Alex is in the top bunk in the room he’s sharing with Trixie. He has one leg flung through the slats on the bed, and his toes wiggle in his sleep. I smile and draw the blanket down around his foot.
Trixie is in the bottom bunk, and she’s lying against the wall, with her arm lifted above her head. Stretched out alongside her is Sally. He’s on top of the covers while she’s beneath them, and I stop to be sure they’re both all right. Sally lifts his head and looks at me, blinking his big brown eyes. Then he heaves a sigh and relaxes. It’s amusing and stupefying the way he has taken up with Trixie. She needed a protector. She needed someone to have her back. And it looks like this great big goofy dog has her back, her side, and he might even have her trust.
I walk into the living room to find Gabby pulling out the couch bed. “You don’t have to do that, honey,” I say. “Go to bed.”
“I’m going to sleep out here.” She starts to make up the tiny bed. “You take the bedroom.”
This worries me more than anything. Gabby has become my protector, after all that has happened. It should be me taking care of her. But it’s not. It’s the reverse.
“Seriously, Gabby. Go to bed.” I point toward the bedroom and put on my mom face.
Gabby rolls her eyes. “Not happening, Mom,” she says quietly. “You’re eight months pregnant. You’re taking the bed.”
“Gab…” I don’t even know what to say to her anymore. I don’t know how to talk to my own daughter.
She sits down on the foam mattress and crosses her legs, then shoves the pillow down into the hole between her knees, resting her elbows on it as she looks at me. “So…” she says with a grin. “You and Jake, huh?”
A grin tugs at my own lips, even though I try to hold it back. “Me and Jake what?”
She smiles even bigger. “So you and Jake were totally a thing, weren’t you?”
“A thing?” I fluff the extra pillows and sit down next to her, leaning against the back of the couch with my legs in front of me. I lay my hand on my belly, because it makes me feel centered. “Define thing.”
“He was your boyfriend before you met Dad.”
I nod slowly and suddenly it’s hard to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Oh, Mom,” Gabby chides softly. “Don’t cry.”
I point to my stomach. “I’m really pregnant, Gabs. I can’t help it.” I wipe my eyes and try to get myself together.
“Tell me about Jake,” she says, and she turns to lay her head in the little bit of lap I have left. My fingers immediately find their way into her hair. “Was he your first love?”
Warmth settles in my heart, replacing where pain was a second ago. “Yeah, he was.”
“How old were you?” She yawns.
“It was the summer I turned sixteen.” Memories wash through me, making the hair on my arms stand on end. “It was magical.”
She snorts and turns away from me, and I run my fingers through the back of her long dark hair. She makes a soft, happy noise, and I realize this is the most calm I have felt in quite some time.
“Was he your first kiss?” she whispers. Then she giggles.
“Yeah, Gabs. He was.” And he was my first grope, my first second base, and my first boyfriend. My first loss.
“What happened between the two of you? Too much distance?”
“No,” I reply. “I met your dad when I joined the Army.” And that love…that love eclipsed everything else.
“But before that,” she prompts. “What happened with you and Jake?”
I shrug more to myself than to her. “I had to go home. He stayed here. That was all of it. We wrote letters for a little while, and then we stopped. I don’t remember why.”
“You were meant to meet Dad,” she says. Her voice gets soft and breathy, and more of her weight settles against my leg.
“Yes, I was.” That is one hundred percent true. I was meant to meet Jeff. I was meant to have three beautiful children with him. What came later…that was a tragedy.
After a long while I slide out from beneath Gabby’s sleeping form and pull the covers over her, staring down at her long enough to watch her chest rise and fall twice. That’s enough. Twice.
15
Jake
My paddle slices through the water with a dull slush, the soft whisper of the boat moving across the lake breaking the silence of the morning. The sun is barely over the horizon, but I shoved the canoe off anyway. I didn’t have much of a choice. Pop woke me up early and asked me to go and fix the mooring cleat on the floating dock that’s in the middle of the lake. I get out there, though, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Knowing Pop, he’ll probably tell me that there was a lesson in this little excursion.