“You’ve ridden in here before, right?” Castro had an easy way of talking to the baby. “C’mere, princess.” He lifted her into the pack and strapped her in. “Now I’m gonna pick this up…”
“I’ll do it,” I said, stopping him. I lifted the pack, while Nicole watched me with big eyes.
“Your shoulder gonna be okay with that?”
“Sure. She only weighs twenty-odd pounds.” Castro was a great guy, but if anyone was going to carry my baby in a pack, it was going to be me.
“Suit yourself. Here—I’ll hand her off to you.” He took the pack by its frame while I pulled the shoulder straps on. “Clip that chest thing,” he said.
So I did. Nicole let out a string of babbling and kicked her feet, shaking the pack gently. “Let’s walk, and we’ll see if she’s down with this.”
“Awesome. Let’s go downriver?” He pointed.
I looked around. “No—that way. She needs shade or she’ll burn.”
“Look at you being the dad!”
“I have pale skin, too.”
“Castros don’t burn,” my friend pointed out.
In three more weeks, neither would I. There was no sunshine in the hockey rink. Three weeks. That was all the time we had left before training camp. Inconceivable.
Carrying Nicole on my back was an unfamiliar experience. I could feel the warmth of her body where it rested against mine. And, as I walked, a little hand explored my hairline. I reached back and caught one of her stubby feet in my hand, and she giggled.
She babbled as we walked upriver, following the grassy bank.
“Hey, cool rock. How deep do you think it is here?” Castro asked, pointing at a giant boulder in the middle of the stream.
“No idea, man.”
“Hang on a second, then.” Castro kicked off his hiking shoes and socks. He turned up the cuffs on his shorts.
“Showing me some leg? Sexy.”
He gave me the finger.
“Don’t curse in front of the child.”
He made another rude gesture, and I laughed.
Wading out into the river, he began to laugh, too. “It is so freaking cold.” But he made it to the big rock in the middle without much trouble. “There are tiny fish nibbling my toes.”
“They don’t know any better. Do you want me to take your picture on that rock? That will impress the ladies. Or at least your sisters.”
“Good idea.”
I took out my phone to take his picture, but Nicole started to fuss. I took a couple of shots, put the phone away, and then reached back for her toe, which was kicking madly. “Everything okay back there?”
“She wants to go wading, too.” Castro picked his way back toward me.
“Zara said to stay away from the river.”
“She said not to let the baby walk into the river. But it’s mean if we don’t let her get her feet wet. I won’t set her down.”
I took the pack off, and the baby wriggled to get out. “Go ahead,” I said, lifting her out of the pack and onto the grass. “But if this goes badly, tell mommy it was his fault.”
“Come here, little cutie,” Castro said. She ran to him. He lifted her up over the water, then swung her gently, allowing her toes to dip into the shallow water.
She hooted with laughter.
“Whee!” Castro did it again and again. Nicole laughed until her face was red, and her whole body was shaking. When he stopped, she fussed. So he obliged, dipping her toes into the cool water a dozen more times.
Then, for no discernible reason at all, she began to cry. Tears streaked down her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Castro said, tucking her onto his hip and wading toward the shore. “I’ve got you.” He tried that thing where you jiggle the baby gently against your body.
But she howled. Her face turned red. She opened her mouth wider and screamed.
“You broke her. Let me.” I took her back from him, trying to decide what to do. Last time I calmed her down in a hammock. But there wasn’t one here. Maybe some more walking in the pack?
“She’s probably just tired,” Castro said. “Didn’t Zara say she didn’t get a nap?”
“Guess so.” I set her into the pack with the predictable result—more yelling. I felt like a dickhead strapping her in as she screamed. But I didn’t know what else to try. So I picked up the pack and set off up the path. Castro ran to join me, hustling to fall in step.
As we walked, he told me a funny story about the time his sister was on the freeway when her little boy started to throw up in his car seat, and she couldn’t pull over to help him. “They had to get that car detailed the very next day.”
Nicole’s cries had quickly begun to sound less insistent, and then they stopped entirely. She leaned to the left, toward the river, maybe watching something in the water.
“What’s she doing back there?” I asked.
Castro looked and then laughed. “She’s passed out cold. Looks like you on the team jet after a four-game road trip.”
“Very funny.”
“Funny ’cause it’s true!” We walked in silence for another minute. “You still afraid of the baby?”
“No. She’s not very fierce.”
“Wait’ll she’s sixteen and telling you her current curfew is too early, and that she needs your car.”
There was nothing about that scenario that I could picture. Fifteen years from now sounded like another epoch in time.
Thinking back, I tried to picture Bess at sixteen. She’d never given anybody sass. Neither of us had. We lived our teen years on tenterhooks, hoping that the scowling grandfather who’d taken us in wouldn’t find us to be too much trouble. “Hey, Castro?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever thought you were on top of your shit? And then you realize you really haven’t dealt with your shit at all?”
“Wait—what kind of shit are we talking about here?”
“Baggage. History.”
“Maybe? I used to lose it whenever someone in the minors would use a slur against me. But mostly I’m over it now. I’m like—take that, fuckers. I made the big league and you didn’t. But once in a while a fan will say something stupid, and I realize I’m not really over being the only brown guy on the ice. Is that the kind of shit you mean?”
