Page 63 of The Wrong Track

He glanced at me again. “Did you think I could forget that?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry that I didn’t hear your call. My mom kept calling and texting that night and I’d turned off the volume but I thought—”

He’d apologized so many times. “No, no, please,” I whispered. Ella was frowning in her sleep. “Being in the hospital again made me think a lot. Like, what if something happened to me? What would happen if I died and left the baby?”

“Remy, the new inhaler is going to work better,” he said. And I knew that he’d been waking up constantly to check on me. He had circles under his eyes to prove it, and I wished I could ease his mind. Maybe this would help because it would settle everything about Ella’s future.

“My closest relatives wouldn’t want to have her,” I persisted. “They wouldn’t take her.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Have you tried to talk to your sister? Has anyone ever explained to her why you couldn’t leave, how you were trapped in that situation? It’s not fair for them to blame you. Someone needs to tell them—”

“Tobin, please listen,” I interrupted. “It’s important. I know that you love Ella.”

“I do,” he answered. “I love her very much.”

“Then I want to ask you something.” I hesitated, though. “You can say no. I’ll figure out something else if you say no.” I could ask Hazel, maybe, or Monica. But Tobin was the obvious and best solution.

“Remy, you’re making me more anxious than when she was crying. What is it?”

“I wrote a will, just a form one that I got at the library. I don’t have any possessions or assets to leave. But there’s a place to designate the person you would like to take your child. I wrote your name, that I would like you to have Ella. Would you take her? Would you take her if I was gone?”

There was silence in the car and my heart sank. “You don’t have to,” I told him, and he started shaking his head, no.

“You’re not going to die. I don’t want to hear this.”

“But just in case. I have to think of her future. I have to make it legal and binding to protect her.”

More silence and it lasted long enough that I felt sick, but then he took a deep breath and spoke again. “Of course. Of course I’d take Ella, there’s not a question. But I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

We didn’t talk about anything else at all for the rest of the way to the party, and then we did nothing but talk because his cousin’s farmhouse was packed with Whitakers, adults and kids and pets and chaos. Most of them were very excited to meet Ella and even me, too, and Tobin stuck with us. To my surprise, he mostly stayed close enough to touch, with his arm around my shoulders or holding my hand, that close. And that was fine by me.

I could tell that I’d shaken him up with what I’d talked about in the car, which hadn’t been my intention at all, but gradually he relaxed. I watched his usual smile return as he talked with the cousin who’d given us the crib, Luke, and his wife, Emily. She also smiled and said that they were so glad to finally meet me.

“Charlene has told us a lot of great things about you,” she volunteered.

“Really?” I knew that word had come out with a lot of doubt, because both Tobin and his cousin looked down at me.

“Sure,” he told me. “Of course.” And I tried to switch my features from an expression of skepticism to one of “sure, of course.”

But no, that wasn’t how she felt. I’d been avoiding Charlene a lot so I wouldn’t have to deal with the reality of her feelings about me. She’d stopped by frequently in the days since I’d been back from the hospital but I’d managed to be resting, or taking care of Ella in the other room, or just out of the house. I hadn’t seen her except to briefly say that I was fine and had to run and meet Annie at her office.

It was much harder to avoid her in this house, especially since spring rain was falling hard outside and I didn’t want to make a break for it through mud puddles. She waited until Tobin had taken the baby for another change before she approached me, smiling as she met my eyes. I couldn’t get away without crawling under a table or something.

“I remember my first Whitaker family party with Tobin’s dad,” she said, “when he introduced me to everyone. I kept a piece of paper in my pocket and wrote down all the names but I still couldn’t keep track. And I think there were fewer of them, then.”

That would have been a good idea. All I remembered was that Steve was the biggest and the oldest and that Tucker was the one who’d played baseball, and that all their wives and girlfriends had been nice to me. “There are a lot,” I agreed. I sipped my sparkling water. This party was dry and I was glad. I was anxious enough that I probably would have been tempted to drink, even though when I’d gotten over the terrible shakes and sweats and puking, the heart-pounding withdrawal from everything, I’d sworn to myself that I wasn’t ever going to touch any substance ever again.

“How are you feeling?” she asked me.

“Totally fine,” I answered firmly. “No problems at all.”

“Because Caroline and Amy just mentioned to me that they were witnesses to your will.”

“Yes,” I agreed, and tried to leave it at that, but Charlene didn’t say anything either so I continued. “I know a kid’s birthday party isn’t really the time and place, but I had it in the diaper bag so I thought I’d ask them,” I explained.

She nodded; no words. Her eyes continued to meet mine as she waited.

“I wanted to get it done right away,” I told her, “because I thought it was important to protect Ella. If I have another asthma attack while I’m alone, she’ll have someone to take care of her, someone who loves her.”

“Tobin.”

---