All Fall Down (23 page)

“Who, Sunny?” Liesel scoffed at the very idea. “No. The worst she’d do is make me feel guilty for single-handedly destroying the earth with my ridiculous selfishness and disregard for the world’s natural resources.”

Becka’s brows lifted again. “Wow. Again with the bitter. Honey, I’m worried about you!”

Liesel pressed her face to the top of Bliss’s head. The sweet baby fragrance made her want to weep again. “I just thought this would be so much…easier.”

“It’s never easy. And you’re doing a good thing. But you have to make sure you take care of yourself, that’s all.” Becka hesitated. “I want you to promise me you won’t let this overwhelm you. You call me, if you have to. Or hell, make Chris pick up some of the slack. Hire a babysitter to take some of the pressure off.”

Liesel blinked at this. “Do you think I can’t do this?”

Becka sighed. “No. But I know how hard it can be, staying home with kids. And you…well, hon, it’s not like you chose to quit and stay home to raise your own kids, you know? You sort of got suckered into it.”

That this was very close to the truth set Liesel’s teeth on edge. Becka must’ve seen it, because she held up her hands right away. She shook her head.

“Sorry. Overstepped. I get it. Tell me to shut up.”

“I don’t want to tell you to shut up.”

“You’re my best friend,” Becka said quietly. “And it’s not that I think you can’t handle kids. God knows you’ve been awesome with Annabelle and the boys. But, Liesel…hon…it’s hard enough to do this when they’re your own kids.”

“And they’re not my kids.” Liesel’s gut twisted like a ball of foil crumpled in a fist.

“I’m just saying, give yourself permission to—”

“Fail?” Liesel broke in.

Becka shook her head, but before she could say anything else, the door from the laundry room opened and the squeaking tread of sneakers sounded on the tile floor of the hallway. Sunny appeared, her blond braid swinging over one shoulder.

She was beaming. “He asked me to go to the movies on Friday. Not with a group, just us!”

She crossed to Liesel and held out her hands for the baby, who went instantly to her mother with a gurgle of delight. Sunny held Bliss high to blow a raspberry on her fat belly. She looked at Liesel with bright eyes. It was the most animated Liesel had ever seen her.

“Congratulations,” Liesel said.

She tried to sound like she meant it.

Chapter 35

P
atch has been sitting next to her at mealtimes as often as he can. He brought her fresh peaches after she’d mentioned that she didn’t like the sort that came in cans. Sunny’s known Patch forever, but they didn’t become friendly until her short days selling literature, which Patch still does. He’s really good at it. He has a way of connecting with people, getting them not only to pay for the pamphlets, but also to actually read them, too. She’s seen people come back just to talk to Patch about the family. It’s probably because he came into the family after reading one of those pamphlets himself.

Sunny knows exactly what Patch wants when he asks her to walk with him out behind the barn.

She goes with him. Happy is fine in the nursery with the other babies, and Edwina doesn’t like Sunny very much, so she often sends her away. As Patch reaches for Sunny’s hand while they walk, she thinks Edwina would like her less if she knew that by telling her to get out of the nursery she was giving Sunny the chance to go walking with Patch, holding his hand.

Behind the barn, Patch seems nervous. Pacing. He laughs a lot at nothing until Sunny takes him by both shoulders and stops him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Patch laughs again, a little softer, and puts his hands on her hips. “You’re so pretty, Sunshine. You know that?”

It’s nice to hear, but pretty doesn’t really matter.

When he touches her, she closes her eyes and turns her face to keep his lips from touching hers. Patch kisses her cheek instead. He pulls her closer.

He’s prepared. He brought out a blanket, some fruit, a pitcher of lemonade. Patch and John Second are good friends, that’s how he can get these special things.

He isn’t anything like John Second, though. That’s why Sunny went with him in the first place. So when he pushes her back on the blanket and puts his hand under her dress, up over her thighs, she closes her eyes and lets him do what he wants.

It doesn’t take long. It never does. It doesn’t hurt, and when it’s over, Patch tries to kiss her again. This time when she turns her face, he says her name like he’s sad.

“I like you, Sunshine.”

He’s waiting for her to say she likes him, which wouldn’t be a lie but it’s not the truth he’s looking for. Sunny’d like to make Patch happy. He’s always been nice to her. But she can’t say the words. She pulls her dress down over her thighs and brushes the grass from it.

She does take his hand when he offers it to help her up. Patch is frowning. He pushes her braid over her shoulder.

“You don’t like me?” Patch asks. “I’d like to be special to you.”

