I’m not as angry as I used to be, though it’s still there, a low simmer that I’m not sure will ever go away. For all her tears, for all the times she might have cried over the choices she made, she still made them. Regret is a fucking terrible thing, but she wasn’t there when the Kid needed the bathtub, when the earthquakes got to be too much. When I sat him on my lap and explained to him that she wasn’t coming back. When he was just a little guy and too smart for his own good, but still not understanding what that meant.
He grew up. He stumbled, sure. We all did. But he grew up, and he’s found his way home again. The road may have been long and winding, but he’s here. We all are.
We survived her.
We would survive this.
I breathe and breathe and breathe.
Otter’s there, because of course he is.
His hands are on me, rubbing up and down my arms, like he’s trying to see if I’ve been injured even though he knows I’m not. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say back.
“You okay?”
I look up at him, at that face that’s so familiar and so loved. He’s concerned for me, brow furrowed, the lines around his eyes pronounced. How different things could have been. She didn’t give him to me, but I can’t help but think just how far the road would have taken me away from him if she hadn’t made the choices she did.
“No,” I tell him honestly. “But I think I will be.”
“Of course you will,” he says, lips quirking slightly. “We’ve got a lot to look forward to.”
“We do, don’t we?”
“Wanna go home?”
I take his hand in mine and don’t look at the empty house again. “Yeah.”
He leads me away.
She’ll always be with you, it whispers in the back of my head. Whether you want her to be or not.
IT’S AN eight-hour drive back to Seafare.
We think about stopping overnight in Portland but decide against it as the call of home is that much stronger.
The radio is quiet in the background, and we talk and talk and talk about what’s going to happen to us.
“What do you think?” he asks me outside of Hood River.
“About?” I ask, and I’m drowsy, his hand in my lap, palm up, and I’m tracing his fingers.
“About what we’re having. The other one. Do you want to know?”
I’m a little fuzzy, so it takes a moment for me to get what he’s talking about. “Oh. I—you know, I thought I would, now that we’re having two, but I—I don’t know. I still feel like I want it to be a surprise. We know one, but the other can be a surprise.”
He nods slowly. “Me too. I don’t want to know until the day of.”
“You sure?”
“Think so. Won’t matter to me either way.”
I roll my eyes. “Only because we already know there’s a boy.”
He grins crookedly. “Nah. And you’ll never get me to admit it.”
“Just our luck, it’ll end up being triplets.”