Chapter 5
Taz
Wednesday night, the house is too still.
Molly hasn't said a word since I got home, just stares out the window at the dark yard like it holds some answer I don't have. I keep glancing at her, trying to read her profile, but she's locked up tight.
"Mol," I say from the doorway.
Nothing.
"Baby, please talk to me," I try again.
She turns then, and her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. Controlled. That's almost worse. "You want me to talk? Fine. Let's talk about how you missed our baby's scan while you were escorting Kendall to the same building."
"I know how it looks—" I start.
"Do you?" She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you chose her over us. Over me."
"It wasn't a choice like that." I grip the doorframe. "She called, she was scared, she said she was cramping and didn't want to go alone. I thought—I thought I could get her there, make sure she was okay, and still make it to you. I checked the time, I thought I had a window—"
"But you didn't," she says.
"No." The word scrapes out of me. "I didn't."
Molly's laugh is hollow. "So your solution was just... not to mention it? Let me sit there alone wondering where my husband was while you were one floor up holding someone else's hand?"
"She's my friend. She's been my friend for fifteen years, and she's going through a scary pregnancy alone, and I didn't—" I stop, try again. "I didn't think about how it would look. I was just trying to help."
"You were trying to help her," Molly says quietly. "While I needed you. While I sat in that exam room by myself, hearing our baby's heartbeat with an empty chair next to me."
The guilt lands in my gut and stays there. "I'm sorry."
"I know you are," she says, flat.
"I'll make it up to you," I tell her. "Saturday. I'll be there, Mol. I swear to God I'll be there."
She doesn't answer for a long moment. Then: "You left me alone, Taz. Again. And this time it mattered."
I don't know what to say to that. I don't know how to fix it. So I stay quiet, and hope that Saturday gives me a chance to prove I can still be the husband she married.
If she'll let me.
By Saturday morning, the house is quiet, and for the first time in weeks, I remember what that feels like.
Kendall left yesterday for her mother's place to plan a baby shower. I didn't ask for details. The second her car pulled out of the driveway, my shoulders dropped three inches. I didn't realize how tense I'd been. How much space she takes up just by being here.
Molly's still asleep. I can see the shape of her through the doorway, curled on her side with one hand tucked under her chin. She always sleeps like that, like she's trying to make herself as small as possible. I used to tease her about it. Called her my little armadillo.
I haven't called her that in a while.
I make breakfast quietly, the way I used to before everything got complicated. Eggs over easy, the way she likes them, with the yolks runny enough to soak into her toast. Turkey bacon because she can't stand the smell of pork anymore. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, heavy on the pulp.
When I bring the tray upstairs, she's awake, blinking at me from the pillow with those honey-brown eyes that still make my chest hurt after seven years.
"You found the stove," she says, sitting up. "I was going to put its picture on a milk carton."
"It was where we left it. Somebody should have told me." I set the tray on her lap. "Turkey bacon. I remembered the smell of the other kind was bothering you. And toast, if eggs have been expelled from the acceptable-food list."
She lifts a corner of the toast. "You cut it diagonally."
"You said once it tastes better that way," I tell her.
She squints at me. "I say a lot of nonsense. You kept that one?"
"It was useful nonsense," I say. "There was a task attached."
Her mouth lifts, but then she looks at me over the tray. "I need you to hear the things that don't come with instructions too."
"You're right," I say. "Wednesday was—"
"I don't want to spend breakfast listening to you punish yourself," she cuts in. "I want to eat it with you. There's a difference."
I sit beside her and steal a piece of bacon. She moves the plate closer instead of slapping my hand. That small permission is enough to make me feel like an idiot for ever taking breakfast for granted.
"What would you like to do afterward?" I ask. "We could walk, if you're up to it. No destination. Nobody expecting us."
"I'd like that," she says. "But if you start timing it because you have a meeting to get to, I'll abandon you outside the house with the ornamental lions. You can explain your schedule to them."
"They look like a difficult audience," I say, and she snorts into her toast.
"They've been watching you drive past for two years," she tells me. "They've formed opinions."
I laugh, and she takes a bite of toast, hiding her smile behind it. Her hair is a mess. She's wearing my old ranch shirt. I want to remember this without making her sit under the weight of my regret.
"I miss watching you eat food you actually want," I say.