As it turns out, he is special to her, but not in the way he wants. Patch is the father of Sunny’s second baby, though once her belly grows big enough to show, he stops asking her behind the barn. And once they were no longer having sex, Patch no longer seemed as interested.

Sunny hadn’t forgotten that.

The dress Liesel had let her borrow had been ruined, or so Liesel said, but she had taken Sunny to the store to buy another one. She hadn’t let Sunny pay for it either, though Sunny had enough money. It had just been the two of them, no kids and no Chris, but Liesel had seemed distant and distracted. Or maybe it was Sunny who’d been distracted with all the choices in clothes and trying to find something that didn’t make her feel strange but still looked…

Pretty.

Pretty didn’t matter, she reminded herself. Except she thought maybe it did, for Tyler. She wanted to be pretty for him.

She hadn’t really expected him to come in to the coffee shop early on the day they were supposed to go out, but every time the bell over the door jingled, Sunny looked up with her heart thumping and the breath catching in her throat. It was never him, but half an hour before Tyler was supposed to pick her up, Josiah strode through the door.

“Sunny, Sunny, Sunshine.” It was the way he’d greeted her so often in the past.

A wave of nostalgia washed over her. Or was it déjà vu? Something lifted inside her at the sight of him, even though she didn’t let it show on her face.

“Can I get an organic soy and orange smoothie with one of those scones?” Josiah pointed at the glass case.

She served him his drink and his scone because that was her job. Josiah studied her without walking away from the counter. He held the cup in one hand, the plate in the other, like he was balancing them. Or weighing them.

“You look different,” he said.

Men’s clothes didn’t set them apart the way women’s did. Sunny had seen that when she was sent out to sell pamphlets and even more so since she’d been living with Chris and Liesel. A woman could be set aside simply from what she wore, while a man in jeans and a white shirt could pass as anything he wanted. Josiah didn’t look different because he didn’t have to.

She lifted her chin and kept herself from smoothing the front of the skirt she’d picked out. It hung to her toes and had been sewn of multiple colored layers of fabric that had also been twisted. She wore it with a plain, pale pink T-shirt, though she’d added a thin cardigan to cover her arms.

“Relax. You look nice.” Josiah sipped from the cup. “How’ve you been, Sunshine?”

“Fine.” Wendy and Amy both were out. They were supposed to be back before it was time for Sunny to leave, and though she enjoyed it when they were gone and she was here alone, now she wished they’d come back early.

“I’m fine, too.” His grin was tempting, but faded quickly to become a look of sorrow. “You’re afraid of me.”

She shook her head and felt the brush of her hair all down her back. She’d pulled just the top part back into a wide barrette and left the rest to hang down. Tyler would notice, she thought suddenly, the way Josiah did. He would notice she was trying too hard.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not.”

Liar’s tongue, she thought. Josiah knew it, she could tell. He put the plate and cup on the counter to grip it with both his hands, so he could lean closer to her. Speaking low, so nobody could overhear them, though they were all alone.

“I am not my brother,” Josiah said.

Sunny knew that was the truth. She’d always known. It was the reason her mother hadn’t left with him when John Second threw him out…and the reason Sunny’d wanted to go.

“I’m not my father, either. I know you’re living with your biological dad. Trying to adjust. And you’re doing a great job, Sunshine. You should be proud of yourself. I sure am.”

The way he said it made her feel anything but proud. How hard was it supposed to be to “adjust,” anyway, after being raised in a way most so-called normal people found strange and appalling? She frowned. She didn’t deserve praise for just doing what people were supposed to do to be normal.

Unless Josiah could see right through her, see that she was not the same as other people, no matter how she tried.

Josiah pulled back and rapped the counter with his knuckles. “Anyway. I just stopped in to see how you were doing. I’ve had some people asking about you.”

The question popped out before she could stop it. “Who?”

He took his cup and plate again. Two steps back from the counter. Still smiling. He rattled off a few familiar names, mostly women Sunny hadn’t seen in years. Then, “Patch, too.”

That was when the bell jingled and Tyler came into the shop. He made a beeline for Sunny without even giving Josiah a second glance. “Hey. Are you ready to go?”

“I have to wait for—” But there was Wendy, breezing through from the back with an apology for being late. When Sunny looked at Tyler again, Josiah had taken his drink and food to a corner table and was reading a newspaper.

He didn’t look up when they walked past him.

“This isn’t the way home.” The tug of the seat belt against Sunny’s throat was like a hand, fingers squeezing. She didn’t want to sound scared or twist in her seat.
Face of stone.
She was suddenly unreasonably terrified.

