Page 65 of The Wrong Track

“No. No, it sure doesn’t,” I said. “Married? To me?”

“Yes,” he said stubbornly. “Us, married to each other, and I would adopt Ella. I’d be her real father.”

The baby took that moment to call out to us. She kicked and waved her arms and we both turned and smiled at her.

“She thinks it’s a good idea,” he said. “Right, peanut? I’ve been teaching her to call me Dada, not Tobin. I already think of her as my daughter.”

I felt my eyes get wet. “You do?”

He nodded. “If you move away, I swear to God, I think I’ll have to come, too. I can’t imagine her growing up and me missing it, not being there with her. I can’t imagine being apart from her.”

“You love her that much?” My words broke. “Really?”

His did too, even after he swallowed before he spoke again. “I really love her that much.”

I couldn’t say anything more so I just hugged him.

“Uh…”

A woman with wild, curly hair looked into the bedroom. I knew I’d met her, but damn. What was her name?

Her eyes got big and worried as she saw us hugging on the floor. “Tobin? Is everything ok?”

“Hey, Cecilia. It’s all fine,” he answered. “Remy and I were just talking and we’re going to get—”

“The baby changed. We’re going to get the baby’s diaper changed, right now,” I interrupted very loudly as I wiped my eyes on my shirt and turned back to my naked child. “We’ll be down in a minute. Sorry to take up your bedroom.”

She said it was ok and left, looking over her shoulder. I hoped she wouldn’t mention to Charlene that I was having a breakdown in here.

“Please don’t tell people that we’ve decided something,” I said. “We have to talk about it more.”

“What is there to talk about? It makes total sense,” he told me.

“It’s the rest of your life, Tobin! The rest of your life with Ella, yes, but also with me. I don’t think I can—we need to talk about this more.”

But he got a look on his face that he didn’t get too often. It was like a very, very handsome…mule. He’d had it when I’d told him that I wanted to get his money back after the car payment he’d made for me and he’d had it the second night I’d slept in his bedroom when he’d said that yes, I needed to be in there with him. It was an expression that told me that he wasn’t going to give in.

“Fine,” he said, and shrugged. “We can talk about it more and I’ll convince you. It’s the perfect solution and it’s what we should do.”

“Tobin?” His cousin Alex stuck his head through the door. “Cecilia just told me to check on you guys. Is everything ok? Why is the baby naked?”

That made us get our acts together and go downstairs. And then, I wanted to get away from Tobin. No, I didn’t really want to, because I always liked to be with him, but I was afraid he would argue more and that I’d give in. When he’d said those words about getting married, my heart had leaped up in my chest with a feeling that I identified as joy.

But after that first flash of excitement and elation, I hadn’t had to think long to understand that it was a very, very bad idea. He needed to hang out with his family and maybe a little bit of distance would get the crazy notion out of his head, too. I understood the knee-jerk reaction that he was having, believing that he needed to take steps immediately to solve something. I’d had that kind of reaction before and I’d acted on it, and it had not gone well for me.

“Why are you leaving, Remy? What are you doing?” my sister had asked me. “I don’t understand.” But I’d kept on walking, right out the door, right to Kilian and four years of living a life that I wouldn’t have wished on anyone. I didn’t even wish it on Kilian himself.

“I can’t ruin Tobin’s life. I won’t,” I told Ella, and she opened up her mouth and cried.

I didn’t talk much on the way home, but he had a lot to say. He discussed how Ella could grow up in the same house for her whole life, his house. “It’s much better now that you’ve fixed it, and we could keep fixing it,” he said earnestly.

“Tobin, it’s not your house that’s the problem.”

Fine, he had other arguments. She could go to school with her cousins, have fun birthday parties like the one we’d just attended. She would grow up with family all around to support her, like when she won her cross-country meet or was the only girl kicking ass on the gridiron. He thought she would also edit the school newspaper and be voted the president of the environmental club and play at least three or four instruments, all first-chair. “I know she’s going to do so well in school,” he said confidently.

I thought so too. She was a lot like Lily, I was sure of that now.

We would both teach her to ride a bike, to drive, he went on. Hazel could give her piano lessons and his nephew Charlie could do the same for swimming. The two of us would save so we could pay for college for her. We would always have a place for her to come back to, we would always be there for her through everything that happened in her life.