Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Forest
The sarcastic, infuriating, insulting young woman, who looks like an angel but sure doesn’t act like one, drives at a snail’s pace.
The moment she got her car running, her bravado shattered.
Her spitfire attitude vanished and the color drained from her face, leaving her pale and shaky. What’s the story there?
It is unfortunate that ImNoAngel and I both turn right out of the parking lot, and then again at the first major intersection.
Then left, then right. The roads are all two lanes, so I don’t have the opportunity to pass her, as much as I want to, with her driving ten miles under the speed limit.
A pit forms in my stomach when we take yet another turn together.
She probably thinks I’m following her, and I can only imagine the frantic dart of her unsettling, icy-blue eyes in the rearview mirror.
Eventually, I smarten up and take a left onto a side street while she goes straight at the traffic light.
Idling for a few minutes in front of a darkened house, I double back and continue on the way home.
But, dammit, I catch right back up to ImNoAngel.
We both turn right into the same neighborhood.
She must catch me on her tail because she suddenly guns her engine and whips her car into a long driveway.
The universe is playing a sick joke on me, because not only do we live in the same quiet development of nineteen-fifties brick ranchers, but my new house is only three doors down and across the street from hers.
I throw my head back against the leather headrest with a groan when I spot ImNoAngel storming across the paved road with a can in her hand.
“You followed me?” she screeches when I step out of the SUV. She stands just out of arm’s reach, lifting the can with her finger on the nozzle. Bear spray. Christ almighty.
“No!” I put my hands up and back away, readying my tired body to dodge the spray, if at all possible. I tip my head toward the tall, wooden FOR SALE sign to the left of the driveway that my realtor hasn’t removed from my yard yet. “I just moved in.”
She narrows her eyes with suspicion. “Prove it.”
“Put the can down first.”
“No.” She flexes her finger, a multitude of silver rings reflecting the street lamps’ light.
“Fine!” I yank my keys out of the ignition and quickly lock the SUV’s doors to protect the kids, then dash across my expansive lawn. I jam my fingers against the electric keypad to unlock the freshly stained, wooden front door, throw it open with a bang, and make it back to the SUV within a minute.
“Well, there goes the neighborhood.” She lets her arm drop, her numerous bracelets clinking together, and gives a sidelong glance at the SUV, where the children have begun to cry again. “I’ve seen this play before.”
“What play?”
She purses her lips. “It’s how James trapped my sister.”
“Who’s James?”
She tilts her head, looking down the street, and says to herself, “Although I think she wanted to be trapped.”
I scrub my hands down my face with frustration, ready to be done with her and this horrible night. “What are you talking about?”
She lifts her small chin. “I do not babysit for anyone but family, so don’t even bother asking.”
Bewildered by her sudden declaration, I blurt, “As if I’d hire a lunatic like you to watch my kids.”
“You’d be so lucky.” She tosses her long, shiny platinum hair over her shoulder, spins on a heel, and runs back across the street. I don’t know how she does it in heels so high.
I hate that I look at the backs of her thighs again, her lithe muscles flexing below her dress, which bounces up with every step.
She suddenly whirls and yells, “Stop watching me, weirdo!”
“I’m not!”
She gives me both middle fingers before disappearing into her house.
That’s one way to welcome someone to the neighborhood. I can only hope my new coworkers are much nicer and less inclined to threaten me with bear spray when I start my new job tomorrow.
The ice cream is a melted mess by the time I get the kids and groceries inside. Unopened cardboard boxes are scattered throughout the one-story, four-bedroom house. The only thing I have properly put away is our furniture, since we all need a safe place to sleep.
I recognize my parenting game isn’t up to snuff when I simply hand the pint of chocolate ice cream to Sebastian after he climbs onto his twin-sized bed in the nursery, allowing him to slurp it like a milkshake while I get Josephine settled into bed in her room.
Fortunately for her, the hall bathroom separates her room from the boys’ so their ruckus doesn’t keep her up at night.
