26. Fran
— ? —
Fran
Six weeks have passed since we prepped for the Henderson wedding, the November invoice paid in full, my flowers and Logan’s delivery runs working together like we’d always done it that way. Thirty-five weeks now. The cottage is almost ready. The car seat is not.
“The manual says the base should click twice,” Logan announces from the backseat of the truck. “I’ve clicked it seventeen times. It’s not clicking twice.”
“Maybe you’re clicking wrong,” Theo suggests from where he’s leaning against the truck bed, eating an apple. “There’s probably a technique.”
“There’s no technique for clicking. Clicking is clicking.”
“Clearly not, if you’re doing it wrong.”
I’m sitting on the porch with Bree, watching this disaster unfold with the kind of amusement that only comes from being thirty-five weeks pregnant and absolutely done with everything.
Baby James is asleep in Bree’s arms, and Rosie is somewhere in the yard, probably terrorizing Gertrude or vice versa.
“How long has he been at this?” Bree asks.
“About an hour.” I take a sip of the lemonade Junie made before she left for the day. “He read the manual twice. He watched three YouTube videos. He called the customer service line and spent forty-five minutes on hold before getting disconnected.”
“And the car seat still isn’t installed?”
“The car seat is mocking him.”
From the truck, there’s a sound of frustrated grunting followed by Logan’s voice: “Theo, if you don’t stop smirking, I will throw this car seat at your head.”
“You won’t. It cost too much.”
“It cost two hundred dollars and it’s worth nothing if I can’t get it to CLICK TWICE.”
I lean back in my chair, cradling my enormous belly. The baby has been doing gymnastics all morning, probably in sympathy with her father’s struggles. Or maybe in mockery. It’s hard to tell with babies.
“Rafael installed ours in about fifteen minutes,” Bree says mildly. “Should I send him over?”
“Please.” I raise my voice. “Logan! Bree’s husband is apparently not defective. He’s going to help.”
“I don’t need help!” A pause. “…Okay, I need help.”
Rafael appears from around the side of the house, where he’s been “checking on the greenhouse” but really just avoiding the car seat drama. He takes one look at the situation, shakes his head, and climbs into the backseat next to Logan.
“You’ve got the latch backward,” he says.
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do. Look - here.” There’s a clicking sound. Two clicks. Precise and distinct.
Logan is silent for a long moment. Then: “I hate you.”
“You’re welcome.”
By lunchtime, the car seat is installed, the baby is still doing gymnastics, and we’ve migrated to the backyard where a makeshift picnic has been assembled from whatever was in the fridge.
Theo has claimed the hammock, despite multiple objections that he didn’t help set it up.
Rosie is on her fourth lap around the yard, chasing Gertrude with the kind of manic energy only a toddler can sustain.
The goose, for her part, seems to be enjoying the game.
She honks dramatically every time Rosie gets close, then waddles just out of reach.
“She’s going to be a nightmare when your baby arrives,” Bree says, nodding at Gertrude. “Fair warning.”
“She’s already a nightmare. She bit the mailman again last week.”
“The same mailman?”
“Different mailman. The first one quit.” I shift on the picnic blanket, trying to find a position that doesn’t make my back scream. “I think she sees the baby as her personal charge. She’s been even more protective lately.”
“A goose godparent. That’s…” Bree searches for the word. “Special.”
“Deranged is the word you’re looking for. Deranged godparent.”
Logan drops onto the blanket beside me, still slightly sweaty from his car seat ordeal. “The nursery’s ready, by the way. Did I mention the nursery’s ready?”
“You’ve mentioned it about twelve times.”
“Thirteen. I’m keeping count.” He stretches out, his head finding my lap despite the belly obstacle. “Every piece of furniture in that room was built by my hands. The crib, the changing table, the rocking chair, the little bookshelf thing-”
“The little bookshelf thing is my favorite part,” Theo calls from the hammock. “Very technical term.”
“It’s a shelf. For books. What else would you call it?”
“A bookshelf, probably. Without the ‘little’ and the ‘thing.’”
“I’m adding descriptors for emphasis.”
I run my fingers through Logan’s hair, picking out a piece of sawdust he missed. “The nursery is beautiful. You did good.”
“I did adequate. The crib required three attempts.”
“The first two attempts were character building.”
“The first two attempts are currently firewood.”
Bree is watching us, her face gone soft, maybe a little nostalgic. “You two are different,” she says.
“Different how?”
“Different from last time I saw you.” She bounces James gently as he starts to stir. “More… settled. Like you actually fit together now.”
