Chapter 35 Gabriel #2
“Clarissa, James, and little Marc are three more people next year. So a little bigger.” Clarissa and James weren’t comfortable bringing their newborn out, yet.
But we did get to meet the little guy before we came here.
Neither James, nor I, are ready to resume our old schedule of playing basketball a couple of times a week.
Maybe in six months we’ll find time. Maybe a year.
An image of Sydney, in some distant future, holding our child burns into my brain, and I shut it down.
She’s never wanted that with me. It’s one thing for her to agree to stay married.
She knows she can walk away at any moment if I let her down.
Her apartment remains, fully furnished and waiting, in case she needs it.
Having or adopting a child with me is a level of trust she’s never been capable of.
I’m grateful for what we have. She loves me. That’s enough.
Sydney watches Mom and Dad playing cornhole with Phee, Bronwyn, Rory, and Sam. When Dad picks little Sam up and stretches him over the line for his toss, Sydney laughs. “What are they doing?”
“That’s Miller cornhole,” I say.
“It’s a free-for-all.”
“Love hard. Remain loyal. Fight dirty. Or in this case, play dirty,” I say.
Her brow furrows, and she swallows hard. “What is that?” she whispers.
“The game?”
She shakes her head, her expression intent. “No. What you said. Love hard.”
“It’s the McRae family motto. Bronwyn was around six. I was eight. Henry ten. I don’t know which one of us came up with the idea, but we decided we needed one. We were going to grow up and save the world,” I say with a smile.
She turns those beautiful eyes on me. “You saved me.” She stretches on tiptoe and presses a kiss to my lips, then settles back on her heels. “The motto . . . ?”
“We ended up fighting about the thing that was supposed to remind us we were a team. After a week of squabbling, Mom and Dad sat us down in the study. All of us lined up in our little chairs in front of his desk. Dad said the motto got three lines. We each had to choose one and that was the end of it.”
Expression fascinated, she glances over at Henry where he stands talking to Bronwyn’s husband Dean, then over to Bronwyn and back to me. “Are you going to tell me who chose which line?” she demands.
“I’ll bet you can guess.”
Her face works as she appears to chew on the inside of her lip. “All three fit all three of you, but I think Bronwyn said ‘Love hard.’ Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t see you or Henry as little boys wanting your motto to sound sentimental.”
I laugh. “We were frothing at the mouth in fury over it. At least she didn’t say, ‘Princess Sparkle Pants’ or ‘Love and Flowers.’ Small miracles.” I examine my fingernails, then buff them on my shirt. “One down. Two to go.”
“Henry can be very literal, and he expects things to be fair. Ten-year-old Henry chose ‘Remain loyal.’ Then, you added ‘Fight dirty,' probably because you thought it was funny, and also you were a little bit of a troublemaker.”
I grin. “You’re right.”
“What’s my prize?”
I give her an up and down lascivious look. “I’ll give it to you later.”
She pats my cheek. “Good boy.”
I go rock-hard in an instant and tug her against me to cover my reaction from view. “Sunshine, I’m going to be so good for you that you walk bowlegged the rest of the weekend.”
“Aunt Syddie, Uncle Gabriel, we’re going to play soccer. Are you coming?” Phee shouts across the lawn.
“Not like this, I’m not,” I mutter under my breath.
“Uncle Gabriel is going to sit this one out. I’m coming,” she calls over.
I press a kiss to her temple. “Take it easy out there.” She’s nowhere near back to 50 percent, let alone 100.
She places her drink on the table behind me. “My body won’t give me a choice. But think of the joy Phee and Rory will have if they kick my butt here today. They can lord it over me for years.”
“Go get ’em.” I pat her ass and position a cushioned patio chair in front of me. For modesty.
As she leaves the patio to join the children, I cup my hands around my mouth to project. “And taking the field today, two-time NCAA Division I National Champion striker, Sydney. Walsh. McRae.” I slow it down for the drama and drag her last name out on a yell that comes straight from my diaphragm.
She drops her chin with a grin and raises a fist in the air as she jogs toward the kids.
Janessa gives a whoop. Everyone on the patio erupts in a cheer.
I’m going to cry. Over my wife running across the lawn to play with the niblings. But she’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
A hand squeezes my shoulder, and I turn. Frederick Granthy stands beside me, a look of concern on his face.
“Oh, hey! I didn’t know you were coming.” I clap him on the shoulder.
He nods. “I wasn’t sure if I’d make it. You never know when an emergency is going to roll in.”
I tilt my head to the side. “I thought you came out of retirement for Sydney. You were supposed to go back to your golf and well-earned life of leisure afterward.”
He laughs. “Soon. Josh took over the family practice, but he’s doing some volunteer work. Somebody has to hold down the fort. I’ll go back to my nine a.m. tee time when he comes home next week.”
To say it’s a change for him to mention Josh’s name in my presence is like calling the ocean “kinda big.” I can’t help but wonder if that means Josh has changed the way he speaks about me to his father.
Or, maybe, Dr. Granthy is simply tired of reinforcing close to a decade of silence between Josh and me. “How is he?”
