Somehow, in the middle of all of the wicked fuckery that is my life, this brown headed, green-eyed angel appeared. Every time I think my life is perfect, is more than I ever dreamed it could be, she makes it a little better.
“I promise you I will take care of you and the baby,” I whisper, not really sure if she can even hear me. “I will love you both until the day I die. I will make sure you have everything you ever need and never feel alone.” I raise my head enough to kiss her stomach. As my lips touch her, tears began to sting my eyes.
If this scene was on TV, I’d laugh my ass off. But I don’t give a fuck. Growing inside the love of my life is a little human, half her and half me. I don’t deserve her or this, but I’ll be damned if I don’t make it my life’s mission to try.
“I’m your daddy,” I whisper, feeling a little dumb talking to her shirt. I don’t even know if babies can hear outside the womb, but it’s worth a shot. “And you have the most beautiful mommy in the entire world.”
I look up into her eyes. Seeing love in them, the tears flowing down her cheeks, make mine spill over, too.
“We are going to love you and probably make you rotten. If you’re a boy . . . Do we know if it’s a boy or girl?”
She laughs and shakes her head, wiping the tears off her face.
“If you’re a boy, we will go fishing and play Tonka Trucks in the sand and drive cars and watch football. I'll have Max teach you to fish and your Aunt Kari will take you hiking. And if you’re a girl, there will be . . . well, I don’t know what there will be. But there won’t be boys, that much I’m sure of.”
Jada laughs again and I can’t help but smile, although if she thinks I’m kidding she’s crazy. “Either way, we are going to love the shit out of you. Sorry. I probably shouldn’t say shit. As you can see, Daddy has a lot to learn. But I promise you and your mommy that I’ll figure it out.”
I stand and pull Jada up, too. “I love you, Jada Alexander.”
“And I love you, Cane. So much."
Read on for a glance at Max and Kari’s story,
The Perception, available now.
KARI
The box that Jada handed me felt light in my hands. It jingled as I turned it over, the contents that I had tucked away clamoring inside. It was the size of a shoebox but held memories that could fill a Mack truck. A sharp pain tore through my chest at the realization that my secrets had been in someone else’s hands.
I looked up at my sister. Jada’s long brown hair was in a knot at the top of her head, her round cheeks pink. She looked a lot like me, only my hair was a lighter shade of brown and falling across my shoulders. Our noses were identical, our eyes a bright shade of green. We had our mother’s dark complexion, although Jada was much more like her than me.
My eyes settled on her growing belly.
And, right now, she’s a lot more like Mom than I’ll ever be.
“Did you look inside?” I tried to keep my voice even. The thought of her possibly knowing the items lying buried at the bottom of the box made me queasy. At one point, I would have told her. I needed to tell her. But she was dealing with her then-husband, Decker, at the time and didn’t need more stress. There were days during her first marriage that I wondered if he would actually hurt her. So when I called her that day to tell her what was going on and she was already crying, I choked. I masked the pain from my voice and worked her through her problem, keeping my issues to myself.
Sadly, even to me, that was something I was pretty good at.
Our mom died when I was eleven, Jada fourteen. She was carrying a baby and died from an ectopic pregnancy. It was hard on all of us, but Jada seemed to pick up the pieces of herself faster than I did.
Dad had his secretary at his realtor office, Alice, come to the house a few days a week to help out. Alice was great and did our laundry, made cookies, tried to talk to us the best she could. But our mom was perfect and, as much as I loved Alice, she always seemed like a fill-in. I remember watching her mill around Mom’s kitchen one afternoon a few months after the funeral, Jada sitting at the table peeling an orange. Alice was making plans to take her to a play she wanted to see.
I sat there and sketched on a notepad, drawing little doodles of arrows, and felt so utterly alone. Why couldn’t I go on like Jada? I just wanted to scream that everything was wrong, pound my fists on the table and yell at Alice to get out! To stop touching all my mom’s things.
But I couldn’t do that. When I had tried to bring it up to Jada at night, as we lay in our beds, she shushed me in the motherly way she had taken on. Told me that I didn’t need to be so hateful and that we were all doing the best we could. That we were in it together. And somehow, over the next few years, I mastered the art of being “in it together,” yet being absolutely alone.