Chapter 7
seven
. . .
Beau
Sadie comes back out of the daycare with a little boy on her hip, his head tucked against her shoulder, cheeks flushed red enough I can see it from where I'm sitting in the truck.
She's got a backpack slung over one arm and a dinosaur blanket clutched in the same hand, and she looks like she's about two seconds from dropping it all, so I hop out and jog around to meet her.
"Here, let me." I take the backpack off her arm, and she lets me, which tells me more about how frazzled she is than anything she's said out loud so far.
"Thank you." She adjusts Vince against her hip, and he peeks one eye open at me, then buries his face back against her shoulder. "He's shy when he's sick. Usually he'd have a hundred questions about who you are, and why you’re here."
"That's alright. Plenty of time for questions later.
" I open the truck door, and she climbs up with him still wrapped around her, settling into the passenger seat and getting him buckled into her lap since I don't have a car seat, which is a thing I make a mental note to fix before this ever happens again. "How's he doing?"
"He’s really warm." She presses the back of her hand to his forehead, and her face twists into a mask of worried and tight that I don't like seeing on her. "Vince, baby, can you tell me if your throat still hurts?"
He nods against her shoulder, doesn't say anything, and that's enough for me to make a decision I probably don't have any right making, considering I've known this kid for a grand total of four minutes.
"I think we should take him to urgent care," I say, climbing into the driver's seat. "Sounds like strep, if his throat's hurting along with the fever. It’s better to know now than to wait it out overnight and have him worse off by morning."
Sadie looks over at me, and there's a war going on behind her eyes, the kind I recognize because I've had that same war with myself plenty of times.
Pride against practicality. Not wanting to need anybody against needing somebody anyway.
"I don't have insurance through the job I just lost, and I haven't gotten set up on anything yet through you—"
"I'll cover it." I say it before she can finish the sentence, because I already know where it's headed and I'm not about to let her talk herself out of getting her kid seen because of money. "We'll figure out the insurance stuff later, that's an easy fix. Right now, let's get him looked at."
"Beau, I can't ask you to do that."
"You didn't ask. I fuckin’ offered." I put the truck in reverse, glance over my shoulder to back out of the spot. "Buckle up. Urgent care's right off Main, we'll be there in ten minutes."
She doesn't argue after that, just settles back against the seat with Vince curled into her, one hand smoothing over his hair in a slow, rhythmic motion that looks like it's as much for her own nerves as it is for his.
I drive, letting the radio stay off, because something about the two of them huddled together in my passenger seat feels like it needs some quiet around it.
We get to urgent care and I park close to the door again, same as I did at the daycare, and Sadie carries Vince in while I follow behind with the backpack and the dinosaur blanket, feeling a little ridiculous carrying a kid's stuff into a waiting room, but not minding it either.
We check in, and there's a wait, longer than I'd like, Vince is getting fussier by the minute, whining low against Sadie's shoulder about his throat hurting.
"Hey, buddy." I crouch down in front of them, and Vince peeks one eye open at me again, more curious this time than shy. "You want to see some cool stuff while we wait?"
He nods, just barely, and I pull my phone out, scroll to a video I took last week of the table saw cutting through a piece of oak, sparks of sawdust flying everywhere in slow motion.
It's not much, but it's enough to get him sitting up a little straighter, watching the screen with the focus only a four-year-old can manage when they are genuinely interested.
"You build stuff?" he asks, voice scratchy.
"Yeah, I build stuff for a living. Tables, cabinets, whatever people need.
" I show him another video, this one of a headboard I finished last month, and he watches it with his eyebrows pulled together, like he's studying it.
"Maybe sometime, if your mom says it's okay, you can come by the shop and see it in person. "
"Can I, Mommy?"
Sadie's watching the two of us with an expression I can't quite place. It strikes me that maybe she’s never seen her son with a man. "We'll see, baby. Let's get you feeling better first."
They call his name a few minutes later, and I stay in the waiting room while they go back, because that feels like a line I shouldn't cross yet, no matter how much a part of me wants to.
I sit there scrolling my phone, not really seeing anything on the screen, mostly just thinking about how easy it felt, crouched down in front of that kid, showing him videos of sawdust like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It's almost forty minutes before they come back out. Sadie's got a piece of paper in her hand, and Vince looks more tired than anything now, worn out from the whole ordeal, head resting heavy on her shoulder again.
"Strep," she says. "Like we thought."
"Figures, with the throat and the fever together." I stand up, take the backpack again, and hold the door for them. "They give you antibiotics?"
"Yeah, the pharmacy's supposed to have it ready in twenty minutes." She follows me out to the truck, gets Vince settled again. "Thank you. For all of this. I don't know what I would've done without a car, without insurance figured out, without…"
"You don't have to thank me." I climb in, start the truck. "We'll swing by the pharmacy, then I'll get you two home."
She's quiet on the way to the pharmacy, quiet after, holding the little white bag against Vince’s leg, and I drive them to her place, a small rental on the edge of town with a porch that needs a coat of paint and a yard that's neat despite it clearly being mowed with an old push mower.
I carry the backpack up to the door while she carries Vince, and once we're inside, she gets him settled on the couch with the dinosaur blanket, gives him a dose of medicine, turns the TV on low to a show with cartoon dinosaurs that seems to make him happy despite everything.
"Thank you," she says again, standing in her small living room, looking more exhausted than I've seen her look in the two weeks I've known her. "Seriously, Beau. Today could've gone a lot worse without you."
"Glad I could help." I linger by the door, not quite ready to leave yet, not entirely sure why. "Don't worry about coming in tomorrow. Just stay home with him, make sure he's actually on the mend before you're back at work."
"You don't have to do that. I can bring him with me if I need to, you said that was fine…"
"I know what I said. I'm saying take the day anyway. The business survived two years without you, it'll survive one more day. He needs his mom right now, not hanging out at the shop."
She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes full of tears and gratitude. "Thank you," she says a third time, quieter this time. "For everything today."
"Anytime." I mean it more than I probably should, considering she's my employee and I've got no business feeling the things I've been feeling for two weeks straight. "Call me if you need anything tonight. Anything at all."
"I will." She walks me to the door, and there's a second where neither one of us moves, just standing there in the doorway of her little house, Vince's cartoons playing low behind her, and a beat passes between us that I don't have the courage to name out loud.
"Night, Sadie."
"Night, Beau."
I drive back to the shop with the radio off again, replaying the whole day in my head, the panic in her voice when the car wouldn't start, the way Vince watched that sawdust video like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen, the look on her face standing in that doorway just now.
I've got no business feeling what I'm feeling.
I feel it anyway, the whole drive home.