At the sight of me, Mia raised her eyebrows to AJ, but neither one of them said anything. I eased down at the table where Bella was eating a snack and coloring. “Want some?” she asked, pushing the plate of animal crackers my way.
“No thanks, sweetheart.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw AJ and Mia having a quiet, but heated discussion. She threw her hands up before stalking over to me. “I think you’re lost.”
“Excuse me?”
She narrowed her dark eyes at me. “I said, I think you’re lost. This isn’t your usual bus. You remember, the one you and your wife ride on.”
I glanced over at AJ who shook his head like he wasn’t about to get into it with Mia by taking my side. “Please Mia, I need some time, okay?”
She huffed out a frustrated breath that ended almost in a growl. “What I would say to you right now if it wasn’t for her,” she said, pointing to Bella. She then stalked away from me over to the kitchen, and for the next hour, she ignored me. But I didn’t really mind as long as she wasn’t yelling at me. I focused my energy on staring out the window and trying to process what in the hell had happened to my life.
When I felt a tug on the pants leg of my jeans, I glanced down to see Bella staring up at me. She had abandoned her place on the couch with AJ where they had been watching movies. “Hey sweetheart,” I said. I bent over to pick her up and ease her down on my lap. Her jet-black eyes surmised me before she cocked her head at me.
“Why u sad?” she asked.
Great, I didn’t even begin to imagine how I was going to explain this one. “Do you think I’m sad?”
Her dark ponytail bobbed up and down as she nodded. Leaning over, her tiny hands came to my cheeks. Her fingers gripped my flesh before she pushed my face up. “Smile, Unca Jake.”
I laughed through my smushed cheeks. “Okay, okay. I’ll smile instead.”
A pleased little grin spread on her face. Grabbing a piece of paper off the table, she waved it at me. “I dwawed u a picture.”
“You did?”
“Uh, huh.”
As I stared down at the scratchy, multicolored drawing, I knew better than to make any assumptions about what was on there. I’d made that mistake when Jude was little and caused him to burst out crying when I suggested the drawing of me was a dog. “So tell me about the picture,” I urged.
Her little finger stretched out to one of the stick figure/semi blobs. “Dat’s u and Dat’s Aunt Abby.”
“I see. Oh, you did a really good job.” She had managed to give the Abby blob yellow hair and mine brown. My eyes honed in on the yellow and brown blob beside us. “Is that…Angel?”
She giggled. “No.”
“Oh, is it your kitty, Jack Sparrow?” At the mention of his name, the one-eyed Siamese cat lifted his head from his perch over the table and eyed me contemptuously.
“It’s u baby,” she said, as if it was the most obvious choice in the whole-wide world.
I sucked in a harsh breath. After today, Bella’s comment was like a double roundhouse kick straight to the groin. “But I don’t have a baby, sweetheart.”
“But u will. Evewy night before I go to sleep when I say my pwayers, Mommy and I pway for you and Aunt Abby’s baby.”
I cut my eyes from the drawing to stare at Mia. An unapologetic smile appeared on her face before she quickly looked at Bella. “Come on, pumpkin. It’s time for your nap.”
“No,” Bella protested, burrowing down in my lap. Her fingers twisted into the material of my T-shirt as if I was her lifeline to keep her out of naptime hell.
AJ crossed his arms over his chest, looking seriously parental. “You know the rules, mi amor. If you don’t take a nap, you don’t get to see me at the show tonight.”
Bella squirmed in my lap. She, along with Jude and Melody, loved nothing more than to put on their noise-blocking headphones and stay backstage, watching us perform until their bedtime. Leaning over, I whispered into her ear. “Go on and take your nap. I’ll need to see you at the show so you can make me smile,” I urged.
“Okay,” she said. Before she hopped down, she gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek. “‘Mon, Jack,” she instructed. Although the cat hated me and AJ with a passion, he had a special love and patience for Bella. He rose up and stretched before hopping down. Once Jack Sparrow was at her side, she put her tiny hand in Mia’s and started down the hallway to the bedroom. Glancing at me over her shoulder, she said, “Love u, Unca Jake.”
“Love you too, princess.”
Once the door was shut behind them, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. As AJ eased into a seat across from me at the table, I gave him a shaky smile. “Your daughter is far too smart for her own good.”
He laughed. “Tell me about it. It’s like she’s two and a half going on twenty-two.”
An uncomfortable silence then passed between us. I could hear Mia reading Bella a story. Finally, I cleared my throat. “So Abby was pretty upset when I left, huh?”
AJ grimaced. “I’d say emotionally obliterated.”
My chest ached at the prospect, and I sighed raggedly. “She f**king blindsided me, man. To find out she’s been lying to me these past few months. That she ended up doing what I feared the most—what she swore she would never do.” Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. “How can I ever trust her again?”
“Look man, I know that it all seems pretty desperate right now. But you have to sit back and think for a minute. Abby has stood beside you through some pretty heinous shit—times when you were hard to love and did things that she didn’t understand or maybe approve of. But she stayed right by your side, man.”
“I never openly deceived her like this,” I protested.
“Would you just take a second to think about it from her perspective? She goes through a pretty horrible surgery, she’s worried to death about having a baby, something you know she wants more than anything in the world, so what does she do? She cracks and does something that goes completely against her character.”
I stared down at Bella’s drawing, taking in AJ’s words. “I’m not saying what she did wasn’t wrong, Jake. It’s a hard pill to swallow when anyone lies to you. But at the same time, you have to look at the bigger picture. She wasn’t cheating on you or stealing money from you. She wanted a baby—something she said you gave her hope for after her surgery.”