Page 49 of The Wrong Track

He pointed toward the other side of the bed. “There. I’ll put a pillow in between us so I don’t bother you. I roll a lot.” I saw a small hint of his smile.

“I can go on the couch.”

“You don’t even like to sit on that couch.” He fluffed the pillows and placed one in the middle of the bed, then he put out his hand. “Come on. I’ll turn up the baby monitor so we can listen. I’ll feel better knowing that you’re close,” he told me. “If you have trouble breathing again, then I’ll be here.”

I still hesitated. “I didn’t mean to wake up the baby. You can trust me with her.”

“Remy, I know that. Right now, it’s three in the morning and we both know that she’ll be up in not too many hours, ready to start her day. Let’s sleep now and figure this out when our brains are functioning a little better.”

So I took his hand, which he still held out to me, and let him lead me to his bed, and I tried not to think of other times that this had happened. Because this was Tobin, and he wouldn’t. He flicked off the light on his table. I lay down and reached for the blanket just as he took it and covered me, tucking it around my shoulders.

“Is this enough? You get colder than I do.”

I was going to cry, so I nodded and he seemed to see me in the darkness.

“It’ll feel better tomorrow,” he told me. The bed dipped as he got onto the other side of it but he didn’t make a move towards me and I felt the pillow in between our bodies. Not that a pillow would have stopped someone. Not that anything could stop it.

“Hey. Are you crying?”

I was trying not to make any sound and I didn’t think I had. I didn’t think I’d been shaking the bed even though I felt like I might be shaking myself.

“It’s ok.” His voice sounded so sleepy. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.” His arm moved across the pillow and his hand rested on my shoulder again. “It will be ok.”

It did feel better with him right there. It should have been the opposite and I shouldn’t have wanted him to touch me at all, but as I heard his breathing lengthen and slow, I put my own hand over his and held it. After a while, I did sleep, too.

∞

The sun was wrong. I squinted against the light but it shouldn’t have been coming from that window. Why was that window there? And it was much too bright; Ella always woke me when the world was still in a murky blackness.

I jerked my body up and out of the bed and then wavered on my feet for a second before I ran into the other room. Her crib was empty and I spun around looking, like she might be hiding in a corner or something.

“We’re out here,” I heard Tobin call, and I lurched down the hallway.

They were at the kitchen table. He sat drinking coffee from a cup that might have been better described as a vase and Ella sat in his lap. Both of them looked very awake, like they might have been sitting there for a while.

“I didn’t hear her.” I pushed hair out of my face, thinking that Annie was right and I needed to get it cut. “Come here, Ella.”

Tobin let me take her, so he couldn’t have been too concerned about my behavior of the night before. She was in a clean diaper and another pink outfit, of which his relatives had given us about a million. She didn’t seem any worse for wear after her mother had terrified her.

“Here. You’ll probably need this.” Tobin poured another vase of coffee and slid it my way. “I’m not on until tonight so I thought I’d let you sleep in,” he explained. “She slept in too, until just around five.”

I looked at the clock and saw that it was now after seven. “Y’all have been up for hours. You should have gotten me.”

“We were good. She was interested in my toast but I told her she had to wait a few months. We’ve been working on talking.”

“How’s that going?” I studied the baby’s face. She really did seem ok.

“Well, ‘Tobin’ might be tough,” he acknowledged. “I went for ‘mama’ and she did seem intrigued. We decided that we’d go on a walk this morning, try out that baby sling thing that Luke gave us.”

It was a kind of front pack so you could wear an infant. Tobin had been practicing with a large teddy bear. I gulped coffee, holding it away from Ella so it didn’t spill on her, and then nodded. “I’ll go.” He needed to walk in his boot and exercise his leg and he could do it with a cane, now, instead of crutches.

I felt better when I came back with my hair tied in a ponytail and my teeth brushed. Tobin had secured the baby to his chest and was checking the straps. Then he checked again and tucked a blanket, another one, around Ella. “We’re all set,” he said, and held out his coat for me. “I’m not going to need this. It’s really warm out.”

His idea of “warm” was very different from mine, and I put on the coat and buttoned it closed. He smiled when he saw me in it.

“That was my grandpa’s hunting jacket. He wore it to walk out into the woods and sit with his thermos to drink coffee. Not much of a hunter,” he said. He reached and fixed the top button, right under my chin. “Do you need a hat?” I didn’t know so just in case, he stuck one in his own pocket and picked up my gloves, too.

But it was warmer outside. Not that I would have called it balmy or even comfortable, but I didn’t immediately wish that I could go back in the moment we closed the door behind us. Tobin chose to walk up the street and I went along beside him, watching the baby. She peeked out from a little hollow next to his chest and with her hat and blankets, she looked pretty cozy there.