and Summer were gone together. He put that away for later thought.
With Hope asleep, he walked around and tried to think of something to do.
Trey looked out the side window and wasn’t surprised to see Leena walking over. She wore what looked like a summer dress even though the March weather was wet, windy, unpredictable, and downright cold at times. It had thin little straps and tiny flowers all over it, and it hugged her body.
She knocked. He waited, indecisive, until she knocked again.
“How’s everything going?” she asked as he opened the door. “Are you doing okay?”
Her voice and mood were too light and cheery, rubbing on him. He kept his expression pleasant, but anger hit him out of nowhere. He hardly felt anything anymore, so the feeling surged through him like hot apple cider after working in freezing temperatures. It felt good.
“Trey?”
He shook his head a little. “Sorry, I guess I’m still in a haze.” To cover, he tried for a smile. Real smiles were impossible these days. Instead he pushed his face into what might look like a smile, but he couldn’t smile all the way through. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms in a relaxed stance, trying to put her at ease. Okay, he supposed he could talk with her for a while. What was the harm in that?
Her face softened, her brows rising like she’d just seen an adorable, fuzzy kitten. She laid a hand on his forearm. “It must be so tough.”
He shrugged. If only that anger would come back. She kept her hand on him. He thought she’d feel the same awkwardness he did, but she didn’t move it. The air felt tight around him.
She took a step closer to him, so her body was almost touching his, and reached up to gently knead his shoulder with her other hand. “It’s okay if you need a shoulder to cry on.” She pulled him toward her as she spoke. Trey could have resisted. Instead he leaned into her, telling himself it was just a hug.
It was a hug that stirred things in him. Guilt. Surprise. Curiosity. Most of all, the contact awed him because he was feeling so much all at once. That alone made him tremble and almost break down.
He eased his arms around her, returning the embrace, and felt first the heat of her body and then the curves of her front as she leaned into him. His face touched the bare skin of her neck. That’s what finally got through to him, shouting that this wasn’t appropriate.
But it wasn’t all the way wrong either.
Leena shifted her head so her face came close to his cheek. She wasn’t shy about it; her other hand moved up to cup his chin and prompt him to turn his head. At first, he resisted. But slowly he turned just enough that his mouth was by her cheek too.
His heart pounded. He felt a hot and cold sweat prick the palms of his hands. Twice he thought he could move away, but he was stuck. She turned her head a little more, and he heard her quick breathing.
It was too much. Her body heat seared him now. Still, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so he eased back and said, “I might hear Hope crying.”
The house was silent as a tomb, but she nodded. Her face was flushed, he noted, but she didn’t look hurt or angry. No, it was more like appeased. “Okay. Don’t hesitate to come over if you need anything.” She smiled at him as she turned to leave. He was heading out of the room too, desperately needing to move.
~ ~ ~
Trey stood in his bedroom that night thinking everything was different yet still exactly the same. Trey changed Hope’s diaper on the changing table while running the evening through his head. It’d been quiet. Normal. That just didn’t add up after what happened earlier today, or even after all the upset in their lives lately.
“Just like old times,” he said, dropping a bundled dirty diaper into the Diaper Genie. Rosette sat in the bed, the covers pulled up over her raised knees, with her Kindle in front of her. They had already made it through several nights, taking turns getting up with Hope. That led to an earlier bedtime, he noticed, as they tried to catch up on sleep.
She glanced up at his words. He wasn’t sure if she was actually reading or not. Even without a reason to think so, he guessed not.
He picked up Hope and sat in the rocking chair. The baby looked up at him with clear eyes. He was spending more and more time wondering about her future.
“Just like old times.” Rosette whispered it so quietly he almost didn’t hear. At first, he planned to let it go, let her words slip by, but as the seconds passed, he realized her tone just wasn’t right.
He glanced over to see her staring hard at her Kindle. The sinking feeling hit that he’d missed something big. There wasn’t any way that she found out about what happened earlier…
“Rosette?” He had to wait a long time for her gaze to come up and meet his.
“Just like old times. You’ve been gone all day.”
“I’ve been right here!”
“No, you haven’t. Your body was, but you’ve been somewhere else.”
He stopped rocking and stared at her, knowing she wanted an answer. She wanted something.
Finally he shrugged. “I didn’t even realize…”
“That’s always the case.”
“Rosette, we’ve all been under a lot of stress. I’m… I’m trying.” He spoke gently. For once, it looked like he got through to her. She softened.
“I know,” she said, even more quietly. “Me too. It just freaked me out today.”
That was bad, but he knew it could be much worse. He ran things through his mind again, for the twentieth time probably, and decided it was almost impossible that anyone knew. Maybe it meant that little incident was something he didn’t want her to know, ever.
If he freaked her out by pulling into himself… did that mean she still cared? Or just that she needed his help right now?
“Do you think Amanda killed herself?” Rosette abruptly asked.
He jerked up to look at her, managing to switch topics with her after only a short delay. Although he couldn’t deny he hadn’t been thinking about that a lot too, he couldn’t give any answers. “I told you what Harry said, didn’t I?” He spoke in a conversational tone. “There’s no evidence of another vehicle, or even skid marks to indicate she was trying to avoid an animal. I just don’t know what to think.”
“Will we ever know?” she asked, which might have been just a rhetorical question. Either way, he didn’t answer that one.
“We need to discuss the funeral soon and set a date.” He already knew who to talk to at the chapel and what arrangements would need to be made. They’d tried to talk to Amanda’s mom, but they had ended up mainly communicating with her caretakers at the assisted living facility and learned she wasn’t physically able to make the trip. Her health had really gone downhill this last year. Amanda’s friends were helping with the arrangements and costs, but he felt responsible. He wanted to do this for Ricky. “I can probably handle most of it.”
