33 - Haley
33
Haley
Telling someone not to freak out never had the desired effect. It was like telling a woman to calm down, or to smile.
I sputtered questions at Lucas so quickly my words slurred together.
He put a hand on my arm to calm me down. “She’s fine. The twins are fine. It was just a scare.”
I relaxed. A little.
“They’re keeping her overnight as a precaution,” he explained while taking my suitcase.
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” he admitted.
White-hot rage bubbled inside me. “This happened yesterday and she didn’t call me? I’m her sister! She can’t just keep things like this from me!”
“She knew you would say that,” Lucas said calmly. “She wanted me to tell you that she didn’t want you to fly home early for no reason.”
“No reason. No reason! How is this no reason?”
“Aunty Sara is okay, Mommy,” Bran said. “She just had a little scare. Like when I scraped my knee last year.”
I moderated my breathing, then told Bran, “Good point, Bran Bran. But Mommy is very mad at Aunt Sara right now.”
We loaded everything up in Lucas’s car, a nice looking Nissan sedan. “Hey. Quick question. How did you… um. At what point did Sara contact…”
“Sara told Jordan first,” Lucas answered. “He watched Bran last night after baseball practice. But he had to go to work today, so he called me.”
Lucas had been watching Bran. That spawned a new kaleidoscope of emotions, but I pushed them aside for now.
“It’s three o’clock. Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked.
“I took a personal day. Really, it was no problem. We’ve been having fun. Right, little man?”
“Yeah!” Bran said happily from the back seat. “We’ve been having so much fun. I like his name.”
A jolt of panic surged through me. “Oh yeah?”
If Bran had told Lucas why he liked his name so much…
“It’s fun to say,” Bran announced. “Lucas Lucas Lucas. It rhymes with mucus . That’s the fancy word for buggers .”
“We’ve been watching Sesame Street,” Lucas told me. “Elmo was a doctor in the last episode. Sara said it was okay.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Bran hadn’t told Lucas his middle name. Or if he had, Lucas hadn’t pieced it all together
Yet.
When we got home, I rushed to get ready to go to the hospital. I changed into some fresh clothes, noting that my apartment was a mess of toys, coloring books, and yogurt containers. All problems that could wait until later. Being a mother was a never-ending chore of deciding which messes had to be taken care of now, and which could be put off.
“I’ll watch Bran until baseball practice,” Lucas said. “Go to the hospital. Be with your sister.”
“Thanks,” I said, then hugged him. He felt tall and sturdy, and projected an air of stability. Like everything was going to be all right.
I said goodbye to Bran, then hopped in my car.
The hospital was across the river in Portland. Thanks to rush hour traffic on the bridge, it took over an hour to get there. I parked, then speed-walked through the lobby and up to the floor where Sara’s room was.
I burst into tears as soon as I saw her sitting in the hospital bed.
“Oh God, not you, too,” Sara muttered in annoyance.
I hugged her. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “We had everything covered.”
“All the more reason to tell me!”
“You would have left the conference early!”
“Yes!” I insisted. “Because you’re in the hospital!”
“All you’re doing is validating my decision to wait until you got home.”
I turned to Harper, who was typing on a laptop in a nearby chair. “I’m just as angry at you.”
“No matter what I did, I was going to piss off one of you,” he replied. “I’ll choose to placate my extremely pregnant wife every time.”
He made a good point, but I didn’t want to admit it. I still felt like I had been left out of the loop.
“Do you know who’s watching Bran right now?” I asked.
Sara frowned. “Jordan should be. Right?”
I shook my head. “Lucas is with him. He picked me up from the airport.”
Sara’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know that!”
We both turned to Harper.
“Jordan said he would rope in Lucas if he needed additional help,” he explained.
Sara gasped. “Why would you allow that?”
Harper put down his laptop. “Why wouldn’t I? You said you’ve been on good terms with Lucas, Haley. Did something happen?”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, giving Sara a pointed look. It wasn’t his fault for not knowing that Lucas was Bran’s biological father. And this wasn’t exactly the right time to reveal that information to him.
