Playing House

It's Over

The baby monitor crackled to life, Elena's soft vocalizations filled Kim's darkened bedroom, Elena Mae Ruzek had inherited many of her Daddy's traits. His affinity for sleeping in was not one of them, while Adam was known for sleeping till noon, Elena was always up at the ass crack of dawn regardless  of the time she had fallen asleep

She had just begun sleeping through the night, Joy about fell over the first time Kim reported that Elena had slept through the night. She was just four months old at the time, and Joy told Kim not to get used to it, that it was a fluke.

Now, at five and a half months old nothing had changed, Elena was still sleeping through the night, and while Kim hated the three a.m. wake up call she thoroughly enjoyed it when Elena was in her crib by eight p.m. it allowed for Kim to relax.

While there hadn't been a change on Elena's sleeping patterns, a lot had changed.

Joy carried the infant carrier, while Kim carried the bags of cleaning supplies, "Kim, we could've paid someone to do this you know" she huffed as she set Elena's seat on the floor outside Kim's apartment door.

It had been about a week or so since the break in and while the police had been unable to find the suspect, Kim was ready to come home.

"I know" Kim said over her shoulder as she unlocked the door, "I just need to do it..I can't explain it, but it's not gonna feel clean...if I don't watch as its done" she guessed it probably didn't make much sense to her sister, but it did to her. She wanted to watch as the disgusting words slowly vanished under a fresh coat of paint.

She had contemplated on leaving the baby with Adam, that maybe the paint fumes would be too much. Only for Adam to have been called out of town for a few days to deal with his mother, and while Tom offered to keep the baby, Kim declined. Not that Tom wasn't capable of taking care of Elena, Kim wasn't ready to leave the baby with anyone but Adam.

Adam hadn't even had the baby solo for more than an hour or two at a time. Kim was breastfeeding and wasn't ready to start offering her a bottle and Adam was reluctant to have her on his own overnight anyway. So for now, Adam spent a lot of time with Kim and the baby at Joy and Tom's house.

That needed to change, Kim needed to be back in her own place.

As Kim pushed the door open, the faint odor of paint hit her nostrils, "Wow!" Kim heard Joy practically yell when she entered the apartment.

"Who did this?" Joy asked as she ran her hand over the soft fabric on the new couch, a brand new recliner in the corner of the room.

Kim smiled she knew who did it, "Adam. Adam did this" she grabbed Elena from her sister and went to the nursery.

As expected she found the room painted and a unopened box in the corner of the room, a note attached to it.

'Kim, it came late. Adam promises to assemble it when he gets back..Lori'

Joy had gone down stairs to grab the rest of Kim's things from the car and ran into Adam on his way up, "I thought you were with your mom?" Joy asked as he lifted the pack and play from her arms.

"I was" Adam smiled, "and now I'm not" he smirked, "Kim already upstairs?" He had gone back and forth on how he wanted it to play out. He wasn't one for recognition, he'd rather people didn't know that he did something for them, but in this case he really wanted to see the look on Kim's face when she saw it. He needed to replace the image in his head from the day they discovered her trashed apartment.