Page 37 of The Wrong Track

“Ithink she looks just like you. Your big eyes, your beautiful hair.”

“She’s mostly bald,” I had to point out.

“Right, but you can already see that when it comes in a little thicker, it’s going to have that soft curl like yours does,” Annie told me. She picked up a lock of my dark hair and studied the ends. “Has it been a little bit since you got a haircut?”

I thought back and remembered going for a trim in Virginia. With my sister, four years before. “A little bit,” I acknowledged.

“I have a great stylist you could go to. I get my facials done at that salon, too.” She got excited. “You know what we should do together? A spa day!”

A spa day? I was hardly able to make every day a shower day. It seemed like each time I tried to get dressed, something went wrong with the baby. She spit up, or needed changing, or just cried. She cried and cried and mostly, there wasn’t anything I did that made her feel better. I’d resorted to begging, lately, asking her to please, please stop. Please, I really was trying my best, please? That worked as well as anything else, which meant that it did not work at all.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Remy?” When I didn’t object, Annie went on. “Have you been exercising?” she inquired, and I flushed. I knew that I needed to do more, because I’d gotten a glimpse of myself in the mirror this morning as I’d stepped out of the shower—I’d taken it even through the crying, because my boss was coming over and I had to look better than I had been lately. What I’d seen in that reflection had been horrifying.

The only good thing was that Kilian also hadn’t seen because he would have…Kilian wasn’t around anymore, I reminded myself. Tobin had checked and made absolutely sure that he wasn’t in the witness protection program.

But maybe they wouldn’t tell local police that. Maybe it was too big of a secret.

“I only ask because I got pretty down after I had Mackie. My daughter, Macdara,” Annie explained. “It really made me feel better to leave her for a bit and be alone, and it really helped me to do Pilates. Pilates and hot yoga saved me,” she said earnestly.

“Tobin and I have been taking walks,” I said. “He’s getting out of the big cast next week and he’ll be able to go even farther.” Moving to a boot on his leg also meant that he’d be able to drive himself around, which meant that he’d start going into the station to work there every day. I was glad for him, because I knew how tired he was of being in this house. To him, it felt like a prison.

Not to everyone, though. At some points in my life, I’d been stuck places. Like, actually stuck in that I wasn’t allowed to leave, and this house didn’t feel like that at all. It was more like a cocoon, not a prison. And it had been so nice to have him here with us. I’d wake up and he’d be feeding the baby, the two of them rocking together in the chair in the corner. Before, it might have scared me to find him in my room but it didn’t now. It made it feel even safer.

I met Annie’s gaze and she smiled at me. “What were you just thinking about? You closed your eyes and looked so happy.”

I shrugged. I’d been thinking of how I’d heard a tiny sound last night and then had watched Tobin with the baby. She’d cooed at him. “Maybe I fell asleep for a moment,” I said, and Annie laughed. That made the baby startle a little in the bouncing seat that Tobin’s cousin Mason had brought over for me to borrow. That seat was gold; it was the only way I’d even gotten the shampoo in my hair that morning. “Annie, I’m really sorry that I haven’t made those box cushions for you,” I told her. “I keep trying to start and—”

She waved her hand and shook her head. “No, please. Believe me, a woman with six children can understand how it’s difficult to get things done.” She looked wistfully at the bouncy seat. “Seeing Ella, though, it makes me really miss this stage. But I should stop at six, right? Oh, hold on. This is the elementary school calling.”

And then Annie had to run, literally, because there’d been an incident with glitter glue, popsicle sticks, and the nose of one of her sons. “I’ll call you later,” she said cheerily, and her car fishtailed down the street.

Tobin came in from the living room. “She’s one of the worst drivers in the state of Michigan,” he told me. “Years ago, she also didn’t wear her corrective lenses, and I was a fairly new driver then myself. My mom was terrified of me being on the road with her.”

“She’s a nice boss, though,” I said. “She doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve totally blown off everything and left her stranded.” I stared around at the piles of projects. My “atelier” was definitely neater than Annie’s own office, but there was enough mess to make me anxious.

He put his hand on the baby’s head and smiled at her. “She looks cheerful.”

“Annie spent most of her time here talking to her and holding her, that’s why. We didn’t even really discuss me working more.” And that also made me anxious, because I was paid by my production. Without me sewing, there was no money, and my final paycheck from the botanical gardens was now totally gone. “Tobin, are you busy right now?” I asked him.

“No, not really. It doesn’t look like I’m going to solve any of these cold cases, but at least I’ve gotten some of the files better organized. What do you need?”

“Could you watch her for a while so I can sew? I want to drop off some finished work at Annie’s office later.”

He smiled again at the baby. “We can hang out, right, Ella? I’m sure she’d be interested in the unsolved murder of a nun from 1907.”

“Seriously?”

“Not a lot of crime here,” he told me, and unstrapped the baby. He put her on his shoulder and she peeked over the seam of his shirt.

I followed them with the seat into the living room. “Do you think she looks like me?” I asked.

Tobin moved her into his arms to study her tiny face. “Right now, she looks more like a peanut. A beautiful one, but such a little peanut.”

“Really,” I pressed. “Do you think she will?’

“Are you afraid she’s going to look like her father?”

I stared at her dark eyes. Kilian’s had been green, like olives. “She won’t be like him,” I said.

---