Alix couldn’t help laughing.
“Don’t encourage him,” Jared said, but he was smiling. Still holding Tyler, he got into the shower with the boy and grabbed a bar of soap.
Alix looked at the two of them, both naked, both beautiful. Never in her life had she seen a sight that affected her more. No building on the face of the earth equaled the perfection of this man with this child. The tenderness, the kindness, the love between them seemed to create a glow around them.
For a moment she had to hold on to the sink to keep from collapsing. “I’ll …” she began. “I’ll get the …” Vaguely, she pointed toward the living room.
“No eating the soap,” Jared told Tyler. “And keep your eyes closed. I have to shampoo your entire body.”
Alix left the room to get the blanket and clothes in the washer, and put the diaper in the outside trash.
When she got back to the bathroom, Jared held a wet and slippery Tyler out to her. “He’s yours to dress. I’ve got to wash my hair.”
“I don’t know how—” Alix began, but Jared wasn’t listening. Grabbing a towel off the rack, she took the boy.
Tyler didn’t like having his diaper changed but he hated being put back into clothes. Alix managed to get him onto the bed where he promptly rolled off and ran for the door. She caught him, put him back on the bed, and held him down with one hand on his chest while she got clothes out of the diaper bag.
Tyler was laughing hilariously as he struggled to free himself from Alix’s grasp. Figuring out how to put on a diaper while holding him down wasn’t easy. As soon as she’d get the diaper under him, he’d roll aw
ay and she’d pull him back. She got the diaper in place, then the sticky tab glued itself to her left thumb and she couldn’t get it off. She had to get the other tab in place before the first one gave way.
When she finally had it on, Tyler looked at her with eyes of mischief, but she caught him before he made another run for it. “Oh, no, you don’t. Now come the clothes!” She made a cackling sound like an evil witch—which made Tyler go into hysterics with laughter.
When Alix finally got him into his shirt and shorts, she looked at him in triumph. “There, now. Doesn’t it feel good to be clean? Let’s get your sandals on.”
Seeing an opening, Tyler did a lightning-fast roll and was off the bed in less than a second. He ran past Jared, who was standing in the doorway. He wore only his jeans with a towel around his neck.
Alix sat on the edge of the bed, then flopped back onto it, her arms spread wide. “I am exhausted.”
Too bad Tyler didn’t feel the same way. Jared nabbed him as he ran out of the room, then tossed him onto the bed beside Alix. When Jared stretched out on the other side of them, Tyler immediately began yelling, “Press! Press!”
Jared groaned. “He only knows about six words, so why does that have to be one of them?”
“What does it mean? Is it someone’s name?”
“I should be so lucky,” Jared said as he began to stack pillows on top of each other then lay down on them.
Alix watched as Jared stretched out on the pillows so his body was a foot above the bed. With a howl of laughter, Tyler flopped across Jared’s chest and stiffened his sturdy little body. Jared began to bench press the boy. The pillows were for Jared’s arms to go down by his ribs.
“I think I’ll go make dinner,” Alix said, laughing as she got up and left the room.
When Jared and Tyler got to the kitchen, with Jared saying his arms were aching, Alix was stirring shrimp and rice in one of Dilys’s big skillets. Jared fastened Tyler into a sturdy wooden high chair that he said had been made by his great-grandfather, and began to feed the child cheese and crackers.
Alix was eager to tell Jared what Caleb had told her about Valentina’s journal. At the end, just as the rain stopped and the sun started to come out, Caleb had told her where it was probably hidden. A minute later, Caleb had glanced toward the attic window and said he had to leave.
“Are you a vampire and the sun makes you sparkle?” she’d asked, teasing.
“Something like that.” After Caleb left, the attic no longer seemed magical. It was just big and full of too many boxes filled with too many secrets. For a moment Alix sat on the little couch wishing the candlelight and music would return. The ladies at the party had looked so beautiful in their long dresses.
Not long after, hunger drove Alix downstairs. As she ate at the kitchen table, she thought of all she’d seen and heard. And as the hours went by, the idea that it had all been real faded. She began to remember the experience as though it were a movie she’d seen.
“Caleb said Valentina kept a journal,” Alix said to Jared as she stirred the rice.
“Did she?” Jared asked but didn’t seem interested. “Pass me that box, will you?”
Alix handed him the water crackers. Jealousy was one thing, but this was information that needed to be told, so she kept on. “Caleb said he believes Valentina’s journal was hidden in an oven in the basement of the washhouse where she used to make her soap. He said that building burned down when the house did.”
“I never heard of any outbuildings there.”