Page 59 of Remembering You
“I think we’re going to need to buy a larger dining table,” Marty chuckled, counting the extra bodies. With Chris’s sons—and if they bring partners or girlfriends. As well as the grandkids starting to pile up… her eight-person dining table wasn’t quite going to cut it anymore.
Lio yawned in her arms and Chris bent down, lifting her into a hug, pressing his lips against her pink, ruddy cheek. “Good morning, little Lio,” he said, cooing softly. Lio wriggled her arms and legs against the several blankets wrapped around her, then let out a small sneeze.
Chris’s face immediately twisted, going from family mode straight into doctor zone. He pressed the backs of his knuckles to her cheeks and forehead, face creasing into thoughtful lines and wrinkles. “Is she sick? She shouldn’t be out in the cold if she is.”
Marty smiled and shook her head. “She’s not sick. Sometimes babies sneeze. I was going to take her back inside with me and Olivia in a moment, though.” She quirked a brow in his direction, giving the man she loved a pointed look. “You’re not the only medical professional in this house, you know.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “Still, I’d feel better if we took her back inside just to check her temperature real quick.”
Marty smiled. “Yes, Dr. Foster.” She paused then as he turned to go into the house, carrying her granddaughter tenderly in his arms. “I love you, Chris,” Marty said. It wasn’t her first time saying it, and it certainly wouldn’t be her last, but Chris paused all the same, a couple of feet in front of her. Turning, he smiled and tilted his head as she closed the space between them.
“I’ll never tire of hearing those words from you,” he said. “I love you too, Marty Tripp.”
He bent, kissing Marty before tugging them both inside her house.Theirhouse. The house she and Jim shared… that Jim built for her, still held so much of him within it. But she was certain he would approve of Chris. Like Chris. Maybe in a different world, Jim and Chris would have been friends.
Marty swallowed, a knot lodging in the center of her throat as Chris sat on the couch, unwrapping Lio from the swaddles to take her temperature. Olivia crawled up beside him, watching his every move. “Is she okay, Grandpa Chris?”
Grandpa Chris. Marty’s breath caught. Who taught her to call him that? In a blink, Marty was standing in that room with Jim again, thirty years ago.
I got home from work and kicked off my white keds by the front door, catching Jim’s gaze as he looked up at me from where he held our son in his arms on the couch, rocking him back and forth. “Look, Cam,” he whispered in our sleeping son’s ear. “Mommy’s home.”
It was my first day back at work in three months and leaving Cam and Jim at home was like leaving a piece of my heart in someone else’s hands.
“How was it?” Jim asked, beaming.
Hot tears sprang to my eyes. “It was good,” I admitted. “But hard. I wanted to call a million times throughout the day.” Jim stood, shifting Cam into his other arm and enveloping me in a hug. “Carla says it gets easier.” I felt Jim nodding from where his cheek was pressed to the top of my head. “Ugh, enough of that.” I waved my hands in the air and cursed the hormones still raging through my body. “How was your day? How’s my little man?” I grinned at the baby in Jim’s arms and without asking, lifted my giggling three-month old into the air.
“He was awesome,” Jim said. “We checked in on a job site this morning for an hour and then came back here. I got the laundry done and even managed to write up a couple proposals. And…”
Jim ran to the closet and pulled out a poster board, holding it up for me. “Tada!”
I laughed and examined it more closely. “What the hell is that?”
“Cam’s vision board,” he announced proudly.
“He’s not even a year old… his vision board should consist entirely of my boobs.”
Jim’s brows bounced up and down. “Then Cam and I have similar vision boards, I guess.”
I scrunched my nose. “Ew. For very different reasons, I hope.”
“Well, obviously.” Jim wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me in for a kiss. His tongue brushed against my bottom lip and I parted, moaning as his tongue explored against my own. “I missed you today,” he whispered.
“I missed you, too.” A gurgling noise, followed by an inhuman amount of spit up on my shoulder caused me to break away from Jim with a sigh. “Ah, the joys of a new baby,” I laughed, and grabbed a wet paper towel to clean myself up. Shifting Cam to my other hip, I bent, examining the vision board Jim had created for our son. “So… you want him to take over your business some day?” I asked, pointing at the Tripp Construction logo which he crudely drew in ‘& Son’ between the words. “What if he doesn’t want to be a contractor?”
Jim shrugged. “That’s fine, too. It would be awesome to work with him someday, though.” Jim pointed to a University of New England brochure. “He’ll get his degree at UNE, or maybe Harvard.”
“A Harvard educated contractor, huh?”
Jim narrowed his eyes at me, playfully. “Hey, now. I don’t like what you’re implying.”
I held my hands up, surrendering. “You’re right, sorry. Who are these people?” I pointed to an old couple smiling at the camera… clearly a cutout from my Redbook magazine.
“That’s us,” Jim said proudly.
“Us?”
“When we’re old and gray and grandparents to the four kids Cam someday has.” He pointed to a large family portrait on the other side. “That’s us as grandparents. We’re going to make pretty hot grandparents, you know that?”
