33. Wednesday, October 31, 2012
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2012
T hey came home the next morning to an empty house, since the kids were at school. Normally, Julia wouldn’t have had time or inclination to throw a pity party over the end of their getaway, because it was Halloween. But for the first year ever, Paige was declining to go trick-or-treating, or even to dress up in costume.
Of course, she was thirteen now, but Julia knew of several thirteen-year-olds who still trick-or-treated. It felt poignant that Paige now believed herself to be too old and too cool for trick-or-treating.
Nevertheless, after months of trustworthy behavior on Paige’s part – even with occasional access to electronics, which Paige used to manage Julia’s social media accounts – Julia had agreed to allow Paige to stay home by herself while the rest of them went trick-or-treating. In exchange, they would leave a bowl of candy outside, and Paige agreed not to answer the door to anyone.
“Do you still refuse to do the costume thing?” Julia blurted to William after unloading the car and unpacking.
“Normally, yes. But this year, I'm making an exception – for Robert.”
“Oh, I see; I’ve moved down in the pecking order,” she teased him.
He smiled and kissed her. “What are you going to be this year?”
She poked him in the chest. “You, sir, will just have to wait and see.”
With a hopeful look, he guessed, “A mermaid?”
Julia laughed. “I never want to spoil that precious memory for you by trying to recreate it. Especially at my age.”
William scoffed. “What are you talking about? You’re the hottest mermaid in the sea at any age.”
She laughed again, and drew him closer for another, longer kiss. “The kids will be home from school by three-thirty. Let’s plan to greet them at the door in costume. And don’t disappoint me."
Knowing they would need every minute between now and then, Julia enlisted William to help set up the rest of the Halloween display in front of the house. Of course, she had already decorated a bit, but she always saved the best for the day of. Afterward, she banished him to the in-law unit while she donned her costume. After putting the finishing touches on her makeup – all except her lipstick – she wandered downstairs again to find him on the couch with his laptop.
But with her first glimpse at his costume, she stopped short in the doorway. “No way!”
He looked up, and his eyes instantly widened.
He was dressed in full pirate garb from head to toe, complete with cuffed blouse and doublet. When he set his laptop aside and stood, she saw the cuffed leather boots over black breeches, the belt with its various pouches, a cutlass with a leather scabbard, and even a pewter mug dangling from one of the belt’s many frogs. He had even brushed black dye into his beard and mustache to match the curly wig hanging below his tricorn hat.
Meanwhile, his eyes drank her in from top to bottom, and back up again. “Looks like we had the same idea.”
Julia burst out laughing now. “For Robert?”
He nodded.
“Okay, but do you know who I am?”
“Besides sexy pirate girl? Nope.”
Julia posed like a game show hostess. “Jack Sparrow, meet Gráinne O’Malley!”
“I’m not Jack Sparrow; I’m Bluebeard. ”
Julia's eyes widened. “And I guess this is where I return your engagement ring, you uxoricidal maniac.”
He burst out laughing and came forward to kiss her. She had held off on applying her lip color for this exact reason. She knew that once he got a look at her in this costume, he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes or his lips off her.
“Well,” Julia murmured when he finally broke the kiss, “Gráinne and Bluebeard were from two different centuries, so they never would have met, anyway.”
“Bluebeard is a fictional character, Julie.”
While she laughed, he took a step back and held her by the shoulders, once again raking his eyes up and down her body. She wore a tightly-laced green bodice over a white cap-sleeved blouse, and a short, layered brown skirt with an asymmetrical hem. Julia did not have a bounty of cleavage, but the corset lifted what she did have practically all the way to her chin. She had elaborately braided her hair, and a tricorn hat of her very own crowned her head.
“Uncle Tim would roll over in his grave at the historical inaccuracy of this,” Julia admitted. At William’s frown of confusion, she added, “Did I ever tell you he was a history teacher before he opened the aquarium shop?”
“No.”
“He was, until he got fired for banging a student."
William reeled back in shock. “Really?”
“Uh huh – specifically, my Uncle Rob.”
“Oh my God,” William murmured. “You never told me that.”
“I never knew, myself, until my Aunt Brigid told me a few years ago. It was quite the scandal. Anyway, Tim was positively anal retentive about historical accuracy. But Uncle Rob would tell him to stop being such a bitch, because the look on your face is totally worth it.”
