Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
MIRABETH
“Where is all my furniture?” I murmur, slowly walking through the room. “She’d kept it just like I left it in case I ever needed to move home.” I slide my fingertips across the new, custom maple wood furniture. “What is all this?”
“This is our baby’s nursery furniture.” Conrad thumbs the ridges of the little fat kittens—which look suspiciously like Merlin—that are carved into the crib’s railing. “We finished them just yesterday.”
I nudge the old-fashioned rocking chair back and forth with my toes. “We?”
“It’s the set we’ve been building at work. I’m the one who carved the kittens. Your mom commissioned them.”
Tears form at the corners of my eyes as I take in the gorgeous furniture that must have cost a fortune…and is exactly what I would have picked out if I could afford it. “But why would she have it all delivered here if she’s going to sell the house?”
My brows lift when Conrad hands me an envelope that he found on the changing table with Mom’s name on it.
Thinking Mom must have left it for me to find, I slide my index finger beneath the flap that’s lost most of its adhesive over time, but I jump when my phone rings from the pocket on the side of my hip before I can read what’s inside.
I put my phone on speaker when I grind my teeth and answer, “What do you want, mother?”
“Let me inside, honey,” Mom says sweetly. “I can’t fit between the boards.”
“No. Fudge you.” It’s the worst thing I’ve ever said to my mom, and I end the call, cutting off her cackle.
I skip after Conrad when he heads down the hallway and picks up the hammer to start pulling the nails from the boards blocking the entry.
Though Mom had managed to tug the quilt down over the window and unlock the front door, I had nailed enough boards across the doorway to keep anyone but a small child from squeezing between them.
“Don’t you dare, Conrad, or I’ll never, ever, ever have sex with you again,” I tell him, pointing my finger to scold him. The nerve of this man to betray me at a time like this!
“Yes, you will,” he says with a sexy smirk, discarding the first, then the second of the four boards.
I shake my head so fast that my hair whips my face. “No way, José.”
Conrad yanks me toward him, causing me to stumble into his hard chest. “We both know you’ll do what I say because you’re a good girl who loves it when I make you take my—”
“Lord knows I want a grandbaby, but I don’t want to think about how that baby was made.” Mom plugs her ears with her fingers, singing, “La la la,” while Garth pulls up and parks his rockabilly, cherry-red, 1950s pickup at the curb.
I stick my tongue out at my mom, really wishing she hadn’t cut Conrad off, my core fluttering, even though I’m still pissed that he’s taking down the boards. Conrad looks like he’d catch my tongue with his mouth if I hadn’t thrown up not too long ago. It’s a dang shame.
Once Conrad gets rid of the third board, Mom and Garth step over the fourth. “Well, that was all very dramatic,” Mom says, looking around at all the destruction with a sigh.
“You told me you were going to sell our house!” I yell, pushing in front of Conrad. “How did you think I’d react?”
“Certainly not by throwing Garth’s flowers through the window after storming out and driving like a bat out of hell before I could finish saying ‘now I can sell the house to you’,” Mom says.
Ok, so me either, since just a few days ago, I would have silently stewed and hidden. I had no plan when I told Conrad to pack up our apartment, other than that I was going to find some way inside the house before confronting Mom…through the barred door, of course. I still wanted to hide.
Mom grabs my hand and pulls me down onto the couch beside her and her freaking new husband—my new stepdad, I realize. With Conrad settling on the cushion to my right, Mom drops her large purse on the coffee table, straightens her spine, and pointedly looks at the envelope I’m still holding.
“Open it, honey,” she says.
With her knees pressed to mine, Mom looks on expectantly, her features softening as I slide the folded sheet of notebook paper and one-dollar bill that had been included from the envelope. I begin reading out loud through my tears:
Kyra,
My stunning, stubborn, hilarious Kyra. Every day, I’ve fallen more and more in love with you since you jammed that ridiculous, large IV needle in my arm three times before you finally found my vein after I accidentally slashed my calf on the chain link’s rusty metal wire.
