Chapter Three
Willa
I woke up completely disoriented.
I had no idea where I was, what day it was, or what time it was.
Adelaide.
My stomach swooped; my heart fluttered.
But there was a little coo that had me pushing up from where I’d fallen, curled up on my side in a tight, protective ball, on my own bed. Then there she was, just eight inches away from me, big eyes looking up at the ceiling fan as it circled, content as a clam.
The whooshing in my ears didn’t lessen, and it took an absurd amount of time to realize it wasn’t my own blood rushing through my head; it was the fans.
The fans Owen had brought and left.
Owen!
I was supposed to be looking at samples.
But I knew from the weight in my breasts and the wetness soaking through that more time had passed than should have.
I turned, glancing at my nightstand to see my alarm clock.
It was one.
One in the afternoon.
I’d been asleep for hours.
Perhaps even more shockingly, Adelaide had been either asleep or calm for hours.
“Hey, sweet girl,” I said, stripping off my wet shirt and reaching for her. “You have to be starving.”
And I was aching from fullness.
If you’d have told me a few months ago that I would be tits-out on my bed while a repairman was possibly still roaming around my house, I would have laughed. But it was amazing what survival mode and motherhood did to your thoughts on modesty.
But, well, when you’d been spread-eagle on a bed in front of strangers while you delivered, then had someone ice your sore lady bits and walk you to the bathroom in your diaper, yeah, your body didn’t quite feel your own the way it used to.
I figured it would come back. Once this hard first stage was over. Once I was done being poked and prodded and wasn’t strapping myself to a machine that milked me in between nursing because I was something my lactation nurse called a ‘hyperlactator.’
“It’s great!” she’d insisted when I replaced yet another soaked pad from my nursing bra. “You can freeze the milk. Some hyperlactators even donate their breast milk to milk banks who supply it to hospitals for preemies.”
I supposed I should be thankful that I produced enough. But in my overtired mind and sore body, all I could focus on was that when I didn’t have a baby attached to me, I often had a machine. It was exhausting.
“It won’t be like this for long,” my mom’s voice said in my head.
“I know that’s not a huge comfort when you’re in the trenches and so tired that you can’t think, or see, straight.
But it won’t last. It’s just a few weeks, maybe a few months.
Then you’re going to look back and wish you’d soaked up more of this time. ”
It was why I’d refused not to take my maternity leave, even though my very male-dominated office had some glances to shoot in my direction.
I wanted to be present.
I wanted to enjoy it.
Lord knew there was a lot about my daughter’s conception and my pregnancy that had not been good or easy. But I’d endured. So I’d earned this protective little bubble I was living in.
Even if I knew myself. And by that I mean, the second Adelaide slept through the night, I would probably start working remotely. If for no other reason than not to allow the men who’d been nipping at my heels for years to get my job the chance to sneak in while I was busy being a mom.
Because, yes, motherhood was part of my new identity.
But I’d worked so hard to get to where I was in life.
My career was important to me. It was the only reason I was able to make the decision I’d made to be able to do this motherhood thing without a partner.
It was how I was going to be able to give my daughter the life I wanted her to have.
I wanted to be able to keep my job.
Besides, it was an outlet.
And as the newborn phase swallowed me up wholly, I figured that outlet was going to be very welcome eventually.
Also, I wanted to be a good role model for my girl. Show her that she could be and do anything she wanted. That you could always fall back on your education and your career. Even when a man you thought you loved and could trust ran out on you and the baby you created.
“You really like the fans, huh?” I asked when I pulled Adelaide away from my chest and set her on my shoulder, something that usually led to a loud cry. But she just let me pat her until I got a little burp then went still again.
I carefully set her back on the bed, cautiously hopeful. And she just… settled.
“Okay. I guess we will be living in here with the fans until I can buy some for your nursery.” With that, I climbed up, got a fresh shirt, and checked the bathroom. There was no sign of Owen. The space felt at once very warm from the dehumidifier but also damp and musty.
I emptied the water collection into the sink before walking out of the bedroom in search of my handyman, ready to apologize profusely for falling asleep on him.
But my house was empty.
Weirdly quiet.
I paused halfway through my kitchen, staring at the empty sink, uncomprehending for a moment.
Someone loaded my dishwasher for me?
Had my mom stopped by?
Or one of my aunts or cousins?
It was possible.
They all had keys and security code access. They could pop in and out whenever they wanted.
But my mom would have snuck in and stolen the baby so I could sleep. My aunts would have likely let me be but cleaned or cooked and left a note before they left. My cousins would have crashed on the couch to wait for me, knowing Adelaide never slept for long.
But there was no note.
No new food in the fridge.
No sign of anything other than clean dishes… and the samples spread across the dining table.
Had… Owen loaded the dishwasher before he’d left?
Maybe it was something that, a few months ago, would have really bothered me. I wouldn’t have liked it if someone’s actions made it appear like I couldn’t manage my own life.
This new me, who had been heavily leaning on her extended family for help? I just felt a little warm sensation in my chest as I turned on the electric kettle and made my way toward the dining table to look through my options as I waited for it to boil.