“Well then, I owe one to your Uncle Rob.” He wiped his hand down his nose, mouth, and beard while stealing one last, lecherous glance at her body. “How are you feeling right now, by the way?”
Julia tilted her head. “Feeling?”
“I remember what today is for you.”
Her mouth twisted into a poignant smile. Halloween was complicated, ever since Uncle Rob pas sed away exactly nineteen years earlier. Growing up, it had always been Julia's favorite holiday – a time to show off the costume and makeup skills she had learned from Rob. After all, Rob’s first love, besides writing, had been theater.
“It wasn’t until Paige was old enough to trick-or-treat that I finally got it,” Julia said quietly. “Rob wouldn’t have wanted me to mark the day with anything other than total, unrestrained, irreverent joy. Ever since then, I try to honor him by making Halloween as epic as possible.”
“Hence the graveyard in front of our house.”
Julia laughed. “He would be so proud of me.”
She took his hand and led him out front to the spectacle, where they would wait for Paige and Robert to get home from school. They had draped astroturf over the driveway, then strewn it with fake headstones and zombie heads emerging from the ground. Seated around a cafe table, a pair of skeletons with flashing red eyes played poker. On the table in front of each skeleton sat a cheap plastic pint glass stuffed with Halloween candy, and Julia had set a gigantic bowl of Halloween candy in the center of the table. A couple of speakers, hidden in their tiny excuse for a flowerbed, were set to broadcast an epic Halloween soundtrack. And right beside those, a projector would throw ghostly images against the entire front elevation of the house.
“I think the spider really ties it together,” William reflected, peering warily at the wedge of glow-in-the-dark webbing that stretched from the upstairs window all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. Perched in the center was a gigantic papier-maché arachnid that Julia and the kids had constructed the previous weekend.
“That’s not a spider, that’s Shelob.”
He nodded, serious as a heart attack. “Now I'm the one having second thoughts about that ring.”
As she laughed, William donned his eye patch and his hook; and only a few minutes later, Robert was coming up the street with his friend Jordan and Jordan’s mom. Normally, Julia’s mother was there to greet Robert and Paige when they got home from school, but today, she had the day off. The residents at Treemont were hosting some kind of Halloween thing for the neighborhood kids.
The instant Robert spotted the waiting spectacle, he crowed and came barreling down the sidewalk. Then Jordan spotted it, too, and took off after Robert.
“Mommy! Will!” Robert screamed on repeat, running back and forth between them and each decoration in turn.
“I think we broke him,” Julia murmured aside to William, who put his fist to his lips to stifle a laugh.
Jordan was no less amped up as he pleaded for candy. Julia told him to ask his mom, so as soon as she caught up, Jordan bombarded her with a string of Cantonese. His mom smiled and held up one finger. Once she and Jordan, already devouring his single bite-sized Snickers, crossed the street to their own house, Julia turned to Robert.
“Let’s get you into your costume, Tadpole.”
“I'm not Tadpole today,” he protested. “I’m the Dread Pirate Robert.”
“As you wish,” Julia quipped, then steered him inside to his bedroom, where she helped him get ready. She knew he could do it mostly, if not entirely, on his own, but it would take longer. Paige would be home any minute now, and she wanted them to be ready.
Sure enough, they returned outside just as Paige appeared at the end of the block. Julia lifted her hand to wave, but her breath caught in her throat, and her hand froze halfway to its destination.
Xavier was walking Paige home.
Granted, as they turned down the block, there was nothing suspicious to see. They kept plenty of space between them. They both looked down at the sidewalk, Xavier gripping the straps of his backpack as he listened to whatever Paige was saying.
Sensing Julia’s tension, William rested a hand on her shoulder. “They’re just walking home from school together,” he whispered.
“Your house is three blocks away,” she whispered back, because she still thought of it as William’s house, even though it hadn’t been for sixteen years. “And it’s in the opposite direction from the bus stop.”
Tension creeped into the hand on her shoulder, and she turned in time to catch the annoyance flashing through William’s eyes. “They’re just friends, Julie.”
But she didn’t have time to analyze that before Robert called out to Paige and Xavier and ran down the sidewalk to greet them. Instantly, Paige and Xavier froze i n place with what looked an awful lot to Julia like guilty faces.
Paige raked a gaze of alarm over Julia, William, and the Halloween display. Cringing, she unleashed the timeless refrain of mortified teens everywhere: “Mooooooom!”
