Page 97 of Embers in Our Souls
“I think Vivienne is teething, she woke up an hour ago. She’s finally back down, but now I have a second wind. Julian is snoring and you know if I don’t fall asleep before he starts, then I can’t even think about sleeping. I thought I’d text and check in.”
“I’m sorry. I remember those days when Noah was teething. It’s no fun. Oh, I won’t be at work tomorrow, so raincheck on our morning coffee together?” I grab a bottle of my favorite wine.
“Oh really? And where will you be? Riding some firefighter?” I can practically see her smirk through the phone.
“Maybe?” I smile.
“Such a dirty girl. I approve.” She laughs.
“I knew you would. I still need to ask Tyler if he’s okay with me going over there. He’s on shift right now, but I’ll text him in the morning. I don’t want to bother him while he’s focused on saving lives and all.” I pour my wine and move to the couch.
Taking off my shoes, I sit down and Darth makes his way over to sit by my side. For a cat, he’s quite cuddly.
“I guess things are getting serious?” she asks.
“I don’t think there was ever a time it wasn’t serious with Tyler and I.” I look toward the stairs to ensure I don’t have any little ears eavesdropping then whisper, “We’re married, Kalli. It’s hard to keep things anything but serious, you know? We’re either all in or not.”
“I get that. I love how you were all ‘We’re getting divorced!’” she says that with a gruff voice and I laugh. “And now you’re all in love with the guy. Way to put your foot down, Indy.”
“To be fair, I was lied to. And I was pissed. Not sure I was out of love with the man.”
“Sure. But I can give you a hard time. What a one-eighty you did in a short amount of time, though,” she chides.
“I know. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. I think I simply never stopped loving him. I think I convinced myself that I hated him, but the reality of it is I absolutely loved him to my core. Every single person I dated after was an attempt to replace the feelings I had for him. And I never succeeded. No one felt as impactful as Tyler did in my life.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
“Kalli, did you fall asleep?” I swear, if she’s sleeping while I just divulged my feelings, I will lose it.
“No. That’s just really sweet.”
“Well, it’s true. It doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings about him lying to me; and I’ve expressed that to him. I’ve made it clear that what he did was wrong and he understands that his lie caused a ripple effect on my life. But we’ve grown.”
“I’m glad you’ve found your happily ever after, Indy. You deserve it.”
“Thanks, Kalli,” I tell her.
“I’m also glad you’re not with Roger. He was so damn boring.” She chuckles into the phone.
“Yes, we’ve established the fact Roger was as fascinating as watching paint dry.” All I hear is a bark of laughter in my ear.
I just dropped off Noah at school. It was a rough morning today. He was dragging for some reason. Getting him out of bed was a nightmare. He has days like that and today was one of them. Even getting him to agree on an outfit for school felt like an uphill battle. And he wears a uniform. Apparently choosing from the standard green, red, or navy was a tough choice. The joys of nearly-six-year-olds.
His birthday is approaching, so I chose to distract him on the drive to school by bringing up his plans. That seemed to brighten his mood a bit. We decided to do a party at the local park, with a baseball theme. That’s easy enough, although the weather is already horribly humid. Hopefully on whatever day we plan it, the shade will provide ample support.
I texted Tyler before heading out to drop Noah off, asking if I could hang out with him today. He responded saying he was all for it.
Luckily, now that I’ve left the school, traffic has improved, and my GPS shows I’ll be at Tyler’s fairly soon. I’m listening to a podcast when I get a call through my Bluetooth speaker.
I look down to see it’s Theo, the private investigator I hired to find my biological parents a few months back.
“Good morning, Theo. How are you?” I say.
“Good morning, Indiana.” His gruff voice greets me.
“Do you have some updates for me? I haven’t heard from you in some time.” Theo warned me since I first spoke to him, it’s usually quiet until he has news for me. I was antsy in the beginning, but since I’ve been consumed by reconnecting with Tyler, I haven’t really put much thought into locating my biological parents.
“Actually, I do. Do you have a moment?”
