My Babies and Me

It made Michael uncomfortable to watch them. They weren’t really even touching, unless you counted the number of times they rubbed elbows as they walked, but he could feel their closeness.

“Laura was telling me they’re looking for a house not far from here,” Susan said.

“They are?” Seth hadn’t mentioned anything about a house.

“Yeah.” She waved as the other two pulled away and then shut the front door. “Then whenever Seth’s out of town, Laura and I will be nearby.”

And that would make it easier for Seth to play surrogate father to Susan’s children as well, Michael surmised. But he needn’t have worried. Michael intended to do his duty.

“We need to talk.” Grabbing Susan’s arm, he pulled her to a halt.

“Here?” They were still in the hallway.

“The kitchen’s fine, I guess,” Michael said, leading the way.

When she got to the kitchen, Susan immediately busied herself drying the dishes and utensils she’d left in the drainer. Suspecting it wasn’t good for her to be on her feet for long, considering the day she’d had, Michael found a towel and helped her.

“What’s up?” she asked after they’d worked silently for several minutes. She knew something was wrong. She could tell by the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“I’m going to quit my job and move back home.”

The bowl in Susan’s hands slid to the floor, shattering into tiny pieces.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BLOOD RAN down her leg. Susan saw it there. But she didn’t feel a cut. Didn’t feel anything at all except disbelief. And a crazy sense of unreality, as if she’d stepped out of her life and was watching from the sidelines.

“Watch where you walk.” She heard Michael behind her as she bent to pick up the bigger pieces. She had to get a paper towel before her blood dripped on the floor, too.

Michael appeared in front of her, trash can in hand as he reached for a piece of glass. “You’re hurt!” he cried when he caught sight of her leg.

Hauling her up—all 160 pounds of her—he set her on the counter and examined her laceration more closely.

“It’s nothing,” she heard herself say. Glancing down as Michael cleared away the worst of the blood, she wasn’t so sure. The soiled washcloth looked kind of scary.

“You were lucky,” he said, probing around the cut.

Susan winced, but was almost glad of the pain. Glad to feel something more than cold.

“It’s just a small cut and there’s no glass embedded. Are the bandages and antiseptic still in the same place?”

Nodding, Susan sat dutifully still while he collected supplies, patched her up and then cleaned up the rest of the glass. All the while, she was thinking that if Michael was really coming home for good, she should be ecstatically happy. So why wasn’t she?

And then it hit her. Michael was why she wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy. There’d been no joy in his resolute statement. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him smile since he’d arrived.

“Were you planning to ask first or just move right in?” She blurted the thought aloud when he was down to the last slivers of glass.

He stopped sweeping and looked up at her. “You’d tell me no?” It had obviously never occurred to him.

“I might.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it, Michael,” she said, her heart splintering into as many shreds as the glass in the trash can.

Finishing with the broom, he put it away, then came to stand in front of her, arms across his chest. “You can honestly tell me you don’t want me living here with you?”

No. She couldn’t tell him that.