49. NINEAH
NINEAH
“COME TO TITI, sweet muffin. What I lack in boobie, I promise I make up for in snuggles.” I pressed fresh baby face against my chest and inhaled the scent of my God daughter. Billie, Zajre’s two-month-old sniffled, her wet chubby cheeks red from exertion, but at least she’d stopped crying.
“You of all folks being the baby whisperer was not on my radar,” Zajre said, lowering herself into a recliner.
She’d given birth just a couple of months ago and the second she was ready for visitors I’d started coming over once a week with takeout and an offer to do her laundry and she paid me in baby snuggles.
“Just because I never wanted one of my own doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I just like giving them back to their adults end of the day.”
My best friend snorted. “Is that why you’re adopting an eight-year-old?”
“That is one hundred percent why. Yes it is,” I cooed at the baby girl. “Are you excited to meet your cousin, little Billie?”
“When do you get to see her again?” Zajre asked.
I shrugged. “So far, they allow me two supervised visits a week and we’ve already begun the process. I’m just waiting for a weekend pass. I want to take Miracle to Rock Creek.”
Zajre wrinkled her nose. “For the owl?”
“I know,” I winced. “Honestly, I’m just glad she didn’t form an attachment to vultures or something vile. Did you know there was a difference between a detritivore and a carnivorous scavenger?”
“I did not.”
“Until last week, neither did I.”
My thoughts drifted to the little painter from Harriet Academy.
In the three weeks since the art show, I’d managed to not only secure regular visitation with Miracle, but start the formal adoption process.
Kirah had warned me that the courts were slow and finalization could take months, but if I were lucky, I might’ve been able to bring Miracle home as soon as next month after the inspection.
I hadn’t heard from Abraham since that night in Germany, but I had received a call roughly a week later from my attorney, letting me know that the previous divorce decree had been voided, a new one filed, and our marriage had officially been dissolved.
Three days after that, another attorney that was supposedly in charge of our property, reached out to me about putting our house on the market.
It was then I’d realized I didn’t want to sell.
Maybe it’d been foresight, maybe I was just afraid to let go of the one place I’d attached happy memories to, but I spoke at length with the attorney about my circumstances, asking what I’d have to do to keep the home.
Within forty eight hours, a contract arrived in my Dropbox and I’d been able to wire the necessary funds that morning to buy Abraham out.
I’d requested a conversation, expecting some form of communication beforehand, but unsurprisingly, he’d declined.
Even still, when I came by to visit the house, the grass was always freshly mowed on time, the refrigerator stocked, and even though I’d never caught him, I always felt when he was there.
With the inspection looming, I was more than grateful for his help.
Everything was seemingly falling into place, and though I still had a giant, Marine-sized hole in my chest, I couldn’t help but think about my future positively.
This new life I was in the process of making for myself was going to be enough. I’d make it enough.
“When are you going to tell her?” Zajre asked, reaching for her wine glass. She took a long sip and settled into her chair.
“As soon as the agency sends someone from the state to inspect my home, I’ll be granted temporary custody pending finalization.
It’s been torture, though. She knows what’s happening.
She’s been watching other kids get adopted her entire childhood, waiting for her turn, and I can’t reassure her or answer any of her questions, yet. ”
Zajre smiled. “Aw. Baby’s first parenting conflict.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
Sniffing little Billie’s head once more, I realized her breathing was even now and she’d fallen into a deep sleep.
“It’s so strange. I never wanted this,” I admitted.
“Diapers and sleepless nights. Toddlers finding new and improved ways to self-delete… Still, I guess, a tiny part of me mourns all of those years Miracle was alone. I know what it’s like to be so young and not understand.
All you know at that age is that the one person in the world who’s pretty much obligated to love you unconditionally, didn’t want you but I just look at her now as an adult, and I understand it even less. ”
Zajre’s gaze passed lovingly over the baby in my arms before settling on me.
“As a psychologist, I’d tell you that two contradicting feelings existing simultaneously don’t make them any less true.
As your friend, I promise you, you’re going to be the best mom to that little girl. Whatever that looks like for you.”
I DIDN’T KNOW if Zajre was right.
The last several months of my life had been filled with so much loss and heartbreak I’d probably gone back and forth in my own mind a thousand times until I was bored of the indecision.
However, standing in that school gymnasium, staring at an owl painting, something had shifted permanently and I knew this wasn’t merely a new hyper-fixation or a means to fill a man-sized void.
After the divorce, I’d taken the last eight months to examine not just what I truly wanted out of my future, but what I wanted to give.
I’d never thought of myself as a mother.
