Heart Thaw (7 page)

I nod with jerky fear. My hand is on Georgia’s flat, warm stomach, and she tells me that her baby is growing right under it. I tip my head back and look at the picture of us as babies. I always thought we’d complete the cycle, have babies of our own. But not this soon. Not this way.

“I know you’re overthinking everything, like you always do. But,
for once
, just feel happy for me, okay? I know it doesn’t make sense to you, Sade, but I’ve felt like the last three years have been nothing but pain. And misery. And, for the first time in so long, I feel like I’m going to be okay.” She runs her fingers over my knuckles. “Okay?”

I nod again. “Of course,” I gasp. “Of course.”

I have a million arguments, but I realize Georgia already forgave me once for trying to take her heart away from Danny. If I try to do it again with the baby, she’s not going to be able to forgive me.

Even if I’m doing it because I want to protect
her
heart.

“I’m so hungry,” she groans.

“Do you want me to make some broth or toast? Or tea?” I wrack my brain for things Mom makes when we have stomach bugs.

“Did you get Bavarian cream?”

She rubs her cheek on my jeans.

“Of course. Won’t it make you throw up again?”

I push her hair back from her forehead.

“Maybe. But there’s nothing in my stomach now anyway. If I’m gonna puke, it might as well be for a good reason.”

She pushes herself into a sitting position, and is about to stand when I bound over her  legs and run for the dining room. I scoop up a Bavarian cream donut and the quickly-cooling coffee and bring them over. She takes a bite with her eyes closed and licks the cream off of her lips.

“Mmm. This must have been baked this morning. Amazing.”

I breathe in the smell of pine and Bavarian crème and the vanilla candles half-melted all over the little apartment and watch my best friend in the world lick powdered sugar off her fingers. I know I should say something to prove that I’m pro-baby to keep the vibe going, but I’m not sure what to say that won’t smack of sucking up. So I just ask something I’m genuinely curious about.

“What will you name her?”

I put my feet up on the coffee table and watch the snowflakes out the window, now as big as birds’ wings.

“Dani. Dani Eileen.”

Her voice is powder soft, but with a hard edge. Like the sledding snow when it freezes over.

I open my mouth to point out that that might be sad for Georgia, to be reminded every single minute of so much loss. And I’m going to ask what the biological father’s name is.

Instead I count until the urge to logicize everything subsides.

I make it to fourteen, take a deep breath, and say, “That’s a beautiful name. It sounds Italian.”

That’s all it takes to earn me a sugar-laced kiss and squealy hug. Georgia presses her teary eyes my shoulder, leaves two little half-moon black smudges, and sighs.

“I was so scared to talk to you about this. I’m really glad we did, you know? Now I’m ready to tell my brother and your sister and mom.”

“Your office is closed for the holidays, right? Stay at our house for a few days,” I plead. “You can eat and rest and just hang. Mom will love running around, taking care of you.”

Her hug is so tight around my neck it crushes my windpipe a little.

“I’ll pack.”

She does, and I convince her to get in my mom’s big old car before the snow makes the road treacherously slick. I text Mom to let her know we’re both on the way and that Georgia is staying. She’s ecstatic, of course. Georgia and I pick up sour cream and pickled herring, which is the weird food she’s craving. Strange, but it kind of makes the whole pregnancy thing feel official. We pile back in the car and sing along to old Christmas songs blaring on the radio.

“Hello!” Mom calls when we walk in, backed by an icy blast of snow. “Girls? Come get some hot chocolate. I put a candy cane in yours, Georgie, just how you like it.”

Georgia looks around my mom’s little house, crushed under two tons of Christmas decorations collected over a few decades, and her limbs relax, wet-noodle limp. The smile on her face is so soft and sweet, she glows.

“I have to talk to Mom,” she whispers, squeezing my arm.

“Do you need moral support?” But she’s already headed into the kitchen.

She half turns, shaking her head. “Nah. It took guts to tell you, but Mom? She’ll take one look and just know. Plus that, she’s a sucker for babies.”

She’s gone in a whiff of vanilla and a spring of curls.

I take the gray plastic Home Depot bag to the tree and pull out the bulbs. I’m going to change the ones that are out, but the tree looks so gorgeous, and I’ve hardly had a minute to really soak it in. I sit down next to it, but there’s something about the glow that I want to tangle myself in. I lie down on the carpet, just outside the circle of glowing light. When that’s still too far, I shimmy onto the red velvet tree skirt spread under the branches.

A few spare needles fall on my face. The smell is so strong, it’s like I’ve been submerged in a bath of warm pine sap. I can see the bottoms of the ornaments hanging in the lacing, locking network of branches that criss-cross all the way to the top, where the angel is. She isn’t visible from way down here, but I know she’s up there the same place she’s been since before I was born, and that’s comforting.

The sound of Mom’s shrieks echo around the corner, a happy, frantic sound. She’ll sit Georgia down and ask the right questions. She’ll slide a mug of cocoa across the floury counter, and Georgia will stir the velvety chocolate with her candycane and take long, mint-spiked sips that leave a dash of whipped cream over her top lip. And all will be as right with the world as it can be with Eileen gone.

The front door pushes open, and I strain my neck, hoping it’s Ella so I can apologize about last night and my bitchiness about Antonia. Even if I know I’m right, it’s way more important for me to know when to keep my mouth shut.

But the heavy thud of boots lets me know it isn’t my dainty sister. The boots clomp closer to the tree, stop, and Trent’s head pokes under the branches and into my tiny, magic space.

“Hey.” His head is turned sideways, and all the shiny dark hair falls to one side.

“Hey.” I smile at him from the pit of my heart, a warm, contented, piney smile and hope, hope—

“You mind if I join you?”

Better even than I hoped.