William squeezed Julia’s shoulder once. “I’ve got this.”
While William defused the situation, Julia summoned Robert back inside the house under the pretense of repairing a ripped seam in his costume. When the front door swung open again, Paige’s angry footsteps stomped upstairs, and then Julia heard William’s careful tread in the den.
“All done, Tadpole,” she murmured, tying off the last stitch in her fake repair. “It’s still a bit too early for trick-or-treating. Maybe you can practice your guitar while I finish getting ready.”
Robert ran upstairs to do just that, while Julia joined William on the sofa in the in-law unit. He crossed his arms over his chest, pinching his mouth with one hand and regarding her with an unreadable expression. She waited, fidgeting with her fingernails, until finally, William dropped his hand to his lap.
“He was just walking with her. You remember how close our houses are. It’s not that far out of his way.”
“Is this the first time he’s ever walked home with her like that?”
William blinked. “I didn’t ask. Does it matter?”
Hot acid rose into her throat, and Julia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Both times she ran away, it was with a boy.”
His eyes softened. “I know, sweetheart. I know what a huge trauma that was, I really do.”
A frown etched into Julia’s forehead. “Will, I know you believe there’s nothing going on between Paige and Xavier. When you say Xavier is a good kid, I believe that is your honest experience of him, and I have no evidence otherwise. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s to trust my gut. It’s almost always right; but even if it isn’t, I'm still going to press pause and figure out why my gut is sending false alarm bells. Nine times out of ten, it’s because they aren’t false.”
William studied Julia sadly, but behind the sadness loomed a tinge of something else. Something almost resembling... irritation ?
He placed his hand on her elbow. “Julie... maybe now would be a good time to go find your uncle’s stone.”
Julia sat stunned for a moment as heat flared through her face and chest. Her eyes stung ominously, but she tamped down the threatening tears and squeezed both hands between her knees.
Out of the corner of her eye, Julia could see that William was watching her keenly. She took a minute to pace her breathing and use one of the grounding techniques Clio had taught her: five things she could see, four she could hear, three she could feel, two she could smell, and one she could taste. It was a strategy that, for her, never failed to bring her back to center.
Finally, in a steady voice, she said, “I don’t need my uncle’s stone. When you said that, I felt like you were trivializing what my intuition has been telling me. Whether my intuition turns out to be right or wrong, I’d like to know that when I share it, you’ll at least not invalidate it.”
She watched the lump rise and fall in his throat as he stared across the room, digesting her words. Finally, he dragged his eyes back to hers, his expression unreadable. “I want to finish this conversation, but now probably isn’t the right time. Can we talk about it after Robert goes to bed?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Julia nodded; but still, she felt her heart splitting right down the center. It was their first Halloween together as a family, and only one day after William's proposal. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, but instead, she was going to have to compartmentalize her hurt feelings and put on a brave face, for Robert’s sake.
Thankfully, William did the same as they walked the three blocks to Kelly and Pilar’s house. There, they met up with Kelly and Zach. Kelly wore Ximé in a sling, and Zach wore an elf costume.
“I’m not just any elf,” Zach explained when Julia marveled over it. “I’m the Keebler elf.”
Julia laughed, and William asked, “Why the Keebler, elf, buddy?”
“Because he makes my favorite cookies,” Zach replied, peering sideways at William as if the answer should have been obvious.
Aside to Kelly, Julia inquired, “Where is everyone else? ”
“Pilar is staying behind with Zuri and Xavier,” explained Kelly.
“Oh, so you have one of those, too, huh?”
Kelly lifted an eyebrow. “One of what?”
“A thirteen-year-old who’s too cool now for trick-or-treating,” replied Julia.
Kelly grinned knowingly, but it did little to disguise the same poignant feelings Julia was having.
Before they departed, Pilar came to the door with little Zuri in her own sling. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded of Julia. When Julia froze, startled, Pilar laughed. “I’m not letting you go anywhere until you show me the ring!”
As she arranged her features into a smile and held out her hand, Julia studiously avoided looking at William. Pilar seized Julia’s hand and squealed all the right things, until Zach groaned, “Mom, come on! Let’s go!”
