And Gennie loved having a younger cousin to lead around. Noah called it her big-sister britches and that was so adorably accurate. They were as thick as thieves and it was both amazing and slightly terrifying to watch. They'd spend hours being precious and tending the animals on Shay and Noah's farm—and if you took your eyes off of them for two minutes, you'd find them carrying a canoe down to the cove. Or they'd quietly raid Noah's collection of special-batch jams and set up a table on the side of the road, selling them for half of what he sold them for in the farmstand.
Shay liked to say it was good for them to get into trouble together. As a pair of only children with slightly hyper parents, they needed to push boundaries and cook up mischief..
I was happy they had each other. Jude, however, still leaned hard on the hyper side of things since Percy was extremely accident prone. He broke his wrist jumping off the monkey bars at school last winter and the day after the cast came off, he fell off the roof of the garage and broke three fingers on the opposite hand. Add to that tally more than a dozen stitches and a couple bumps on the head worthy of CT scans, and the local ERs hated to see us coming.
Janet liked to say it was good for Jude to experience this. He did ride a craft-project motorcycle as a teenager, after all.
"But Noah, Ben, and the beers?" I asked.
He shrugged. "I can do both." He moved to the window, holding back the lace curtain to peer outside. From this room in the old Victorian, he could see all the way down the water. "Do you ever think— Nah. We'll talk about it later."
"Talk about what later?" I turned away from the mirror. "You're not allowed to start sentences like that and then sayWe'll talk about it later."
"We come here a lot. We like this town. Right? There's a festival every damn month." He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket. "Do you ever think we should take a look at moving here?"
Over the past year, our new family realized a couple of things. First, our house was a bit too small for us. It wasfinethough we had no breathing room whatsoever. Jude's home office wasin the basement, which wasn't ideal, and Percy's room was tight for a kid with a lot of books and a lot of stuffed animals—and an aging beagle-brother. But the real problem came down to all of us sharing one bathroom. That issue alone was enough to send me out on a house hunt.
We also realized there weren't tons of kids in the neighborhood. Hardly any in Percy's age range. Lots of babies, lots of teenagers. Not much in between. He had plenty of friends from school but playdates weren't the same as neighborhood friends.
Another issue: it was much harder to bake at my regular volume when my kitchen also served as the site of at least two meals per day, homework, lesson planning and grading, and nearly all family business.
All of this meant something had to change. Either we found something new or took on a renovation project. But the market was a wild, terrifying beast and construction seemed like a nightmare.
Though we hadn't considered leaving the Boston area for Rhode Island.
"I'd have to leave my school. It's too far to commute," I said. "And what about Jamie and Ruth? I love them, you know. Kind of a lot."
"Trust me, I know." He motioned to the tent outside, where tonight's party would take place. "But you love Shay too. Kind of a lot. Plus, Emme and Ryan have been talking about building a new place down here when he retires."
"That would be a big change for Percy." I rolled the tube of lip color between my fingers. "And for me, too."
"Then it's not right for us," he said. "Not now."
I studied him for a moment, taking in the wide set of his shoulders, the collar open at his throat, and the thick, unruly waves of his hair. He seemed…settled in a way that I hadn'tnoticed until now. Or perhaps I had noticed but attributed it to the ease that came with life being a little less difficult these days—save for the kid who seemed to think he'd get a free sandwich if he visited the ER enough times in a year.
Percy hadlovedkindergarten in Aurora's class. Most of his peers had picked up enough ASL that he didn't have to rely on the tablet to communicate. He was in Jamie's class this year and we weren't sure how he'd do with navigating Auntie Jamie versus Ms. Rouselle, though it hadn't been much of a problem. And he adored her class. Could not say enough good things about first grade.
Janet was still healthy as could be. No recurrence. Percy and I baked a special loaf of bread before her quarterly PET scans and shipped it overnight so she'd have a little love from us to help her through. Later, we'd celebrate the all-clear on a video call. Gary from up the street always made an appearance.
And Janet's good pal Rita was doing well too. Her lizard mosaic art still scared the crap out of me, though Percy thought it waswicked cool.
Brenda's rehab following the surgery to repair her broken hip had been tough but she was fully recovered now and loving her memory care community. There were good days and bad days, of course, but it seemed like she was finally getting what she needed, and that made everything else better. We sent her special loaves of bread too, along with Percy's baking videos. He was something of a showman when it came to telling folks what to do in the kitchen, and he loved editing the videos with his quippy little voiceovers.
My mother still called fairly often. She liked to pretend nothing had happened and would chatter on with breezy updates about my father and sister as if they weren't my sworn enemies. At first, I'd hated everything about these calls—and Jude had side-eyed me pretty hard for taking them at all.
But I gradually noticed that she didn't drop needless barbs or insults at me anymore. That she started asking questions about my work. She even made some polite, if not painfully stiff, inquiries about my "friend." That was obviously Jude, and I took a huge amount of smug joy in announcing he and his son had moved in with me.
There were no apologies but there wouldn't be. That wasn't how her world worked. But she hadn't ripped into me for stringing Brecken along and embarrassing my father that way. And she hadn't shrieked about the mess I'd make of my life by consorting with Jude. It wasn't much but it was something.
I did know it was weird to take any of this as progress. I was aware thatnotverbally attacking me was the least she could do. But it was better than where we'd started, and that meant something to me.
"I like the idea ofnot now," I said. "This isn't the moment for us to make a big move, not with everything we have going on, but we'll make it someday."
"We'll focus on getting this kid through elementary school first," Jude said. "Finish the adoption too. That gives us plenty of time to decide whether you'd be happy teaching in the schools here and if we have enough insurance coverage for Percy to be in the same town as Gennie for more than a few days at a time."
We'd started the adoption process over the past few months. Stunningly, Maddie had been the one to suggest it when we visited Saginaw in July. I didn't have grounds for comparison but based on everything I'd heard from Jude, it seemed like Maddie had chilled out in a big way this year.
He said it was because she was in a serious relationship and didn't have the time to invent new ways to torture him. I imagined some of that was true but also that she'd moved into a new season of grief. Regardless of which side was right, she'd been content to follow Jude's lead on visitation. She flew out forPercy's birthday weekend last September and again this year, and we visited with her in Saginaw the whole month of July. This seemed to give her what she needed.
