Someone to Love (13 page)

“He’s upset, once he gets over that, I’m sure he’ll want to be right there with you. Just give him time,” Diane said smiling.

“Look at that smile, you’re so happy that I’ll be living here aren’t you.”

“I am. And our children are going to grow up together.”

“And Amara’s just in Indy”

“Ah, that’s how you beat everyone down here,” Noli said.

“Everyone? I thought just uncle Robert was coming.”

“Mom and Ryan’s coming too.”

“Really?” Amara said. “It’s too bad I won’t be able to see them. I have to get back.”

“Have you found a place?”

“I’m sleeping on my cousin’s couch like I’m a college student and not a college graduate with a couple of years’ experience under my belt.”

“I have a house in Indy I won’t be needing in the foreseeable future. Check it out, if you like it, it’s yours.”

“You can sublease?”

“I’m not renting, I bought it.”

“When did this happen?” Diane asked.

“A few months ago.”

Diane pasted a smile on her face that looked very similar to the way Aunt Catherine smiled when she was displeased but trying bite her tongue.

“I wish I’d known that. I’d been in Indy a couple of months too,” Amara said.

“You’re not the only one that wishes they’d known,” Diane said to Amara. “You do see why Cooper’s upset Noli. If I didn’t love you so much I’d be upset too. The thing keeping me from being mad is I’m just happy you’re here. Amara, we’ll discuss your secret relocation later.”

“It wasn’t secret, I just didn’t want to say anything until things were settled. Noli is good at keeping secrets and she’s been traveling the world. Are you CIA?” Amara asked lightening the suddenly tense mood.

“I would tell you but then I’d have to kill you with my bare hands.”

“So, have you decided on names yet?”

“Since I went into labor on New Year’s Eve, we’ve decided on Evan Joseph and Evie Grace.”

“Aww, that’s sweet.” Diane dabbed at the moisture in the corner of her eye before it fell. “You used your parents’ names as their middle names.”

“It was Cooper’s idea,” Noli couldn’t help but smile at Cooper’s thoughtfulness.

“What do their names mean?”

“Evan means God is gracious and Evie means life.”

“Those are beautiful names. What do you need? I mean for the baby?” Amara asked.

“Is it too late to have a shower?” Diane asked.

“A shower now will have to do since we did not know to have one before.” Catherine Clark answered entering the room and kissing her daughter on the cheek. “Hello, Diane.”

Catherine was Noli’s aunt, by marriage. That qualifier was always added because Noli wanted it to be known she had no blood relations with the woman she thought was proof of alien life form or that scientist had created a life like artificial intelligence robot. Her uncle’s wife seemed to lack true emotions. She was always so matter of fact about things and refused to call anyone by anything other than their full name like the she hadn’t been programmed to use abbreviations or nicknames.

“Hello, Aunt Catherine. Where’s Uncle Bobby?”

“Hello, Magnolia,” the woman said coming to stand by the bed and placing an uncharacteristic hand over Noli’s. “Robert is parking the car.  How are you and the infants? You gave us quite the scare.”

Magnolia glanced over to her cousin. Had her aunt just said us? “I did?”

Diane had said she’d seen a softer side of her mother when a series of misunderstandings and miscommunication had caused her and Jack to temporarily separate. This was the first time she was experiencing it for herself.

“Of course. I was shocked when Diane called your uncle with the news of you being in labor. Then when she called back that you were in emergency surgery delivering a second infant, I was floored. I insisted that we leave out first thing in the morning because driving through the middle of the night would not have been prudent. We left so early I did not even take the time to properly put myself together.”

“You look perfect as always, Mrs. Clark,” Amara said from the other side of the bed.

“Thank you. I think a shower would be appropriate. Perhaps you and I can plan it,” she said to Amara. “I know that is usually in Noli’s wheelhouse, but she shouldn’t plan her own shower and Diane has a pretty severe case of love sickness with a touch of pregnancy brain.”

