Page 65 of No Kind of Hero
“Four weeks.” It sounded like four months. He wanted thisdone.“And then what?”
“And then Joan can get a hearing scheduled.”
“Which could be months more down the road, I’m guessing.”
“Yes. But if you don’t start now, it’ll be that same amount of time, plus however long you wait. And the fact that she’s in another state—that makes any request for shared custody trickier for her.She’sthe one who put that distance between you.”
“She’s the one wholeft.”
“And that matters, but like I said—family reunification.”
“What family? Family isn’t making a baby. Family’s taking care of it. And she never did it.”
“Never? Even at the beginning?”
“I’m not sure.” Here it was, the worst thing, the thing he’d tried not to see. “All I know is that Gracie always seemed to be crying when I came home from work, and it seemed . . . wrong. Half the time, April would be crying too. I thought it was—you know. Postpartum depression. I looked it up.”
“Maybe it was.” Beth hesitated, then said, “She can’t have been a terrible person, or you wouldn’t have loved her. But she doesn’t sound like a strong one.”
“No. Both of those.” He shoved his sandwich back in his lunchbox. He’d be hungry later. Just not now.
Beth had been right, though, about one thing. Going to dinner at her parents’ house was a distraction. And maybe he was feeling better anyway by the time he was buttoning himself into another white shirt for another evening out with Beth. Not to mention a whole night working on that list of hers.
April wasn’t at her parents’? Well, great. She’d moved on, and she hadn’t come back for Gracie. That told its own story. He’d always wondered what those legal notices were all about. If anybody ever read those things in their tiny type or responded to them, he’d be pretty damn surprised. If a month went by with no response? He showed up in court with Gracie and no April, and Gracie was officially his. Job done.
Beth was right. This was better. The only way you got a job done was to start it.
And then there was that other thing. Walking through the front door of the Schaefers’ spectacular lake house without ringing the doorbell. This time, he wasn’t carrying a paint can, and nobody would be writing him a check. The Schaefers might not like it—he hoped they didn’t, in fact—buthefelt great about it.
Henry ran into the house behind them and took off around the corner, ready to spread the love in that way only a dog could, and Beth said, “Here. Let’s put Gracie’s stuff in my bedroom. Escape route.”
“Except you won’t be going out the window,” he said. “I’m going to miss that. That was hot as hell. Catching you. You on the back of my bike.” He sighed. “Oh, yeah.”
She laughed, sounding breathless, and took him up the stairs, down the hall, and through the door of a room he’d been in exactly once. When he’d painted it.
“Same color,” he said, setting Gracie’s diaper bag on the bed. The walls were painted the palest ice-blue, a color he’d chosen after having Michelle tell him the look she wanted. Michelle, not Beth, and that was pretty damn weird.
All the furniture was the same, too, from the sleigh bed on down. A white comforter that looked like a cloud, an ice-blue bed skirt, and the piece de resistance. An elaborate white ceramic . . . thing . . . like a queen would have, fastened to wall near the ceiling, with gauzy white fabric draped from it and gathered in folds around the head of the bed.
Not that that was all. You also had your crown molding, your filmy white window curtains, and your crystal chandelier. It was a room for a princess, and then there were the matching pieces. Bedside tables, dresser, dressing table with mirror and padded stool, and crystal wall sconces. Let’s just say you didn’t see a lot of bedrooms like it in a doublewide.
Beth looked around and sighed. “Yeah. Clearly, my mom wanted a different child.”
“You saying your apartment now doesn’t have a crown hanging from the ceiling?” Evan asked, starting to smile.
“Nope. I’ve found out my taste is pretty nearly Spartan. Clean, that’s the word. But look. Gracie likes it.”
Evan was still holding Gracie in her baby seat, and when he checked her out, it was true. She was staring at the crown like she was getting ready to practice her one-clicking. “I’ll do it for you if you make me,” he told his daughter, “but I’m going on record here and saying it’s not my favorite.”
“Gracie could be a girly girl,” Beth said. “What with the bunnies and the ponies and the butterflies and all. What are you going to do then?”
He sighed. “Sucker for women. That’s me.”
Beth laughed again, and he smiled at her and thought,Not so bad.He took Gracie out of her baby seat, Beth picked it up, and they went downstairs. Through a living room Evan remembered just fine, an enormous multi-sided thing that extended over the lake so far, it was like being on an island. Past a grand piano that gleamed with about ten coats of black varnish, and on through one of multiple sliding doors onto the ultimate entertainment deck. A good fifteen feet wide, with angles that gave you a view of almost all of Wild Horse Lake, and featuring three separate seating groups in addition to an outdoor dining set that was nicer than anything in his house.
All of it was only stuff, he reminded himself, just like Beth’s parents and everybody else here were only people. He didn’t work for any of them, and he didn’t need to. And if he knew his face was at its most inscrutable? There was power in that, too. He wasn’t twenty-four anymore, and he was done sneaking around.
It was a nice thought while it lasted.
