I imagine her standing there staring at them with her hands on her hips.
“Yes, we’re done,” Imogene says.
Abigail walks back into my room, and I can hear Imogene in the hallway telling Derrick, “She’s really quite something, isn’t she?”
“She rather is,” Derrick replies. “Even reminds me a little of Melanie, truth be told.”
“You okay?” I ask her as I lift my feet back onto the bed, and Abigail quickly arranges the covers around me.
“Fine,” she snaps.
I stare at her. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.” She picks up my slippers and puts them in the cabinet.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.” She balls her hands into fists and props them on her hips. “They just make me so mad. They can’t even apologize without it being all about them, or even say a simple thank you, for that matter.”
She jerks a pillow from behind my head and plumps it. I watch as she beats the pillow, glad it’s not me she’s mad a
t.
“I’m ready to go home. I miss my cabin. I miss my bed. I miss Mitchell.”
She snorts. “Gran has been spoiling him rotten. He’s going to stink like spoiled seven-year-old by the time you get back.” She shoots me a playful grin. “They’ve been playing UNO, Connect4, and Sorry, all week. Gran has loved every second.”
I grin. “He told me when he called this morning.”
Her brow furrows. “Where was I this morning?”
“HR, maybe?”
She grins. “Because I am about to be a woman with a job!” She lifts her arm in the air and flexes her muscles. “Hear me roar,” she calls out in a whisper-yell.
Yesterday, she’d gone down to the HR department and given them her resume. With a glowing reference from the last hospital she worked at—yes, the one with Sandra—she’d immediately gotten the job. She will be working in maternity, doing three long shifts a week.
She gives me a self-conscious look. “I hope they didn’t see that little display. They would fire me before I can even get started. Oh! And more good news. Your son has started calling me Abby,” she says. She gives me a little sideways grin when she says it. “And I think it’s kind of cute.”
I pull my chin back and stare at her. “You must really love him.”
Her smile goes soft. “Oh, I really, really do.”
“About as much as you love me?” I grab her sleeve and drag her close to me.
She taps her chin, considering. “Maybe more, actually. His feet don’t stink quite as bad as yours.” I yank her to me, and she falls against my chest, very careful of my incisions as she gently lays her head on me. I brush her curls down but they just pop right back up.
“The day that your divorce goes through, you’re going to have to marry me so that you can keep me from a life of living in sin.”
She narrows her eyes and glares at me. “There’s no sin in what we do. Unless I’ve missed something.”
“You’re going to have to make an honest man of me.”
“You’re already honest. Try something different.” She lifts her head to stare at me, propping her chin carefully on my chest.
“It’ll make Mitchell so happy. He desperately wants you to be his mom.”
She finally softens. “That’s a good reason to get married,” she says.