Page 77 of Single Chance

I shook my head and dabbed at the corners of my eyes with my napkin. “You didn’t. I think about her every day. I can still hear her voice in my head, from the years before dementia got to her, when she was clear and her voice was strong. Sometimes I can almostfeelthe love she’d have for my baby, as if it’s a tangible thing.” I shook my head. “I’m sure that doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s like she’s watching over you,” Sam said with incredible insight for her age. But then she had firsthand experience with a loved one’s death.

“Sometimes I could swear she is,” I said. “I went into that yarn place downtown a couple weeks ago?—”

“Fat Cat.”

“Right. I went in to avoid that llama that apparently sneaks out to go to the bakery?”

“Esmerelda.”

I laughed. “Everybody knows this llama. Anyway, I didn’t set out to go to Fat Cat, but once I was in there, surrounded by all that yarn, I felt Gram’s presence. She loved to knit. I found some beautiful yarn, and long story short, Loretta, the owner, offered to help me knit a baby blanket. I’m going tomorrow for my first lesson. Or re-lesson? My Gram taught me, but let’s just say I’m not a natural.”

“Do you think… Would you mind if I went with you? I want to learn to knit.”

I tried not to show how happy her question made me. Because teenagers and enthusiasm… There were limits, and this was new. Sam and I were new. “You absolutely can come. I’d love to have a knitting buddy.”

“Maybe I can learn to make adorable little sweaters for the baby.”

“That would be amazing,” I said, with visions of the cutest handmade baby clothes filling my head. “Likely way over my sad capabilities, but you… I have every bit of confidence Loretta could teach you how.”

“Annika, Kinsley’s sister, was wearing this adorable striped sweater the other day: pink, yellow, and cream. I want to make something like that.”

“We’d have the best-dressed baby in town.”

As we split the last portion of lasagna, we kept talking, turning to lighter topics, everything from her classes to her newish friendship with Kinsley to why I became a teacher. We bonded over Taylor Swift songs, home science experiments, and cute socks.

So much about my future was uncertain, looming, scary. My life was one big question mark after another. Where would I end up living? Would I eventually get back into teaching? How would Chance and I manage co-parenting? Would we ever share more than kisses and a kid? How soon would I have to break down and buy pants with a bigger waist? And most importantly, how would I handle having a little human dependent on me?

All of it circled through my brain at different moments throughout the day. All of it could stress me out in a heartbeat.

But these forty-five minutes with Sam, just the two of us getting to know each other better? It gave me hope and made it easier to believe maybe everything would end up all right.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chance

One of the cool things about having a former NFL quarterback in our dad group was that Max could afford man toys and liked to share.

He’d recently outfitted the walkout basement of his lakefront home with a pool table, a foosball table, and a video game system like nothing I’d ever seen that put thousands of games at our fingertips, from 80s Galaga and Donkey Kong to the latest console games.

Harper, his fiancée, had taken two-year-old Danny for a sleepover at her apartment with Dakota so Max could host us this week. All five of the rest of us had shown up—Knox, Ben, Luke, West, and me—and we’d gravitated toward some cutthroat foosball and pool first thing.

Max had smoked a shit ton of ribs, made a slow cooker full of baked beans, mixed two pans of corn bread, and stirred up some cole slaw just like a regular Martha Stewart. Between the food and the toys, it was no wonder his house was our favorite place to meet.

After our initial breaking-in of the game tables, we sat around in his basement that felt more like a high-class men’s club, minus naked women, stuffing the damn good food in our faces and shooting the shit.

“So Danny’s hanging out with the pretty girls tonight, huh?” West said as he leaned over a rib.

“If by pretty girls you mean his future mommy and her friend,” Max said. “We started the adoption process last week. It should be official shortly after the wedding.”

“Congrats on getting it started,” Ben said. “We’re going through that times two. Or four, depending on how you look at it.”

“There’s gonna be an awful lot of little Holloways running around this town,” Luke said.

“That’s just the four they’ve already got,” West joked. “How long till you and Emerson increase that population yet again?”

“We’re not in any hurry,” Ben said. “We both remember how much work infants and toddlers are.”

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