Page 96 of Goodbye Paradise
“I can’t get over the hospital Maggie took me to. I thought all babies were born at home.”
“Yeah,” I said, squeezing her instep. “I’ll bet that seems pretty strange. But if anything goes wrong, they can help.”
“I have to stay two nights.” She made a face. “Maggie said she’ll stay with me. But I don’t want to take her from Chloe.”
“I’ll stay a night,” I suggested. “And Maggie can stay the other one. We’ll split it.”
Miriam turned her smile on me. “You know I love you, right? But I was thinking of asking Josh if he’d take a shift.”
I tipped my head back against the sofa and laughed. “That just figures.”
“Don’t be mad. But I’m a little scared of babies. And he…”
“…Isn’t,” I supplied.
“Yeah.” Her voice was soft. “I’m happy that you have him, Caleb. I truly am.”
There wasn’t a thing I could say to that, except the obvious. “Thank you.”
“I thought we were doomed, you know that? Both of us. And I won’t pretend that the last year was easy. But I’m so optimistic now.”
“I’m glad,” I ground out, because my throat had seized up completely. And suddenly I was losing a battle with tears that I didn’t even know I’d been fighting. My chin sagged onto my chest, and a sob came heaving from my throat.
“Oh, noooo!” Miriam crooned. She scrambled into a kneeling position, grabbing my head against her giant curvy body.
Ihatedbreaking down. But that was the thing about tears—they didn’t care. It had been so long since I let any out that now they poured out of me like a river. Another sob burst forth. “I’m sorry,” I said for the thousandth time.
“Shh,” she said. The sound of her voice was precious to me. Miriam was one of my oldest friends. I’d been looking out for her for as long as I could remember. I thought it was my duty. The part I didn’t understand, though, was that I didn’t have to do it alone.
I cried anyway, though. I shed tears for those who wouldn’t wake up here with us tomorrow: for whichever girl Asher targeted next, and for my own mother, who used to knit me new socks every year. I shed tears for the kids who wouldn’t go to a real school, and for the boys who liked boys and were terrified to admit it.
I’d come so far, and yet there was no way I’d ever be able to fix all the things that were wrong.
A few minutes into my crying jag, Josh appeared at my other side, his hands free of Chloe. He must have pawned her off on someone else, because he shoved me over a few inches and took a seat on my other side.
Nowbothmy oldest friends were holding me while I struggled to breathe normally again.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. That was my only job this morning. But it was so hard to set my burdens down, that even this seemed impossible.
When my sadness finally lifted, I found my head on Josh’s shoulder. He stroked my hair slowly, patiently.
“Josh?”
“Mmm?” he said.
“Can we get married?”
His breath caught, and then I felt his smile against my forehead. “You do mean to each other, right?”
I squeezed his knee. “Yes. Would you do that for me?”
“I would like that very much,” he said in a small voice.
“Oh, man,” Miriam said, raising a hand to her face. “Now you’re going to makemecry.”
“So?” I gave her knee a little pinch, the way I would have done when we were kids. “Why should I have all the fun?” Sitting here together, a warmth spread through my chest. I took a deep breath through my sniffly nose and felt calmer again. “We’ll hold off on the wedding until after you have the baby,” I said. “So you can fit into one of Maggie’s dresses.”
“I know a good catering company,” Josh said.