With Benjamin tucked into one arm, I kneel beside Josephine’s bed and smooth back her ponytail. “I’m so sorry I left you alone in the grocery store.”
“It’s okay,” she whispers, curling on her side with her stuffed bunny rabbit, tucking it against her chest. She hasn’t slept with it since she was six years old, and it kills me that the past month has been so upsetting that she’s reaching for her younger childhood comforts.
“No, it’s not. I scared you, and I never, ever want you to be scared of anything. I promise I’ll do better.” I hope I’m not making an empty one. “We’ll get through this. You’ll see.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she says, smacking her lips and burrowing deeper under her rainbow quilt, as worn out as I am.
When I make it back to the boys’ room, chocolate rims Sebastian’s lips, and he’s only grown more wired with all the sugar. My stomach hollows out. I really do suck at this, and I’m in for another long, sleepless night.
With Benjamin and a bottle of his expensive-as-all-get-out formula, I settle into the corduroy rocking recliner in the corner. It’s the strangest feeling, feeding and taking care of a six-month-old baby that isn’t mine, while staring at the two-year-old that also isn’t mine.
It’s been ten years since my ex-girlfriend, Lindsay, signed over her parental rights when Josephine was born.
As much as it devastated me, I’d understood when Lindsay had said she wasn’t ready to settle down yet.
We were only seniors in college. I was ready, though—or at least I naively thought I was.
When I was recruited for a senior position in my field, I’d been intrigued by the idea of raising Josephine in a smaller city, relocating from San Antonio to live a slower pace of life.
It was just my luck that, only two days after going under contract on this house, I received the phone call about my ex and her husband passing, leaving behind the boys and irrevocably rocking our world.
It was shocking, to say the least, to learn she had listed me as her emergency contact.
With no one else—family or friends—to take the boys, it fell to me to decide their future—take them in and raise them with their older sister, or let the state put them in foster care.
It was an easy decision to step up for them.
The first three years of Josephine’s life were a blur. I forgot how exhausting this stage is, especially on my own. But if I could do it once, then I can do it again for Josephine’s little brothers.
I’ll show ImNoAngel just how wrong she is about me.
The blaring alarm on my phone startles Sebastian, Benjamin, and me awake.
At first, I’m confused, waking from my prone position on the beige, carpeted floor of the nursery.
“Sorry to wake you, buddy,” I tell Benjamin when he rolls onto his back in his oak crib, kicking his feet in his sleep sack, scattering four of the ten different brands of pacifiers I had purchased, hoping he liked at least one.
He’s so adorably bald, as Josephine and I were at his age.
My back aches like the dickens when I sit up, and my eyes are bleary from lack of sleep.
It took another two hours to get the boys settled after we got home.
I swipe my alarm off, groaning when I look at the time.
At least I got five hours of sleep, broken or not.
Without it I’d really be up the creek without a paddle before I have to get ready for work. It could be worse.
“Good morning, Sebastian. How’d you sleep?” I ask when he sits up, yawning wide enough to crack his jaw. Hopefully better than me.
Sebastian blinks his large, light-brown eyes with beautiful, long lashes. Then his face falls, tears welling along his bottom lash line. “I want Mommy.”
I knee walk to his bed. “I know, buddy. I’m so sorry she can’t be here.”
When I reach for him, he lunges into the corner, clutching a stuffed elephant that came home with him. “Mommy! I want Mommy!”
He’s breaking my heart, and I don’t know what to say, other than to keep telling him how sorry I am.
“Daddy?” Josephine walks into the room, rubbing her eyes.
I sweep her into a hug, loving that I can count on her to be happy to see me, as I always am to see her—an actual angel in looks and spirit.
“You stink,” she says, pushing away from me.
I catch a whiff of my armpits, and it just about knocks me over. I never did grab that shower last night, and now all the kids are awake. “Oh, geez. Sorry.” ImNoAngel hadn’t been lying. I reek.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Josephine to watch the boys while I sneak away for a few minutes to shower, but I shut my mouth.
