Quarterback's Secret Baby(11)

"Are we going to be OK?" CeeCee squeaked out, staring up at me. "Are you leaving? You're not leaving are you, Tash? I don't want-"

"Hey!" I said sternly, regaining some of my composure now my little sister was there, needing us to be strong for her. "CeeCee, I just told Ray the same thing. I am not going anywhere. We're all here - me and you and Ray and mom and Alisha and Rosa, and we're all in this together. It's not going to be easy, but you don't need to worry about me leaving the family, you got that?"

I watched CeeCee as she struggled to get her shaky breathing under control. She was in her prime annoying teenager years and she had her moments, but she'd been raised by the same strong woman Ray and I were raised by. I gave her another hug and looked her in the eyes.

"Do you hear me? No one's leaving. Tell me you hear me."

She nodded. "I hear you, Tash."

"Good. Now you two get yourselves ready for dinner in an hour, because I'm making chicken and dumplings."

Chicken and dumplings. The ultimate comfort food in our family, a dish that had, over the years, taken on an almost mythical potency when it came to healing all manner of pain. A dish I had yet to make without my mother's presence beside me, playfully slapping my hands when I chopped the vegetables badly or refused to deal with raw chicken carcass. She was asleep in her room, recovering from her visit to the doctor and so it was my job to make the stew. I walked down the stairs with a strange sense of change hanging over me - over the whole house. My mother had cared for me - for all of us - and now it was time to take care of her.

She joined us for dinner - Ray helped her down the stairs and pulled out her chair at the head of the table. I saw her waver slightly when she saw what I'd made, but my mother is tough and I knew she wasn't going to get all weepy over chicken stew.

"Look at these carrots, Natasha," she admonished me affectionately. "You always did cut them too thinly. They need to be cut on the diagonal, and chunkier than this so they don't just dissolve into the stew."

"I know, mom. I tried to do them that way but they all just ended up being straight-across by the end."

My mother rolled her eyes, grinning, and I was suddenly struck with the feeling that, maybe, we were going to get through it all.

About halfway through dinner, Alisha came home from work.

"Hey!" I called down the hall. "We've got chicken stew in here, Alisha - you better hurry, though, or your boyfriend is going to eat it all."

Things almost felt light by the end of that dinner. Rosa pushed individual peas around the highchair tray and, when she managed to pick one of them up, made a big show of feeding them to my mom. Later on, after helping my mom into the living room so she could watch TV, Ray and I remained at the table while CeeCee started washing the dishes and Alisha took Rosa upstairs for her bath.

"I did something stupid today," I said to my brother as we sat there looking at each other forlornly.

Ray raised a single eyebrow at me. "Did you? What's that, then? I think we're probably all good with writing today off, you know."

"Yeah, I know. It's just - I was kind of a bitch to someone at school. Someone who doesn't know what's going on. I feel bad about it but-"

"But you'd rather drink poison than say sorry, huh?"

Ray knew me too well. I pressed my lips together, embarrassed by how predictable I was.

"Aw, Tash," he said, leaning over the table and squeezing my hand. "Who was it? Lena? She'll understand, she's used to dealing with you."

"No," I said, a little tightly. "It wasn't Lena."

Ray caught the tension in my voice and looked up, curious. "Who then? A boy?"

"Yes, a boy."

Normally that would have been Ray's cue to make fun of me or tease me about how strict I was with boys, but not that night. He knew we were all too fragile for joshing.

"Invite him over. Bake him some cornbread and tell him you're sorry, Tash. I guarantee that'll fix it. And just tell him what's going on with you, if this is someone you like. You're so locked down all the time, it's not healthy. You've got to let yourself be easier with some of the people in your life, you know? Or one of these days, you're going to explode."

Ray was right. And so the next day, at school, I left a note in Kaden Barlow's locker. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but it was huge for me. The note read:

"Kaden - I'm sorry for being such a bitch yesterday. I had some bad news earlier in the day and I shouldn't have taken it out on you. To make it up to you I'm going to make you some of my family's famous cornbread - if you still feel like talking to me. - Natasha."

As soon as I'd dropped it between the metal slats of Kaden's locker I started fretting over the details of the short note - even after I'd already spent almost two hours writing and rewriting those few brief lines. Should I have signed my first name like that, as 'Natasha'? Was it too formal somehow? Did it make me sound weird? Should I have used the word 'bitch?' My third-grade teacher told us once that boys didn't like girls who used curse words. As far as I could see it wasn't true but as soon as the note was out of my reach her words came back to me. Had I just ruined my chances? Well, it was too late to fix it now even if I had. I scurried off to class before Kaden could find me standing there pondering over minutiae like a freak.