His Best Friend's Baby

Really, you’re gonna get mad because theylet you sleep an extra hour? She tried to relax. Clearly she had been on her own for too long.

Ben struggled to lift himself out of the chair with one hand and reached for Julia with the other.

“Stay there, Ben.” She walked over to kiss his cheeks and his hands, rub her nose with his damp one. All of their morning rituals. He laughed and clapped in response.

“Hog heaven, huh, buddy?” she asked, letting him put his hands on her face leaving sticky hand-prints on her skin. “Pancakes and blueberries.”

“Nana,” he said, pointing to Agnes, but watching Julia.

“That’s what I told him to call me,” Agnes said with an embarrassed laugh, pulling at the neck of her yellow T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted to be a Nana.”

“Sounds good.” Julia swallowed a lump of emotion.

“Ron.” Ben pointed to Ron and everyone laughed.

“Grandpa is for old men,” Ron said with a grin. The metal frame of his glasses caught the sunlight and winked, making him seem particularly merry. “Besides, Ron is easier to say.”

He looked young, trim and healthy with his blond hair shot through with a little silver. He appeared younger than his wife and Julia wondered if Mitch would have looked that way. Respectable. Dependable.

She doubted it.

“Ron, it is.” Julia nodded definitively as if she were checking that off a list. What to call Grandfather—check.

“Ron,” Ben mimicked Julia’s nod and tone.

“He’s such a sweet baby,” Agnes said.

“The sweetest,” Julia said, smiling in agreement. She ran her fingers through her son’s hair to try and work out a knot of maple syrup near his ear.

“Look at us, forgetting our manners.” Agnes stood, suddenly a flurry of activity.

“Would you like something to eat, Julia?” Ron patted the chair next to him at the small kitchen table. “Some coffee?”

“Coffee would be a dream.” Julia sat and an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. They had covered the basics last night. Weather. Flights. How they must just be exhausted. This morning all the unsaid things and the hurt they had caused each other in the past pulled up chairs and sat at the table.

Julia curled her bare toes into the braid rug under the table and folded her hands into her lap, trying to look the opposite of a gold-digging whore. She felt shabby in Mitch’s old army T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

I should have worn something nicer, she thought, when unease and doubt slipped under her guard. I don’t have anything nicer.

“How did you sleep?” Ron asked.

“Like a rock,” Julia said brightly and wondered how she could stretch that answer for another hour of conversation. “Very well, thank you.”

More silence.

“You have a lovely home.” She hoped that didn’t make her sound like a gold digger. She was only telling the truth. Every room was filled with books and art and warm rich colors, rugs, beautiful wood floors, light stucco walls with dark wood support beams across the ceiling.

“Thank you.” Ron nodded and took a sip of coffee.

Kill me now, Julia thought.

Agnes cleared her throat and Julia looked over to where the woman, short and round, stood in a pool of light from the window above the double ceramic sink. Tears glittered on Agnes’s cheeks.

“I am sorry, Julia,” she whispered and shook her head. Squeezing her eyes tight. “I was horrible to you and—” She stopped and a single sob came out.

Julia leaped to take the coffee mug out of her mother-in-law’s hands. She wrapped her arms around Agnes’s curved shoulders. “I wasn’t the best, either,” she said.

“I was just so upset that you got married without telling us,” Agnes went on. “Mitch is—” another sob escaped “—was our only son and I know we expected a lot but it was just such a shock. The marriage and then the news of the baby—it was just such a shock.”

“Tell me about it,” Julia said dryly, relieved when Agnes gave a watery chuckle. “Trust me, getting pregnant and marrying a helicopter pilot was the last thing I expected to happen.” Or wanted to happen, she didn’t say. Her life tended to be made up of things she had to make the best of.

“You know how your son was,” Julia said softly. “He was so—” She stopped, at a loss for words, trying to remember exactly what it was that had attracted her so ferociously to Mitch Adams. “Bright, you know? Shiny and bold. Like the world was there just for him to enjoy.”

“Yes,” Ron agreed. “He was like that.”

“He just swept me off my feet.” Swept wasn’t even the right way to describe the sensation. It was as if she had been blinded by the light that always shone around Mitch.

“When I got pregnant—” she cleared her throat, uncomfortable with the topic “—we hadn’t known each other very long.”

“A month,” Agnes said, obviously casting judgment on Julia’s loose morals. Julia swallowed the protestations of her innocence. They seemed pretty stupid, in light of what had happened. What did it matter if Mitch had been her first? She’d been so completely paranoid about pregnancy that they’d used two forms of birth control.

She’d gotten pregnant anyway, after only knowing Mitch for three weeks. She had been so stupid and silly with lust and love.

“I was twenty-one—”

“So young,” Agnes said, lifting watery brown eyes to Julia.

“Mitch didn’t hesitate. He wanted to get married. He wanted to give our child what you guys gave him.”

He just never managed to be around enoughto do it.

Agnes, who had been weeping silently, buckled a little and put a hand on the counter to brace herself.

“We wasted so much time with him.” Agnes sighed. “Three years. I would give anything to have them back.” Her face twisted in agony that struck a chord in Julia’s own grief. “Anything.”

“Nana!” Ben yelled. “Don’t cry!” Ben hated when Julia cried. He got angry and fussy. But when all three of them turned to the little boy he looked away, confused and embarrassed. Julia wondered if he’d ever had the undivided attention of three people.

“You want more pancakes?” Agnes asked Ben and he broke into a beatific grin, revealing all of his little teeth.

“That’s a yes,” Julia translated needlessly.

“Well, sit and drink your coffee,” Agnes said, drying her eyes with a dish towel. “I’ll make some more pancakes.”

Agnes put a steaming mug of coffee in front of Julia and darted a quick look at Ron. It was a cue of some sort and Julia braced herself. Not for any particular reason; it was the conditioned response of a woman who had never felt as though she really belonged anywhere.

“Julia,” Ron started uncomfortably. He drummed his fingers on the table briefly and cleared his throat. There was a glacial undercurrent in the room suddenly and she was not so sure of her welcome here. “What are your, ah, your plans?”

“Plans?” she croaked. This was it. This was “the good to see you, don’t be a stranger, but could you move on?” speech. Her stomach churned bile. Maybe Mitch was right. She was a fool for believing in the good things.