By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out that all my increasingly frequent “accidents” were in fact intentional, all so I could visit the pretty nurse who instantly captured my heart and soul.
I’ll always be amazed and grateful that you chose to look past my prison uniform to see the man I was inside.
You gave me a beautiful life and daughter, and the kind of love I thought a man like me didn’t deserve after the mistakes I made.
A part of me wants to be selfish and keep you all to myself long after I leave this world, but I love you too much to ask that of you.
Instead, I ask that once you’ve grieved and healed, you find a partner you can give your whole heart to, just as you gave me, and who will, in turn, give you his whole heart, just as I gave you.
And when you do, I request that you give our beautiful daughter and her future family the option to buy the house where we built a lifetime of happiness. $1 should be sufficient.
With all my love,
Forever yours,
Michael
I turn and tuck my face into Mom’s neck, both of us sobbing as we squeeze each other tight, and she rocks me side to side as she did when I was a kid. It’s exactly what I need. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried harder than when Dad passed.
“He loved you so much,” I say with a hiccup.
“He always will, even if he’s not here to show it,” Mom says, cradling my face and kissing my forehead.
“That’s the kind of whirlwind love we both want for you.
” She looks past me to nod at Conrad, who’s scooted closer and is rubbing my back.
“And I think you’ve found it. So have I again,” she says, looking over her shoulder and lifting her chin to kiss Garth.
“But how did you know? Why Conrad?” I stroke Merlin’s fur when he jumps on my lap and purrs, rolling onto his back so I can scratch his belly.
Mom smiles. “It’s a sixth sense. I felt that same spark inside Conrad when we first met that I did in your dad and Garth, and I just knew, he’s the one for you.
” She laughs softly. “Though I wasn’t going to take any chances and make you wait out the rest of his sentence until you could be together, hence the reason I worked with Bridget to get the marriage program up and running. ”
Garth whispers with kind eyes pinned on Mom, “The wait is hard on a man, but so worth it.”
I melt at the look she and Garth share. It’s the same one, I now recognize, that I’ve seen on Conrad’s face, even when we were both hurting, and it was all my fault for being too stubborn to talk to him. I won’t make the same mistake again.
“Thank you,” Conrad says, reaching past me to hold Mom’s hand.
“You’re welcome. I wish you could have met Michael.
He would have loved you too.” Mom sniffles, then uses my large jersey sleeve to wipe the tears from her cheeks and blow her nose.
Gross. “Now that we have that settled, I have something else for you.” She digs through her purse and produces a business card.
“That’s the number to the realtor your Aunt Faye recommended.
She has all the documents ready to sign, so give her a call in the morning, and she’ll walk you through it. ”
After Mom and Garth leave, having helped clean up the mess I created and instructed us to take a look around the house, Conrad and I slip past the nursery into the primary bedroom at the end of the hallway.
“So that’s where it went,” I say, finding my old, solid oak bed frame positioned beneath the wide window that faces the side yard.
From the tall posters at the four corners of the bed hangs new, gauzy white fabric like the kind you’d find in a royal princess’s castle chambers.
On the new mattress, still wrapped in protective plastic, sits a large bag containing a fluffy, frilly white comforter and sheet set, four new pillows, and two paperback versions of What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Felon’s Baby.
I laugh when I pick up the dog-eared book on top, the pages curling along the edges, and flip to the copyright page, seeing that it was printed the year before I was born.
Inside are notes scribbled in the margins by both Mom and Dad, along with little love notes they had written to each other, so excited to meet their baby girl.
The second copy is a newly revised and updated version, the pages pristine, ready for Conrad and me to read and study and leave little love notes of our own.
Conrad squeezes my arms from behind. “I’ll get the luggage…and your toothbrush.”
I let out a soft snort and finish poking around the rest of the house, which has been mostly emptied, ready for us to move in and turn our happy little “accident” into our lifetime of happiness.