Noli laughed, she had actually just found something Catherine Clark said funny. The woman had just said something funny on purpose. Noli wasn’t certain but she wondered what was in the pain medication they gave her because perhaps she was hallucinating. “Thank you Aunt Catherine, but I don’t want a shower.”

“It is not about what you want, it is about what you need.”

“I already have the things I need for the baby.”

“You were planning for one, you had two. You need twice the number of things,” Diane chimed in.

“But, I just don’t want to have a shower.” Her voice was on the verge of a whine as if any moment she would stomp her foot, cross her arms and pout her lips.

“Here is the situation, we want to have a baby shower and you do not. Here is the compromise, we will have a small shower because we missed out on the entire pregnancy. It will just be the women of the family, and Amara.” Catherine said.

“We’d have to include Jack’s mom,” Diane added.

“Maybe the new proud papa and the papa-to-be should be there too.” Amara added.

“Co-ed baby showers are becoming acceptable. Perhaps Robert and Ryan should be there too,” Catherine said.

“Maybe that’s a bad idea, it shouldn’t be co-ed,” Amara said.

“No, I like that idea.” Diane chimed in. “In fact, they could help get the nursery together before the shower.”

“That is an excellent idea. We need to get a matching set of what you already have.” Catherine said.

“And I can arrange to get the baby stuff you already have brought down here,” Diane said.

“You mean you’ll send Jack up to get it,” Amara said.

Diane shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, I was going to send Jack and Ryan.”

“Send me where,” Noli’s cousin Ryan asked as he stepped through the door and held it open for her uncle Robert.

“To get the baby furniture from Indy so it will be here for the baby shower I don’t want to have,” Noli said.

“We don’t always get what we want,” Uncle Bobby said standing next to his wife, which left the space next to Amara open for Ryan to take. “For instance, I didn’t want to learn that the niece that I love like a daughter was having an emergency C-section when I didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Bobby. Aunt Catherine said I gave you both quite a scare.” Robert Clark was Noli’s favorite uncle. He was her only uncle, but that’s not why he was her favorite. He did truly love her like a dad. During her teen years he’d always take her side, but somehow set her straight at the same time. When her parents died, he grieved just as much as her, but was strong enough to hold everything together for her. He was a very patient and understanding man, which he probably had to be to be married to Catherine for so long.

“How are you, Noli?” Robert asked inquiring about more than just her physical health.

“I’m hanging in there. Evie is doing great and Evan is already showing improvement.”

“I haven’t seen them yet. I think I’ll go do that now,” Amara said seeming uncomfortable for some reason.

“I’ll come with you,” Ryan said which caused Amara to narrow her eyes at him.

“Where’s the father? Shouldn’t he be here?”

“He was here all last night. He hadn’t been prepared for this so I talked him into going home for a shower and a change of clothes.”

“Magnolia, why did you keep this from all of us?” Much like her parents, her uncle would use her full name instead of the preferred abbreviation when he was upset.

“I think I am going to go and see the infants,” Catherine said.

“I’ll show you where the nursery is,” Diane said excusing herself too.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant until the fifth month. Then I was in denial for a month. I was too afraid to believe it myself and telling someone else would have made it real. By the time I was ready to deal with it, I was afraid of how everyone would respond to me having kept it secret.”

“How long were you going to stay away and keep this secret? Until they graduated from college? Until you were a grandmother? For months you would talk to me but omit that you were pregnant because you were afraid of how I would react? ”

“I was afraid you’d say come home, and that’s not something I can do. I can’t go back there. There are too many memories and it hurts too much to know there will be no new ones.”

“I missed them too. I understand how you feel. Other than Catherine, my sister was my best friend. Even last night, I wanted to call her and ask her what on earth you were thinking before I remembered that I couldn’t. But missing someone is no excuse to behave immaturely and that’s what you’ve been doing.”

“Please don’t be mad at me too, Uncle Bobby. I know that how I behaved was irresponsible.”

“And inconsiderate. Can you even comprehend the terror I felt when a frightened Diane called me with the news that you were having emergency surgery?”

