Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72822 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
God.
I hadn’t believed her!
“Tell us about the times that you saw her. Was she always scared?”
Sam’s quietly worded question had me nodding.
“I met her in the hospital when she had her baby, and we’d hit it off so well that we exchanged Facebook info. Shortly after that, we met for coffee. It just bloomed from there. But every time that Drake would come into the room when I was at their house, she would get all wonky.”
“Define wonky,” Sam ordered.
I bit the inside of my lip and closed my eyes as I recounted the first time that I wondered what was up with their relationship.
***
“This coffee is to die for,” I exclaimed, inhaling the aroma that wafted from my cup. “I love it. I would totally box this up just so I could smell it. I’d probably get the same buzz from sniffing it as I would from drinking it.”
Marianne started to laugh but that laughter quickly died when her husband, Drake, walked into the room.
I still wasn’t sure what to think about that man.
He was handsome, in a polished sort of way. I normally found myself veering more toward the rugged, lumberjack type of men. Men with beards and longer hair, and who wore flannel shirts, work boots and faded jeans.
Drake Garwood was nothing like that, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in anything less formal than dress slacks. Today he was wearing black suit pants, and a white long-sleeved, button-down shirt tucked into those pants. He finished it all off with a black belt, black dress shoes, and a burgundy tie. The suit jacket was slung over his arm.
He didn’t smile when he saw Marianne. In fact, he looked at her almost… indifferently?
He didn’t say anything as he went to the baby, Raymond, and picked him up out of his bouncer.
Marianne was practically quivering. But was it in anticipation or… something else?
I couldn’t tell, but I definitely could feel the tension in the room. What was that all about?
I opened my mouth to say something, but the words froze in my throat when my eyes lit on the diaper explosion. Raymond had poop from the tops of his ears all the way to his feet. Only, before either Marianne or I could say anything, Drake curved his arm around the baby and cradled him close to his chest.
The bright brownish-yellow mess smeared the chest of Drake’s shirt along with his hand.
Drake froze and then turned his angry gaze to Marianne.
“You let my child sit in this?” he snarled.
Marianne started to shake her head. “I didn’t…”
Drake walked over to Marianne, thrust Raymond in her arms, covering her with the baby’s mess, and then glared at her. Just when he was about to start yelling, my presence made his notice, and he hesitated.
“Clean him up.”
Then he left.
“Marianne.” I reached for the baby. “Oh God.”
Marianne stood and then walked to the kitchen sink where she washed what she could off, then started emptying the sink of its dishes. Once she had that done, I walked over with the baby, and we set him down into the sink, hosing him off as best as we could with the sprayer.
“You’re not seriously washing him in the sink, where our dishes go, are you?”
Marianne seemed to tense, her whole entire body freezing as she tried to say something that wasn’t going to make him angrier but ended up not saying anything at all as she waited for him to continue.
“You are.” He walked up to Marianne’s side, this time in a dark gray shirt, and glared. “That’s disgusting.”
Marianne’s lip quivered. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say another thing. He just walked straight out of the house without looking back.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “He does realize that babies are messy, right?”
Marianne shrugged. “I’m not all that sure that Drake actually knows anything at all about children.”
***
“And, in all honesty, what he did that time wasn’t all that worrisome. I think any man would’ve been upset about poop on their shirt before they went to work.”
“No,” Dante disagreed. “I’d give goddamn anything to have my child’s poop on my shirt. Or their throw up. Hell, I’d give anything to walk into the laundry room to get one of my shirts only to find it stained with their crayons that got mixed up in the wash with my work shirts.”
Nobody said anything.
“You have other kids?”
Dante made a sound in the back of his throat like a wounded animal. “No. Not anymore.”
“I wouldn’t be mad. Not like that,” Max butted in, likely sensing the sudden tension. “I’d be peeved, but not at my wife, and certainly not at the kid. It’s not like that’s controllable.”
I nodded, feeling weird all of a sudden. “I was a little weirded out by their interaction. But that was just one incident of many. Things like that happened a lot. I remember thinking that it was like he only picked their kid up for show, like he only did it out of obligation maybe. Marianne freaked out whenever he picked the baby up, almost as if she was just waiting for him to hurl the baby across the room. And that wasn’t just once in a while—that was every single time that I witnessed it.”