Page 103 of Free Heart
Occasionally, he looks my way, but I don’t know what to make of his gaze. It’s blank, but not unkind. Like a mystery looking at a mystery.
I realize this must be how people feel about me a lot of the time.
“How did the dress rehearsal go this morning?” Peggy Jo asks Sejin, taking an enormous bite of the pizza we had delivered since the cupboards are nearly bare.
“Great,” he says with a fond grin. “The kids are so cute. You’re going to love it.”
“I have no doubt I will.”
I notice he leaves out the way Jeremiah tried to bully his way to the front of the stage by shoving the sweetly singing Christmas Taylor Swift to the side. I guess it’s all par for the course when dealing with children.
“How’s Bella?” I ask, surprising everyone at the table except Buck with the question. He doesn’t know me well enough to be shocked at my show of interest. I roll my eyes. “What? Edith taught me a few interpersonal skills. I’ve told you before.”
I’m also genuinely curious. I’m not sure who Bella’s baby-daddy is, and I’m not sure if Peggy Jo’s planning on going back,how long she’s staying here, or anything at all, really. She’s been very vague about it all.
Peggy Jo’s eyes shade for a moment, but then she puts on a smile. If she thinks I can’t tell it’s fake, then she’s a fool. “She and little Amelia Rose are doing great. Oh, by the way, we’re calling her Mimi for short.”
“Bella?”
“No, Amelia Rose.”
“Right. Makes sense. It’d be a weird nickname for Bella.”
Sejin laughs and touches my hand with a fond glance. Glad I can entertain him.
Buck murmurs, “I always wanted a little girl, but I was happy with the boy we got.” He sends Sejin a wink. “Cutest one at the baby store.”
“Baby store?” Peggy Jo asks, clearly happy to change the topic away from Bella and Amelia Rose.
“Oh,” Buck says with a small smile. “Lisa and I used to joke about how Sejin was a store-bought baby instead of homemade.” He chuckles. “He was just as good, butveryexpensive.”
Sejin shifts a little, and I can’t decide if it bothers him to be spoken of like that. “Yup. Mom said I was the cutest baby in the whole mail order catalog,” he offers gamely as if trying to make the words not rest on his skin wrong.
“Was there really a catalog back then?” Peggy Jo asks Buck. “Did you have a whole lot of babies to choose from?”
“No, no. It was a joke we had. The adoption agency sent Lisa some photos of him, and we decided right away that he was the one for us. We didn’t look at any other babies.”
Sejin’s lips tweak up.
“It was love at first sight,” Buck declares.
Peggy Jo smiles and points my way with her fork. “Dan can relate.”
“It was a picture of him for me too,” I say. “Saw it andbam.Had to have him.”
Sejin’s cheeks go dark with a blush, and he makes warning eyes at me.
“A picture, huh?” Buck asks.
“Yeah, on an app.”
Sejin kicks me beneath the table.
Buck nods, thoughtfully. “I’ve heard the kids are into those dating apps these days. Nevaeh—that’s my niece—tried to get me to use one. Said it would do me a world of good to meet some nice single ladies.” He glances at Peggy Jo, who has the balls to look bashful, and says, “She might have been right, but an app seemed like a weird way to do it. I met Lisa at a church dance when we were teenagers. That’s back when we went to church, mind you.”
Sejin swallows his bite of pizza. “I’ve always meant to ask—did you guys stop going to church because of me?”
Buck frowns. “No, we stopped going because some women were gossiping behind your mama’s back, and it hurt her feelings real good. So, I told her to forget about itandthem. We weren’t ever real big on church anyway. Too much went on that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Jesus at all.”
