Page 47 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“That man was cheating.”

“I don’t doubt it. Doesn’t change that this is funnier.” She reached over and took the empty mug off the tray and set it back on the coffee table. Her hand brushed my knee on the way, light, almost absent. The kind of touch a woman gives a man without thinking about it because touching him is just something her body still knows how to do, even when the rest of her has been keeping its distance. “Take your pills.”

I looked at the little dish. Three capsules, same as always—one for the pain, one antibiotic in case any infection was trying to sneak in around the wound, and one for the blood pressure, which the doctor said my age and temperament weren’t doing me any favors for.

“You gonna stand there and watch me do it like I’m one of your daddy’s chickens you’re worried might not eat right?”

“I’m gonna sit there and watch you do it, and yes, because you have a documented history of pocketing pills and pretending.”

“That was one time. Nineteen ninety-something. I was a young man, and I thought I knew better than the doctor.”

“You still think you know better than the doctor. The only thing that’s changed is your knees can’t get away from me fast enough to prove it anymore.”

I picked up the first capsule, put it on my tongue, and took a pull of the tea to wash it down. Odette watched, unblinking, the same way she used to watch our boys when they were small and sick, and she didn’t trust either of them to swallow medicine without spitting half of it into a napkin the second her back was turned.

“There,” I said, after the second one went down.

“One more.”

“I can count, Odette.”

“Then count faster.”

I took the third one. Swallowed. She waited a beat longer than seemed necessary, watching my throat move, watching my face, the particular scrutiny of a woman who had decided a thing needs doing right and is not inclined to let a man’s pride get in the way of doing it right.

“Satisfied?” I asked.

“For now.” She finally sat back, tension going out of her shoulders in a way I understood to mean she’d finished whatever internal checklist she’d been running. “You’ll take the next round at eight. I already texted myself a reminder, so don’t think you’re getting out of it by claiming you forgot the time.”

“You text yourself reminders about my medicine?”

“I text myself reminders about everything that matters and everything I don’t trust you to remember on your own. You’re on both lists.”

I laughed at that—a real one, short and rough, but real. It pulled at something in my side that reminded me the bullet wound wasn’t the only place age had started collecting rent, but I didn’t mind it much right then. On the television, the family from Ohio had lost Fast Money by four points and were hugging each other like they’d won the lottery anyway. Odette shook her head at the screen with the particular fondness of a woman who’d watched this exact show enough times to have long since stopped expecting the contestants to be good at math.

“You know,” I said, after a minute, watching her more than the television now, “I was starting to think you were gon’ stay mad at me clean through the winter.”

Odette didn’t answer right away. She reached for her own tea, took a sip, and set it down with that same deliberate care she gave everything. When she did finally look at me, there was something in her face I couldn’t quite name—not quite the softness of before, not quite the hardness of the past few weeks, but something in between that I chose, in that moment, to read as the beginning of forgiveness. Because a man recovering from a bullet wound and a family full of grief wants to believe the woman feeding him ginger tea has decided he’s still worth the trouble.

“I was mad,” she said. “I’m still a little mad. What you did to Priest, locking that boy up off the books like a piece of property—that was wrong, Winston. I told you so, and I meant it. What Amai did to Kaisen, putting him in a hole in the ground like an animal—that whole family’s gone crazy with grief and pride, and I don’t like watching my sons turn into you and your daddy before my very eyes.” She paused. “But you’re still my husband. You’re still recovering from a bullet you took defending this family. I can be mad at the decisions and still bring you your tea.”

“That’s a fine line to walk.”

“I’ve been walking it thirty-some years. I got good balance.”

I reached over slowly, because everything I did those days was slow. My body was still relearning what it was allowed to do without complaint. I put my hand over hers on the couch cushion between us. She didn’t pull away. That, more than the tea, more than the sandwich cut just so, more than the pills lined up like good little soldiers, told me something was shifting back toward where it used to be. Odette Landry did not let a man touch her hand when she was still fully, completely angry. I’d learned that particular signal a long time ago, back when we were young and broke and fighting about money instead of about bullet wounds and buried sons.

“I’m not gon’ apologize for keeping this family standing,” I said. “You know that about me. Never have, never will.”

“I know it. Don’t mean I have to like every method.”

“No. Reckon it don’t.”

We sat like that for a minute, her hand under mine, the television chattering along in the background with some new family up on the risers hollering about the survey said. I let myself have that minute the way I don’t usually let myself have things—unguarded, unhurried, a man on a couch with his wife instead of a general planning his next campaign.

“You want more tea?” she asked, pulling her hand back to reach for the mug.

She stood and gathered the tray. Forty years of habit that neither of us had bothered to break. She paused at the mouth of the hallway, looking back at me on the couch, cane leaned against the arm, the game show glow flickering blue-white across my face.