Page 4 of Lost in the Moment and Found

“Your mother told me she told you that we’re expecting a baby,” he said, without attempt at preamble. “I know this all has to be a lot, and very quickly, for you. I’m sorry about that. Change is always hard. At least all the change is happening at once? I handle things better when they don’t draw themselves out.”

“I don’t,” said Antsy. She was starting to feel that change was like cookies. One a night would be wonderful, but if you ate too many at one time, you’d wind up making yourself sick and not getting any cookies for a week.

She felt a little sick. Having Tyler in her room, sitting on her bed, didn’t help. She quietly decided that she’d be sleeping in the upper bunk tonight, and every night until it was time to change her sheets again. She didn’t want to sleep where he’d been sitting.

Slow horror grew in her belly when he patted the mattress beside himself. “Come over here,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

Antsy didn’t move. Tyler frowned, just a little, and patted the mattress again.

“I don’t bite, Antoinette,” he said. “Come over here.”

Antsy didn’t like him. She didn’t like the way he touched her mother or the way he looked at Antsy herself, or the way he insisted on using her full name all the time, like everything he said was too important to be anchored to a nickname. But she knew she was supposed to get along with people and be fair to them, even when she didn’t like them, and since it wasn’t Tyler’s fault that her daddy was gone, it didn’t seem fair to keep on punishing him being there and loving her mother when her daddy couldn’t. She was supposed to be a good girl. She was supposed to be nice, and kind, and all the other things little girls are told to be.

And her daddy was never coming back, not ever, and her mother hadn’t been as sad since Tyler came to live with them. He wasn’t helping Antsy the same way, but he wasn’t hurting her, either. It would hurt her mother if she didn’t at least try to get along with him, since he was a part of their family now and was always going to be.

Antsy pushed herself off the floor and approached the bed with the cautious hesitancy of a wounded animal, finally settling next to Tyler on the mattress. He put his hand on her leg, keeping her from pulling away.

“This baby is going to be your little brother or sister,” he said gravely. “It’s a very big responsibility to be a big sister, and I know you’re going to do a wonderful job.”

“How is it a responsibility?” asked Antsy warily. She knew girls her own age who had little brothers and sisters at home, who were expected to spend all their time taking care of babies when they weren’t in school, feeding them and changing their diapers and making sure they didn’t hurt themselves on a world that seemed designed entirely of things meant for hurting babies. She liked playing with her dolls. She found the idea of playing with a living doll that screamed and peed and spit up and couldn’t be left face-down in the yard when she got tired of it a lot less appealing.

“You’re going to have to be the one who teaches them what’s right and wrong, and how to take care of their toys and what ice cream is.”

“Oh.” Antsy liked that better than she liked the idea of diapers and bottles. “I guess I can do that.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re on board with this.” He squeezed her leg before finally taking his hand away. Antsy was almost ashamed of how relieved she was. “Your mother’s very excited about this baby, and so am I. It would be wonderful if you could find it in you to be excited with us.”

“I’ll try,” said Antsy honestly. “It’s still very new. I didn’t know there would be a baby.”

“Neither did your mother,” said Tyler, and put his hand back on her leg, squeezing it again before standing, a smile on his mustachioed face.

The place where his hand had been felt hot, like she’d been pressing a heated towel against it. Antsy stayed where she was and watched as Tyler made his way to the door, pausing with his hand on the doorknob to smile indulgently back at her.

“Thank you for talking to me,” he said. “Goodnight, bug. Sleep well.”

Then he was gone, and Antsy was alone. She changed into her nightgown, quickly, and climbed up to the top bunk of her bed, shivering as she crawled under the covers. It was a long time before she fell asleep, but she didn’t even stir when her mother came in to tell her to brush her teeth. It was unusual enough for Antsy to go to bed early that her mother looked at the sleeping child for a long moment before she frowned and let her be.

She could talk to Antsy about the way she was reacting to the idea of a baby in the morning.

3EVERYTHING FALLS APART

THUS BEGAN WHAT ANYONElooking in from the outside would probably have assumed was one of the most exciting times in Antsy’s life. Her mother finally told her own parents she was expecting a baby, almost two whole weeks after telling Antsy, and they couldn’t have been happier for her. Antsy wondered sometimes if that had something to do with her grandma being her mother’s mother and not her father’s; her father’s mother was much less enthusiastic when they finally called her to give her the news.

Antsy had never been particularly close to her paternal grandmother, but in that moment, she felt like they were the only two members of the family who understood each other. She would have crossed the country to join her in her small, safe apartment in Manhattan, if she’d been able to figure out how to do it.

She was trying as hard as she could, trying every single day, and it made her happy to see her mother so happy: her mother’s friends liked to say that she was glowing, and while she wasn’t—she didn’t light up a room in any way other than the ordinary ones—she was smiling more, happy and healthy and beautiful, even as her belly grew larger and more pronounced by the day. Antsy wanted to be excited about the impending baby, but she couldn’t figure out quite how.

It didn’t help that now, with a baby coming, all the kids in her class whose parents had gotten divorced and remarriedliked to tell her about how Tyler wasnevergoing to leave. Sometimes they seemed unnaturally gleeful about her presumed future unhappiness. Once the new parent made a baby with the existing parent, that was it. They were there forever.

Antsy didn’t want Tyler to be there forever. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to be there for now. The more time passed with nothing bad happening, the more unreasonable her dislike of the man felt, but she still called him by name, and she still refused when her mother tried to nudge them, however gently, toward finding their own version of her much-missed daughter-daddy trips to Target. She didn’t like the idea of being alone with him even more than she didn’t like the way he looked at her sometimes.

She still didn’t have the words to explainwhyshe didn’t like those things, just the slow and septic understanding that it wasn’t about him trying to replace her daddy, and that she didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t learn to like them. They were a part of who Tyler was, and as long as she could make nice well enough to let him be a part of their family, did it really matter if shelikedthe man? She didn’t like broccoli, either, but she ate it when it was on her plate, not like peppers. She hated peppers so, so much that her mother didn’t even cook with them anymore.

Antsy didn’t hate Tyler, not yet, and maybe not ever. And he was kind to her mother as her belly grew bigger, bringing her drinks, rubbing her feet, doing more and more of the grocery shopping and driving Antsy to school like there had never been any question that he’d be willing to do those things.

It was about a month before the baby was born when things got really bad for the first time.

Antsy’s mother had been feeling icky all day. Her head hurt and her back hurt and her ankles hurt and her list ofthings that hurt was so long and detailed it seemed like every part of her must be in pain. Antsy was afraid to ask any questions about it, because what if she said herhairhurt? That would be a horror beyond all understanding or accepting. Antsy wouldn’t be able to handle hearing that from her mother, so it was better not to ask. She had been sitting at the table, placidly coloring a picture of a unicorn in a field all full of flowers, when she smelled hamburger frying in a pan. She looked up, and then behind herself. Her mother was still stretched on the couch, her belly jutting up like a boulder, a warm washcloth on her forehead.

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