“Pretty much. I thought I was really over mine. But every night lately I’m dreaming about my dead mother or my asshole father.” Last night I’d been standing in our old house while my father swung his fists at me. And while Nicole cried from another room. Not Bess, Nicole. All my baggage was swirling around in my mind, in technicolor.
The only night I hadn’t had at least one weird dream was the one I’d spent in Zara’s bed. Go figure.
“That’s just your brain trying to scare you into doing better,” Castro said. “Like when I have that recurring dream about showing up to practice without my pants on.”
I laughed and tipped my head back to feel the sunshine on my face. Nothing about this summer was happening like I planned. But maybe it wasn’t a bad thing.
* * *
We walked for a good ninety minutes. The baby slept for only a little while, but she woke up in a better mood. I felt small hands playing in my hair as we moved through the forested path at the river’s edge.
It was after five o’clock when we headed back toward the coffee shop, and my phone pinged with a text from Zara. I’m all done here. Heading up the hill to find a burger for dinner. Want one?
Yes, I replied quickly. Can we eat them in the Tudor? I want to give you a set of keys. The realtor left them in the mailbox after closing.
You bought the place already? She fired back.
Sure did. Meet me there?
Twenty minutes later I arrived at the house. It was just me and Nicole. I’d sent Castro home. I found Zara inside, walking around the empty rooms, looking thoughtful.
Nicole squealed with delight at the sight of her mother. And I didn’t blame her at all. I felt like making happy no
ises every time I set eyes on the woman, too. Not waiting for an invitation, I walked right up to Zara and kissed her on the neck. “Did your electrician show up?”
“He did,” she said into my ear. “He replaced something that I’ve already forgotten the name for, but swears it will do the trick.” Her hands caught my stubbled face before I could kiss her more thoroughly. “Let’s eat, okay? I’m dying.”
I followed her into the kitchen, still wearing the baby. When I removed the shoulder straps, Zara eased the pack off my shoulders and unclipped her babbling little girl. “Did you have a good walk? I have some food for you!”
Nicole ran away. We could hear her toddling around the empty living room, her squeals echoing off the walls.
“Come here, baby girl,” Zara said, calling her back to the kitchen. “I brought your clip-on chair.”
Zara had suspended a baby seat off the stone countertop, but it took Nicole a few minutes to be convinced to sit in it. Zara set down some bites of chicken and French fries on a placemat. When the baby saw the food, she agreed to be confined again.
“Thank the lord,” Zara said, clipping her in.
“Long day?” I asked, putting a hand on her lower back. I ached to touch her. The night we’d spent together hadn’t gotten her out of my system at all. It had made me crave her more.
“Long day. Long week,” Zara said, dipping her hand into a paper bag and pulling out a foil-wrapped burger. “Here you go. You don’t strike me as the picky type, so I got you one with everything.”
“Thanks. That’s perfect.” It was bonkers that Zara and I had only had dinner together a couple of times—the wedding and her family’s Sunday lunch. Standing at the counter side by side, we ate in silence for a few minutes, while Nicole stuffed her face, too, with great enthusiasm.
“Still like the house?” I asked, admiring the way the late afternoon sun slanted through the room.
“I love it desperately,” she said immediately.
Swear to God, that made me feel ten feet tall. “Glad to hear that. You didn’t seem so sure about the whole idea before.”
“It wasn’t the house,” she said quietly. “It was owing you. I owe everyone in my family. No—everyone in my life. I didn’t want to add you to the list.”
She said that with her spine straight and her dark eyes boring into mine. And that’s the moment when I finally understood that I loved her. I’d probably loved her a long time, but I’d been too chickenshit to use that word, even to myself.
“You don’t owe me anything, baby,” I said softly. “I want you to have this place. In fact…” I stepped across the roomy kitchen, opening empty drawers until I found what I was looking for—an envelope with a copy of the deed inside. “Here. This copy is for you.”
Zara opened the envelope and pulled out the document. Her frown deepened as she flipped through the pages. “Both our names are on here?”
“That’s right.” My lawyer had known what to do. “Joint tenants with rights of survivorship. If anything happened to either of us, the other one gets the house automatically.”
Her dark lashes lifted, and her gaze met mine. “You could have just willed it to Nicole.”
I shrugged, because I supposed she was right. But I wanted Zara to have a house. Hell, I wanted her to have everything. “It makes me happy to do this for you, gorgeous. I hope you like the house. And I hope you’ll let me visit.”
“Thank you, Dave.” Her cheeks stained pink. She took the last bite of her burger and then crumpled up the wrapper. “I got fries, too,” she said, changing the subject. She set the bag between us, like a deep-fried barrier.
Fuck that. I pushed the bag aside, leaned in and kissed her jawline.
Never one to beat around the bush, she captured my face in one of her sleek hands. Turning her chin, she kissed me once on the mouth. But then she pushed my face away. “I can’t, Dave. I want to, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She glanced over at her chewing baby before looking me straight in the eye again. “Once upon a time, you and I were wonderfully, gloriously casual with each other,” she said. “It was a temporary thing, and that was fine with me.”