Tyler beat out a pattern on the steering wheel with his fingers. Sunny didn’t know the song playing on the radio, but it had very suggestive lyrics. She couldn’t ask him to turn it off. She wondered if he even noticed or cared. Probably neither.

He glanced at her. “I know. It’s a long cut.”

She knew about shortcuts, not long. The three previous times they’d gone out together in a group, he’d brought her right home. “Tyler…thank you for dinner and the movie, but I really have to get home.”

“What’s the rush?” He used his turn signal, eased into the next lane, took a road she didn’t know.

She didn’t recognize the streets he was taking, but she could tell they were getting farther from the center of town and into a more rural area. Lots of trees on either side of the car, but no signs of anything she recognized as being close to Chris and Liesel’s house.

“It’s just…my dad’s wife. She’s been home alone with the kids all day, and she probably needs a break.” Sunny thought of the twisted-down turn of Liesel’s mouth lately, how infrequently she smiled and how quick she was to snap.

Tyler looked over at her with a frown. “You okay?”

Sunny shook her head. Her hair fell forward over her shoulders. She wished she’d put it in the braid she was used to. Unbound, it was heavy and hot and got in the way.

“Hey. I’m sorry.” Tyler pulled slowly to the side, into one of the unmarked side roads off the main one. He didn’t go very far, but the trees rose up around them and covered the car with shadows. He turned off the ignition and twisted in his seat to look at her. His arm stretched out as he put his hand on the back of her seat, fingers close enough to brush her shoulder if he twitched them.

“Tyler…”

“Sunny, I really like you.”

She shook her head again. Heart thumped. She didn’t look at him, afraid of what she might show him in her eyes. He’d see she wasn’t like the other girls who came into the shop and laughed and joked. He’d see she was afraid, and that was stupid, because Tyler was a nice, normal guy.

“Don’t…you like me? Even a little?”

Was that the twitch of his fingertips on her shoulder? Touching her hair? Sunny sat up straighter, and her seat belt tried to strangle her. She pulled it, but the stiff fabric had already cut a line into her throat.

“I like you, Tyler.”

“You won’t even look at me.”

Stone. Look like stone. Don’t show him you’re afraid, that you’re freaked out, that you might want to cry.

Tyler’s smile was hesitant. “Are your parents really all that strict?”

“No. It’s not that.”

“So call home. Tell them I’m taking you out for ice cream. I can still have you home in a couple hours.”

He leaned in to kiss her before she could do more than put a hand between them. Her fingers curled in the soft fabric of his T-shirt. Beneath them, his chest was hard.

She wanted to sink into it the way the girl in the movie had melted into her boyfriend’s embrace. All open mouths, tongues, hands roaming. Soft sighs, low moans. The scene in the movie had fascinated her at how little like real life the lovemaking had seemed.

“What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.

He kissed her again, and she did her best to kiss him back, but his mouth was too hot and wet, his tongue went too deeply into her mouth. She wanted to kiss him because she liked Tyler a lot. She knew what happened when you didn’t kiss back.

Still, when his hands slid up her body to just below her breasts, every muscle went stiff. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the movie scene, but could not. All she could see, in fact, was Josiah’s face.

“I can’t.” Sunny pushed at him. “I really need to get home. Liesel’s been with the kids all day, and Peace gets cranky at bedtime if I’m not there to tuck her in. And I promised Happy I wouldn’t be out too late.”

His brow furrowed. “Huh? Peace and Happy?”

“The kids,” Sunny said patiently. “Happy’s four. Peace is almost three. And Bliss will be a year old in a few months.”

“I don’t get it…why does it have to be you?”

“Because,” Sunny said, “they’re my children.”

Tyler recoiled, just a little. Then laughed. “Huh? Wait. You’re kidding me, right?”

“No.” The stone of her expression wanted to crack, but she didn’t let it. “Please take me home now.”

“But wait. Wait a minute. You have three kids?”

“Yes!” she said, exasperated. “That’s why I have to get home.”

“But…you’re my age!”

There were many things about her past that Sunny was ashamed of. Many that she’d accepted she would always be sorry for. But her children were neither shameful nor something to regret.

“I know.”

“But I thought… I figured…” Tyler waved a hand at her clothes. “You said your parents were so strict and stuff. I mean, I figured you were some goody-goody or something.”

Sunny looked out her window. No idea where she was. No idea how to get where she needed to go. Powerless.

She hated feeling powerless.

“I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew.”

“Hey.” His soft touch tried to turn her toward him, but Sunny wouldn’t turn. Tyler let her go. “Sure, I heard things, but…I’m sorry, Sunny. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”