Paige Torn (9 page)

A copy of a magazine called
Wedded Bliss
is lying on the counter in front of me, so I thumb through it while Layla gets water boiling for the noodles. “Here's one.” I hold up a page with the most awful dress I've ever seen in my whole life.

Layla glances over at it. “That's not too bad.”

“The wedding dress, Layla.”

She squints at the picture again. “Ew. That looks like moss grew on that girl.”

“The dress is white.”

“It has a greenish tint to it. Pass.”

“I was joking, anyway.”

“I would hope so. Just think about all the ideas this is probably giving you for your wedding someday, Paige!”

“Mmm.” I shrug. Layla and I have such different tastes in everything that our weddings will probably be like night and day.

In ten or so years, when I get old enough to be married.

Never mind that Layla and I are the same age.

“So, we have a big problem.” Layla takes the meatballs out of the microwave.

“Not with the meatballs.” I hold back a shudder at the thought.

“No. With the flower girl.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“She doesn't exist,” Layla says sadly. “I don't have any little cousins, and Peter doesn't know any girls under the age of six — ”

“Does he know any over the age of six?” I cut in.

Layla purses her lips in thought. “He knows you. And me.”

“So two.”

“He's a quiet sort.”

“Layla,” I say, deciding to just voice my concerns while there is still plenty of time to call the whole thing off. “Are you really sure you want to marry Peter?”

She gives me a funny look and dumps the sauce from the jar into a skillet. “Uh, yes, Paige. That's why I said yes when he asked me.”

“I mean, he's nice,” I concede. Most people would argue that it is hard to be mean when you just kind of stand there unmoving like a rusted-open barn door all the time.

“He is, isn't he?” Layla sighs.

“But he's not very … um …” I struggle to find a word that doesn't have a nasty connotation to it. “Animated?”

“Of course he's not, and I wouldn't want him to be.” Layla spoons the meatballs into the sauce carefully so it won't splash. “He's a very real person. He doesn't try to pretend.”

Animated
is not the right word.

“He's just not who I always envisioned you with,” I say slowly.

She looks over at me with a smile. “I know. I just figured out one day that Gilbert Blythe probably wouldn't be knocking at my door anytime soon.”

We both have a moment of sighing silence for sweet Gilbert who stole Anne of Green Gables' heart.

She goes back to stirring the sauce. “Peter's a good guy, Paige. You can stop worrying.”

I won't, so I don't promise anything. “If you're certain, Layla. All I'm saying is, you're going to be with him the rest of your life, and I just want you to be 100 percent certain.”

She pulls a colander out of the cabinet. “I'm 200 percent certain. Stop worrying about me. You've done that since we were kids.”

“You needed worrying about back then.” She still does now. She just obviously can't see it.

She waves a hand. “Please. I was fine. You were the one running around during finals like you and six of your rodent friends had to make a ball gown by midnight.”

I laugh. “What?”

“Like it?” She grins. “I just came up with it by myself.”

“You are so weird.”

She pours the spaghetti noodles and the boiling water into the colander and nods. “And yet, somehow, I am still loveable.”

* * * * *

“Thank God it is Friday night,” Peggy gripes as she comes down the hall, putting on her jacket. “I am not going to have to look at one more birth father who is contesting the adoption or one more adoptive parent who needs to learn some patience, kindness, and gentleness toward their case manager. I am going to sleep in tomorrow morning. I am going to sit at my breakfast table with my husband and drink my green tea while we work crossword puzzles together.”

I grin at her while I stack up the papers strewn all over my desk. “Sounds like good, clean fun.” I slide them all into a stack to work on come Monday.

“Watch it, Paige. You're going to get old one day too.” She finishes pulling her jacket on and waves a finger at me. “And then see how you feel about the antioxidants in green tea helping to prevent the sag under your chin and the chance to exercise your aging brain doing a crossword puzzle.”

“I think I'll have to take my chances with my macchiato.”

“Suit yourself.” Peggy shrugs. “I plan on dying beautiful.”

I laugh and stand, grabbing my jacket and purse and turning off the lamp on my desk. My desk is so bare compared to everyone else's here. Peggy has pictures of her husband and kids and new grandbaby, Candace has pictures of her family, and Mark has pictures and a baseball that his kids signed that says, “Warld's Bist DAd.”

My desk has a lamp on it. And a pack of gum. And all the files I am working on. And a mock-up of the floral centerpieces for the banquet. But I am pretending it is a bouquet of flowers for me from a secret admirer. Even though I have no time for an admirer, secret or otherwise. Still. The thought of a guy sending flowers is nice.

I wave at Peggy and climb into my car. Time to run home and change into jeans before I go to help with childcare at the church dinner tonight. I yawn, pulling out into traffic. I am tired. And really wanting to just stay on my couch eating chocolate-covered popcorn and watching
Emma
tonight.

The good version with Gwyneth Paltrow.

I hurry up the stairs to my apartment, change out my black skirt for jeans and my ballet flats for sneakers, and throw on a hoodie over my cami. I grab a cheese stick and run back down the stairs to my car.

Cheese sticks should never be dinner as often as they are mine.

Which sounds something like a song by Taylor Swift, but I rip open the package and inhale it on the way to church anyway.

I get to church right at six and the dinner starts at six thirty. Geraldine, the church secretary who is in charge of the event, finds me right when I walk in.

“Paige!” she says. “Oh good. Okay, I've got you guys set up in the nursery. I think there are only going to be six or eight kids here tonight, all ages five and younger. And Madalyn Louis is going to be helping you.”