Dr. Granthy shakes his head and rubs a hand over his cropped steel-gray curls. “He’s well. If you want more information than that, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
I clear my throat. “I didn’t intend to pry.”
“You didn’t. It’s good to see Sydney like this.”
Sydney dribbles the ball toward one of the nets someone dragged out of storage earlier.
Rory guards it, and Phee attempts to steal.
Phee almost makes it, but Sydney fakes to the left, then shoots the ball straight past Rory.
Both kids groan loudly, then laugh and high-five her, and they start again with Sydney leaving an obviously deliberate hole in her defense, giving Phee the opportunity to jump on it.
She does, her little face intent, as she races across the grass.
“Sydney will tire soon, but she’s healing.” I shake my head. “I can’t understand why she doesn’t remember you. I get that she’s still missing chunks of time after college, but you’re an odd thing to block in the present considering she’d only met you a couple of times during our marriage.”
“It’s likely she associates me with the trauma since I was her doctor in the immediate aftermath.
I was the one who ordered the catheter to check for kidney damage, and .
. . you remember how she reacted to that.
If she’s doing well in other aspects, as she obviously is, I wouldn’t dwell on individual bits and pieces of memory.
I can understand where it would be frustrating, but recovery takes a long time, and she’s doing impressively well. ”
He places a hand into the pocket of his khakis, his pale blue polo shirt bright and pristine in the sunshine as he sips from a bottle of water and watches Sydney and the kids play.
I get caught up in the sight of that thick, wavy ponytail flying behind her.
Her tan thighs, exposed by white shorts, flex as she moves.
That ass. Holy fuck. That ass. Round and bitable.
The smile on her face. The way she’s such a natural with the kids, challenging them without disheartening them.
Building their excitement as she delivers a toned-down version of smack talk and takes it right back with a grin.
Two more plays, and she’s visibly flagging. When Sydney passes the ball back to the kids and heads my way, I grab her drink from the table behind me and pass it to her. “Look at you, all hot and sweaty and hot.” I waggle my eyebrows.
She gives a smiling eye roll, then turns her attention to Dr. Granthy. “Hello. I’m sorry, but if we’ve met, I don’t remember.”
“This is Dr. Granthy,” I say.
He holds out his hand. She stares at it for one. Two. Three seconds. Then she looks up into his eyes and returns his shake.
“Hawai’i looks like it was good for you,” he says.
She runs her tongue over her front teeth, her brow creasing slightly. “Yeah. It was great.”
“You really should make an appointment to come into the office for your follow-up visit,” he says.
Sydney’s head nod looks almost slow motion.
Granthy reaches into his pocket and hands her a business card. “To help you remember that you need to make an appointment.”
She accepts the card without looking at it and tucks it into her shorts. “You look familiar.”
He gives a hearty laugh. “Glad to hear it.”
“Gabriel, do you have my phone?” she asks.
Her shorts have only small pockets, so she handed it to me hours ago. When I pass the phone over, she steps in the middle between me and Granthy and holds it up for a selfie.
“Lean in. Say, ‘Cheese,’” she says.
We do as she asks, and Sydney snaps a photo of the three of us together.
“Maybe it’ll help me remember this meeting.”
Dr. Granthy straightens, then reaches for the phone in his pocket, holding it up to look at a notification. “The life of a doctor on-call. I have to take this. Happy birthday, Sydney.”
He heads back inside the house, his phone to his ear.
“Do you need to sit down?” I ask.
She sighs. “Probably. My legs are wobbly.”
When she sits, I join her at the table.
“So, that was Dr. Granthy,” she says.
“Yes.”
“If I keep staring at this picture long enough, do you think I’ll remember him next time?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“My therapist says I associate him with the trauma, the same way I did Dr. Frankhouser. I think she’s right.”
She opens up the photo on her phone and examines it. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Nothing.”
Sydney glances at her can of seltzer, then makes a face.
“I’m sorry. I can’t drink this after it sat open.
I know it’s wasteful, but I can’t stand seltzer, anyway, let alone at room temperature.
I gaslight myself into thinking I like it because it doesn’t have sugar.
But this is raspberry/lime-flavored sadness with a sprinkle of dirty socks. ”
“Give it here. I’ll drink your dirty socks and get you something else.”
She passes it over. “I’m going to stare at this photo until I figure out what’s wrong with it.”
“I’ll be right back.”
“Do you trust Dr. Granthy? Completely?”
“Frederick Granthy is the last person I can imagine causing harm to this family.”
“Hmmm.”
“He saved my life.”
Amelia Webster’s loud laugh catches my attention.
She approaches Mom from our direction, chatting animatedly and clearly having a great time.
I look for Rob Sennett and find him leaning against the exterior wall of the house, less than six feet away from us, with a drink in his hand and his mouth turned down.
He glances our way, then at his watch, before straightening and heading for Amelia.
A ridiculous theory tickles the back of my mind, but not only is Rob not a woman, the investigation at the lab showed nothing of concern with any of Sydney’s co-workers.
What did he say that night on the phone? “Sometimes, blind faith is just closing your eyes and pretending you don’t see.”