She blinked back tears. “Just doesn’t seem right.”
Trey mentally went through the circumstances of Amanda’s death one more time: No evidence of another vehicle or an animal. No past history of Amanda exhibiting any type of suicidal behavior. No chance in a billion that Amanda would want to harm her precious unborn child. Then, an idea came to him, one so ludicrous that he should have thrown it out on the spot. Could foul play have been involved? The evidence didn’t really support his new theory. Honestly, the suicide theory was much more logical—there wasn’t another single good reason to explain why she was out on that dark highway alone. And serious crime in Coos Bay was virtually nonexistent. Still…
He just wanted an explanation for this horrible situation, one other than suicide.
Glancing down, he saw Hope’s eyelids drifting, even as she watched him. “I keep thinking about what we’ll tell Hope,” he said to Rosette, even though he wasn’t sure if she was paying any attention.
That statement assumed so many things, such as the existence of a “we.” How would they explain what had happened to her birth mom? Would they become Mom and Dad to her? Or would Trey end up raising her by himself?
Rosette looked at Hope for a minute, watching him hold her, and looked about to say something before she turned her eyes back to her book. He hoped to God she wasn’t at the verge of telling him he was on his own.
Chapter Ten
Rosette had been checking out the window a few times a day since Alex told her about that girl staring at their house. That’s why she was looking out the window now, and why she saw the same young woman slowly walking down the sidewalk, her hands in her pockets and her head down. The girl slowed down even more as she approached, looking despondent in the windy weather. She could have been a high school or college student; Rosette couldn’t tell.
She wanted to tell Trey, but he’d taken the kids out. On second thought, maybe she shouldn’t trust him. She wondered what would happen if Trey were the one peering out the window. The girl had started watching the house after Ricky and Amanda died, as far as anyone knew, but maybe this was about Trey and not about them. Maybe Trey knew that girl. There were too many possibilities to make any kind of educated guess.
Rosette turned around, faltering on what to do. Then she turned back to the window and peeked out again. It would nag her until she got some answers. Making a quick decision, she hurried through the house and garage, coming out on the far side so she could meet the girl after she passed the house.
Rosette slowed her pace and walked toward the mailbox even though it was Sunday. It was the only thing she could think of as an excuse to walk down the driveway. Before she opened the mailbox, she pretended to notice the girl for the first time.
“Hello!” She tried to smile and sound friendly. It sounded a bit forced instead. “Do you live around here?”
The girl shook her head, walking faster.
“Are you visiting then?”
An undercover detective she was not. The girl picked up her speed to almost a run. She looked older than Rosette had thought, somewhere in the eighteen-to-twenty range. So she wasn’t a bored high school freshman without a license who spent her time walking around for something to do.
Rosette went back into the house and sat down, thinking. But what could she do? Call the police and say a girl walked past her house. Oh, no, call in the SWAT team!
She leaned back, sighing and almost laughing. Maybe this is what it’s like to be strung out on drugs or something. With all the sadness, stress, and lack of sleep, on top of the normal daily things, she was losing her mind.
Trey had taken the kids out today so she could rest, not work herself into a frenzy. It was either funny or sad, but they were keeping so busy that they didn’t have time to talk about their problems. At this rate, they could leave it on the back burner indefinitely. In a year, when they were sleeping through the night again, one of them might say to the other, “Oh, by the way, do you remember we were going to separate?”
In her fuzzy-minded, sleepy state, it almost seemed comical. A muffled cry came over the baby monitor, bringing that sinking feeling that she’d have to get up out of her comfy chair. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, then rose and went upstairs. Hope wasn’t yet waking up, just moving around. Rosette stood and watched the baby sleep. Her tiny mouth was open just a bit, and her face was completely slack. Her arms were thrown out on both sides, bent at the elbows, and her little hands were curled into fists by her head. It was so like Candace and Jake when they were babies, except they had dark hair. Hope looked like a blond angel.
Rosette wandered to the back window and looked out. The trees hid the beach where the waves hit the sand, but she could see the mighty Pacific extending as far as the eye could see. It was a dark day due to heavy cloud cover, and rain began to patter on the window pane.
She glanced at Hope again and then went downstairs to start the laundry. She tried calling Angel but didn’t get an answer. If they didn’t already have all kinds of baked goods from friends, she would have baked some cookies. As it was, there was so much food in the kitchen it was nearly flowing off the counter.
Maybe she needed to do something creative. Trey had left several new pieces of driftwood on the patio in case she wanted to carve them. Rosette went outside and picked one up, wondering when he had left them there. Recently, because he cared again? Or a while ago, out of habit? This second guessing everything was wearing her down. With an annoyed sigh, she retreated back inside. She loved to paint, too, and thought about pulling out her acrylics when someone knocked. “Hello?” Angel called as she came in.
Rosette stepped out of the kitchen, happy to hear another voice. “I just tried calling you! Want some tea?”
Just the sight of her friend with her dark, caring eyes made Rosette want to burst into tears.
“Sure, tea sounds great. I saw your call, but I was almost parked outside by then.” She followed Rosette into the kitchen. “Tea” didn’t just mean a tea bag. Rosette pulled out her tea collection, and they considered which two flavors of loose leaf tea to mix. Angel chose cranberry rose and orange spice.
“Are you doing okay?” Angel asked, watching Rosette fill the kettle and put it on the stove.
“Kinda,” Rosette said, staring at the stove. “Would people hate me if I got a divorce?”
“Hate you?” Angel sounded disgusted at the idea. “You mean your kids? There are lots of kids that go through this and still turn out to be great people. I know it’s not the best situation…”