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She rubbed his cleft. “Well, aren’t you glad that’s not the case?”
He was distracted for a moment, but then muttered, “Totally. But please give me a heads up if you ever start thinking about having Dolly move in with us. You know, before she tells me, or shows up with a suitcase and four thousand books.”
“Will do.”
Since David and Evan had gotten rather proficient at moving stuff, they were able to get the U-Haul truck unloaded by late afternoon, just in time for Evan to have to leave for work. With extra pieces of furniture and boxes everywhere, Paige, David, and Jacob did a little bit of work moving things that needed to be stored in the third floor attic space. After a few hours of that, followed by pizza for dinner, Jacob crashed on the couch.
When Paige suggested David move Jacob to his bedroom, David obliged, then suggested he and Paige should go to bed, too.
“It’s barely past 8 p.m.,” she objected. “We can get a bunch more boxes moved upstairs—”
“We could, but we’re not going to. Because if you think I’m going to expend any more energy on moving boxes instead of having sweaty, needy, mind-blowing sex from behind with my beautiful wife of six days, then you don’t know me very well.”
The next day, Evan joined them again, this time to help switch out some of the existing furniture in the loft with Paige’s furniture, such as her kitchen table and chairs, bed frame, nightstands, and dresser, because they’d been hers and David’s previously. David’s corresponding stuff was then taken up to the attic to deal with later, along with pieces of furniture they simply had no room for, like Paige’s living room set. It created a lot of moving around and work, and took several days.
By the time the weekend rolled around, they still had boxes everywhere, so they began working on at least getting them to their designated rooms—kitchen items in the kitchen, knick-knacks and books in the living room, and clothes in the master bedroom.
On one trip into the master bedroom with a box of her clothes, Paige abruptly stopped at the sight of Jacob sitting in front of a carved wooden chest, with some of the toys and stuffed animals from inside scattered on the floor around him.
Paige wasn’t sure what she was feeling … sadness at seeing the things she’d bought for her baby being handled by another child, or relief that it wasn’t as painful as she’d thought it would be.
“Whoa,” David said, as he came into the room with another box of clothes, and had to step around Paige in order to avoid running into her. After setting the box on the growing stack in the corner of the room, he turned to take in the scene before him, becoming confused by the uncomfortable vibes Paige was giving off as she stared at Jacob, who was playing with some stuffed animals. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a treasure chest,” Jacob said excitedly. Then, holding up a dragon, he asked, “Can I have this?”
David realized the ‘treasure chest’ was actually the one he and Evan had carried in together, not knowing what the contents were. Now that it was open, however, David could see it was full of clothing and toys for a child; his heart dipping, he immediately knew which child.
Shaking off her paralysis and swallowing hard, Paige put down her box and sat down on the floor next to Jacob. “No,” she told him gently. “I’m sorry, but I bought that for someone else.”
“Who?”
She took a deep breath, not sure how to proceed. She’d never really thought about having this discussion with Jacob, and now that it was here, she wasn’t quite ready for it. “For a baby I was going to have, many years ago. He didn’t get a chance to be born, though.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes babies just aren’t healthy, or strong enough, and it keeps them from being born.”
“Oh.”
“It made me really sad, and on what would’ve been his first birthday, I got him a couple of presents. That made me feel a little better, so I kept doing it, year after year. I bought clothes he could’ve worn, and toys he might have wanted to play with—like that dragon,” she said, pointing at it. “And I think about what he’d be like if he were here.”
“Oh.” Jacob looked down at the dragon. “Are you still sad?”
She nodded. “Sometimes.”
He blinked at her with serious hazel eyes before scooting over and climbing onto her lap. “I don’t want you to be sad.”
Paige put her arms around him and pulled him against her chest. “Being sad isn’t always a bad thing. For me, it means I loved my baby a lot, that he owns a piece of my heart and I miss him. But you know who else I love?” she asked, looking down at him.
After a pause, Jacob said, “Me?”
“That’s right. My own personal Stinker.” She kissed the top of his head, then rested her chin on it, his buzzed hair tickling. “And I love your dad, and your grandma Valerie. My friend, Jules. Dolly. Oh, and Evan, too. So, I have a lot of people to love, people who own pieces of my heart, and that makes me happy.”
The two of them sat like that for several moments, until David crouched down next to them. “Little Man,” he said to Jacob, “why don’t you go check on the cats and see if they’re all getting along? Maybe play with them for a little bit, too?”
“Okay.”
Once Jacob was gone, David lowered himself to the floor next to Paige. “Are you okay?”
