10. Maisie
Chapter 10
Maisie
A udra’s shrill cry jolts me from my sleep. On autopilot, my feet hit the carpet on the side of the bed in our room and I shuffle over to her Pack ’n Play to pick her up.
The clock on the dresser flips over from 12:10 to 12:11 as I rub my hand down my daughter’s back, a twinge in my shoulder making me wince.
A crack sounds in the room as my jaw stretches to accommodate the massive yawn forcing its way out of me.
“What’s wrong, baby girl?” I softly coo to my daughter. The sheer amount of drool on the collar of her onesie gives me a good clue why she’s awake right now, since this is outside of her normal nighttime feeding routine. Carefully, I lean back against the headboard of the bed in the room and slip a finger into her mouth. With a light touch, I run my fingers around her gum. Right at the front of her mouth, I can feel her getting her first tooth. The raised and inflamed gum is firmer to the touch, and Audra lets out a pained whimper when I pass over the area.
All of the baby books that I read while pregnant said this day was coming but it doesn’t stop the pang in my chest.
My baby girl just keeps growing. Every time I have to buy her new clothes or I have to adjust the straps on her car seat, I get hit with the feeling. It’s happy and sad all at the same time.
Audra softly starts to chew on my finger. “I know. I bet that feels a little better, huh?” I didn’t pack all of her supplies. Just the most necessary ones, which means that I don’t have the teething gel here that I bought in preparation for this.
“You’re growing chompers. It’s painful, but I bet you’ll like them more when you realize you don’t have to only eat that mushy baby food anymore.” I keep my tone excited and playful to hopefully distract her.
The air in the bedroom is a little stuffy, and she’s a little warm. I lay Audra down in her Pack ’n Play, and she starts to cry again.
“One second, baby. Mommy’s just opening the window.” I coo at her over the sound of her escalating sobs. I muscle the window open, and even though it’s the middle of the night, the moon gives off just enough light for me to make out the trees that surround Harlan’s house.
It’s so pretty here, even in the dead of night.
A whisper of a breeze comes in from the few inches I managed to crack the window, and with it comes a fresh scent on the air. Tension drains from my shoulders, and I suck in a gulp of the cool air.
“There we go. That’s a little better, isn’t it?” I say, though I doubt she can hear me over her own whines.
Audra’s bag on the dresser is my next destination. I pull out the baby Tylenol and measure out a dose. This won’t give her any immediate relief, but hopefully, it will take enough of the pain out of her mouth that she can sleep a bit more. Lord knows I could use the sleep too.
Once I manage to trick my daughter into taking her medicine, her not-so-quiet crying starts up again and I hate it. I hate that she’s in pain and there’s nothing that I can do to fix it for her.
A knock at the front door startles me and sends my heart into my throat.
Nervously, I glance around the bedroom. The night breeze that was so enjoyable a few minutes ago now holds an ominous edge.
“Oh god, Mais. Get a hold of yourself. If it was Sean, he wouldn’t be knocking on your fucking door,” I whisper harshly to myself.
As if the universe read my thoughts, Harlan calls through the door. “Maisie? It’s Harlan.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Did we wake him up? Stress pulls my shoulders tight as I step off the bed and try to put Audra back down in her Pack ’n Play. But my daughter starts screaming her head off. If I thought her earlier cries were loud, there had nothing on these.
Scooping her back into my arms, I walk through the apartment until I come to the front door. I could just not answer, but somehow that feels wrong. Especially to someone who’s done nothing to earn my rudeness.
I crack the door open and pitch my voice over the sound of Audra’s wails.
“Yeah?”
Harlan’s standing on the landing at the top of the stairs, his hands in his pockets. He’s still dressed. That means we didn’t wake him, right? Or he fell asleep on the couch until Audra started screeching her head off.
The breeze carries his rugged scent along with the fresh pine.
A look of concern covers his features as he takes in the screaming baby in my arms. “Is she okay? I heard her crying from my room and just wanted to check on you both.”
“She’s teething. So she’s mostly fine. Her mouth just hurts right now.”
“Oh.” I swear I see his face soften in the low light from the fixture hanging beside the door. “Is there anything we can do for her?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not really. I have teething gel in my camper, but didn’t bring it with me, so I just gave her some Tylenol. Sorry for waking you. I’ll close the bedroom window and let you get some sleep.”
Taking a step back, I’m about to shut the door when Harlan says, “Wait.”
I pause.
“Do you want me to bring some ice over? That should help right?”
