Forever Family (Forever #5) (6 page)

His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “That’s…called greeting cards,” he managed to get out. “Every day.”

“They put your grim little clowns on greeting cards?” I asked.

Another smile. “And calendars…damn agent.”

I tried to picture the maniacal characters gracing someone’s day planner. I guessed there was a market for anything. They’d made Albert famous enough that he went into hiding. And when his assistant found him with his wrists cut and told the world he had died, he was relieved to be out of the public eye.

He spoke slowly, with great deliberation. “What are you working on?”

“Still the cliff painting,” I said. It had been months since I had been inspired to paint my baby, Peanut, at the age he would be now, standing on a cliff over the ocean here in San Diego.

“Perspective right yet?” he asked.

“I’m on attempt number eight,” I said with a sigh. His hand felt papery and thin in mine. The tremor ran through his muscles like a heartbeat.

“Just getting started,” he said.

I pushed out a rueful laugh. “I know. I’ve totally let go of the idea that I can do anything worthwhile on the first — or twentieth — try.”

“Good girl,” Albert said. His eyes drooped, but he forced them open, trying to keep his spark. He really wanted so much more time, so much more life. My heart squeezed painfully.

“I actually tried it inverted just to get the feel for it,” I said. “So gloomy and dark that way. Made me think of you.”

His mouth twisted as half of it smiled. “Good.”

Talking was clearly painful and difficult for him, so I decided to just keep up my end of the conversation. “I got to ride in an ambulance with a rock star, his crew, Jenny in labor, Corabelle, and a pissed-off EMT while Jenny and Chance got married en route to the hospital.”

One of his eyebrows lifted.

“Darion and I were painting.” I gestured to my spattered shirt with my free hand. “But we caught up with the ambulance and jumped on.”

Albert’s eyes glittered. He was enjoying the story.

“She literally refused to get off the ambulance until they were legal. That girl is so nuts.” I rolled my eyes. “The baby is early, so she’s small, but apparently everything is okay.”

“Good,” he said. “But you?”

I let out a sigh. “I’m keeping up appearances. The way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.” I kept my focus on the wreath over his head, refusing to meet his gaze. “I’m trying to spend them happy.”

He shook my hand from side to side until I turned back to look at him. “Process,” he said. “Feel.”

Albert was one person I tried to always be honest with. “I don’t want to feel those things too much. The path is slippery and dark. It’s a long fall.” I flipped my wrists up, even though you couldn’t see the fine lines in the gloom. He would know.

He let go of my hand and wrapped his trembling fingers around my wrist. They were warm where they had been in contact with mine, chilly where they had not. It didn’t escape me how important that was. Holding on to another person is what kept us alive and strong. Otherwise we would struggle in the chill of solitude.

“You won’t go there again,” he said.

“I don’t know that,” I said. “I feel like I’m always one bad day away from the worst.”

His eyes bored into mine. He didn’t have to say anything. We’d had this conversation before.

“I know. I have Darion. And Corabelle and Jenny. And my work.” I glanced around his room. “But I also have this black hole inside me.” I couldn’t really put into words what I felt. But I could picture it. It always floated just outside my vision. I was too frightened to look directly at it. And I would never paint it, never make it real.

His voice had more strength when he said, “Life is dancing around the blackness.”

I wanted to picture this. I tried to see myself, striped tights, spriggy ponytails, cavorting on the edge of the blackness, a colorful sprite laughing in the face of the siren call of despair.

But I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to do it.

“Go see your friend’s baby,” Albert said. “Paint your pain. Leave it on the canvas. Remove it from your soul.”

He closed his eyes and his hand slid from my arm. His breath escaped in a long sigh. I squeezed his fingers one more time and stood.

Albert had been saying the same things as long as I knew him. Paint my pain. I’d gone through so many canvases, so much drawing paper, so many tubes of oils.

But maybe everyone was right. I’d left that dark hole on the periphery of my vision. I hadn’t even stared into it, much less danced in its shadow.

But now the life I thought I’d lead was right in front of me. Jenny. Her baby. Darion would want a family eventually. I had no idea how I could face the idea of losing another one.

