There’s bowls of white icing, and colorful candies, white-and-red-striped peppermint sparkles, scattered all over the table. And about two dozen rectangular pieces of brown cookie.
“Honey, you’re home!” Brent greets me, then he sucks one of Kennedy’s icing-covered fingers into his mouth.
Regan, Ronan, and Rosaleen attack me at once, talking at the same time, showing me what they’re doing. I can only make out every other word. Then Chelsea walks in, wearing a red-and-green apron and carrying a tray of more brown cookie rectangles.
“Hey!” she says with excitement, putting the tray down and reaching up to peck my lips.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
She glances around the table. “I went overboard with the gingerbread. So instead of building a house, we’re building a town.”
Stanton passes me a cold beer from the ice bucket on the end of the table. “Welcome to the party.”
Two-year-old Samuel squeals as Sofia tickles him, murmuring something in Portuguese. Then he pops a candy in his mother’s mouth.
“Check it out, Jake.” Rory motions to the half-constructed building in front of him. “Me and Brent are making the law firm. Becker, Mason, Santos, Shaw and McQuaid—has a pretty nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Kennedy answers before I can. “You should think about being a prosecutor, Rory. We have a great office building.”
Brent scoffs. “Don’t listen to her—she lies. Her office is shit small.”
Kennedy plops a glob of icing on Brent’s nose.
But he’s not bothered at all. “Now you have to lick that off, Wife.”
She adds a red M&M to the center of the icing. Taking the cue, Regan screeches, “Food fight!”
“Noooo!” Chelsea laughs. “No food fighting.”
Brent shakes his head at his wife. “You’re such a bad example.”
Kennedy just sticks her tongue out at him.
“Presley and I are making the capitol building,” Raymond tells me from the other end of the table. “Together.”
Then, behind the seventeen-year-old’s back, he gives me a thumbs-up and wiggles his eyebrows. That crush is still going strong.
Chelsea takes my hand. “Come on, grab a chair. What should we make?”
Sometimes I look around and wonder, how the hell did I get here? How is this my life? It all changed so fast. But then I stop wondering. Because how this life became mine doesn’t really fucking matter. I’m just crazy-happy that it is.
“Let’s make our house,” I tell Chelsea.
Her eyes flare. “Good one. Let’s do it.”
****
On Christmas morning the kids converge on our bedroom at 4 a.m.—it’s the one day they’re allowed to come in without knocking. When wrapping paper covers every inch of the floor, and the dog and the kids are busy figuring out their new toys, I set Chelsea up with a cup of tea on the couch, while Rosaleen and I start making enough strawberry-and-blueberry pancakes to feed an army.
Rosaleen whisks a huge bowl of batter while I slice the strawberries.
And out of nowhere, she asks, “Do you think you’ll like the baby more than us?”
The knife in my hand freezes. “What?”
She shrugs, blond curls jiggling. “We’ll understand if you do.”
It takes me a second to come up with an adequate response.
“You know how in school they tell you, ‘there are no stupid questions’?”
“Yeah?”
“They’re lying to you.”
She snorts but doesn’t meet my eyes, focusing hard on her bowl.
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Well . . . the baby will be yours. Yours and Aunt Chelsea’s.”
I put the knife on the counter, wipe my hands, and crouch down to her eye level. When those sweet blue eyes are on me, I give her the firm, irrefutable truth.
“You are mine. Mine and Aunt Chelsea’s. Never doubt that.”
The words sink in . . . and then, slowly, she smiles. And her grin is brighter than all the Christmas lights on this street put together.
“Okay.”
I nod and stand up. “Now let’s get these pancakes made before your brothers start eating the tree.”
Chapter 6
January
After a relatively quiet New Year’s, the kids head back to school. Being home with them over the break, I noticed Raymond was really quiet. Too quiet.
So, one day, when Chelsea’s boss calls her in early to the museum, and I’m in charge of getting them on the bus, I hold Rory back at the front door.
“What’s up with him?”
Rory follows my gaze toward his twin brother’s back. Then he shrugs. “Raymond worries.”
This isn’t news to me. Like many intelligent children, Raymond has anxieties: global warming, droughts, nuclear war—if there’s a possibility of worldwide catastrophe, Raymond’s shitting a brick about it.
“What’s he worried about these days? Specifically.”
Rory’s gaze turns cautious, reminding me of a witness on the stand. “I can’t tell you. It’s a brother-code kind of thing. But . . . Raymond doesn’t have a password on his laptop. If I was a smart guy—that’s where I’d look to find out what’s going on.”
Then he heads down the driveway. “Later, Jake.”