My eyes narrow on the man, suspicious of the offer. Just then, Audra lets out a screaming wail sharp enough to pierce my eardrums and I relent. “Yeah. That should help.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
Instead of stepping back and closing the door to wait, I watch Harlan walk down the stairs. His wide shoulders almost too much for the narrow stairs. The way he skips every other step — probably because he’s so tall. He disappears through the sliding doors on the back deck of his house and a breath gusts out of me.
I don’t understand him. He has no reason to be this nice to me. No reason to offer me the apartment because my luck went to shit. No reason to come knocking on the door in the middle of the night, just because he heard my daughter crying. I’ve been pretty defensive since I woke up in the hospital to his questions, but he’s been nothing but kind to me and Audra.
Looking over the frame of his house, I try to imagine what the inside looks like.
There isn’t much room between the attached garage and the house, but I wonder where his room is that he might have heard.
Knowing your luck, his bedroom is right next to yours.
Before I can dig into that distracting thought, he reappears with a plastic bag of ice and quickly climbs the stairs — two at a time — to hand the bag to me.
“You want some company while you sit up with her?” he asks.
A closer glance is all it takes to realize that we didn’t wake him. He’s still in the casual jeans and flannel over white t-shirt that he was wearing most of the day. He’s also more alert than someone who was woken up would be and my shoulders drop a little more at the relief.
He probably heard Audra from the front of the house when he was getting home from his brothers’ poker night. Which makes more sense.
That kindness is what gets me. It hits me right in the loneliest parts of my heart and I can’t stop myself from saying yes.
“Sure,” I say before I let myself think of all the reasons that this is a terrible idea.
Good job, Maisie. You invited god knows who into your place in the middle of the night. Best decision-making skills ever.
I’m too tired to battle the voice inside my head back right now. It’s not even my place, it’s his. If he wanted to, he could come in at any time. I’d bet my very broken camper that he has a spare key to the place.
If he wanted to hack me and Audra into little pieces to bury out on his property, he would have done it already.
This place sure is secluded enough he’d probably get away with it too.
“What in the world is going through your head right now?” Harlan asks.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You just had some pretty interesting expressions going on.” He smiles at me.
I shake my head and step back from the door, holding it open for him. “You don’t want to know.”
After clicking on a light, I wave awkwardly at the couch. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” I step back into the bedroom and grab Audra’s mesh fruit holder from her bag.
Once I’m back into the living room — where Harlan is sitting on the couch, his head nearly touching the ceiling — I’m trying to juggle the ice bag, my daughter and fruit holder when Harlan reaches over. “Here, let me hold her for you.” Before I can give him the ice bag and hang on to my daughter, she leaves my arms.
The sudden change in person has her low whining cry stuttering to a stop as she takes up the bearded man holding her. The silence is loud in the now quiet of the living room.
Harlan stares at her with wonder in his eyes. “She’s so small.”
I snort. Opening the hatch-like lid of the fruit holder, I place an ice cube in the mesh before clicking it closed again. “She’s not so small when you’re carting her around all day.”
Audra is laying on his knees, her little body nestled into the groove his thighs create. His fingers lightly trace her tummy, and she gives him a gummy smile — and I soften .
Harlan smiles down at her and says, “Your mouth hurts, huh?” He makes overly exaggerated facial expressions for her benefit.
A kernel of affection for the man starts to bloom in the pit of my stomach. Here he is interrupting his own sleep to make sure me and my daughter are comfortable, and I can’t help the stab of pain at knowing this is how it should have been for us. She should have a daddy who loves her, who’ll sit up with her at night. Who’ll forgo sleep to ensure she’s comfortable.
Shaking myself out of thoughts that can never be, I offer, “I can take her back.” The sooner we get her comfortable, the sooner she’ll go back to sleep.
“Let me?” he asks quietly, without taking his eyes off her.
“Oh. Uh. Sure.” I hand him the mesh pocket and Audra recognizes it before trying to grab it from his hand.
“The little blue bag part can go into her mouth.” Harlan holds it for her, and both of her hands wrap around his while she tries to attack the bag. I swear I see my daughter swoon in relief from the cool ice against her inflamed gums.
“Holy shit. She’s got a good grip.”
Considering that grip has yanked more than a few strands of hair from my head, I can’t help but agree. “Yeah, she does.”
“What is this thing?” He nods to the holder.
“It’s for introducing solids. Cut up fruits or veggies go inside and lets her gnaw on it while she’s learning to chew. She loves it.”
“I bet.” His cheeks stretch into a grin, and I ignore the jump in my belly at the sight. “You probably love your fruit, don’t you?” he coos to her.