After bidding farewell to Pilar, the rest of them crisscrossed the neighborhood. Along the way, they joined up with Rowan, her mom, and her two dads. But before Robert’s jack-o-lantern bucket was even halfway full, he was already cranky and rubbing his heavy eyelids. From her sling against Kelly’s chest, Ximé made ominous noises suggestive of hunger.
“I’d better get this butterball home to her mamí,” Kelly observed.
When Zach protested, Rowan's parents gamely agreed to take him along and deliver him safely home when they finished. Then Julia, William, and Robert began the trek home, until Robert cried that his feet were hurting. Julia relieved him of his jack-o-lantern bucket, William swept him up, and Robert wrapped his little legs around William’s waist. A minute later, he rested his head on William’s shoulder, sucking on his middle and ring fingers. And a minute after that, he was sound asleep.
It should have been a sweet, touching moment, but Julia’s heart ached to remember her earlier disagreement with William. And she could tell, from the way he avoided her eyes and the silence he kept, that he knew.
Finally, they reached home to find the bowl of candy out front thoroughly ransacked. Julia placed Robert’s jack-o-lantern bucket inside of the bowl and took them b oth with her as she unlocked the front door. William silently carried Robert into the in-law unit, making a beeline for Robert’s bedroom.
Meanwhile, Julia tiptoed upstairs to check on Paige. The lights were on in the living room, but Paige was nowhere to be found. The kitchen was dark, but Julia checked there anyway before setting the Halloween candy on the table and making her way to what was now Paige’s room. It was the same room she used to share with Julia.
But no light escaped from beneath Paige’s door. Julia glanced at her phone, confirming it was only 6:45 – far too early for Paige to be asleep. So she tiptoed downstairs again and quietly poked her head into Robert’s room, just long enough to see William tucking Robert under the covers, and to confirm that Paige wasn’t downstairs, either.
Increasingly alarmed, Julia slid open the patio door and searched the backyard. Still no Paige.
Closing her eyes, fending off panic with several slow breaths, Julia considered. Surely Paige wouldn’t be in Julia’s bedroom, would she?
Then Julia remembered that she hadn’t actually checked inside of Paige’s bedroom. Heading upstairs again as quietly as possible, she opened Paige’s door and flipped on the light.
Julia wasn’t sure if the screams came from herself or Paige. Maybe they both screamed at the same time.
Or maybe they came from Xavier, lying in bed with Paige. Except they weren’t just lying in bed.
The next thing Julia knew, Xavier was out of the bed on his own power. Xavier was by no means a small boy, but after landing in the corner of Paige’s room, he cowered in a fetal position and smacked his hands over his ears.
Then Paige was on her feet, shouting words that Julia’s brain couldn’t decipher.
Suddenly William filled the doorway, reeling in shock at the scene before him. He quickly turned away when his eyes landed on Paige.
From somewhere in the house, Robert’s cries were getting closer. William ran to head him off before he could see anything.
Finally, Julia 's brain cobbled together enough sense to notice that Paige and Xavier were still in their underwear. Xavier rocked side-to-side, his knees drawn up to his chest, his forehead resting against them. His hands still covering his ears.
Julia seized her daughter by the shoulders, scanning for any signs of trauma. “What happened?” she demanded, trying very hard not to freak out.
“Nothing!” shouted Paige, self-consciously wrapping her arms around herself.
Julia could hear William somewhere in the house, trying to settle Robert. Somebody needed to tend to Robert, because Julia was not going to turn her back on this situation. Not even for a second.
Julia struggled to control her shaking hand as she jerked her pointer finger across the hall at the bathroom. “In there,” she ordered Paige, her voice quavering.
“Mom, I’m sorry, just... please don’t call the cops on Xavier,” pleaded Paige. “That’s the worst thing you could do.”
Julia blinked at her several times.
“He’s a black boy with Asperger’s,” Paige whispered, her eyes pleading with Julia to understand. “How do you think that will go over?”
Julia finally snapped out of her panic-induced fog. She nodded slowly as understanding unfolded in layers. “I wasn’t planning to,” she hedged. The truth was, Julia hadn’t even gotten that far in her thought process. “Just wait for me in the bathroom, please.”
Paige heaved a sob of relief. Turning to Xavier, she said through her tears, “I’m sorry, Xave. I’m so sorry.” Then, without meeting Julia’s eyes, she brushed past into the bathroom.
