The door crept open and Lilith gave me a sad smile and opened her arms…where I fell apart again.
“Aww, honey, you haven’t heard from him?”
“No,” I mumbled against the burp rag over her shoulder. “Have you?”
“Just once,” she said quietly.
“Did he ask about me?” I said, pulling back and wiping my eyes.
She didn’t have to answer; the look on her face said it all with the way her mouth flattened, and the frustration flashed in brown eyes so very much like his. “No.”
“Okay.” There was that word he hated, but fuck him. If he wanted to take issue with it, he could just get his ass up here and do so.
Lilith tipped her head and smiled. “Do you want to hold a freshly bathed squishy bundle of baby?” She took a step back and held the door.
“Yeah, I think I do,” I said, stepping inside. “I even brought him something.”
She led me into the living room where a large man with short-cropped, military-issued sandy hair I could only assume was Jordan sat with a sleepy satisfied smile on his face while he held their son in his arms.
The bundle of baby had a scrunched-up face like he’d just caught a whiff of some geriatric-grade methane.
“Jordan, this is Maisy. Maisy, my husband Jordan.”
“Nice to finally meet you,” I murmured, handing the bag to Lilith as I snuck a closer glance at their sleeping bundle.
“I don’t even know his name. What are we calling this little cutie?”
When they didn’t answer, I glanced up and found them looking at one another.
“What? It can’t be top secret. Is it one of those weird Hollywood names?”
“Cain,” Lilith said quietly. “We named him Cain.”
“Oh—well—that’s…shit.” I ground my fingers into my temples. “I’m swearing in front of him already. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m pretty sure he won’t pick it up just yet. You’re good,” Jordan said with a laugh. “He learned all kinds of salty language when I checked to see if he needed changing and sunk my fingers in a loaded diaper.”
“He loves it and he knows it,” Lilith said next to me with a laugh in her voice.
Jordan stood and nodded to the chair. “Settle in and I’ll pass him over.”
I took the offered seat and curled my legs up under me.
Jordan leaned down and laid Cain right in my arms where he cracked an eye open, decided I was good people, shuddered out a breath, and drifted off again.
My mind went back to that moment in the barn and the way Cain muttered under his breath, like he could will his nephew to breathe with chanting words, prayers, whatever he had to say in those moments that I couldn’t make out.
The relief on his face the minute the baby finally let out his first scream.
If he were here holding his nephew, I had no doubt what he would do.
And since he wasn’t, I’d do it for him until he could be.
I leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to Cain’s soft forehead where it met his head full of dark hair and breathed him in.
30
I walked through my apartment door for the first time during the daylight hours after spending more than a week working double shifts, avoiding drinks and basketball games with my friends at the precinct, waiting for something to feel normal. For anything to feel normal again.
I couldn’t even find some sort of familiarity in the obscurity I once loved about the coffee shop around the corner where I counted on no one knowing my name or caring to talk. And why? Because the woman behind the counter that I was used to seeing day in and day out quit while I was gone and now, the only familiar thing I had left was the forgettable flavor of scorched coffee on my tongue that I could get from any gas station or truck stop.
On the third day, I’d taken out a pizza box to the dumpster—because that’s what I did now—field trips to the dumpster, and when I’d gotten back to my door, the neighbor introduced himself, thinking I was new to the place.
I’d been here for five years.
Turns out he’d been here for four.
Neither of us could back out of that conversation fast enough.
Alone in a city of millions.
And now the stark light of day was a ruthless bitch ready to deliver a one-two punch by making sure I saw every single impersonal corner of my life in desolate detail.
The problem with the impersonal—it showcased the intimately personal.
One thing stood out. The one thing always stood out here.
Abel’s ashes.
And the harsh truth that I’d been keeping him here. All this time, I’d been keeping myself in my own prison, unable to let him go.
To what end?
I’d never be able to change the last time we spoke. I’d never be able to change what I’d done when I reported them. And I had to be honest, what really bothered me is that I’d do the same thing again if I had to do it all over again today.
Because I was trying to save his life.
Being with Maisy lit me up from the inside out with so much color, so much attitude, so much heart, and no amount of being here would ever feel normal again.
I live for the both of us now.
She was right. The minute I didn’t have someone who needed me, someone to save, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Being here wasn’t living. And how did I figure out how to live for both Abel and me when I hadn’t even figured out how to do it for myself?
The sinking feeling in my gut hadn’t eased since I left that hotel, no doubt making another monumental mistake with Maisy, but they had a win to celebrate and the minute the exhibition was over, the storm took hold in me one more time and I wouldn’t do that to her in her moment.
She’d say okay
