Chapter 18 Micah #3
He would wait for her outside the bakery with a bouquet of daisies he’d picked by the side of the road.
He’d buy her special cream to prevent stretch marks.
They’d drive past a house, and he’d say, “That’s the kind of house I want us to live in.
You and me and our kids.” In short, he never questioned that she was a good person.
No one else thought that. She was the wild child in the family, prettier and bolder and sassier than Eve, the one with the big plans to travel without agenda or fear.
Eve’s eyes had lit up with glee when Micah told the family she was pregnant.
Her mother shook her head, already exhausted at the thought of a grandchild.
Her father, who’d finally managed to drive up and see his daughters, said he was only surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
Mom told her she’d have to help out more at the bakery to cover costs, since Micah and the baby would obviously be living with her.
Eve, who also lived at home, sporadically taking classes at the community college, got up Micah’s ass by telling her she looked bloated and green.
James became the one bright spot in her life. “You’ll make such a great mom,” he often said, based on nothing Micah could see. “We’ll figure it out as we go,” was another one of his sayings. “Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet, babe.” Eternally, immovably optimistic.
Micah did love him, she thought. Like a good friend. Sex with him was solidly vanilla. Her dream of leaving Stafford to talk to people from everywhere, experience the wider world, see cities and mountains and turquoise oceans, was dead.
It was so humiliating. She’d been complaining about Stafford for years, and yet here she was. At the bakery, living in her childhood bedroom, pregnant and trapped.
James was in the delivery room as a stream of obscenities poured from her mouth that final half hour.
When the baby finally came out, she was stunned.
The nurse put the baby on her chest, and she stared at him, the slimy, red-faced little thing.
She was a mother. She was in charge of this tiny, vulnerable, raw creature.
It was terrifying, and she looked at James with wild eyes.
“You did it,” he said, smiling as tears streamed down his cheeks. “And look at him, Mike. He’s perfect.” He suggested the name Logan—Wolverine’s name from X-Men—and she nodded, having been too superstitious to think about baby names until the baby was actually here.
Eve left for Tahiti four days later.
James came over every day to see her and Logan.
Gave her half of his paycheck and lived with his parents to save for a house.
He took care of the baby if she needed to go to the doctor or just wanted to get out for an hour.
For Christmas, he gave her a framed black-and-white photo of her and Logan he’d taken when she wasn’t looking.
He asked his parents to babysit so they could go out for dinner, even if it was only pizza or a cheeseburger at the diner.
And he still looked at her like she was a goddess.
By Logan’s first birthday, she stopped wondering whether she should tell him about Logan’s paternity.
During her pregnancy, he’d asked her to marry him twice.
She said she already had too much going on.
He asked her again when Logan was six months old.
She said they couldn’t afford to live on their own, which was true.
He asked again on Logan’s first birthday, and it became an annual tradition .
. . on his second, third, fourth, fifth.
She’d smile ruefully, kiss him and say, “Why ruin a good thing?”
“When you’re ready, then,” he would always say.
But she didn’t want to marry him for the simple reason that he deserved someone better. Someone who truly loved him, not just someone who relied on him and liked him well enough. Someone who wasn’t a liar. Someone who hadn’t cheated on him with a married father of three.
The day she fell for him was a regular day in the fall.
She happened to be looking down from the apartment above the bakery and saw James walking Logan back from kindergarten, his daily duty, and one that he loved.
The two of them were laughing at something, and Micah smiled.
Then Logan tripped over the front step of the pub, fell flat on his face and started screaming.
James swooped him into his arms, checked Logan’s forehead and kissed it.
He said a few words to him, kissed his chubby cheek and touched Logan’s little nose with his forefinger.
Then her son put his head on James’s shoulder and hugged him, and James closed his eyes, a look of such love on his face that the entire world shifted in that moment.
When they came in a minute later, boo-boo forgotten, James smiled at her, and she felt it. Her heart squeezed, and warmth crept into her cheeks. Her stomach fluttered, and her nether regions tightened and hummed. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Logan, your mommy is the prettiest woman in the world.”
“I know,” Logan said. “Can I have a snack?”
When Logan went to bed that night, Micah and James went to her room across the hall. They’d had sex since Logan was born, but that night, it was different. That night, she loved him. No more vanilla, no sir.
In the spring, they bought a hoarder’s house after the owner had died (found two weeks later because of the smell).
James said the place had good bones. He went from Stafford Auto Works to the house every night, donned a hazmat suit and mask, and chipped away at the seemingly infinite hoard.
Micah did the same when the Paulsons would babysit (her mother said she and Logan lived with her, and that was plenty of help already).
When seven dumpsters had been filled, they pulled down the moldy drywall and ceilings, tore the cabinets off the kitchen walls.
James borrowed tools, rewired the place with his dad, bought excess PVC pipes from plumbers.
They hung the drywall and learned to tape the seams by trial and error.
Micah cut back the brambles that choked off the backyard and tore up their roots.
She learned how to sand and paint, hunted down used appliances, and scoured thrift stores for used furniture and kitchen tools.
It took them almost a year to make it livable. The day before they moved in, James asked her to go for a walk. He stopped in front of the brick town hall and said simply, “It’s time, don’t you think?”
She did. They got the license and were married then and there. James told her he’d bought the rings six years ago, and her eyes filled with tears. No witnesses were needed, so it was just Judge Abbott, who’d once given Micah probation when she’d spray-painted Stafford Sucks under the bridge.
She would never tell James about Mr. Bates. She couldn’t imagine that he’d love Logan less, but it sure might change how he felt about her.