For so many years, it’d been a taxing effort just taking care of myself.
But sometimes, inspiration came from the most unlikely places and mine just so happened to spawn from a seven-foot-tall, nearly four-hundred-pound man who’d cared for me like I was the most precious thing in the world to him, and ever since, I couldn’t stop thinking about how it’d be a crime not to pass on the legacy of a man who’d touched my heart and life in every way possible.
I’d never be able to unchain what linked us forever. Undo the negligence that’d claimed so many lives in such a vicious and senseless way. But I could do what he’d wanted of me—I could be free.
Pulling into the driveway of the home I was going to make mine, I couldn’t help but feel the tingling rush of excitement.
My fresh start was within arms’ length and all I had to do was reach for it.
I popped the trunk of my SUV and grabbed the cans of paint I’d stopped for after leaving Zajre’s.
I hadn’t had much of a design concept past Miri’s favorite color—sage green—and rectangles I wanted to leave blank so that she could paint murals inside them.
When she finished one, I’d have a frame made for it so her walls looked just like the mini gallery.
My plan in the works, I took three trips with my supplies and got to work taping the baseboards and trim.
By the time I’d laid the second coat of primer, my arms were screaming and the sun was lowering in the sky.
Wiping a hand over my sweaty forehead, I decided to take a break.
Though it was early May, it was such an exceptionally hot day that I used my phone to adjust the air conditioning.
In the kitchen, I searched the cabinets for a pitcher I could use for iced tea and found one in the walk-in pantry as well as the sugar and tea bags I knew where in there.
While the water heated in the kettle, I placed an order for Butter Chicken and Naan.
I was scrolling through bedroom furniture when I registered movement in my peripheral and froze.
My Glock was still upstairs in Miracle’s room and I didn’t have so much as a can of mace in the pockets of my paint-stained overalls.
Reaching for the block near the toaster, I grabbed a knife and held my breath.
The movement happened again, but this time I realized what I’d seen, was a shadow.
A large male one. Lowering my weapon, I shoved the knife back into the block and went for the sliding glass door.
Stepping out onto the back patio, I strode over to the edge of the pool Abraham was currently swimming toward.
I crossed my arms over my chest, half-annoyed, half-terrified that if he kept swimming I’d sit outside all night just to watch the muscles of his back.
Is that what they looked like while he was…?
Nope. He left me. He didn’t get to move into my brain and squat there indefinitely like some heart-breaking hobosexual.
Abraham stopped at the edge where I stood and broke the surface. Shaking the water from his face he looked up at me.
“You know, I’ve never been divorced before but I’m pretty sure breaking up with me means relinquishing your pool privileges.”
Abraham took the steps out of the water, huge pools of it falling off of his massive body in splashes.
He reached over my head for the towel on the table behind me and wiped his face.
“Apologies. I came by around noon to finish packing up the study. If I’d known you were planning on being here today, I’d have just hired someone. ”
Okay, so I was a bitch.
“No, it’s…I’m…” I coughed like there was a pepper flake stuck in my throat. “Finish your swim.”
“Nineah.”
Not waiting to give my emotions the slack to betray me, I turned on my bare feet, but I moved too quickly and slid on a puddle of water.
My body twisting at an awkward angle, I rolled my ankle and tripped into one of the stone vases.
The lip of the vase scraped the inside of my forearm and a warm trickle of blood ran down my wrist.
Shit.
Two large hands steadied me by my waist as my cheeks lit on fire. “Don’t say anything.”
Abraham ignored me. “Are you okay?”
I was greasy, sweaty, I probably still smelled like baby spit-up after burping a newborn, and I was so ungraceful I couldn’t even storm away from my own ex-husband right. No, I wasn’t okay.
“I’m fine,” I snapped.
“Can you walk?”
I would crawl out of here with a broken leg before I let this man feel sorry for me. “I said I’m fine.”
I went to take a step toward the house but a fiery sensation shot up my ankle and I winced.
Abraham lifted me, one arm under my legs the other supporting my back.
Carrying me back inside of the house, he walked over to the kitchen island and set me on top before going over to the stove to remove my screaming kettle from the eye.
I wiped a wayward tear, annoyed as he grabbed a rectangular bag from under the sink and returned to me.
“You don’t have to play Doctor. If I sprained it, I can call an Uber to the ER.”
“Don’t irritate me. I’m not in the mood,” he murmured. Opening the first aid bag, he pulled out a cloth and a small bottle of peroxide, and I watched him clean and treat the scrape on my arm.
The left side of my chest sank.
Please stay.
Stay and don’t leave like everyone else.