Just anger and stupidity.
The next morning, I had been so distraught I started crying at breakfast in front of the boys. Logan thought it was because of him. He had been so patient. So understanding. So desperate to fix what he thought he’d broken.
That had only made me cry harder.
I had locked myself in the bedroom.
He’d had Darren take the boys and spent the rest of the day trying to get me to come out.
I had, with the decision to tell him everything.
But when I’d opened the door, he had been standing there looking so sweet and apologetic that I’d ended up telling him that I forgave him
That I never wanted to talk about it again.
He had been too relieved to question it.
Now I wish he had.
Chapter Twenty
Logan
“Daddy, can we have a sister?” River asks from the back seat, twisting the little bear I bought him at the hospital gift shop.
“Uh…” I glance at him in the rearview mirror. “Well, bud, we… we have you.”
“But I’m not a girl!” he yells in his tired toddler voice, holding the bear up by its ear.
I narrow my eyes at the road and suddenly wish I’d let my mom pick him and Myles up at the hospital.
Maybe I can placate him with a puppy. It worked before.
When we found out Myles was a boy, Jess was ecstatic. But she’d also been a little bummed about not having a daughter. So, as a push present, I went to the animal shelter and came home with a three-month-old pit bull.
Something that became a tradition.
In olden times, Vikings supposedly presented women with cow heads for giving birth. I brought Jess a puppy. I twist my lips, wondering if I’m remembering that right. Maybe it was Norsemen. Or are they the same? I should really Google that.
Whoever it was, a dead animal doesn’t seem like an appropriate gift for a woman who just gave birth.
A live one isn’t ideal either, but I took charge of everything, the chewed shoes, the accidents, the dinosaur phases.
I can’t help smiling when I remember how happy Jess was when I brought Bell home. It had been a gamble. She lost her childhood dog, while we were in college, and I know that shattered her.
But it paid off.
Another thought hits me out of nowhere.
If we separate… what happens to the dogs?
Do we split them? I gave them to her, technically. But they’re really the kids’ dogs now.
We can’t take the only constant away from them.
Not if we’re already breaking their family.
By the time I pull up to my mom’s apartment, my thoughts are spiraling through alternate weekends and custody schedules.
