Becoming April

Chapter 12

I called Carl. I had to.

Of course first I spent almost an hour pacing my living room, stepping around the piles and boxes from yesterday. I even pulled out my family albums, I didn't know why, and picture after picture just made me feel worse.

I'd loved my parents, I had. And they'd loved me. But I'd come along when Mother had been in her late forties. Dad had been fifty-one. They'd already been married more than twenty years and if they'd regretted not having children before me, they hadn't tried very hard; I really had been a shock. They'd loved me but hadn't exactly known what to do with me, and it had been an absent sort of love. I'd had a nanny; my parents were those kind of people.

I did remember childhood night-terrors, and Mother's kiss on my forehead.

But they hadn't been very involved. They'd worried as I got older and stayed single, but again in an absent way. To be fair I'd been the furthest from a rebellious or taxing child, and as an adult I'd been content to go into my father's business and make the job and my hobbies my social life, such as it was. They'd supported my choices because my choices hadn't inconvenienced them, and in the end I'd come home for them.

They were my parents, and I'd loved them. So why was I walking back and forth trying not to cry again? Why was I even over here? If their ghosts stood in front of me now and I told them what had happened, what May proposed to do, they'd ask if it was what I wanted and be fine with it if it was. They'd never been jealous of my fondness for Nanny Jane.

So, why was I being like this?

Finally able to trust myself I plopped onto my too-big easy chair and called Carl's number on my house phone, taking a last nose-clearing sniff as it rang twice, three times and— "This is Carl, talk to me."

"Carl," I said.

"David. Didn't recognize the number. Is everything alright?"

I sniffed and took a breath. "May . . . "

"She called me. Are you alright?"

"She told you?"

"When she was ready to, yeah. She's a bit worried right now."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry."

He chuckled. "Don't be. I'm sure your head's a sack of squirrels right now. I wish she'd waited to spring her idea with me first, we could have talked to you together."

"You— You're fine with it?"

"My wife is a genius, it's brilliant, of course I'm alright with it. Still there?"

I'd dropped my head in my hands, throat closing around a growing knot. "Yeah," I finally managed.

"Hey, where are you?"

"Back home. I've been . . . thinking."

"Well, do it or don't do it, but get back over there and talk to my wife. When she called me she was nearly hysterical, thinks she's ruined everything."

The knot tripled in size and dropped into my gut. "I— Okay. I'm going. Carl? Really?"

He chuckled. "Really. Now get, go on old man."

I got.

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Their house was quiet, my laptop sitting alone on the dining room table and Steph absent from her front room crib. Going up the stairs, at the landing I almost kept going up to check May's office at the top of the house but heard a sound from the nursery. They were there.