Page 40 of Second Chance

“Good idea, bro. Thanks.” Sean starts rolling another cigarette, and Tony decides he’s out of energy for comforting people he doesn’t know and also out of patience with secondhand smoke.

Tony knocks into Lia’s stroller accidentally-on-purpose. She starts crying immediately. “Sorry. I’d better take her for a walk, calm her down.”

“See ya.”

Tony waits until they’re around the corner to breathe a sigh of relief. “You,” he tells Lia, “are the best wing woman on the planet.”

She doesn’t stop crying, so he picks her up and starts to rock her until she settles a little. They’ll do a quick loop around the building, enough time for Sean to finish his cigarette and fuck off but not so much that Gianna will come looking for them and freak out.

“What a mess,” he mutters, still holding Lia. “Don’t tell your mom I said that about her friends. It’s true though. None of them are ready to be in relationships.” He thinks guiltily of Daniel and wonders if he’s ready to be in a relationship with all the baggage he’s carrying from last year and all the years before. Tony hopes he is. He hopes he doesn’t lean on Daniel so hard Daniel crumbles.

By the time they pass the front entrance, Lia calms down enough to go into the stroller again, and Tony realizes it’s a verybad idea for Sean to cover for Lily. He shouldn’t let someone who isn’t insured drive the car. He’d be the one on the line for the money as far as the insurance company is concerned if they found out. If Sean and Lily tell the truth, they have a chance at getting partial coverage. Tony knows much more about car insurance than either Sean or Lily, so they probably think Sean is getting her out of trouble. Someone should let them know that’s not the case. Not now, when they’re both struggling, but maybe Tony can find Sean’s number in their shop files on Monday to let him know he ought to change his statement for the insurance company. What a fun conversation to start his week with.

He feels bad for Lily. After everything she went through last year, she deserves an easy start to the semester, not all of this. No wonder she’s struggling. Tony wonders if maybe she’d have been better off starting fresh somewhere else. The country has more than enough tiny liberal arts colleges dotted around it. Returning to the one she almost died at might not have been the best choice. Especially given Lily was on edge before Professor Lawrence was killed.

Tony feels bad for Sean as well. The guy has probably never taken responsibility for anything in his life, not if he’s the kind of kid whose parents can pay for this place out of pocket, buy him dress shoes for college, and not bat an eye at a hefty bill for a car accident. He’s trying, at least. Telling him about the insurance will be a load off Sean’s shoulders. But now also seems to be a bad time to add more fuel to the fire of Lily’s stress.

Mercifully, Sean has left when Tony returns to his spot by the back door, saving Tony from making the decision of when to let him know about his insurance. Even better, he didn’t spot the olives where Tony left them in the shade past the door. Lia’s playing with her pacifier again. Tony sits on the steps leadingdown from the paved walkway surrounding the building to the parking lot, one hand on Lia’s stroller and the other free to nibble.

He makes it about halfway through his olives before the noise inside escalates again. Preemptively, Tony rocks the stroller, hoping the motion will keep Lia calm. She already made her preference for constant motion known when she was a fetus. Whenever Gianna was up and walking around, Lia was calm and quiet, but as soon as Gianna sat down, she’d start to kick. Tony remembers the first time he felt it. Gianna called him into the front from the workshop. She sounded so freaked out he sprinted to her in the office. He found her slumped in the office chair, hands cupping her belly under the thick high school sweatshirt she stole from Blake W when he went to college and forgot it at their house.

“C’mere.” Gianna waved him over impatiently. “Touch.”

“You hate when people touch your stomach.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, strangers I didn’t ask. Come on!”

He put his hand on her stomach tentatively and, only seconds later, was rewarded by the reverberation of the person who would one day be Lia. “Oh my God.”

Gianna nodded wordlessly. She’d been feeling it for a few days, but no one else had been able to yet.

“Hey,” Tony whispered, rubbing the baby bump. “Hi, little person.”

It was the first time he fully realized Lia was going to be real, and the sense of awe hasn’t diminished since then.

From behind, the door opens, and a wave of noise crashes over them. Lia cries out in discomfort. It’s bizarre because she doesn’t mind the godawful Top 40 station Gianna likes to play in the front office at full volume or the sounds of the workshop. Lianaps there with no problem, but this memorial appears to be an issue.

Tony struggles to his feet and picks Lia up, shushing her softly.

The door closes, the noise diminishing.

Moving slowly so he doesn’t jar Lia, Tony turns to see who it is. Hopefully, not Sean.

“Sorry,” whispers a little girl barely as tall as the door handle. “Am I allowed to be here?”

“Of course.” Tony tries to school his face into something calm and welcoming. “Are your parents in there?”

She nods. A black bow fixed in her hair leans a little lopsidedly, hard to see against the tight, dark coils of it. “My dad’s inside.”

“He knows where you are?”

Again, she nods. Her dark purple dress, with its little flowers, pairs with a white blouse. She probably doesn’t have any black clothes. Why would she? She can’t be older than five.

“I’m Tony, and this is Lia,” he says, and Lia chooses to mark the moment by pulling at the top button of his shirt. “What’s your name?”

“Francie,” she says.

“Nice to meet you, Francie. You seem a little young for college.”

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