Page 40 of The Wrong Track

“I was just resting my eyes,” I said. “Lulu’s car was still in the road and I didn’t want to get in your way.”

“I didn’t hear you pull in. I’ve been texting and calling and you didn’t answer. Annie told me that you’d left hours ago, that you were heading back home. I thought that you’d been sitting in here running the car.”

I glanced at the garage door, which was shut. “You thought I’d be dumb enough to run a car in a closed garage? You could die doing that.”

He didn’t answer but his hands convulsively clenched on my arms.

“Did you think I’d done it on purpose?” I asked. “Did you think I did that to myself and the baby?

“You’ve been—”

“Still! Still, I would never have done that. Do you know how many ways I could have left this world already? Did you think I would wait until I could take an infant with me?” I stared at him, shivering because I was standing there in my bra. “Christ. That is what you think of me.”

“No, I don’t. I wasn’t really thinking except that I’ve seen someone do that and I saw you—I’m sorry.” He squinted and looked toward the house. “Can we go inside?” He reached for the baby but I shied away, moving as far as I could in the sliver of space we had.

“You don’t trust me with her. I know you don’t. You didn’t want me to take her today by myself. Is that why you got me to live with you, because you thought I’d hurt her? Was this all a trick?” Hazel thought I was incompetent, but he thought I was a potential murderer?

“Do you think I got hit by a car on purpose? That I broke my leg in three places as some kind of evil plan? When it happened, it was just like I said. I thought we could help out each other. You have to admit, Remy, you weren’t doing so great.”

“I was doing fine.” I thought of myself, frozen in that brown chair, staring through the window the whole night and waiting for Kilian to show up. Maybe “fine” wasn’t the right word. “I would have been fine.”

“Probably, yes, but don’t you think it’s better this way? Us, together, the three of us.”

This time when he reached, I let him take the baby. I crossed my arms in front of myself to try to shield my body from his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Tobin told me. “I really wasn’t thinking. I saw the car, and you slumped over, and I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“No.” I sighed. “No, you weren’t really wrong. It’s not that I haven’t thought about doing it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to my sister or my mom.” I’d already made things bad enough for them. I couldn’t have left them to deal with my mess again. “I guess I couldn’t do that to her, either.” I lightly touched the baby’s back. She was just so small and helpless. I wasn’t going to leave her like that, but I would never be able to protect her enough, either.

“Ella,” he said. “Ella Margaret. You don’t say her name too often.”

“I know her name. And I won’t hurt her.”

“Or yourself,” he told me. “You’re not going to do that to yourself, either.”

I shook my head. I wouldn’t.

Tobin breathed out, like he was forcing himself to calm down. “Let’s go inside,” he told me.

I let him carry the baby—Ella. He talked to her about her day, about going to see Annie and riding in the car. I ducked into my bedroom and put on another sweatshirt and when I came into the living room, he had her dressed again and they were back in their earlier spot on the couch. He was feeding her. “She was hungry,” he explained. “Are you?”

I was, suddenly, and I was so glad to be back after that horrible outing. I looked around the room at everything that was familiar and homey. “I’ll make something,” I offered. “If you’re ok with her.”

“We’re fine,” he said and smiled at the baby, calm again. He had such a nice smile, and I stood for a moment and watched them before I went to the kitchen. After our own dinner, we gave her a bath with essential oil soap from Annie that was supposed to guarantee sleep. Baths were very nerve-wracking and much better to do as a team.

“She likes the water,” Tobin noted. “Maybe instead of football, we could get her into swimming. Or running, like her mom.” He raised an eyebrow at me in that captivating way he did it, just the one. Not captivating. I wasn’t overly interested in his eyebrows.

“I’m not a runner anymore,” I answered.

“You could restart. You have those shoes I ordered by mistake.”

Right, it had been a total error. I carefully poured drips of water onto Ella’s dark wisps of hair. “I know I’m fat,” I said. “You don’t need to hint around it.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to say that.”

“You don’t have to. You just saw me in the garage without my shirt, and I think you saw me mostly naked while I was giving birth.”

“Honestly, Remy, I wasn’t looking at you like that either of those times. I’m not mentally calculating your BMI or anything. When you were having Ella, it was so much—I don’t know, so much trauma and fear, I don’t remember if you were naked or if I was. We all could have been. Same thing just now when I ran out into the garage. I forgot that my leg was broken and I fell down the steps.”