“Xavier,” Julia said, moving toward him, only to freeze when he flinched. “Xavier,” she repeated, gentling her voice as much as possible. It didn't matter that he and Paige had been fooling around – at least, not in this moment. Slowly, carefully, she gathered his clothes from the floor. “I’m putting your clothes here, right beside you. I’m leaving the room now so you can get dressed.”
Xavier gave no sign he had heard. He continued rocking side-to-side with his hands over his ears, his body curved into itself. Julia’s head snapped up when she found William standing behind her .
“Robert’s watching Alice in Wonderland ,” he said calmly. “What happened?”
Julia stood slowly, her eyes still on Xavier. She couldn’t look at William. “They were... they were in bed, and...”
William pressed his lips together and took a moment to process. “I’ll take care of Xavier. Go take care of Paige.”
“Kelly?” prompted Julia, still not meeting William’s eyes.
“Texted her. She’s on the way. I unlocked the front door so she could let herself in.”
There was nothing left to say. Julia gathered Paige’s clothes from the floor and crossed the hall to the bathroom, where she knocked lightly on the door. “It’s Mom. I have your clothes.”
No reply came, so after a moment’s hesitation, Julia opened the door a crack. Paige sat on the toilet lid, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. Lowering her eyes, Julia tossed Paige’s clothes onto the bathroom floor. “Paige? Go ahead and get dressed, please.”
Julia closed the door again and turned just in time to find William standing in Paige’s doorway. His hand was on the doorknob.
“I’m going to close the door and sit here with Xavier for a while,” he whispered. His eyes landed on hers, but the look he gave her was unreadable.
Julia's heart twisted itself into knots, and every knot represented another regret over how the night had turned out. But she nodded her understanding.
When Julia had gotten her breathing under control, she lightly rapped on the bathroom door. Paige let her in, then resumed her seat on the toilet lid. Julia, meanwhile, settled on the edge of the tub.
Paige stared ahead at the wall, but to Julia’s surprise, her expression betrayed no anger or resentment. If anything, she seemed to be in shock.
“Paige, honey, I’m going to ask you some questions about what happened.”
Paige merely nodded, still staring straight ahead.
“Just to make sure... was he hurting you?”
Paige shook her head.
“Was it... was he making you do anything you didn’t want to do? ”
Again, Paige shook her head. Slowly, Paige unfolded her legs and set her feet flat on the tile floor.
“Have you and Xavier had sex?” Steeling her stomach and plastering on as neutral of an expression as possible, Julia clarified, “Vaginal intercourse?”
Paige winced, but she shook her head.
“What about oral sex?”
Paige sat frozen, her gaze trained forward.
Julia’s guts churned. “Did you use protection?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Paige said simply, “We’re both virgins.”
Julia sighed. “Paige... how have things progressed this far between you two? You don’t have a phone.”
Paige blinked, and a solitary tear slid down her cheek. “We see each other at school every day.”
Julia gulped past the lump of shock in her throat. “The oral sex is happening at school?”
Paige shook her head vehemently. “He came over here once in the middle of the night. I disabled the alarm and let him in.”
“When?”
“The Monday after the housewarming party,” she admitted.
“Have there been other times?”
“Just once. We arranged it at school.” Paige swiped at a tear. They had been slipping down Paige’s cheeks from time to time, but it was clear they were tears of sadness, not anger. It was almost as if Paige was resigned to her fate.
“Paige,” Julia began gently, “just to be clear, I still don’t believe there’s anything bad about sex. I do wish you’d wait until you’re much older, and I’m disappointed that you lied and sneaked around. There will be new boundaries after this, but I'm not na?ve, and the most important thing is your health and safety. So if there’s any chance you’ll be having sex, you need to be on the pill.”
Paige dug her toe underneath the bathmat on the floor in front of her. “We, um... we have condoms.”
“Condoms are great for preventing STIs; and they’re better than nothing for birth control. But they’re not quite reliable enough. ”
Paige drew her feet up on the toilet seat lid again and started picking at a toenail. “We weren’t planning to go as far as we did.”
“That’s often how it goes. It’s a powerful instinct. Best-laid plans get scrapped in the heat of the moment. Even though I’d rather you didn’t start having sex when you’re still this young, it’s even more important that you not get pregnant. So let’s get you some better protection, just in case.”
Downstairs, the front door slammed shut. Since Kelly’s house was a carbon-copy of Julia’s, Kelly’s footsteps found their way to Paige’s room with no trouble. A moment later, Julia heard her knock on Paige’s door.
