With Love, from Cold World(87)

Lauren leaned over to address the woman who had opened the door, seated closest to them. “What’s that thing do?” she whispered about the last present.

“Oh!” the woman said, brightening. “It’s pretty nifty. I had one for my kids. Sometimes the cold can be a real shock to their skin, so when you change your baby’s diaper—”

Lauren held out her hand, and the woman flushed when she realized her mistake. She unclipped her clothespin and gave it to Lauren, a sour twist to her lips.

Asa glanced down at where Lauren was clipping the clothespin next to her other one, and when she looked up, she did the most surprising thing. She winked at him.

He couldn’t stop the grin that split across his face. God, he wanted so bad to just haul her out of there, go back to bed, forget this stupid impulse that had him surrounded by strangers and baby paraphernalia. But if he had to see this through, at least he had the distraction of watching her work the room.

She was scarily good at the game. One by one she targeted people, making polite small talk until eventually they slipped up and said the forbidden b-word. It wasn’t long before she had a conspicuous five clothespins, and people started eyeing her like she was a hustler walking into a pool hall. Who knew, maybe that was what she was.

After the presents had all been opened, the room cleared out a bit, some people leaving early for other engagements. The significance of the date and time only hit Asa then, and he grabbed Becca as she was heading into the kitchen with a stack of paper plates.

“It’s Sunday,” he said. “And the shower started at ten.”

He didn’t have to spell out what he meant. Growing up, Sundays had always been untouchable. Not just because they were the Sabbath, but also because it was a day that his dad’s schedule was completely spoken for—last-minute preparations for the sermon, the sermon itself, and then a disciplined block of time afterward for reflection and study. When Asa was a kid, he hadn’t been allowed to join a Little League team because it had a few Sunday games throughout the season.

Becca gave him a slightly sad smile, and for the first time he noticed that despite the makeup and her bouncy blond hair, her brightly flowered maternity dress, she looked . . . tired. He could only imagine how hard it would be to get any sleep right now, and if the rumors were right she was staring down the barrel of at least a few more years of not getting much sleep.

“Follow me,” she said. “I want to show you the nursery.”

He made quick eye contact with Lauren, who seemed to understand his wordless message as he followed his sister. I’ll be right back. But hopefully she also understood the plea under that, somewhere even beyond wordless—If I’m not, come rescue me.

The room that Becca showed him into was down a hallway, small but painted a cheerful yellow, early-afternoon sunlight coming in stripes across the hardwood floor. There was a crib, an overstuffed rocking chair in one corner, and a scuffed dresser with bright red drawer pulls. The room looked a bit unfinished, boxes still stacked in one corner, impossibly tiny baby outfits strewn across the chair. But nice.

Asa shoved his hands deep in his pockets, looking around. “I kind of can’t believe it,” he said, the reality fully hitting him. His sister was having a baby, an actual human person who would be part of his family forever. Somehow, it had felt a little theoretical before this moment—his own fault, for not making more of an effort to see her.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but Becca cut him off before he could say anything.

“I planned this shower so they wouldn’t come,” she said.

He didn’t need to ask who she meant, but he was still confused. “You didn’t want . . .”

“I wanted you to come,” she said. “And I knew you probably wouldn’t if they were here. So I purposely scheduled the shower for a Sunday morning, figuring they’d say they couldn’t make it, and then I could call you up and tell you that it was safe if you didn’t want to risk running into them.”

“But instead they canceled church.”

Becca picked up one of the outfits draped across the back of the rocking chair, using her belly as a shelf as she folded it into a neat square. And then she undid it and laid it the way it had been before, as if she wasn’t even conscious of what she was doing.

“Dad got someone to fill in for his sermon,” she said. “It’s not like he straight canceled.”

But he’d canceled church for himself. That was almost bigger than if he’d shut down the entire operation. The service had happened—in that same building Asa remembered from childhood, cream-painted stucco with brick accents at the corners, one end more traditional with a tall spire, the other more utilitarian, added on sometime in the nineties. His dad just hadn’t been there.

“Well,” he said, because he didn’t really know what to say. “Thanks for trying, I guess.”

Becca had picked up the pink onesie again, but threw it back on the chair with such force that it slid to the floor. “No,” she said, “that’s what I need to apologize for. I didn’t try. I couldn’t just call and tell them they weren’t invited, because I was inviting you. I took the chickenshit way out instead, and then tried to pressure you to come anyway. Just like I tried to pressure you into coming to my wedding, yelled at you when you wouldn’t. It was hard not having you there, I’m not going to lie, but I do understand why you stayed away. I just—”