Clementine’s face reddens with embarrassment. Her wide, brown eyes meet mine, before she whispers a soft sorry and skids to the loft.
“Clem?” Mere calls from the bottom of the steps until the door to the loft closes. “What did you say to her?” She immediately turns to me.
I bring my hands forward, hating the hurt and accusation etched on my daughter’s face. “She is a tenant, Mere, not family.”
“I like her. You do too.” She doesn’t give me a chance to correct her on that. “And she makes our home happy. I like it with her.”
“But she isn’t permanent, Mere.”
“How do you know? Maybe if we are nice to her, she’ll stay.”
“Mere—” I start, but she’s already turned around, storming into her room before she shuts the door with a loud bang.
I’m riveted to the spot. The program still playing on the TV screen, increasing my agony. I switch it off and slump down on the couch.
My heart thunders inside my chest, my ribs tightening almost painfully. I was just hoping for another evening of quiet and peace, as last week. Was it too much to ask?
It’s already midnight. Mere never came for dinner, even after I knocked on her door a dozen times. I decide to give her some time so that she can calm down and we can talk.
With a heavy heart, I return to my room and look at my beautiful wife, smiling at me as always.
“Why did you go, Mel? It’s not only me but Mere misses you badly too.”
I stand before her photograph, tears in my eyes blurring her smile. When I rest my forehead over hers, instead of the warmth of her skin, I feel the cold glass, reminding me she’s no longer within my reach.
I open her dresser, which is exactly as it was ten years ago, and take out the pink cardboard box.
Merida’s baby box.
Melanie had planned to gift this to Mere on her sixteenth birthday. She wanted to add one memory every year in this box. But when I open the lid, there are only a handful of things.
There is Mere’s first ultrasound pic, her first onesie, picture of her first walk, and her first birthday. There is a letter that Melanie wrote the night she found out she was pregnant. It is addressed to My baby. I’d forgotten all about it. I hope someday Mere reads it, knows that her mom did keep something that is just for her and no one else.
“What if it’s a boy?”
“It’s not gonna be a boy. It’s a girl. I can feel it,” Melanie replies, standing before a half-painted wall with a scarf on her head and holding a paintbrush dipped in pink paint.
“Yes, of course. You can feel it, and the test at the hospital is for the ‘unfeely’ moms.” My brush drops into the paint bucket with a flop sound. “I don’t know why we can’t ask the doctor?” I grab my neck, twisting it around. It’d be so easy if we just asked the doctor. This woman is crazy.
“Because I don’t want our baby girl to think that we don’t trust her. You know she talks to me in dreams.” Melanie gives me the stink eye as she gently rubs her swollen belly. Even irritating as hell, she is a vision. I wouldn’t trade her or this life for anything.
“That’s fucking crazy, Mel,” I huff, picking up the paintbrush again and swiping it on the wall.
“Mind your language, Keith Adams. She hears everything.” Her hands resting on her stomach curl, covering the imaginary ears on her belly. “If my daughter’s first word is a swear, I’m gonna kill you.”
“It’s okay to say kill but not fuck?”
Her face reddens in anger, and it’s just so sexy. I can’t resist riling her up. The way her ears turn red, her eyes fix on me, she is a fucking siren. Before her, I thought pregnancy glow was a lie, but it’s a damn real thing.
I drop the paintbrush again in the can and saunter toward her. Taking off my T-shirt, I make my intentions clear and now her face reddens for different reasons.
“You don’t touch me, Keith.” She is already breathless when I take the paintbrush from her hand.
“And why would I do such a stupid thing?”
“This is the fourth time we have started painting. Every time we end up in the nursing chair,” she whispers halfheartedly as I guide her to said chair and settle her on my lap.
She is already nine months pregnant and it’s an adjustment for her to straddle me.