William and Kelly’s hushed voices reached Julia through the bathroom door, but she couldn’t make out what they said. Then, though Kelly’s tone was gentle, it rose in pitch as she addressed Xavier.
A rhythmic sound started up, coming from Paige’s room.
“He’s stimming,” Paige choked out, fresh tears streaming down her face. “He hits his head with his hands when he’s upset.”
A moment later came a sharp rebuke in Xavier's voice. Paige’s door snicked shut again, and then they heard a rhythmic thump.
“He’s banging his head on the floor,” Paige practically wailed.
Julia stood and opened the door a crack to find Kelly in the hallway. She had braced herself against the wall with one hand, her head hanging between her shoulders.
Julia stepped into the hallway and closed the bathroom door behind her. “Is there anything I can do?” she whispered.
Kelly shook her still-bowed head. “It sounds bad, but the stimming actually helps.”
“I understand,” Julia murmured, thinking of the countless fuzzballs Paige had constructed from the myriad blankets she had decimated. Not to mention the way she chewed and picked at her nails until they bled. At least that was preferable to the cutting she used to do on her wrists and arms.
“Will’s in there, in case Xavier truly starts hurting himself; but otherwise, we just have to wait it out.” Then Kelly lifted her head, pinning Julia with anguished eyes. “I’m so sorry, Julia,” she whispered. “When I left the house for trick-or-treating, Xavier was still in his room. Pilar assumed he was sti ll in there. He's never sneaked out – never done anything like this before.”
Glancing back at the bathroom door, Julia silently beckoned Kelly to follow her. When they reached the living room, Julia still spoke in a low voice. “First, you don’t owe me an apology, so you can let that go. But second, Paige just told me it has happened before.”
When Kelly reeled back in shock, Julia explained. As she listened, Kelly steepled her hands together, pressing them to her lips, her eyes wide.
Julia draped a hand on Kelly's shoulder. “Yes, they’re our kids, and there are things we should do to keep them safe. They'll need some clear new boundaries. But also, there’s very little we can do to stop them if they’re bound and determined, aside from chaining them to their beds.”
Finally meeting Julia’s eyes, Kelly deadpanned, “I wouldn't rule it out.”
Julia gave in to some much-needed levity. Kelly dropped her hands from her mouth, but her answering smile was weak.
“I know you’re right,” Kelly said after a moment. “I just don’t want to send the wrong message, either – like we’re condoning it.”
“That’s why I think we should set some clear boundaries, moving forward. I just don’t want those boundaries to do more harm than good, and I have no idea yet what that might look like.”
Kelly nodded, growing pensive, so Julia excused herself to check on Paige. The thumping sound persisted from Paige’s bedroom; and when Julia opened the bathroom door, she found Paige still on the toilet seat lid, still with her knees drawn up to her chest.
“This is all my fault,” Paige choked out.
Julia went to sit on the edge of the tub and took Paige’s hands in her own. “What do you mean?”
“ This. ” Paige gestured impatiently toward the bathroom door, which did nothing to block Xavier’s stimming from reaching their ears. “If this is anybody’s fault, it’s mine, not his.”
Julia sighed and squeezed Paige’s hands. “It’s nobody’s fault, Paige. Besides, it takes two to tango – as long as this was consensual on both sides. ”
Shuddering, Paige withdrew her hands from Julia’s grasp so she could wipe her eyes and cheeks with the heels of her palms.
“ Was it consensual on both sides?” Julia verified again, anxiety thinning her voice to a near-whisper.
Paige immediately nodded. She resumed picking her toenail. “Are you going to keep us away from each other now?”
Julia straightened, shifting her weight on the edge of the tub. “Like I said earlier, there will be new boundaries. I’m not sure yet what those will look like, and I see a lot of conversations with Clio in our future. For now, though, no unsupervised time with Xavier.”
Paige said nothing, but the two tears gliding down her cheeks spoke to her state of mind. Listening to Xavier’s stimming did nobody any favors, so Julia gently prodded Paige downstairs to the den. There, Julia joined Paige and Robert in watching the rest of Alice In Wonderland . It felt appropriately surreal, under the circumstances.
