“I’m perfect,” he said through a rumbled chuckle.
Aly took a step forward and lightly tickled the tiny girl’s foot.
The little black-haired, blue-eyed baby kicked more. Her mouth twisted up at just one side, as she was obviously just learning how to control her smile, and she rolled her head back in delight. She suddenly cooed, and her eyes went wide and she jerked as if she’d startled herself with the sound that escaped her.
Aly’s voice turned sweet, the kind a mother reserved only for her child. “And this is our Ella…Ella Rose.”
Ella Rose.
They’d named their daughter after Jared’s mother.
Affection pulsed heavily through my veins as I looked on the three of them, so happy to see their joy. As strong as that emotion was, it wasn’t enough to keep my own sadness at bay, and my mind reeled with the questions I wanted to ask about Christopher.
But those questions were dangerous. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t know.
Instead, I reached out to let their baby girl grip my finger. I shook it a little, and that sweet smile took over her face again, this time directed at me as she tried to shove my finger in her mouth.
I just about melted. I was pretty sure this little girl had the power to single-handedly jumpstart my biological clock. “Well, hello there, Ella Rose. Aren’t you the sweetest thing.” I glanced up at Aly. “How old is she?”
“She just turned two-months yesterday,” she answered. “It feels like she’s growing so fast, but I already can’t remember what it was like not to have her as a part of our lives. It’s such a strange feeling.”
My head shook with stunned disbelief. “All of this is crazy.” I eyed them happily as some of the shock wore away, as if being in their space was completely natural. “The two of you ending up together.”
Aly blushed, and Jared watched her as if she was the anchor that kept him tied to this world. Then he slanted his own mischievous grin my way. “Don’t be too surprised, Sam. This girl was always meant for me.”
Good God. How Aly wasn’t a puddle in the middle of the floor, I didn’t know. His words were enough to leave me all swoony and light-headed and they weren’t even intended for me. And I wanted to laugh, because he’d always called me Sam, almost like a tease, a dig at his best friend Christopher, who refused to call me anything but Samantha.
It instantly took me back too many years, and I was there, feeling flickers of that flame that had been missing from my life for so long. But those kind of flames had burned me right into the ground. Those kind of flames hurt and scarred.
“So what about you?” Aly asked, stepping back. “What have you been up to? Do you live around here?”
“Yeah, I live with my boyfriend in the neighborhood right behind the shopping center.”
“You’re kidding me? We do too.” She laughed at the coincidence. “We’re neighbors.”
Here we all were, standing in the same store in this huge city, miles away from where we’d all begun. I almost had the urge to look behind me, fully expecting to see Christopher sauntering toward us, an apparition sent to taunt me in a ruthless twist of fate.
“How is your little brother? I heard he was doing really well after your family moved across town.”
After being thrown headfirst into all these tumultuous memories of Christopher, my walls were down, and this time I wasn’t prepared for the sadness that sliced straight through me. I attempted to steady my voice. “He was in remission for five years, but the cancer just recently came back.”
Aly sobered, and genuine sympathy edged the curve of her mouth. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she murmured, and it didn’t hurt to hear her say it. Instead, I felt comforted.
“Me too,” I agreed, shaking my head as a saddened smile twisted up my mouth. “He’s the sweetest kid.”Well, he wasn’t so much a kid anymore. Really, he was almost a man, but it was hard to look at him that way when he was so frail. “I just keep praying for him, and I spend as much time with him as I can to keep his spirits up. He’s been pretty sick with the treatments, so he hasn’t been getting out of the house all that much lately. I couldn’t imagine having to go through my junior year of high school on-line, but he doesn’t complain.”
Stewart was now seventeen, the youngest in our family. My brother, Sean, was two years younger than me, in the same grade as Aly had been, and my sister Stephanie was nineteen. My parents had us in quick succession, and had had some kind of overindulgent love fest with our names since theirs’ were Sally and Stephen. It used to bother me when I was young.