Chad kissed the soft, round cheek of his daughter and stroked the length of her black curls. She settled contentedly against him and kicked her chubby legs. He let her crawl off his lap to sit on my couch.
“She'll crash in about fifteen minutes,” he said confidently, though to my eyes Leah looked about as far away from sleep as a kid could get. “Then we'll really catch up.”
I watched my niece gnaw on the edge of one of my expensive, dry-clean-only pillows and bit my tongue against the words that would have made me sound like my mother. “I'll go make some coffee, okay?”
“Sure.” My brother grinned, though the force of his love was directed at his daughter now, and not so much at me.
I didn't mind, I told myself in the kitchen as I ground beans and measured them into the brand-new, complicated coffeemaker Dan had bought when we moved in. I still wasn't entirely sure how to work it.
I didn't mind that my brother was happy. I was, in fact, nearly overwhelmed with happiness on his behalf. We'd grown up in a house fairly devoid of joy, and I'd been an adult before I'd even begun to allow myself to believe I wouldn't be pretty miserable for my entire life. Instead, he'd met Luke. I'd met Dan. We'd both managed to escape the past and make a present; I had no reason to believe we wouldn't both create a joyful future, too.
Hell, I'd even forged a relationship, of sorts, with my mother. Chad hadn't managed that yet, though I hoped the fact he and Luke had moved back to Pennsylvania from California with the only grandchild my mother could claim would change that.
It absolutely wasn't that I was jealous of my brother.
“Coffee--” I bit off the words when I saw Chad put a finger to his lips. Leah, sprawled on top of the cushions and covered with her blanket, had indeed fallen asleep. Chad made a barrier with more pillows to keep her from rolling off, and gestured to me.
We broke our silence in my new kitchen, with all its new appliances and dishes and pictures on the walls. Chad took the coffee from me with a grateful gasp and drank back half his cup in a large gulp.
“God,” he said. “I swear to you I'm living on caffeine now. She's finally starting to sleep through the night, but it's been a hellish six months. The pediatrician says at twenty-two months she should be sleeping through with no problem, but she's having adjustment issues.”
I liked to sleep. Really, really liked it. Was pretty unfunctional without enough sleep, as a matter of fact.
“So, has she said anything about us?” Chad didn't waste time. He got up to pour himself more coffee and helped himself to a muffin from my fridge. Only the slope of his shoulders gave away his tension.
“Oh, Chaddie, do you want to know?”
He turned. “Yes, Ella. I want to know.”
He'd used my old name, the one my mother still insisted on using. Point taken. “She asked if I'd seen her. Meaning Leah. I said yes. She wanted to know…”
The words lodged in my throat. I shouldn't be embarrassed to repeat them. Chad was the one who'd always called my mother The Dragon Lady, after all. He wouldn't be surprised, but he would be hurt. I didn't want to hurt my brother, not even by proxy.
“What?”
I sighed. “She wanted to know how dark she was.”
Chad's expression went so carefully blank I knew he was furious. “Uh-huh. What did you tell her?”
“I told her,” I said, “to stop being so damn ridiculous.”
He smiled. “Did you?”
“I did. I can't make excuses for her, Chad, but you know how she is.”
“It's bad enough I'm gay, I know. But that I have a black daughter…God. What will the neighbors say?” Chad grimaced and slugged back more coffee. “And she wonders why I don't come home.”
“At least she's asked you to,” I pointed out, drinking my own coffee. “At least she's not pretending you don't exist.”
He made a derisive noise. “If she doesn't accept Luke or Leah, then she still doesn't really accept me. End of story. She can kiss my ass.”
I knew his partner's name, of course, and his daughter's, but hearing them together that way made me giggle. “Luke and Leah.”
“What about them?” He must have heard it, too, the sound of two names that paired brought to mind one of the most easily recognized film references from the past thirty years. “Very funny!”
But he was laughing, and my kitchen filled with giggles and chortles we tried to stifle so as not to wake his child. All our best efforts went to ruin in the next minute, because I heard the front door open and a booming voice carry down the hall.
“I'm hooooome!”
Leah's thin, high wail followed a moment later. Chad was already off his chair and I went after him. We were too late, both to shush Dan and to quiet Leah.
“Hey, there, little girl,” Dan was murmuring, the child in his arms already when I came down the hall and into the living room. Leah looked up at him with wide eyes, but no more tears.
My heart melted.
That night I brushed my teeth, washed my face, smoothed cream into my skin. Every step of my bedtime ritual was the same as it had always been, steps to be counted without even thinking of them. A routine that provided some small measure of comfort in its perpetual sameness, no matter what had happened during the day. Yet when I lifted the white plastic case containing my birth-control pills, I didn't simply pop one out of the silver foil and swallow it with a swig of water the way I always did.
I thought about punching out the pill, letting it drop into the sink and running the water to flush it away down the pipes into darkness. That one, small pill which had been my womb's only protection since the day Dan and I had stopped using condoms. I'd trusted my life to those small white discs of compressed hormones.
In the end, I swallowed the pill. I also took the last dose of antibiotics, because even though my infected finger had cleared up days ago, the instructions on the pill bottle had said to finish the medication. I wasn't then and doubt I ever will be the sort of woman to throw caution to the wind and ignore even something as simple as a doctor's prescription.
I thought about it, though, as I slipped my nightgown over bare skin and pulled back the blankets to get into bed beside my husband. He'd been reading a paperback novel with a lurid cover, but now his chin had dropped to his chest. The series of small, puffing breaths that always announced his slip into sleep had begun. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose.
He woke when I removed the narrow wire frames and set them on the nightstand. His breath gusted hot against my chest and his arms went around me.
“What a nice view,” he murmured into my cleavage.
It had been more than a week since we'd made love in any traditional fashion, if you could call whatever love we'd ever made traditional. It was the longest I'd gone without him inside me since we'd been married. For a couple who fucked more often than we exercised, this had been an eye-opener.
Dan looked pleased when I straddled him, and even more so when I undid the row of tiny pearl buttons at the front of my gown. His hands slid up my sides to cup my bare breasts and push them together. I shivered when his tongue flickered out to taste me. My pulse instantly sped up.
He nuzzled his face against my skin, then used his mouth to pull gently on my nipples. One, the other, then back to the first. Underneath me, nestled along my cunt and ass, his cock got hard. The soft flannel of his pajama bottoms rubbed my bare skin. I wanted to rock my body against it, but held still.
“Take this off.” He didn't wait for me to comply, but lifted my nightgown over my hips as I tugged it over my head.
The tips of my breasts brushed