Just thinking about it, I was quite sure I’d rather stare into the depths of the pit. At least it was familiar.

Chapter 7: Jenny

Motherhood was a piece of cake.

My dad put away the leftover casserole in our fridge, which was stuffed with food my mother’s friends had brought over.

Mom rocked the baby in the corner of the living room. The glider was new, a gift from my old boss Frankie. The hot-pink chenille fabric with little silver threads running through it made it the most fabulous piece of furniture I could ever have imagined.

My phone buzzed. I glanced down at it. The stupid old hospital administrator again. For some crazy reason, you weren’t supposed to check out without giving your baby a name. I argued until I was blue in the face that you couldn’t rush a decision of this magnitude. I had to get the right baby vibes. Little Miss had to show me her personality.

The
last
thing I wanted to do was saddle a
Mavis
with a name like
Penelope
. Or an
Anastasia
with
Jane
.

So I had sort of left. With the forms.

Which apparently was some big deal.

So what?

I mean, it wasn’t like taking my time was a crime. What did they expect me to do? Toss any old name on the paper? Forever?

“She’s asleep,” Mom said, crossing the room. “Shall I put her down?”

I nodded. We’d been home four days. Mom did the laundry. Dad managed the kitchen. Chance had been assembling the outrageous number of contraptions required to keep the baby happy and settled. Swing. Bassinet. Crib. Changing table. And some stuff I couldn’t fathom actually using, like this play thingamajig with silver bars and hideous half-baked animal shapes in black and white. It looked like baby jail.

I kissed the baby’s warm, soft cheek. She smelled of milk and Dreft detergent. Mom carried her away and I settled back on the sofa. Yes, motherhood was just fabulous.

Dad came back in the room. He wore trim jeans and a button-down shirt rolled up to his elbows. His hair was just now really starting to show its gray. Perfect timing for a grandpa. “I’m going to head back to the hotel,” he said. “Got some work things to handle before I fly home tomorrow.”

“Okay, Daddy.” I hated to see him go. He’d been great manning the kitchen. Hopefully Chance would take that over. My girl parts still felt like they’d been bludgeoned by a meat tenderizer.

“I’ll be by in the morning before I’m off.” He leaned down and kissed my head. “You’re doing great, princess.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” I said.

Mom came back in the room. “See you tomorrow, Dennis,” she said. I knew the two of them had been playing nicey-nice for my benefit. For two people who hadn’t seen each other much in the past ten years, they were doing pretty well.

Babies brought out the best in people.

When Dad had gone, Mom sat next to me on the sofa. “Jenny, I heard from work yesterday, and I need to go put in a few hours tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be back in the afternoon.”

A little tendril of panic shot through me. “But Daddy’s leaving too.”

She patted my arm. “I know. It will just be a few hours. It will give you and Chance a little time with the baby.”

“But I’m not ready.” My face flushed. Chance didn’t know a blessed thing about the care of the baby.

Actually, neither did I. My mother handled all the diapers and the changing. I just did the boob thing, which luckily had gone pretty well so far.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m going to catch a little shut-eye now in case she wakes up in the night. Sleep when the baby sleeps!”

She headed for the nursery. She was spending her nights on a rollaway cot in there for now.

Chance passed her on the way, holding two metal pipes painted bright pink. “Thanks, Mama G,” he said. “I’ll finish this in the morning.”

“Is that the swing?” she asked.

“It will be.”

“Good. Jenny loved her swing when she was a baby.” She yawned. “I’ll bring the baby for a feeding if she needs it.”

“I pumped some in the fridge,” I said, “so you don’t have to wake us.”

She nodded. “All right, then.” She disappeared down the hall.

Chance set the pipes on the coffee table and sat next to me. “I thought you were having trouble with the pump.”

My lips turned down. “I managed to get a little out. But I feel like a big old cow with that thing hooked up to me.”

Chance flashed me a wicked grin. “I think it’s kinda cool that they have big see-through cones.”

I punched him in the arm. He had stripped off his flannel button-down and wore just a thin white sleeveless shirt with his jeans. He looked hot and sexy, like a rock star on his day off.

Meanwhile, I was pathetic in a big blue nightdress with boob panels that were always gaping, and no amount of nursing pads kept the milk stains away.

