She led the way to the hall. “Not so much fun when it goes the other way, is it?”
As they left the room, Jared picked peas off the floor under Rocco’s high chair and kicked himself for forcing a stand-off. Maddie returned with her present list and a bunch of cat stickers from the collection in her bedside drawer.
“Where’s Uncle Greg?”
“He had to go to work.” On his attitude.
Kayla re-entered the dining room and looked at Jared thoughtfully. “What happened to, ‘Don’t let him get to you, he’s not worth it?’”
Advice he used to give Kayla when he was a nicer guy. He squirmed.
“Maddie.” She bent to their daughter. “Go get ice cream out of the freezer.”
The little girl’s eyes rounded. “But I still haven’t eaten my vege’bles.”
“Special occasion.”
“I’m sorry,” he said when Maddie had scampered to the kitchen. “I shouldn’t have interfered.”
To his surprise, she hugged him so tightly his ribs ached. “Kayla?”
“I appreciate you standing up for me.” She released him and wiped her eyes with the back of her palm, waving aside his murmur of concern. “Sometimes I need an outsider to say, ‘it’s not acceptable, how Greg talks to you.’ Because when you grow up with it, it’s too easy to think it is you. Overreacting, being too sensitive…”
“I always got the impression you wanted to fight your own family battles.”
“I do. But once in a while it’s nice not to have to.”
“What about Christmas?”
“He’s an asshole, but he loves Mom. They’ll be here. I think he’ll be better behaved, too. You really shocked him.”
“Good.”
Rocco squawked to get out of his highchair and she walked over to him and started wiping his small hands clean. “The other day when you looked at that photo of us in Musique magazine you said jokingly, ‘What did you see in me?’. I saw a guy who encouraged me to be myself, without ever thinking my strength diminished him as a man. A guy who helped me appreciate that all the qualities my father and brother called my faults, were my virtues.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Someone who saw marriage as an equal partnership—”
Jared couldn’t take any more. “Stop!” he said savagely. “That’s no longer true and you know it.”
Maddie bounced into the room holding a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. “Ice cream!”
Incapable of pretending everything was fine for his daughter, he walked out of the room.
*
“That’s great, honey.” Unfazed, Kayla finished cleaning up Rocco and added the debris from his high chair to Maddie’s uneaten vegetables. In this, at least, she understood her husband’s behavior. It was nice to be the one with answers again.
The front door slammed.
“But doesn’t Daddy want some?”
“He’s got a couple of things to do first. How about we go eat the ice cream at the counter in the kitchen? We need bowls and spoons.”
Maddie looked at the plates of uneaten food. “But you haven’t finished your dinner either!”
“So, we’ll be rebels together.” She picked up Rocco. “C’mon, I’ll clean this up later.”
As it happened, she didn’t have to. An hour later, when she walked into the dining room after putting the kids to bed—not that Maddie would stay in hers, she was still trying to milk her cold for all it was worth—the dining table had been cleared. She found Jared in the kitchen, piling leftovers into Tupperware containers.
“Well, at least tomorrow night’s dinner taken care of,” she commented, taking the empty plates to the sink. “Feeling better?”
Jared put the leftovers in the fridge and slammed the door. “Ask me.”
Kayla glanced at his face, suffering and desperate. “Ask you what?” Turning on the faucet, she began rinsing plates.
“You know what, Kayla.” Grabbing a dishcloth, he wiped the island counter. “We’ve been avoiding this conversation since Zander’s voice failed.”
“You may have been.” She tipped Maddie’s vegetables into the waste disposal unit and rinsed her plate. “I haven’t seen anything to discuss.” They should get a compost bin set up at their next house. Maybe a worm farm.
“Haven’t you?” The dishwasher rattled as he pulled out the top rack. “Our life is all on my terms, with Rage’s future in doubt and the tour postponed indefinitely. Now would be the perfect time to move back to Bridgeton. The place you love, and would prefer to raise our kids. Where all our family and friends are. Where people know us as Kayla and Jared, not as Jared Walker rock star, and his wife.”
He started shoving the rinsed plates into the dishwasher. “And yet you’ve said nothing. Not when the shit hit the fan with Zander, not when the band starting discussing a Plan B. Not when you have every right to say, ‘What about what I want?’”