I think about that. We are different, Logan especially, but me too. The sharp edges we used to cut each other on have worn smooth with time and effort. Not gone, exactly, but manageable. Safe to handle.
“We had some stuff to work through,” I say.
“Some stuff.” Bree snorts. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Fine. We had a lot of stuff to work through. But we worked through it.” I glance down at Logan, who’s closed his eyes like a contented cat. “Mostly.”
“We’re still working through it,” he mumbles. “It’s an ongoing process.”
“An ongoing process that involves a lot of apologizing and also a lot of me being right about things.”
“You are right about things. Many things.” He opens one eye. “Just not about the car seat. The car seat was rigged.”
“The car seat was fine. You just can’t read instruction manuals.”
“I can read them. I just interpret them differently.”
“Incorrectly. You interpret them incorrectly.”
Rafael appears with a tray of sandwiches, saving Logan from having to defend himself further. Rosie abandons her goose chase to demand food, climbing into her father’s lap with the kind of total confidence that comes from being deeply, unconditionally loved.
“So,” Rafael says, settling onto the blanket beside Bree. “When’s the vow renewal?”
Logan and I exchange a look.
“He hasn’t officially proposed yet,” I say.
“But you’re definitely doing it?”
“We’re definitely doing something.” I poke Logan’s shoulder. “He keeps promising flowers and drama and hasn’t delivered.”
“I’m waiting for the right moment.”
“You’ve had approximately seven thousand right moments.”
“None of them were right enough.”
Theo swings himself out of the hammock with more grace than he has any right to possess. “What if the moment is never right enough? What if you just… do it? Imperfectly? Like a normal human person?”
“I’m not a normal human person. I’m a furniture maker. We have standards.”
“Your standards are going to result in that baby being born before you get around to proposing.”
“The baby won’t be born for another five weeks.”
“Famous last words.” I rub my belly, where the baby has paused her gymnastics to presumably listen to this ridiculous conversation. “After the false alarm last night, I’m not taking anything for granted.”
“That was a false alarm?” Bree perks up. “What happened?”
“Braxton Hicks. Very convincing ones.” I lean back on my elbows. “We drove to the hospital at eleven at night, spent two hours in triage, and then got sent home with instructions to ‘rest and stay hydrated.’”
“We stopped for gas station snacks on the way back,” Logan adds. “Very romantic. She ate two entire bags of chips while I had a minor existential crisis in the parking lot.”
“They were good chips.”
“They were gas station chips.”
“Still good.” I grin at him. “And your existential crisis was very cute. You kept asking if I was sure I wasn’t in labor, like I might have missed something.”
“You seemed very calm. It was suspicious.”
“I was calm because I wasn’t in labor. As I kept telling you.”
“And I kept not believing you. As I kept telling you.”
Bree is watching us with that soft expression again. “You know,” she says, “I used to worry about you. When you first got married. You seemed so… unhappy.”
“I was unhappy.”
“I know. And now look at you.” She gestures at the picnic, at the farm, at the two of us bickering on a blanket like an old married couple. “This is good, Fran. You deserve this.”
I feel tears prick at my eyes, damn hormones, and blink them back. “Thanks, Bree.”
“I mean it.” She reaches over to squeeze my hand. “The good ones look ridiculous on purpose.”
“Logan’s been practicing, then.”
“Watch.”
As if on cue, Logan chooses that exact moment to stand up, trip over the corner of the picnic blanket, and go sprawling onto the grass in a flail of limbs.
“I’m fine,” he announces from the ground. “That was intentional.”
“It really wasn’t,” Theo says.
“It was a demonstration of my commitment to looking ridiculous for my wife.”
“It was a demonstration of your inability to stand up like a normal person.”
Logan picks himself up with as much dignity as he can manage, which isn’t much. There’s grass in his hair now, along with the sawdust, and a smear of something that might be mud on his cheek.
“I was making a point,” he says.
“What point?”
“That I’m willing to be silly. For you.” He gestures at his disheveled state. “This is me being silly.”
“This is you being a mess.”
“A silly mess. There’s a distinction.”
I’m laughing now, really laughing, the kind that makes my belly shake and the baby kick in protest. Logan grins at me like he’s accomplished something great, like making me laugh is the best thing he’s done all day.
Maybe it is.
The afternoon stretches into evening, golden light spilling across the fields as the sun starts its descent.
Rafael and Bree pack up their kids, James still miraculously asleep, Rosie thoroughly exhausted from her goose-chasing adventures, and we stand on the porch saying goodbyes that take three times longer than necessary.