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Chapter 33: Honeypie

Chapter 33: Honeypie

February

Monday morning, when I pull into Peyton's driveway, she's waiting at the window, probably praying that Patrick Mahomes won't start crying again. I think it's been a long weekend with little Homie.

            "Hey, Mamma." I take carrier from her and fasten it into the back seat.

"What's the earliest we can return them?" she asks as she hops in.

"I think she said she'd be there at 7am."

She looks her phone. "6:45. Perfect. Not a minute later."

"I take it things didn't get much better with Homeslice?"

She tells me all about Saturday night—after we'd gone to the movies, and I dropped her home. She'd paid Emma some of her Christmas money to babysit. As soon as she walked in the door, Emma thrust the screaming robot baby into her arms.

"According to Emma, thirty bucks isn't near enough compensation," she says flatly.

Peyton spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what he needed. She gave him a clean diaper. She changed his clothes. She fed him. She burped him. She swaddled him. Nothing worked. Finally, she stuck him in a closet and closed the door. She could still hear him crying, so she piled all her dirty clothes on top of him.

If he's equipped with a camera, she's screwed.

But the funniest part of all of it was that she kept thinking she could still hear him. She said it was like something out of a Poe story, whatever that means.

"But this was the 'Telltale Robot Baby,' she says, "so it was even scarier."

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, she grabbed him out of the carrier and paced the floor with him, bouncing and shushing, just like I'd done. She was afraid he'd start crying again if she put him back in the carrier, so she walked around the house, holding him.

"Until my mom found me," she says. "I think I was delirious by then. She made me a peanut butter and jelly."

"I love a midnight PB&J," I say.

"Yeah, and she toasted the bread. So, the peanut butter was all nice and melty."

"The best," I say. "What did your mom say about that fact that you were wandering around the house in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised. Since Pax died, you can find any one of us up wandering around at 2 a.m. I think it's just a thing."

I just nod. I can't even imagine.

"But she was good, actually," Peyton continues. "We had a good talk."

"About what?"

"Oh, things about my dad. About Pax and me as babies. Emma. I think I'm too hard on my mom sometimes. She seems so sad."

Right on cue, Homeboy starts wailing. "You've got to be kidding me," Peyton says. 

She grabs a bottle out of the diaper bag and climbs into the back seat. She sticks the bottle in his mouth, and he stops crying.

"Can I ask you something, kind of personal?" She says out of nowhere.

I glance at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Sure."

"Your family. You guys are happy now?"

"I mean, yeah. For the most part. No family is without its issues." I look back at the road.