If I’m going to do better, it starts now by not dumping my parenting responsibilities onto my child.
I ease up off the floor with the groan of an old man as I consider what to do, lifting Benjamin from the crib.
I hadn’t changed a diaper in close to eight years, but I think I got the hang of it again when the fresh diaper doesn’t immediately slip down Benjamin’s adorably chubby legs.
Sebastian is a different story. He fights me tooth and nail when I try to change his potty training pants.
I get it. I wouldn’t want a stranger manhandling me, even if it were for my own good.
After a quick breakfast of Pop-Tarts for Sebastian and Josephine, a bottle and sliced banana for Benjamin, I get ready to shower.
Guilt rips through my chest as I leave Benjamin crying in the travel crib I’ve set up in my bedroom, within view of the open bathroom door.
I’d leave Sebastian with him if I could trust that he wouldn’t climb out and make a run for it.
While Josephine gets herself ready for school, I want to break down and cry when I have to wrangle Sebastian into the glass stall with me, both wearing swim trunks, so I can keep an eye on him while I shower and shave.
At least he won’t show up on his first day at preschool smelling as bad as I did last night.
Actually, I’m starting to feel pretty good.
Everything goes well when we walk Josephine into her new fifth-grade classroom at our neighborhood elementary school.
Even the drive to the boys’ learning academy goes smoothly.
I’d toured the academy after flying back from Missouri, where Lindsay and her husband, Nathaniel, had been living, to arrange childcare for Sebastian and Benjamin before I was legally granted custody.
It was my only saving grace, giving me a thin margin of time to prepare as best as I could for their arrival.
None of the academy employees wrinkle their noses when I usher Sebastian ahead of me into the schoolhouse-shaped building, complete with a bell tower on top.
Murals of loping animals and small children playing are painted along the hallways.
No one gives me disapproving looks either, when Sebastian screams his head off and throws himself on the ground.
It’s a small comfort that he’s not the only one in tears—many of the parents are too, at the thought of leaving their kids.
Surprisingly, I am as well. I hate to see Sebastian so upset and leave him with even more strangers.
If I thought my world was knocked off kilter with his parents’ passing, it has to be exponentially worse for him, especially since he’s too young to understand the why of it all.
Sebastian’s teacher gives me a sympathetic smile when she greets us. “Hi, Sebastian. I’m Mrs. Hassan. Would you like to meet your new friends?”
Sebastian shakes his head vigorously, but after a few more soft-spoken questions from Mrs. Hassan, he finally allows his teacher to take his hand and lead him into the brightly lit classroom to a cozy reading corner with soft pillows and blankets.
Benjamin, however, is all gummy smiles, showing off his tiny, adorable two front teeth, and happily reaches for his teacher, Mrs. Bertrand.
I hand over his diaper bag to Ms. Coffey, Mrs. Bertrand’s co-teacher.
It’s stuffed to the gills with all the brands of formula and pacifiers to continue testing which ones Benjamin likes.
The tiny woman nearly collapses under the weight.
At the exit, I linger, looking back down the hallways.
I’ve only had the boys for two, going on three days, yet it’s striking how attached I already am—leaving a little piece of my heart with my new sons as I head to work.
Sons. How strange that I’m suddenly the dad to three children.
One biological, two by tragedy, but all equally mine.
I’m counting down the hours until I can pick up Josephine and the boys, take them home, and figure out this new life together.
My smile, though tired, is genuine when I get to work.
An assistant, Barbara, greets me at the firm’s glass lobby doors of the standalone brick building.
My new boss, Mr. Fischer, and I had spoken during my several rounds of Zoom interviews, and I’m looking forward to finally meeting him in person.
My mood sinks with dread when I step inside Mr. Fischer’s office, and the last woman I want to see is the first to notice me.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” ImNoAngel says, standing beside Mr. Fischer, seated behind his desk. “Stalker much?”