And then I hear her respond. “Wow. That’s exactly the one you wanted.”
Did he just call you Mommy?
I hear feet shuffling across the floor. I hear a woman’s voice say, “I know this is last-minute, but we were supposed to leave for Pasadena hours ago. However, my mother-in-law was admitted to the hospital and Trey is on duty—”
“Oh no, Lydia,” Auburn interrupts.
“Oh, she’s fine. Diabetic issues again, which wouldn’t happen if she’d just take care of herself like I tell her. But she doesn’t, and then expects the entire family to give up their plans in order to take care of her.”
I hear a doorknob turning. “AJ, no,” I hear Auburn say. “Stay out of Mommy’s room.”
“Anyway,” the woman says, “I have to take some things to her but they don’t allow children in the ICU, so I need you to watch him for a couple of hours.”
“Of course,” she says. “Here?”
“Yes, I don’t have time to drive you to our house.”
“Okay,” she says. She sounds excited. She sounds like she’s not used to the woman trusting her to do this. She’s so excited, I don’t think she notices AJ is opening her bedroom door again.
“I’ll pick him up later tonight,” the woman says.
“He can spend the night,” Auburn replies, hopeful. “I’ll bring him back in the morning.”
Her bedroom door is open now and a little boy falls to his knees directly in front of the tent. I lift up on my elbows and smile at him, because he’s smiling at me.
“Why are you in a tent?” he asks.
I bring my finger up to my mouth. “Shhh.”
He grins and crawls inside the tent. He looks to be about four or five years old, and his eyes aren’t green like Auburn’s. They’re all different colors. Browns and grays and greens. Like a canvas.
He doesn’t have her unique shade of hair color, as his is dark brown. I’m assuming he gets that from his father, but I still see a lot of Auburn in him. Mostly in his expression, and how he seems so curious.
“Is the tent a secret?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes. And no one knows this tent is here, so we need to keep it between us, okay?”
He smiles and nods, like he’s excited to have a secret. “I can keep secrets.”
“That’s good,” I say to him. “Because it’s not muscles that make men strong. Secrets do. The more secrets you keep, the stronger you are on the inside.”
He grins. “I want to be strong.”
I’m about to tell him to go back to the living room before any attention is brought to me, but I can hear the opening of the bedroom door.
“AJ, come give Nana Lydia a hug,” the woman says. Her footsteps grow louder and AJ’s eyes grow wide.
“Lydia, wait,” I hear Auburn say to her with panic in her voice. But she says it a second too late, because I don’t have time to pull my feet inside the tent before Lydia walks into the room.
I can see her steps come to an immediate halt. I don’t have to see her face to know that she’s not very happy about the fact that AJ is in this tent right now.
“AJ,” her voice is firm. “Come out of the tent, sweetie.”
AJ grins at me and puts his finger to his mouth. “I’m not in a tent, Nana Lydia. There’s no tent in here.”
“Lydia, I can explain,” Auburn says, bending down. She motions for AJ to come out of the tent, and her eyes only meet mine for a second. “He’s just a friend. He was helping me put up this tent for AJ.”
“AJ, let’s go, honey.” Lydia grabs his hand, pulling him out of the tent. “You may be okay with allowing your son to be around complete strangers, but I’m not.”
I can see the disappointment wash over Auburn. It washes over AJ, too, when he realizes Lydia isn’t letting him stay. I follow after him, crawling out of the tent, standing up. “It’s fine, I’ll go,” I say. “We just finished setting it up for him.”
Lydia looks me up and down, unimpressed with whatever she thinks she sees. I want to eye her the same way, but I don’t want to do anything to make this worse for Auburn. When I get a good look at her, I realize I’ve seen her before. It’s been a while, but she hasn’t changed a bit, other than having a little more gray in her straight, black hair. She still looks just as stoic and intimidating as she did all those years ago.
She faces AJ.
“AJ, get your toy. We need to go.”
Auburn follows Lydia out of the room. “Lydia, please.” She waves her hand in my direction. “He’s leaving. It’ll just be me and AJ here, I promise.”
Lydia’s hand pauses on the front door, and she turns to face Auburn. She releases a quick sigh. “You can see him Sunday night, Auburn. Really, it’s fine. I should have known not to stop by unannounced.”
She looks over Auburn’s shoulder to AJ. “Tell your mother good-bye, AJ.”
I can see Auburn grimace and then just as fast, her frown turns into a smile as she turns around and kneels down in front of AJ. She pulls him to her and hugs him. “I’m sorry, but you’re gonna go with Nana Lydia tonight, okay?” She pulls away from him and brushes her hand through his hair. “I’ll see you Sunday night.”
“But I want to stay here,” he says with genuine disappointment.
Auburn tries to hide it with her smile, but I can see how his words have gutted her. She ruffles his hair and says, “Another night, okay? Mommy has to get up really early and work tomorrow and you won’t have any fun if all we do is go to sleep.”
“It’ll be fun,” he says. He points toward the bedroom. “You have a tent and we could sleep in—” AJ’s eyes cut to mine and he realizes he just mentioned the secret tent. He looks back at Auburn and shakes his head. “Never mind, you don’t have a tent. I was wrong, you don’t.”
As shitty as I feel about what’s happening right now, the kid makes me smile.
“AJ, let’s go.”
Auburn gives him another tight hug and whispers, “I love you. I’ll love you forever.” She kisses his forehead and he kisses her cheek before taking Lydia’s hand. Auburn doesn’t even turn around to tell Lydia good-bye, and I don’t blame her one bit. As soon as the door closes, she stands and brushes past me, heading straight to her bedroom. I watch as she pulls back the flap and crawls into the tent.
I stand at her door and listen to her cry.
It all makes sense now. Why she was so upset that Lydia stood her up on her birthday, because that meant she didn’t get to spend it with AJ.
Why she said his favorite color is blue.
Why she moved to Texas, when she seems so unhappy here.
And why there is no way in hell I’ll be able to walk away from her now. Not after witnessing that. Not after seeing how incredible she is when she loves that little boy.