“Why are you doing this?” I blurt .
Harlan’s head lifts, his gaze finding mine. “What do you mean?”
I wave at him. “You didn’t have to come over here or bring her ice. You didn’t have to hold her. You could have just went to bed and ignored us. Beyond that, you didn’t have to send your brothers to the hospital so that someone was with Audra — the nurses would have looked after her. You didn’t have to offer me this apartment. None of this — my mess — was your responsibility.”
Harlan’s quiet for a beat before his serious tone whispers across the night. “Maisie. Kindness doesn’t need a reason. What does it cost me for coming over to check on you when I could hear Audra all the way from my room? Or offering up this empty apartment when you didn’t have anywhere to go or a way to get there, even if you did? It’s just me — and my family — helping out while you’re in a tight spot.”
That kernel of affection sitting below my belly button blooms a little brighter. He’s telling the truth. Being a good judge of character in snap situations has taught me to read other people, a skill born out of survival and desperation not to disturb the peace — or get a fist to the face in punishment.
We lapse into a comfortable silence where I watch him tend to my daughter in a way that Sean never would have done.
“How was the poker game with your brothers?” I ask.
“Boone cleared house. The little shit. But otherwise it was good.”
“Does Boone normally win?”
Harlan nods. “Since he’s come back home, yeah. So. Ah. Jedd and I talked about your camper tonight.” There’s something in his tone that has me straightening my shoulders.
“Okay?”
The apprehension in my own voice is enough to have Harlan’s gaze find mine.
“He thinks with the cost of parts and labor against the value of the camper, they’re going to total it out.”
A pit of anxiety forms in the base of my tummy.
“What does that mean? He can’t fix it?” I can’t stop the screechy whisper any more than I can stop the bubbling panic.
“It means that your insurance won’t pay for the repairs. If the repairs are determined to be too high by your insurance company, they can choose to total the vehicle out and pay you its estimated value. Jedd can probably fix it — at least mostly, but insurance won’t pay for it, and it won’t be cheap.”
“Did he say how much it would cost?”
He bounces his knee lightly when Audra squirms. “He didn’t. If you want, you can call him tomorrow or go down to the shop. I’ll leave his number for you either way. You do have insurance, right?”
I nod. “Yeah, but only liability. Fuck,” I say. Liability means that I won’t get paid out a cent for my camper. My tight money situation just got tighter. The dread moves from my chest to grip my throat in a stranglehold.
“Hey.” Harlan’s hand lightly touches my wrist. So light that I barely feel it. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
I shake my head. Because I don’t know that this can be fixed.
“Are you sure?” The question squeaks through my now-pinhole-sized windpipe.
He nods. “Jedd’s been a mechanic for a long time. He can usually tell these things before insurance gets involved.”
I try to tamp down the rising panic. “How do you know so much about this?”
“Totaled my truck a couple of years back after running off the road when I hit an ice patch. That and Jedd’s shop talk helped me learn over the years.”
A stupefied nod is the only reply I can muster.
I have no camper. No vehicle. No way of running. I’m trapped.
The panic claws its way up my chest and neck to spark the start of a headache at the base of my skull. My hands shake lightly against where I’ve got them fisted on my legs.
Audra lets out a squawk and kicks her legs against Harlan’s stomach.
I have no way of protecting her.
“Maisie.” Harlan’s voice is soft but firm. “Maisie. Look at me.” Harlan reaches out and traces that butterfly light touch over my arm. I lock onto his hazel eyes. “Breathe Maisie.” The commanding tone is what does it. Pressure in my chest loosens and releases when I let out the breath I was holding.
“I’m sorry.” It’s lame, but it’s the only thing that I can offer. He must think that I’m a basket case. First, I lose it in the garage when I saw my camper, and now he’s seeing me lose it again in the middle of the night in the apartment that he offered after I wrecked my own damn camper trying to avoid an animal on the road. I’m sitting here damn near having a panic attack in front of one of the first people to be truly kind to me after so long, and I can’t stop the thoughts from attacking.
Worthless.
Stupid .
Waste of space.
Good for nothing.
The recriminations in Sean’s hateful voice take up every available thought in my head. And I can’t help but agree with them. That, more than anything else that’s happened over the last two days, is what starts the tears cascading down my cheeks.
I swipe my hands across my cheeks, trying to wipe away the evidence of my weakness as Harlan watches me while holding my whole world on his lap. A whole world that I can’t keep safe.
“Sunshine. You gotta tell me what you’re running from. What’s got you so scared?”