“Right.” I chuckled. “I haven’t forgotten that you threw me out every night.”
Her smile was sad. “The thing is, I can’t even do that anymore, because now we’re not the only two people involved. I have someone else’s feelings to consider.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to understand. “You don’t want me hanging around because you don’t think I’m good for Nicole?” Didn’t she see I was trying?
“That’s not it.” Zara shook her head. “And I love having you around.” She sighed, as if it had cost her to tell me that. “But what I want isn’t very important anymore. I can live with all kinds of uncertainty in my life, but I won’t do that to Nicole. I’m a big girl. She’s not.”
“Okay. I get it.” Sort of. “It’s just that I missed you like crazy, and I don’t see what it hurts to let you know. I don’t mind remembering why I liked you so much, or how we ended up having a child together.”
“I missed you like crazy, too,” she whispered. “But the other day you asked me what I needed from you. And I didn’t give you an answer.”
“Yeah? Lay it on me.”
“Okay. I need you to decide if we’re really on your list, or not.”
“My…list?” Now I definitely wasn’t following her.
Zara picked at invisible lint on her sleeve. “When I was a little girl, sometimes my father was around, and sometimes he wasn’t. My mother was way too patient with him. He strung us along. And then eventually he went away for good. The last time I saw him I was fourteen.”
Oh. Now she was making sense. My own childhood was my least favorite topic in the whole entire world. Judging from the expression on Zara’s face, this wasn’t a fun chat for her, either.
But she went on. “Nicole is just a baby, and, when she’s bigger, she won’t remember the summer her father showed up for two months.” She took a deep breath and met my eyes. “You can swing by and let Bess visit for an hour, and it doesn’t mean a thing to Nicole. Even if Bess buys out every baby outfit in Detroit.”
Which she might.
“But it’s like this—someday Nicole is going to turn ten. She has a spring birthday—May seventh…”
We both glanced over at our daughter. And I tried and failed to imagine our baby girl as an auburn-haired fifth grader.
“Audrey will probably make her a cake with Wonder Woman on it—or whatever is trending that year.” Zara gave me a fragile smile. “Right here in this kitchen, maybe.” She tapped the counter top.
“Right.” I was still following. “Okay.”
“But here’s the thing I want you to think about.” She let out a shaky breath. “On her birthday, she should already know where she stands with you. You’re either in her life, at that point, or you’re not.”
Oh.
She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Don’t make her wonder. Don’t make her sit there and stare at the phone, unsure if you’re going to call her to say, Happy Birthday.”
Zara turned her face away. But before she did, I saw the tears in her eyes. And my heart broke for her in a way it hadn’t before. Maybe I had a thick head, but it wasn’t thick enough to prevent me from understanding that this little scenario Zara had spun was deeply personal to her.
I reached for her hand, then lifted one of her palms to my mouth and kissed it.
She swallowed hard, but didn’t look at me. “A kid can do fine without a dad in her life. Really.” She let out a shaky breath. “You don’t have to stick around, Dave. But do not make my little girl sit there by the phone and hope she’s been a good enough girl that year to get five minutes of your time on her birthday.”
Fuck. My throat was tighter than it had ever been. “Okay, sweetheart,” I croaked. “I get it.” I didn’t plan to do that to Nicole. But listening to Zara describe her pain, I could tot
ally understand how she wore those scars.
That’s when I finally understood how complicated we really were as a couple. If things didn’t work out between us, it could break three hearts, all at once.
“You…” She swallowed hard again. “You don’t need to be her daddy. She has a lot of family already. If you don’t want to be involved, I’ll understand. But I need you need to figure it out before she’s old enough to ask me if she has a dad or not.”
“I can do that,” I whispered.
Finally, she turned to look at me again. “It’s only been a few weeks. You’re probably still reeling. She won’t remember this summer, Dave. But she won’t be a baby forever.”
“All right,” I said gently. I reached for her, and pulled her into a hug. “I hear you. I’m not going to do that to her. I promise. Can you trust me?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can. But I need you to take some time and figure yourself out. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. You’ve been great. But you’re still on vacation. Everything is always better on vacation. It’s not real life.”
It felt pretty fucking real to me, and I opened my mouth to say so. But she beat me to it.
“All I want is for you to think things over. When you go back to New York, your life will swallow you up, right?”
“Well, sure, but…”
She held up a hand. “Go back. Do your thing for a while. Think things over. Figure out how much of yourself you can give your daughter. It’s important to me, because I know it will be important to her.”
“Okay,” I whispered. Her hand was shaking in mine. “Come here.” I tugged her closer.
She came willingly, resting her cheek against my collarbone. She sighed, as if wrung out from getting all that off her chest.
I kissed her forehead. And her skin felt so good against my lips that I did it again. I held on tightly, pulling her closer. I wanted to press away her fear and her pain—extinguish it between our two bodies.
But that’s when Nicole decided she’d had enough food and began to flail her arms and squawk for freedom.
“Right,” Zara said gently, stepping out of my embrace to gather food scraps from where they’d fallen beneath the baby chair. “Real life calls.”