And I still hadn’t fixed my hair color. I was half pink, half dull brown, like a melted double-scoop ice cream cone.

Tears dripped down my face. “Everybody’s leaving me tomorrow,” I said.

He scooted in close. “They’ve been a big help, haven’t they?” he said. “But we’ve got to figure this out sometime, don’t we?”

I sniffed. “We don’t even have a name for her!”

He draped his arm around me. “Well, let’s figure it out. What were our contenders?”

“Rain, Phoenix, Lyric, and Jane.”

I could feel his stomach tighten as he stifled a laugh. “One of those names is not like the others.”

I bumped my shoulder against his chest. “Hush up. We don’t know anything about her. She could be very studious and straitlaced.”

“Is that the Jane?”

“No, silly, that would be Lyric.”

“Wait. Lyric is the studious one?”

“Of course! She’ll study music! Like her dad.”

“So, which one is the wild, pink-haired minx like her mother?”

“That would be Jane.”

“Okay…but isn’t that the plainest name?”

“I’m Jenny!”

He had to laugh at that. “Okay. You’ve got me there. So, who is Rain?”

“She’s earthy and calm, like a summer shower.”

Chance raised an eyebrow. “You really think either of us could raise one of those?”

“Of course not. Scratch it off the list, I guess.” I fingered the hem of the gown. “I am sort of leaning toward Phoenix.”

“I could live with that. She rises from her own ashes.”

“She’ll make a lot of mistakes, but do something magical and wonderful from what she learned.”

“Sounds like our girl.” He leaned his head against mine.

We sat that way a while, content, the apartment quiet. Everything seemed okay for now. “Phoenix Hannah McKenzie,” I said.

“I like it.”

“I’ll fill out the paperwork tomorrow,” I told him. “Get the pencil-pushers off my back.”

He slid me down on the sofa. “How are your girl parts feeling?” His body lay next to mine, hard and muscled.

“Don’t even think about it, Buster. Two-week minimum. Did you not see what came out of there? Her head was like a squished cantaloupe!”

Chance choked on a laugh. “Point taken.”

I pulled on his shirt. “You can kiss the hell out of me, though.”

“That I can do.” His lips met mine, soft and firm.

I let out a slow sigh as he kissed me long and lingeringly. I felt little pinpricks of interest heading down below, but it was more like a car firing on bad cylinders than anything sexy.

Chance pulled my head against his chest. “Our time will come around again,” he said. “Then we can make another one.”

I punched his arm. “Don’t even talk about it. I’m buying you twenty cases of condoms.”

His eyes glittered as he looked at me. “She’s beautiful, though,” he said. “Like you.”

“It’ll be a good life,” I told him.

“It already is.”

~*´`*~

I tearfully waved good-bye to Dad the next morning. Mom had taken off for whatever work was dragging her away from her granddaughter.

I held the baby in the crook of my arm. My shoulder was already killing me. How could something so small feel so heavy?

When Chance closed the door, I asked him if he’d finished the swing.

“Almost,” he said. “Give me a half hour.”

I didn’t want him to leave the room, but I needed that swing. If the baby started fussing, there were only so many boob jobs that would quiet her down.

“Try to hurry,” I told him. Mom had said nothing was better for soothing me when I was little than to be rocked in a swing.

Chance took off for the nursery. I plunked down in the pink glider. The perfect blanket burrito my mother had tied around Phoenix was starting to loosen. I laid her in my lap and tried to fix the ends.

But with a couple tugs, the whole elaborate system of tucks and turns fell open.

Phoenix looked up at me with her slate-blue-gray eyes. She was quiet and alert, her gaze as wise as a baby Buddha.

“I’ll just try this again,” I told her. “How hard can it be?”

I straightened the small blanket. I crossed one corner over her belly, then the other. But what about the top ones? I tried bringing them down over her shoulders, but this just made a big pile on top.

I put them all back in place and brought the top corners down first this time. Okay, so maybe the bottom ones had to go around the back. I tried turning Phoenix on her side, but she didn’t like that and started to cry.

“No no no,” I said, picking her up. Her head bobbled a little and her cries got more intense.