Page 29 of The Wrong Track

I shrugged. “I never asked,” I answered, but he just waited so I kept talking. “They said they could tell me but I said it didn’t matter.”

“Why not?”

“What difference does it make?” I asked back. “No, wait, I’m not being sassy,” I added quickly. “I really mean that it won’t make a difference. If I have a boy or a girl, it won’t matter to me. I’ll still take care of it. This is my responsibility, just mine, and no matter what anyone thinks, I’ll do a good job. I’ll make sure the baby eats well and goes to school, has warm clothes, learns what’s right and wrong. I can do this. I did it with my sister, and I can do it again.”

“So you want to raise the baby. You’re planning on that.”

“I can do it,” I said again. “I can do it.” I snuck another glimpse at him to see if his face would give any indication of whether he agreed, but he was only looking steadily across at me.

“Is Kilian Rovina the father?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. It rattled.

“Did you get a prescription for a new inhaler?”

“Yes.” I paused, waiting for more, but he only nodded. “I’m not crying now so I can drive,” I said, and started the engine. We skipped the logging museum and went home.

∞

The living room turned into a branch of police headquarters and the third bedroom turned into a sewing room. Both Tobin and I were working, working from home. That meant that we’d been spending a lot of time together, which made this house feel even more normal. Like right now, as I sat at his grandma’s old machine to make drapes, I could hear him humming and I bet he’d be walking to this room soon because we had plans.

Thump, thump. The crutches were always loud in the hallway where there was no rug over the wood floors. A runner would be nice, I thought, and some art on the walls. There was an antique store across from the botanical gardens and I’d gone there on breaks and at lunch to look around. I’d never bought anything, of course, but I’d always been interested in the old stuff. It would fit well in here, and I could make drapes for him just like I was making for Annie’s clients. That would be easy.

Tobin stuck his blonde head through my door. “Ready? Want to go?”

I rolled back the chair he’d borrowed from some relative’s attic for me to use. “I’m ready.” I shifted, uncomfortable. In the last few weeks since that awful appointment with the doctor, I’d been feeling just…unwieldy. Like everything I did was clumsy due to my increasing bulk, like my center of gravity had been left back in that office or something. I’d returned for another appointment since then and he had come again, and again he’d used the museum as an excuse. And we’d turned into the same parking lot as I’d cried.

Now, I lumbered to my feet and did manage to walk around the side of the table without hitting it with my hip or tripping on its leg. We’d been going out to walk together through his neighborhood almost every day, which his doctor had recommended, and he’d been working out at his gym, too. I would drive him there and then go to the library, and an hour or so later he’d emerge very sweaty but very…yes, cute. He was; that was simply an indisputable fact. My mind always went to Beth Ellen, the librarian, saying that she could eat him up.

Other women at his gym seemed to feel that way, too, because often one or more of them would follow him out, running ahead to grab the door or wanting to carry his bag for him. “I’ve got it,” he’d tell them with a smile, but his smile was enough for them to hold the gym bag even tighter and say that no, they were so happy to help! Anytime! Could they pop the trunk? Open the car door? Take him for coffee, a drink, dinner? Then, sometimes, I would get out of the driver’s side and they would get a glimpse of me and my issue. They stared hard.

“Do you explain to those women that we’re not together?” I asked him once, and he’d said no and didn’t appear to care what they thought about us.

Tobin now handed me my coat, my gloves, my hat, scarf, and then the poncho I wore over it all. “It’s getting warmer,” he commented, which only meant that it wasn’t below zero with the windchill.

“I still want the poncho.” We walked slowly together but we did go a pretty good distance, which he measured on his watch. I looked at it now.

“Did you ever run with that?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “This was my dad’s, because he did like to run. Be careful there.” He maneuvered us so that we avoided a patch of ice, because it wasn’t warm enough for that to melt. “If you want to borrow it, you could. If you want to start running again.”

At the moment, I was having enough trouble walking, and when that cleared up I wouldn’t be here, anyway, but I said, “Thanks.”

“Haze and I used to walk together and I’d use this to track how far we went,” he mentioned. “She was always supposed to get out and exercise to help her injuries and I tried to make it like a game, like we were reaching for a goal with our distance.”

That made me feel vaguely disquieted. I had been thinking of these walks like it was our thing…but it wasn’t as if I hadn’t walked with other people, too. I had, although mostly I’d run. Tobin asked me about that, about distances and training, and I said that I was done with it. It was all over, now.

We crossed the street at the same place we usually did. Tobin had grown up just around the corner from his grandparents and he never wanted to walk past one particular house, the one where the dog had lived that had bitten him.

“I know it’s stupid,” he said to me as he saw me looking at it. “That mutt was gone years ago.”

“No, it’s not stupid. You can still be afraid of things years later.”

“Like what?”

“Like the dog, I guess,” I said. “Why are you asking me? I don’t know what else you’re afraid of.”

“Starfish,” he stated promptly. “They’re terrifying. What are they, aliens? And outie belly buttons. Raw meat.”