“More importantly, let’s talk about why you’re in here,” I said.
Sara rolled her eyes. “Because everyone is overreacting. I had some more shooting pains yesterday, just like when I had Round Ligament Pain. Except it didn’t go away. I’m feeling better now, yet they’re insisting on holding me hostage until tomorrow morning.” She shot a glare in her husband’s direction.
“My wife was in crippling pain, so I drove her to the hospital against her will,” Harper said dryly. “You’d think I’m Bin Laden the way Sara has been talking about me for the past twenty-four hours.”
“I didn’t say you were Bin Laden,” Sara said. Then, under her breath, she added, “You’re more like Ted Bundy.”
“Love you too, babe.”
I spent a little while keeping Sara company, telling her about my trip to Vegas and all the things I had learned. Then I said goodbye and drove home so I could catch the end of Bran’s baseball practice. Unfortunately, there was a wreck on the way home causing traffic.
“It’s basically a parking lot on the bridge,” I said over the phone to Lucas. “I hate to ask anything else of you, but can you watch him after practice?”
“I don’t mind at all,” he replied.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m actually thrilled you asked me instead of Jordan,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m going to gloat about this later.”
Once again, I was struck by how comfortable this all felt. Like I wasn’t a single mother anymore. I had other people in my life besides Sara helping me.
It was nice.
When I got home, I parked on the street behind Lucas’s car. I walked around back and went up to my apartment, quietly opening the door and shutting it behind me.
I gave a start. My apartment had been cleaned while I was gone—all the toys and coloring books were put away, and the kitchen was spotless. One of my cook pots had been used and cleaned too; there was an empty box of Kraft Mac & Cheese in the recycling bin.
“Read it to me!” Bran demanded from his bedroom. His voice was amplified and distorted through his cheap plastic toy.
“Only if you put your speaker away,” Lucas calmly told him.
“Okay.”
I followed the voices to Bran’s room, pausing outside the half-closed door to listen.
“There was a blue race car named Dash,” Lucas was reading. “Dash wasn’t the fastest car in the garage, but he had the biggest heart. Every year, the town held a Grand Prix. All the big, powerful cars lined up, their engines roaring like thunder.” He paused to make vroom vroom noises. “Dash wanted to race more than anything, but the other cars laughed and said he was too small!”
“Oh no!” Bran said. He sounded sleepy.
“But Dash had a secret,” Lucas continued in a hushed voice. “He knew every twist and turn of the track better than anyone. When the race began, the big cars zoomed ahead, but they didn’t see the sharp curve! Dash was ready for it, and he hugged the turn perfectly, weaving past them one by one. With a final burst of speed, he crossed the finish line in first place!” I heard paper rustle as a page was flipped. “The crowd cheered, and Dash was given the big trophy.” Another page turn. “And from that day on, everyone knew: being fast was good, but being smart was how you won the race.”
I cocked my head, waiting for Bran’s reaction, but it never came. Confused, I leaned my head around the doorway. Bran was laying in bed, fast asleep. Lucas gently pulled the bedsheet over the boy, patted him on the chest, and whispered, “Sleep tight.”
Seeing Lucas taking care of my son— his son—made my heart sing.
He stared down at Bran a few seconds longer, then turned to the door. He flinched when he saw me, then smiled. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he whispered while closing the bedroom door behind him.
“I just got home. What story were you reading him? I thought I had all his books memorized.”
“I wanted to get him a book about cars, so I stopped by the store on the way over yesterday. On his dresser is another story about a dump truck who gets a flat tire. How’s your sister?”
“Annoyed that they’re keeping her another night, but everything is fine. Lucas, I can’t thank you enough for helping while I was gone.”
“Glad I could help.”
We hugged, and then he was moving past me toward the door. I felt a tug of emotion—I didn’t want him to leave. Not without…
“Get dinner with me next week,” I blurted out.
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Dinner?”
“As a thank-you for helping while I was out of town,” I explained. “My treat.”
Lucas smiled in the warmest, most genuine way. “I’d love that. It’s a date.”