“There’s just one thing I need to let you know,” Melissa said.
“What’s that?”
“If you need me to tell you how babies are made, I can do it. Seems to me at this age, you’d know how to be safe.”
Kate burst out laughing. It hurt her sides, her stomach, and her head, but it also felt good at the same time. Melissa laughed right along with her, taking Kate’s hand again. “I mean, for real. My daughter is older than her own uncle. How the hell does that even work?”
Kate laughed even louder and leaned into her daughter. They embraced and stayed that way for so long that after a while, Kate could not tell where the laughter stopped and the crying began.
Slowly, Melissa helped Kate out of bed. She coached her through getting in the shower and even put on a pot of tea while her mother washed off. Taking a shower, as simple as it was, helped to bring Kate around a lot. But, to her amazement, it was also exhausting. She felt like an invalid as she struggled to put her clothes on.
As she fought to get her arms into a T-shirt, Melissa came into the room and helped. “I don’t know that I’ve ever helped you into your clothes,” Melissa said. “Good thing I’ve had Michelle to practice on. I bet she never would have thought her grandmother would need help getting dressed.”
“Were you always such a smart ass?” Kate asked.
“Always.”
Together, they left the bedroom and walked into the living room. Kate looked around, amazed at how clean and quiet the place was. “Where’s Allen and Michael?” she asked.
Allen took him out for a walk around the block. He’s done it twice a day for the last three days.”
“God, have I been that out?”
“You have.” Melissa took the kettle off of the stove and poured hot water into waiting cups with tea bags in them. “Mom…are you going to be able to do this?”
“I think so. Eventually. It’s just overwhelming. And it took way too much out of me.”
“I thought I was going to die when I had Michelle. I can’t imagine giving birth at your age.” She smirked here and added: “You old fart.”
“You know,” Kate said, “somehow, it became much easier to be apart from you over the years.”
This time it was Melissa who broke out laughing. It was like music to Kate. It warmed her heart in a way that she had missed. Sadly, she realized that she could not remember the last time she’d heard Melissa laugh so hard.
It made her wonder what else she had missed and taken for granted.
***
Director Duran kept his distance in the months that followed. He sent a card and a care package of diapers and wipes a week after Michael’s birth, but refrained from any emails or phone calls. Kate appreciated the gesture but started to feel a creeping sort of certainty about her future with the bureau. Having a baby at the age of fifty-seven and becoming something of a local celebrity for it likely meant her brief resurgence at work was now over.
On the other hand, she couldn’t help but wonder if the bureau might enjoy some of the free press. Not only free press, but uplifting and uncontroversial press for once.
She wished she could be fine with it, but she wasn’t. She grew to love Michael more and more every day. There had been a few days where she had resented him, but it did not last long. After all, Melissa’s speech had been accurate. Had she and Allen been more careful, she would not have gotten pregnant. Then again, the idea of being careful sexually when you were fifty-five tended to look different than it did for other dating adults.
Three months after she had been coaxed out of bed by Melissa, Kate was able to see this last stretch of her life for what it was. It would be a life of domestication and learning how to be a mother again. It would be learning how to love and trust a man with not only her life, but the life of their child.
Ultimately, she was fine with it. Hell, she was sure there were some grandmothers who would do anything to experience that feeling of being a new mother again. And here she was, with that chance.
Allen seemed fine with it as well. They had not yet talked about what the rest of their lives would look like in terms of marriage and co-parenting. He was still loving her well and seemed absolutely nuts about little Michael, but he seemed timid a lot of the time. It was like he was running underneath a cliff, waiting to be brained by a boulder that was sure to fall on him at any moment.
She wasn’t sure what was bothering him until her phone rang on a Wednesday afternoon. Kate was sitting on the couch with Michael. Allen picked the phone up from the kitchen counter and brought it to her. He wasn’t necessarily spying when he looked down to see the display; it was just something they did now, a level of comfort she had been totally fine with.
Yet when he handed the phone to her, he had a sour expression on his face. She took the phone, he took Michael from her, and she looked to the display as she answered the call.
It was Duran.
Kate and Allen locked eyes for a moment and she understood his strain.
Her heart racing, Kate answered the call.
Allen walked into the kitchen; the shadow of that falling boulder may as well have been growing larger and larger, covering him completely.
CHAPTER TWO
Sandra Peterson woke up fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She had been waking up to that same alarm, at 6:30 every morning, for the last two years or so. She’d always been a good sleeper, managing seven to nine hours every night and never waking before the alarm. But this morning, she was stirred awake by excitement. Kayla was home from college and they were going to spend the entire day together.
It would be the first time they’d spent more than half a day together since Kayla started college last year. She was home because one of her childhood friends was getting married. Kayla had been raised in Harper Hills, North Carolina, a small rural town about twenty miles outside of Charlotte, and had opted to enroll in an out-of-state college as early as she could. Going to school at Florida State meant their times together were few and far between. They’d last seen each other at Christmas, and that had been almost a year ago for only a period of ten hours before Kayla had left to visit her father in Tennessee.
Kayla had always handled the divorce well. Sandra and her husband had split when Kayla was eleven and she never really even seemed to care. Sandra supposed it was one of the reasons Kayla had never played favorites. When she visited one parent, she made a point to visit the other. And because of that torturous trip—from Tallahassee, to Harper Hills, to Nashville—Kayla didn’t visit very often.
Sandra shuffled out of the bedroom in her pajamas and bedroom slippers. She walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, passing by Kayla’s room. She didn’t expect her daughter to wake up any time before eight, and that was fine. Sandra figured she could put some coffee on and prepare a nice breakfast for when she was awake.
She did just that, scrambling up some eggs, frying some bacon, and making a dozen silver dollar pancakes. The kitchen was smelling amazing by seven o’clock, and Sandra was surprised the smells hadn’t stirred Kayla awake yet. It had worked when Kayla had been at home, especially when the high school years had come about. But now the smells of her home cooking apparently did not have the same effect on her daughter.