“Mama!” Rebel’s voice called, rising as she came down the hallway. “Mama! Mama!”
She got to the end of the hallway and caught sight of me, and I thought my legs were going to give out when her eyes widened behind her glasses and her lips pulled up in a huge grin. “Wiya!” she said happily. “Wiya!”
Holy shit. She could say my name.
Rebel started toward me, but Molly scooped her up before she could get anywhere close.
“I think you need to leave,” Molly said quietly as she tried to keep Rebel from squirming away. “Right now, Will.”
“Molly—”
“Go.”
I held her eyes, hoping that she’d change her mind, but after a moment, I knew she wouldn’t. I turned and let myself out the door as Rebel said my name again.
I ignored her. I needed to get the fuck out of there before I lost it.
I’d gotten what I thought I wanted. We were done. It was over.
Chapter 13
Molly
18 months later
“I can’t believe you’re still seeing him,” I said to Mel, throwing my hair into a ponytail. “I did not see that coming.”
“What’re you talking about?” Mel asked, throwing some sodas and juice boxes into my cheap little foam cooler. “You love Rocky.”
“He’s a good guy,” I replied with a nod. “But he was married when you got together.”
“Yeah, what a shit show,” she mumbled, snorting. “But he’s not anymore!”
Her tone had me whipping my head toward her and staring intently. She was grinning, her hands resting on the cooler with one hip cocked out to the side. When my eyes went to her ring finger, she scoffed.
“He didn’t ask me to marry him, doofus.”
“Then what’s with the face?” I asked, tossing her a bag of chips off the table.
“Nothing, I’m just happy.” She shrugged her shoulders and stuffed the chips into a huge reusable grocery bag. “And I’m spending the day with my favorite girls and my favorite guy, at my favorite swimming hole.”
“Hopefully your favorite girls won’t be too tired after an hour,” I said dryly, then called for Rebel.
“She’s still having a hard time sleeping?”
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s just waking up at the ass crack of dawn. It might be nine for you, but it’s practically lunch time for us.”
Little footsteps came barreling down the hall, and Rebel slid to a stop on the linoleum, her hair wild around her head. She was already dressed in her little swim suit with built-in pockets for floaty things, but she’d refused to take her socks off so I could put sandals on her feet.
“You can’t wear socks and sandals,” Mel told Reb, crouching down to meet her eyes. “It’s against the law.”
“Socks,” Reb answered, looking down at her feet with a decisive nod.
She was such a cool kid, but so goofy. I laughed at her annoyed expression. She wouldn’t let me paint her toenails because she couldn’t stand the feeling of the brush sliding over her nails, but it was a fight to get her to wear sandals because her feet weren’t ‘pretty’ like mine.
“Hey, Reb,” I called, walking toward the door where I’d hung my purse high on a hook. I’d started hanging it at eye level when Rebel had started getting into everything she could reach.#p#分页标题#e#
The knives were stored above the fridge. All medicines and vitamins were kept in a lockbox on the top shelf of a bookcase in my room.the trunk of my car. There were outlet covers on all of the electrical sockets, safety latches on all the cabinets and my dad had installed slide locks high on all doors leading outside and the bathrooms. I couldn’t be too careful.
The older Rebel got, the more we were able to understand her and her quirks. We’d realized after she’d begun talking that she was definitely on the autism spectrum, though that wasn’t uncommon in kids with Down syndrome. It was just another facet of Reb, nothing more, nothing less. She had sensory issues, but I’d already known that. And she didn’t talk as much as other kids who were three and a half years old, but that wasn’t really a surprise, either.
The tubes in her ears had helped with her verbal skills, though. It was like she’d finally been able to hear herself unmuffled for the first time, and the words had come pouring out. Doctor Mendez reminded me more than once that that wasn’t how the tubes worked, but I still wasn’t convinced. After the tubes had been placed, Rebel had started speaking like never before.
I hated that her second word was Will’s name, but I chose not to think about it. She’d asked for him almost every day for a full year before she’d finally let it go, but there were still days when she’d look at me and say his name like she was wondering if he was real. I’d learned to change the subject.