Madalyn is in the fifth grade and is our senior pastor's oldest daughter. She is a sweet girl, but I'm really not sure how much help she will be when she is only eleven.

“Great,” I say, faking a genuine smile.

“Thanks so much for doing this, honey. I just love how willingly you serve all the time,” Geraldine says.

I am single and live alone. Maybe this is what God has planned for these years of my life. “Sure.”

“All right. I need to go talk to someone about the music. You're good?”

“I'm good.”

She hurries away and I walk down the hallway to the nursery. Nine kids under the age of twelve.

And me.

Emma
is sounding better and better, but I feel horribly guilty even thinking that.

* * * * *

Later that night, I climb into bed exhausted. Two infants screamed the entire night, another one cried red-faced until he finally spit up in my hair and on my shirt. A two-year-old dumped animal crackers all over the floor and then stomped them into the carpet while a three-year-old girl asked nine hundred times if we could go outside and play on the playground in the pitch dark.

And Madalyn just sat there staring at her iPod the whole time.

After all of the parents collected their children and I mopped off my hair and shoulder, Geraldine came by to give Madalyn and me Starbucks gift cards and tell us thank you.

“And, Paige, honey, you'll want to spray that shirt with stain remover before you launder it. Spit-up tends to stain,” Geraldine said.

It was a rough night. And now my car smells like spit-up too.

I took a shower the second I got home and immediately sprayed my sweatshirt and took a small load down to the Laundromat.

There is no better birth control than church nurseries. I am to the point that I'm not even sure I want kids anymore, ever.

I look at my Bible and then sigh and turn off my lamp. I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I'll read twice as much tomorrow.

Besides, I've spent the whole night serving. Maybe that counts for my Bible reading today.

I
have every intention of sleeping in the next morning. Sleep in, maybe watch a movie, make myself French toast, and work on the wreath that is still half finished in my closet.

My phone buzzes at seven.

I force my eyes open and look at it. It's a text from Rick.

C
LAIRE
E
LISE.
B
ORN AT 2:13AM, 8 LBS 6 OZ, 22 IN LONG.

Then he sends a picture of the new baby.

I can't really be mad about getting a text of a brand-new baby. I roll back over in bed and look at the picture of Rick and Natalie's new daughter.

She looks like every other newborn I've ever seen, and while I haven't seen too many, I do notice that all of them have the same characteristics. Red, splotchy face, eyes squinched shut, mouth tight. She is wearing a striped hat on her head, so I can't see if she has any hair.

I text back. C
ONGRATS YOU GUYS
!
S
HE'S BEAUTIFUL
!
C
AN'T WAIT TO MEET HER
!

I set my phone back on my nightstand, yawn, and snuggle back under the sheets. I close my eyes and burrow into the pillow.

And lay there.

I try flipping over to my back and putting my arms out to the side.

Nothing.

I moan. Seriously? I am just going to be up now? I roll back over and look at the clock. Seven fifteen.

After lying in bed for another thirty minutes, I finally give up and just get up. I pull on my robe and pad out to the kitchen to start the coffeepot.

Getting up early on a Saturday when there is absolutely no reason to is just depressing. My grandmother used to tell me about how she would wake up at six every single morning just out of habit. “It's the most annoying thing,” she always said. “But I just can't help it.”

Heaven forbid that is already happening to me.

The coffeepot starts gurgling, and I sit at the kitchen table with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. I don't even like Cheerios very much, but they were on sale and I'm getting low in my grocery budget for the week.

So, Cheerios it is.

I get up and pour myself a cup of coffee, add cream and sugar, and right when I am about to sit down again at the table, my phone buzzes again.

It's a number I don't recognize, but I answer it anyway. “Hello?”

“Hi there, Auntie Paige,” Rick says. “I'm calling from the hospital room phone.”

I grin. That answers my question. “Hi, new dad. How's the daughter?”

“Perfect in every way imaginable.” Rick is obviously gushing. “Oh, Paige, it's the most amazing thing. You can't even imagine what it feels like.”

Considering the closest I've ever come to parenthood is being sort of responsible for taking care of the family dog when I was in the eighth grade, nope. I probably cannot imagine what it feels like.

“Anyway. I'm calling for a couple of reasons. The nurses say Nat can have caffeine now since her milk hasn't come in yet. And she really wants to see you.”

I grin. I knew it was going to be like this. Not even a month ago, I was over at Rick and Natalie's house for dinner, and they went on and on about how they didn't want any visitors in the hospital after the baby was born. They wanted to just have time to bond as a new family. Neither Rick's nor Natalie's parents live in town, but I think both of them are planning to come after Natalie is released from the hospital.

I look at the clock on the wall. Well, the no-company thing has lasted for about six hours.

Rick and Natalie are too social to go too long without seeing anyone.

“Starbucks then?” I ask Rick.

“Please. I'll reimburse you when you get here.” His voice gets muffled. “Sweetie, you know what you want?”

“A grande nonfat caramel latte,” I say along with Rick.

“Wow. You're good,” he says.

“No, she's just predictable. Anything for you?”

“I'm pretty sure any caffeine would send me right over the edge into Wonderland, so I'm fine. But get something for yourself. On me. And thank you, thank you. When do you think you can be here?”

Considering I am still in my robe … “Forty-five minutes?”

“Sounds great. Thanks so much, Paige!”

I hang up, look at my half-eaten bowl of Cheerios and barely sipped coffee, and sigh. Oh well. I'll get a macchiato at Starbucks and consider that breakfast.