“Knock, knock,” a voice called a few minutes later, making me jerk out of my daze to find one of my cousins standing there.
“Gracie, hey,” I said, giving her a distracted smile.
Gracie wasn’t a cousin by blood but by the closeness of our mothers’ girls’ group. She was a pretty blonde with a warm smile, a floral romper, and arms full of reusable grocery store bags.
“I figured you were getting low,” she told me, waving the bags on her way to the kitchen.
“I was. I meant to order and just… forgot.”
“Well, now you don’t have to worry about half-rotten veggies or someone trying to substitute your toilet paper with aluminum foil. Don’t laugh. It happened to me,” she said.
I loved Gracie. She was bouncy and positive, someone who always felt like a ray of sunshine after a week of rain. But she was also my cousin who could always anticipate needs and remember preferences.
So I watched as she pulled out all the items I would have ordered myself and put them away in their exact right locations in the fridge.
“What are you looking at over there?”
“Tile samples mostly.”
“Tile?”
“My primary bathroom had a pipe burst.”
“Oh, my God. Why didn’t you tell someone? We could have come to help.”
“I called Owen to fix it.” Gracie closed the fridge and shot me a raised brow look, her eyes bright. “Don’t start,” I grumbled.
“It’s not my fault you somehow managed to pick the hottest handyman in the entire state to work on this deathtrap of a house.”
“Deathtrap is pushing it.”
“Money pit, then.”
“It is that,” I agreed, sighing.
I’d debated selling it in the early days. But once I started putting a lot of money into it, it felt like I’d be wasting money to move. I always kept thinking, What else could go wrong? A lot, apparently.
“He came right over?”
“Yeah. He was here in half an hour. And, funnily enough, you hear that?”
“Hear what?” she asked.
“Exactly. Adelaide loves the fans he brought in to dry out the bathroom. She’s been quiet ever since. I haven’t had this much peace in almost a month.”
“You look a little better,” she agreed. “Like you got some sleep.”
“I did. I passed out on Owen when he went to get the samples. I guess he just headed out when he noticed. After running the dishwasher.”
“He ran the dishwasher?” she asked, giving me that look again.
“Don’t read into it. He probably felt bad for me.
I’m pretty sure I came off borderline deranged when he was here.
” I’d certainly felt that way. It was amazing what a few consecutive hours of sleep could do for your mental health.
I still felt like I was in a fog, but my emotions didn’t feel quite so raw anymore.
“Still. A lot of men would have just left. And likely trekked mud through your house in the process.”
“He offered to wear booties when he saw Adelaide.”
“Aww.”
“Gracie…” My voice held warning.
“Oh, let me be a romantic.”
“Just because he’s hot?”
He was.
He was knock-you-upside-the-head hot. And I wouldn’t lie that when he showed up at the door the first time, I’d had some very vivid fantasies of him grabbing me and the two of us doing all sorts of steamy things for a few hours.
He wasn’t my typical type. My cousins would likely accuse me of only falling for ‘suits.’ There was some truth to that. I’d mostly dated men who I met in my circle. And my circle was business.
Owen was not a suit.
He was work boots and jeans worn soft from too many washings, stained permanently in different shades of paint. He was shaggy dirty blond hair, a scruffy face, and that kind of lax, easy carriage that you found in blue-collar men.
It was appealing.
Just not what I saw for my future.
Which was why I’d seen a torrid, short-lived affair in my mind and not wedding rings.
“Well, there’s that,” Gracie agreed. “But it’s also a man seeing something that needed to be done… and just doing it. Better than that, he did it without expecting any kind of praise for it. He just did it and left. And locked the door, by the way. I had to plug in my code.”
“He’s a good man,” I agreed.
I stared at the dishwasher for a moment.
It was such a small thing. Ridiculously small, really.
Loading the dishwasher wasn’t exactly an act of heroism.
It wasn’t changing a tire on the side of the road during a storm or rushing into a burning building, or any of the other ways the men in stories did to somehow prove they were worthy of the heroine.
Still, the act made my chest ache.
Because he hadn’t done it for me to see.
He hadn’t mentioned it. Hadn’t waited around for me to wake up and see it and hear my appreciation. He hadn’t made some joke about the state I let the house get into.
He’d just noticed the dishes and done them.
Maybe that’s what got me.
I was used to men who claimed they wanted to help. Or ones who asked what I needed. But there was something different about a man seeing something that needs to be done and simply… doing it. Without direction or expectation.
And that, yeah, that was a good man in my estimation.
“But?”
“But I’m so not interested in dating right now. Or maybe ever again.”
Gracie winced at that.
We both knew why. She’d been right there in the aftermath of the last time I’d trusted a man… and had him blow my whole life up. She wouldn’t blame me for never wanting to go through that again.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t be pushy. You don’t need a man. You just created a whole human being. Who I plan to hold at some point. Maybe while you take a shower,” she added, glancing up at my greasy hair.
“I will take you up on that,” I agreed.
Suddenly, I knew it was all going to be all right.
No matter how sleepless I got, how disconnected from the world I felt, no matter how many things in my house broke, it was going to be okay.
I had more people looking out for me than I even realized.
Including, it seemed, my handyman.