Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 6: Then

"The mother's name is Paula, but she's not in the picture right now," Owen told me as he paced back and forth across the parlor nearly four years earlier. "So the whole St. Catherine's community is helping out to take care of the baby."

"Will you sit down?" I patted the space on the davenport beside me. "The coffee's brewing. The house is clean. There's nothing else to get ready."

Owen's mother, Diana, was supposed to arrive any minute to introduce us to a baby. Given how rarely she'd made the trip down from Boston since we'd moved in nearly a year earlier, we were eager to know what was so special about this baby. Other than the details Owen had just repeated, she'd been frustratingly cryptic when she'd called us the night before.

Owen had spent the morning cleaning like a maniac and our home was as close to presentable, by Diana's standards, as it could have been under the circumstances.

My current home improvement project, refinishing the staircase, was not in an aesthetically pleasing stage of construction. I was replacing the risers with white bead board but I'd decided to keep the original treads despite a few stairs that creaked. I'd picked up the handrails for the new bannister the day before, and they were taking up most of the front entryway.

We'd draped a tarp over the pile of handrails, but it only contributed to the effect that we were living in a construction zone. I could already imagine the disapproving look on Diana's face.

Owen paced and tugged at the ends of his hair. It was a nervous habit that I found sexy in a professorial kind of way, but it was contributing to the gradual recession of his hairline. On one side of him was the fireplace, sparkling clean on that hot July day. On his other side, I sat rigidly on the antique davenport that I'd found at a yard sale the prior weekend.

I loved how the spindle work on its wooden frame brought out the damask pattern in the parlor's navy-blue wallpaper. As soon as we'd pushed the davenport into the middle of the room across from the fireplace, the parlor had immediately felt complete.

But as we awaited Diana's arrival, I didn't dare lean back against the davenport's upholstery. I'd ironed a teal linen dress for the occasion of her visit and I was paranoid about wrinkling it.

I sat up a little straighter and patted the space beside me on the davenport again, smiling in Owen's direction. "Sit here with me while we wait."

The creases across Owen's forehead softened. "Okay. Mom will be here any minute."

Knock-knock, knock-knock-knock. Knock, knock.

Someone was at the back door. Owen's face registered the confusion I felt. It wasn't exactly Diana's style to knock in the rhythm of the old "Shave-and-a-Haircut" ditty. Besides, why would she have walked all the way around to the back of the house, especially carrying a baby?

"Hello?" Marcus's voice reached us through the empty fireplace, which the parlor shared with the kitchen.

Owen was already on his way back there. I jumped up and followed him.

After knocking, Marcus had pushed the kitchen door open a crack but he was still standing out on our back porch.

"Is this an okay time?" He called through the gap in the door. "I've got the bead board for your risers." In his regional accent, the last word sounded like "rye-zuz."

The confusion on Owen's face intensified, but I crossed the kitchen to greet Marcus.

I pulled the door the rest of the way open, revealing a stack of wood on the porch next to him. "Marcus, hi!

Thanks for bringing it over." "What's all this?" Owen asked.

"It's bead board for the risers on the new staircase," I explained. "I didn't realize you'd be able to bring it over today!"