"Then don't look so alarmed every time I lift a fork," she says around a mouthful. "I feel like a zoo animal with an uncertain prognosis."
I fold my arms behind my head. "Would a newspaper help? I could pretend to be reading while I monitor the toast."
"Tell me about home," she says. "Anything that doesn't involve a bill or a broken machine."
I settle against the headboard. "The hills should be greening up. I keep thinking about the first winter you stayed at the ranch, how you went outside barefoot to look at the rain."
"I was checking whether the gutter was emptying into my boots," she says. "You'd left them under the downspout."
"I remember you laughing," I say.
She points a strip of bacon at me. "They were your boots by then. Mine were indoors, where civilized people keep footwear they want to remain dry."
I lean over and kiss her temple. She rests against me while she eats. For once, I have nowhere else to put my attention, and I don't want anywhere else.
We walk the neighborhood after breakfast. We haven't done that in months. The streets are quiet, mid-morning on a Saturday, just joggers and dog walkers and one guy aggressively power-washing his driveway.
Molly's hand is in mine. Our fingers are interlocked, like teenagers, like we used to walk when we first started dating and couldn't stand to have any space between us. I forgot how much I like this. The simplicity of it. Just us, moving through the world together.
"Remember moving in?" she asks. "You carried seventeen boxes upstairs before you discovered I'd labeled six of them kitchen."
"You were directing from a chair," I say. "It felt organized."
"I was directing you away from the wall you kept hitting," she says, swinging our joined hands. "The labels were a separate service."
"I should have hired you by the hour," I tell her.
"You couldn't afford the commentary." She bumps her shoulder against mine, and I hold her hand a little tighter.
We pass a house with a yard full of kids' toys: a swing set, a sandbox, one of those plastic climbing structures in primary colors. Molly slows down, just a little, her eyes tracking across the mess of it.
"That'll be us," I say. "In a few years. Yard full of crap."
"You think?" she asks, glancing up at me.
"I'd bet the ranch on it." I pull her closer. "We're gonna have so many kids this house won't know what hit it."
"So many?" She raises an eyebrow. "How many is 'so many' exactly?"
I shrug. "I don't know. Four? Five?"
"Five?" She stops walking. "Tazio Williams, I am not having five children."
"Okay, four," I bargain.
She pokes me in the ribs. "Keep going, cowboy. You're heading the right direction."
"Three?" I try.
"I'll give you two." She holds up two fingers. "Maybe two and a half, if the first two are really well-behaved."
"What's half a child?" I ask.
She considers this seriously. "I don't know. A dog. A very small dog."
I laugh, and she laughs, and I pull her into a hug right there on the sidewalk. The guy power-washing his driveway glances over, then goes back to his work. Probably thinks we're newlyweds.
"I miss you," I say into her hair.
She's quiet for a moment. Then, softly: "I'm right here."
"I know." I tighten my arms. "But I miss you anyway."
We stand there, just holding each other. The sun is warm on my back. Somewhere down the street, a kid is laughing. This is what it's supposed to feel like, I think. This is what I've been forgetting.
That afternoon, we're making lunch (well, I'm making lunch and she's supervising from the counter) when I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist.
"Hi," I say against her neck.
"Hi yourself." She leans back into me. "Watch the burner."
I reach over and turn off the stove without letting go of her. "Handled."
"Very smooth," she says.
"I try." I press a kiss to the spot behind her ear, the one that always makes her shiver. "How's the baby?"
"Still in there, as far as I know," she says, and pats my hand.
"Good." I put my hands on her stomach, warm beneath my palms. "Hey, baby. It's your dad. I'm the tall one with the questionable life choices."
Molly rests her hand over mine. "Tell the baby about the truck you bought without checking whether it would fit in the garage."
"I was going to save that for a lesson in spatial awareness." I lean closer to her belly. "Your mom will teach you the useful things. I can offer calf roping, tire changes, and several cautionary stories."
"Valuable skills for a Los Angeles baby," she says.
"You never know." I straighten up but keep my hands where they are. "We could move back to the ranch. Raise this kid where I was raised."
She's quiet. I feel her body stiffen, just slightly.
"Maybe," she says. "Someday."
I don't push it. I know she has complicated feelings about leaving the honey operation in Miguel's hands, about being away from her grandmother's farm, about all of it. We've talked about it before, in circles, never landing anywhere solid.