“But I’m not.”
Hannah gifted me with one of her rare half smiles. “Not what? Not human? I’ve had cause to question that myself a time or seven.”
“I’m not okay with being not perfect. Which is ridiculous. No one is. No one.”
“He’s learning.” Hannah tugged on one of Lily’s reddish-brown curls. “Slow but sure.”
I gripped Hannah’s hand and drew her down the hall as I shifted Lily to my other hip. My grandmother was peering into the unlit fire, her lovely face marred with worry lines I didn’t like seeing. Ones I’d put on her face, not for the first time. Definitely not the last either.
When she looked over at us, I let it rip.
“Hannah’s pregnant.”
Twenty-One
Yet again, Hannah stared at me as if I was insane.
Perhaps I was.
My hold on her hand tightened as she tried to yank it free. “So, if you think I’m perfect, or trying to be, you’re wrong. I mess up timing all the time. I mess up fucking everything.”
Too late, I glanced at Lily. She was occupied with trying to dangle forward far enough to pull off her sock, so I probably hadn’t scarred her too much with my language.
Hannah covered her face with her other hand. “Remind me not to try to give you advice again, okay? Like…ever.”
Gran moved forward to pluck the baby from my hip and plunked her down in the playpen across the room. Then she turned back with narrowed eyes. “Okay, I’m no expert, but I do have a child of my own. I know it usually takes a period of time for such things to reveal themselves. I’ve been gone a week. Even if you pounced on Hannah the first day she came here for the interview—and thank you, Lord, because I had serious concerns about you, Asher—you must be like Superman.”
“That’s not exactly what happened,” Hannah began.
“What concerns?” Although I knew otherwise, it didn’t stop me from preening. I could use some Superman mojo right now.
“You live like a monk.” My grandmother shook her head and glanced at Hannah. “He was practically born again.”
“Christian?”
“Hardly,” I snapped. “Just because I don’t share information about my conquests with my grandmother doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”
She rolled right over that as if I hadn’t spoken. Probably everyone in the room knew that was bullshit. Even I did. Not that I told my grandmother about my love life, but I would’ve had to have one for that to be an issue.
Before Hannah, the most enduring affair I’d had in years was with my work.
“No, the other kind of born again. We both know when Billy died, part of you did too. You’ve been a corpse since, just walking around here hollow-eyed.”
I dipped my hands in my pockets and moved to the window. What could I say? It was a truth bomb of the same kind Vincent had laid upon me last week. More and more kept coming at me, and a guy could only duck and weave so much.
“Bess, I got pregnant on New Year’s Eve. Not this month.”
“What?” My grandmother’s voice lowered. “New Year’s Eve. The night Asher didn’t come home. The only night he’d been away from that baby since she was turned over to his care.”
Lily let out a squeal and flung out a squishy block that hit Hannah in the leg. She retrieved it and brought it back to the baby, who flung it right back at her again. Hannah knelt with a smile and bounced the block into Lily’s playpen. Lily plopped on her butt and brought the block to her mouth, gnawing on it with a contented gurgle.
I caught myself smiling and glanced at my grandmother to find she was smiling too, her eyes softer than I’d seen in a while.
“So, I’m going to have another grandbaby,” she said quietly.
Hannah rose and brushed off her apron. “Yes, one is definitely cooking in there.” She glanced down at herself. “
It better only be one.”