Long after Alice woke from her trippy dream – after Kelly had taken Xavier home, and Julia had soothed Robert and Paige to sleep – Julia still felt trapped in her own surreal reality. She didn't know how long she sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of chamomile tea, collecting her thoughts. She glanced at the clock on the wall: nearly one in the morning.
She supposed it was time to face William – her brand-new fiancé who, earlier that night, had blown off Julia’s concerns about Paige and Xavier.
Still, she took her time washing, drying, and putting away her teacup, saucer, and the tea kettle. Finally, with nothing left to do, she took herself out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the bedroom she now shared with William.
Light escaped into the hallway through the gap beneath the door. She tapped lightly on the door, then opened it a crack when she got no response.
William sat on the edge of the bed, still in his pirate costume, minus the hat, wig, and belt with all its accoutrements. He hadn’t even washed the black dye from his b eard. It added to the evening’s surrealism. He slumped forward, his hands clasped between his knees. When Julia swung the door wider, he barely lifted his head, just enough to peer at her from underneath his lashes. His forehead creased, and not just because he was looking up at her: the eyes that met hers were anguished.
Julia's pulse swished in her ears, her emotions a riot of disappointment, sadness, compassion, and even guilt. She came in, shut the door, and sat beside him on the edge of the bed. She, too, was still in her Gráinne O’Malley costume. She stared at the opposite wall, where she could watch their reflections in the dresser mirror.
“I’m sorry,” William murmured after a moment, his voice thin and strained. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I know it’s not an excuse, but... I’ve only been a parent for six months. You’ve had a lot longer to sharpen your parenting instincts.”
“I appreciate your apology, I really do,” Julia began. “I’m not saying I need you to agree with me on every single thing, but it felt like you weren’t even open to the possibility that I might be right. I felt like you just dismissed my gut instinct out of hand.”
In the dresser mirror's reflection, she saw him nodding. “You’re right. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that’s not exactly what I did. And I’m just so sorry.”
Julia couldn’t suppress the tiny furrow that appeared between her brows. “Is it because of what happened last time?”
In the mirror, William’s head tilted. “Last time?”
Julia’s eyes stung ominously. “In 2006,” she whispered. “When my judgment was so poor. Do you still not trust me because of that?”
His features warping with anguish, William turned his whole body to face her. After a moment’s hesitation, she also turned to meet his tortured gaze.
“Julie,” he began, “I can honestly say I’ve put all of that behind me. I know what happened then, and I know we’ve both grown since then. No; what happened is that I had a blind spot, where Xavier is concerned. I forgot that he’s a teenager, and a clever one, at that.”
Julia nodded slowly, but her head was a cacophony of thoughts and emotions, broken only when William tentatively took hold of her hand. She looked up, meeting his earnest eyes with hers. He slid his other hand on top of hers and touch ed the engagement ring he had given her only yesterday.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he repeated, his voice tight with emotion. “I’ll never trivialize your concerns again. I never should have in the first place.”
The familiar warmth flooded Julia's chest. She picked up his hand and held it against her cheek, leaning into it and closing her eyes against its warmth. “Of course I forgive you, Will.”
A sound poured from him, as if all the breath evacuated his lungs. Her eyes flew open again to find tears swimming in his. “You have no idea how worried I’ve been the past few hours,” he confessed, his voice thin and strained.
“About what?”
“Us.”
“I love you, Will. It’s going to take a lot more than this one little hiccup to get rid of me.” He gave a ragged laugh, and she added, “Now go scrub that black dye out of your beard so I can kiss you.”
Humming, he pointed out, “It didn’t stop you from kissing me before.” But with a grin, he took himself to the bathroom to do her bidding. And when he returned, he locked the bedroom door, undressed them both, and turned off the lights.
Later, sex-sated against his side, her voice thick with fatigue, Julia confessed, “I have no idea what we’re going to do about this.”
“Hmm?” murmured William, already half-asleep.
“Paige and Xavier.”
The reminder of what had happened fully woke him. “I don’t know yet, either, but I’m sure it can wait for tomorrow.”
She poked him lightly in the ribs, causing him to squirm. “What’s going to happen when they’re no longer infatuated with each other, but they’re still step-cousins?”
William shuddered.
“Exactly,” Julia replied drily. “They’ll still see each other at every family function.”
After a moment’s consideration, William deadpanned, “We’re all going to need therapy for that. ”
Long after William’s breathing had evened out, Julia muttered to herself, “Thank God for Clio.”