“There’s nothing I can say but I’m sorry.”

“You can say that you’ll deal with your grief instead of avoiding it. I love you, but sorry doesn’t quite cover nine months of lying.”

“It was only four months of lying. And I didn’t want Cooper to know. I was afraid that if I told you, you’d confront him and he’d confront me.”

“Why were you afraid for him to know?”

“Because I knew he’d want his child here with him.”

“You thought he’d take the baby away?”

“No, worse. I thought he’d do exactly what he did. I thought he’d want to get married.”

“I’m still not understanding the problem.”

“The problem is that he keeps taking the few pieces of my heart that I still have since my parents took most of it with them when they died.”

“None of your heart was taken away when they died because none of the memories can be taken away. You’re concentrating so much on the fact that they died that you seem to forget that they lived. They lived a full life of loving you and one another. All they ever wanted was for you to find someone to love and have your own children to love the way they love you.”

“My children will never know their grandparents or have memories of them.”

“They will have tons of memories of them. Those memories that pain you, should comfort you. Instead of running from them, you should be sharing them with your children, so that they will know them. Make your memories of them their memories too.”

“I never thought of it that way. I think I can do that.”

“And you should marry that boy since he’s willing to step up to the plate and do what’s right.”

“I don’t want to marry him just for the sake of our children.”

“Wouldn’t it be more than for the sake of the children? Didn’t you two have a relationship?”

“It wasn’t really a relationship.”

“You two were beneficial friends.”

Noli unsuccessfully held back her smile at her uncle’s attempt to be current. “You mean friends with benefits.”

“Same difference.”

“We never defined what we were other than the agreement that we didn’t want anything serious.”

“Well, it’s way more serious now, what are you going to do?”

“I wish I knew.”

***

“That was actually fun.”

“Your aunt crawling on the floor for that baby proofing game was hilarious,” Cooper said.

“That was something I never thought I’d see. I thought I was going to bust one of my stitches, until I looked at my uncle and saw the way he was looking at her then I just felt gross.”

“What’s wrong with your uncle still being attracted to his wife?”

“Nothing, except the thought of them having sex popped into my head and all I could think about was Aunt Catherine having stiff, proper, robot sex. ‘Oh affirmative. Oh affirmative. That is it’,” Noli said in a stilted robot voice.

“I thought she was nice. She was far nicer than when I first met her at Jack & Diane’s engagement party.”

“Yeah, she still likes to get her way. Like forcing me to have this shower.”

“But you had fun.”

“I did, but now I’m tired.”

“You feeling up to going to visit Evan? Mom said she’d come back and watch Evie if you wanted to go too. ”

“I’d like that. I can’t wait until he’s home.

“That’s another plus of the shower, the twins now have a beautiful nursery to call home and a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn’t even know we needed and don’t think I would have been able to afford. Especially once we get done paying the hospital bill.”

“Don’t worry about the money. Insurance will cover most of the hospital bills.”

“I guess I’m just stressed because things were already tight when it was just me I had to take care of. Now there are three more.”

“Three? We had twins not triplets.”

“I know. I was referring to the twins and you.”

“Oh, money’s not a problem. You don’t need to take care of me or the twins for that matter.”

“It’s good to know I’m not needed.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t needed. I need you for moments like this, to laugh with about adults seeing who could empty a baby bottle the fastest. I need you to reach stuff from the top shelf. And at the end of a long day, I need to relax with you when everyone else is gone.”

“Don’t forget that right now this isn’t actually my home. I’ll be going back to the apartment. I won’t be here when you need me to get up in the middle of the night with a crying baby, but I can be if you marry me.”

The way the green in his hazel eyes sparkled made her contemplate saying yes. “Or you can just move in here.”

“I can’t do that. I need something more permanent than playing house. Something that might tie you here a little more and make you think twice about being Houdini.”

“Marriage isn’t permanent. About half of the country can tell you that.”

“Marriage is a little more permanent than living together.”