“Trust me when I say, Brooks dropped everything to be with us. There hasn’t been a second that he’s not working where he hasn’t been with us. It’s wonderful.”
“Keep telling yourself that when it’s years down the road,” she teased.
I handed her what I’d cut up and she tossed it all in a bowl. “Nah. I think we’re different. I’ve already loved him for more than twenty years. Now that we’re finally together, I don’t see myself loving him any less. I hope you’re okay with that. I mean, after everything that’s happened, I want to be honest.”
She dried her hands and hugged me. “Katy, I’m thrilled to have you home. Thank you for your honesty. Without that there’s nothing to go on. You can always trust me with anything. You know that?”
I nodded my head but felt terrible because I was keeping secrets that could make them all hate me. I had to give it to Brooks for going along with it. He had nothing to worry about, but hiding my asshole husband wasn’t exactly a normal kind of favor.
I looked out into the family room and decided to break the ice with Melissa. If we could just have a normal conversation everything would be easier.
She saw me coming and stood up as I approached. Right away she hugged me. “I really did miss you, Katy. You know on the way here I tried to call you. I wanted to talk things out so it would be so weird at first.”
I thought about the phone that I’d purposely thrown away. “I lost my phone before we came. I haven’t replaced it yet.”
“Oh, that explains why you didn’t answer my messages.”
“Sorry about that.”
We sat down on the couch, while Branch lifted B up and pretended she was an airplane. He was making all sorts of sounds as they flew around the room.
“It’s okay. I guess you have a lot of questions. Branch said you wanted to know how long we’d been together.” She looked down at the carpet and I could tell she was ashamed of the answer. For some reason I didn’t care anymore. It was good that Branch had someone, because he was never going to have me.
“You know what? It doesn’t even matter. You’re getting married and things are the way they are. It’s nice to know that you two had each other.”
I could tell she started to relax more. “I love him, Katy. I really do.”
“Mel, I have a child with Brooks. It doesn’t bother me that you’re with Branch. It’s sort of weird, but I get it.”
She hugged me again. “You should probably not listen to your messages, because I may have gone into detail explaining everything.”
I laughed and became curious as to what was said, thinking that maybe Brooks and I could listen to the messages together in bed later. He liked to be entertained.
“Yeah, I will erase them,” I lied.
It was a good thing that Brooks and Walt came back when they did, because I’d already run out of things to talk about with Melissa. Every day B was becoming more attached to her father. She saw him walking in and went running for him. “Daddy.”
I liked that she called Brooks ‘Daddy’ and Bobby had always been ‘Dada’. I wondered if she considered them to be two different things. No matter what, I was grateful that her real father was already recognized for his part in making her. I knew that as time passed there would never be a question about him not being around. She’d never know a time when he wasn’t everything to her.
Thinking about that reminded me of my father. I remembered being little and waiting at the window for him to pull in the driveway. I always knew that when dinner was cooking, he was on his way home. When I got a little older, I’d watch him pull up and run into the kitchen to make him something to drink. He’d always come in with a smile, no matter how crappy his day had been. At dinner we’d talk about our day, and though mine was filled with fun and games, he’d made his job sound so interesting that even I wanted to do it.
Brooks caught me staring off into the distance and started waving. I finally came back to reality and laughed at myself. “Sorry. I was thinking about my dad.”
He walked over and kissed me. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Branch watching us. I grabbed Brooks’ hand as he started to walk away. “How’s your arm, babe?”
I never called him babe and he’d caught on immediately. He pulled me close. “My arm’s fine, babe.”
Judging from the smirk on his face, I’d say he was amused. He kissed me and walked back over to where B was waiting for him. She was going into the bag, trying to pull out her new swim suit. When she succeeded, she swung it around and started jumping. “Put it on. Put it on.”