Page 72 of His Best Friend's Baby

He’d finished the assembly of the cradle and loaded it into the back of the Jeep, packed it with old towels and blankets like precious cargo. She crawled back there with it after buckling Ben up in the front in an old car seat Nell had dropped off for her earlier.

“Off we go!” Ben cried, his hands over his head as though he were about to take that first big hill on a roller coaster.

“Off we go!” she echoed brightly, trying to beat back the tension that rolled off Jesse. The drive up the mountain to Rachel and Mac’s farm was painful. Jesse’s silence had razor-sharp edges. His jaw was held so tight she could practically hear his teeth breaking. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

She hoped for his sake that seeing his sister would bring this tension to a head, would relieve some of what tormented him.

They pulled to a stop in the gravel parking area in front of a low dark house.

Julia crawled out the back and walked around to unbuckle Ben. She took one look at Jesse and left her son buckled in, cheerfully trying to kick open the vents. She approached the driver’s side.

“Jesse,” she murmured. “Are you okay?”

THERE WAS A CRUSHING PAIN in his chest, a burning in his head.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said, staring blindly through the windshield.

“You can leave,” Julia said. “You don’t have to stay.”

“She left me.” He licked his lips. “She protected me and she just walked away.”

“I know.” She touched his hand, slid her palm over his white knuckles.

“How am I supposed to forgive her? How am I supposed to give her that cradle and eat dinner at her table and pretend like nothing happened?” he asked on a huge breath.

“You don’t have to pretend,” Julia said. “No one is saying you have to.”

“I don’t think I can forgive her.”

“Really?” she asked and he turned his stinging eyes to her. “You can’t forgive your sister but you can understand the way your dad used to beat you? And you can put your entire life on hold for a dead man who wasn’t worth half of you? But you can’t forgive your sister for something she’s spent years trying to make up for?”

He wiped his forehead but didn’t say anything.

“Mama!” Ben screamed, and Julia squeezed Jesse’s hand.

“I am going in. You can leave if you want to, but think about this. Of all the people you’ve accepted in your life, she deserves it the most.”

And then she was gone. She grabbed her son and he was alone with his thoughts and the cradle and the gathering night.

He didn’t know how long he sat out there. But in the end, the thing that got him out of the seat, that forced him to put one foot in front of the other, was Julia.

If Julia could find it in herself to forgive her husband all of his crimes, Then Jesse could forgive his sister for those things she’d done when her back was to the wall.

Julia was ruining him. Changing him, his house, his family. He felt caught up in her current. Her giggle and cheer, her fiercely sunny disposition, her belief in the good things that he’d doubted for far too long.

He pulled the cradle from its nest of blankets in the back and walked over gravel and stone to the door of his sister’s house.

He put his hand to the door and knew that once he opened it, things with Rachel would be different. He couldn’t be the person he’d been for the past few years.

He was going to have to be that boy he’d forgotten and pushed away.

He pushed open the door and stepped into the bright light and laughter of his sister’s home.

THEY LOVED THE CRADLE. So much so that Jesse felt a bit embarrassed by the tears, from both Rachel and Mac. He shot Mac a disgruntled look, but Mac only clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ll understand when you have one of your own,” Mac said. Jesse’s gut trembled at just the thought. “Sympathy symptoms.”

“He’s even having sympathy cravings,” Amanda chimed in. “All he wants are French fries! He’s worse than Mom.”

“That’s how much I love my wife.” He bussed Rachel on the forehead. “I’ll put those steaks on.”

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