I crook my finger in invitation, and he lies back on the floor and slides neatly under the tree, so close our hair mingles, dark brown and blonde strands layered on the red velvet. He reaches one finger up to a branch and catches the drop of sap that’s leaking out. He sticks his thumb and index finger together and presses so the sap oozes out on either side, then brings his fingers under his nose and inhales the piney smell.

“That’s the best smell in the world, right?” he asks, his voice low.

His eyelashes poke out stiff and thick, like black pine needles.

“Yeah. I miss this.”

I trace my fingers over the pine needles on the branch closest to me, and imagine that I’m running my fingers over his dark eyelashes.

He turns on his side and his shoulder bumps the tree, sending a shower of pine needles pinging on us.

“What do you miss? You’re right here, under this tree with me, right now. There’s nothing to miss.”

“But it’s just different. I just feel
different
this Christmas.” I reach high up and touch the toe of a blown glass frog in a hot pink bikini with the tip of my finger. “Remember this one?”

His smile shines under the Christmas lights.

“How could I forget? Your mom wanted that ugly ass thing for how long? And then my mom surprised her with it. But your mom had already bought one…for my mom. Very twisted gift of the Magi shit.”

“It doesn’t feel like Christmas without your mom.” My finger pops the glass frog on her glass webbed foot and she twirls. “It’s never gonna be the same again, is it?”

Every vein stands out on his neck.

“I miss her so much.” His voice is foggy. “I’m so glad I have your mom. Sometimes I just want to hole up, get shit-faced, disappear for awhile. And I know my mom would hate me for doing it, but I fucking want to. Then I think about your mom and her lumpy ass potatoes, and the way she makes us all watch god-damn
White Christmas
and wants to dance around with me like I’m Danny fucking Kaye. And I can’t do anything that would make her upset, no matter how much I want to just get away from all this sentimental shit.”

I spider-walk my fingers to his and hold his hand tight.

“Do you remember the Christmas when Danny threw up all over the presents?”

He squeezes back so tight, all my fingers jerk like puppets on their strings.

“I remember telling him that the eggnog already had enough rum to get a horse drunk, so he probably didn’t need to mix vodka in. Danny could be a real douche-bag.”

“I loved him anyway.”

He uses the pinky of his free hand to push back the hair that fringes over my eyes.

“Me too. Everybody knows you loved him. Georgie knows that.”

His words are muscle relaxers to my heart.

“Yeah? I only gave him shit because I thought they needed time to grow up.”

He shakes his head and his eyes turn a toasty golden-brown.

“You know, my sister forgave all of Danny’s bonehead mistakes when he was alive and forgot them all now that he’s dead. I know you were only trying to protect her.”

“She’s usually more logical about things. But she never applied any of that to Danny.”

My smile is tight. Danny was the one thing Georgia pulverized all her rules for. Well, except for the baby, now, which Trent doesn’t know about. Yet.

“Yeah.” He snorts a little. “I don’t even know what those two had in common. She was so National-Honors-Society-polished. You know she ironed every single thing she wore, even her socks? Laid ‘em all on her bed the night before. Every year since I was tiny, I remember her asking Santa for a day planner. I’m not even kidding. I mean, she asked for normal crap, too, but really? What ten-year-old needs a fucking day planner?”

I laugh a little, curl tighter to him, and watch the way the glow from the Christmas light strands bounces over his skin.

“I think she kind of experienced things vicariously through Danny. And he was no pressure, you know? To him, every move Georgie made was perfection.”

“Yeah, I guess my sister would look like a candidate for sainthood compared to the trainwreck that was Danny Lee.”

Trent shifts and some tinsel knocks off, leaving a crinkled silver strip in his hair. I realize that, when Trent eventually gets gray hairs, it will only add to his dashing handsomeness.

He stares right at me, like he knows I’m hiding the truth. I know it’s just paranoia on my part. I hope it is anyway.

His voice is heavy with worry. “I hate to say this, but with Danny gone, and now that mom’s not around, maybe George can get back on track. Mom let her mope her ass off, and, I know she did the dental assisting thing, but she got accepted to Drew. Did she tell you that?”

“No.” The hurt is like a splinter, incredibly small, but deep and, I know, painfully embedded. “She said she didn’t even look at all the acceptance letters because it made sense to go to community college. For money.”

“Maybe.” He rolls onto his back and cushions his head on hands. One elbow grazes my hair. “She had savings. Mom did. Dad left some. There was a little from my grandparents. We could have scraped together whatever she needed. I think it was about Danny. I think she was scared.” His voice drops. “Or pregnant. Do you think it’s possible?”

“No!”

The word darts out so fast I don’t have time to clamp my mind around it. She was so determined to be with Danny, but this one day, when there was still a tiny window of opportunity to accept a college, she called me and, through sobs, told me she was packing boxes, ready to go to college, ready to follow her dreams, and learn who she was again.

I was so excited, I didn’t even ask what brought it all on.

But it didn’t last.

Danny left for the lumber job a week later, and she unpacked the boxes and got ready to wait. We all waited, anxious to see if Danny would transform from boy to man with that one rough job.

We didn’t realize we were all actually waiting to get the news that he was dead.

“We had this weird little Christmas elf when we were kids, my mom’s mom picked it up in Norway.” Trent’s voice weaves toward me, covering up my careening thoughts and blanketing my nerves with total, silken calm. “Cute as hell. Mom would put it all over the house and tell us it watched us, spied to Santa or some shit. You look like that elf.”

“I look like an elf spy?” Whatever I expected him to say, it definitely wasn’t that. “I look like a weird little Gestapo elf?”

“Cute as hell,” he repeats, and traces his fingertip down my nose, then taps the tip. “I think it’s your nose.”

I clap my hand over it. “An elf nose? Are you trying to give me a complex?”