Ella Dean is a (chanteuse) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-03-08 00:38:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | batman, wendy darling |
Who: Ella & Luke
What: Coffee, babies and discussions
When: Recently
Warnings: Nada.
With Wren and Gus out for the day, Luke was looking forward to having some time with Lia that occurred when she was actually awake. Working made it hard, especially with the nature of his job, but it was worth it to be able to provide for his family. Still, he was glad he had the day off and, barring some emergency, he wouldn’t be called in. He was a little apprehensive about taking her out of the house but he figured it couldn’t hurt, and he opted for a baby carrier (which he’d splurged on, maybe a little) instead of a stroller; he liked having her close, against his chest. After bundling her up to be safe, packing a bag, and carefully getting her strapped in, he left the dogs behind and set out.
Wanting to stay away from the really busy places, he headed for a small cafe off the Strip where he usually got his coffee before work. Lia, for once, wasn’t fussing, instead taking in the world with wide eyes while she sucked happily on her pacifier. She was doing well with keeping her head up, and he told her as much in quiet, hushed tones, earning some smiles from passerbys that he didn’t mind in the slightest. He was proud of his kids, incredibly so; they were good things in his life, and he didn’t have a lot of those.
Once he reached the cafe, he found a corner table, ordered a coffee, and sat to begin the equally careful process of getting Lia out of the carrier.
The apartment smelled of laundry and of bread, both warm and pleasant smells but the apartment itself was too small for an entire day away from work. The childcare place had a yard, with swings and a slide and padded mats out in back and there was no yard tacked on to the apartment, but a scrubby patch of concrete out back some of the residents in the building liked to sit out in chairs in. Without a yard meant out. Ella had liked the part when Beth had been small enough to carry around snuggled against her heart. The weight of her had been a comfort, slung over her shoulders and heavy against her chest. Now she was close enough to two that she was able to walk, even if it was painstakingly slowly and stopping to examine every bug that crawled on the sidewalk between little fingers. It was slow, but going someplace where they made coffee Ella hadn’t made herself and there might be something sweet Beth could crumble in her fingers for fifteen minutes would eat up time and be someplace that wasn’t the apartment itself.
She took a bus partways, to a cafe that wasn’t expensive and had good coffee and Ella smiled at the people who smiled at Beth, small and grateful even if her hand tightened on Beth’s shoulder when they did. She was better now, better with the childminder whose background check had come back without a thing on it but a parking ticket when she had been seventeen, and better with strangers who told her her little girl was cute, but not good enough that she wanted them to linger. When they clambered off the bus it was slow progress once again. Ella was jeans worn to white at the knees and a shirt bought off the racks at Goodwill that someone else had washed and laundered until it was thin and paper, long in the sleeves and loose in the front until anything was lost. She didn’t look like anybody who anybody should notice, and the blond curls were knotted back from being springy-damp and wild from the shower. It was Beth people noticed, Beth who pointed at the things she wanted to wear and Beth who had given up on the soft, pretty cotton dresses too.
When the door pushed in, it was Ella holding it as Beth waddled in, striped tights and buckled shoes and a bright green tee-shirt over a Cinderella dress-up dress, and Ella looked around the cafe like someone looking for the nearest wall to put their back against. He was familiar, and then he turned his head and Ella saw the baby snug against his chest and her smile was sunny, no hesitation at all.
“Luke, is that your new one?”
The sound of his name registered with surprise, because Luke hadn’t been expecting to run into anyone he knew. Jack and Max weren’t likely to be in public since they were supposed to be dead, he wasn’t speaking to MK and Adam anymore, and otherwise most people he knew were from work or from the journal, not necessarily in person. He looked up, distracted, as Lia waved her arms and legs as though she took great joy in making things difficult for him; he already suspected she was going to grow up to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Recognition sank in, then, and he smiled, first at Ella and then at Beth. “Yeah, this is Delia,” he said proudly, a smile and a downward glance before he looked up again. “We call her Lia, though. Gus was a little disappointed we didn’t name her Zebra, but he got over it.”
He gestured to the empty chair on the other side of the table. “You should sit. Beth’s getting big,” he added, another smile and a small wave for the little girl, more a wiggle of fingers than anything, and Lia blinked and stared with wide blue eyes.
The baby cuddled in against his chest looked like she’d had a couple months to grow. She was small still but pretty, the soft, ink-blue eyes of the very tiny. Ella remembered nights split apart by screaming, the days felt thick, like swimming, so tired she had barely been awake. Luke looked tall, healthy, the baby curled like a comma in the soft carrier. She left the comparison, the newborn laid on hospital blankets, where it was and she squeezed Beth’s fingers between hers like a reminder, leaned down to lift her onto her hip.
“Lia’s a pretty name,” she said, soft. Ella’s speaking voice was as alto as her singing voice, all sleepy-slow syllables coupled together, and she sat at the gestured chair with gratitude and a quick look around like having her back to the room presented all kinds of trouble. She liked the booths at the diner because nothing could come behind you, and she liked being able to see the door open and close. She said none of this, but she settled Beth on her lap who waved without a shadow of doubt, all cheerful hand and her other fingers shoved into her mouth.
“She’ll be two soon, and I can’t believe it. She’s walking now, and in a year it’ll be thinking about preschool. But I guess it’s like Amanda, I saw her first off when she was tiny and now she’s seven and her own little person.” She smoothed the mess of curls on Beth’s head, the soft yellow of babyhood beginning just a little to hint of mousing over into brown. “How’s Gus handling not having all the attention?”
The sleepless nights still happened, he didn’t think they’d be out of that stage just yet, but Luke had never really needed much sleep and split between the two of them it was manageable. At first it had been hard but they’d had a couple months to develop a rhythm, to learn, and he could now say it was okay without having to lie. “Thanks,” he said, clearly comfortable with the name choice and proud of it. “Wren likes it because it’s three letters, like Gus. At least they’ll never have to deal with people mispronouncing their names.” He smiled, failing to notice that her look around was more than just a casual glance. Once he’d been paranoid and on edge all the time, a distrusting thing that waited for those who sought to strike so he could do so first, but now he was more relaxed, at ease, and he didn’t realize that Ella might not be. But he was comfortable, too, with himself and his ability to keep his daughter safe.
“Two,” he repeated, incredulous. “I always used to hear people with kids say that time flies, but I never really understood it until now.” Gus had already left his baby and toddler years behind when he’d found him, and even though he still regretted not being there he was glad he wasn’t missing anything when it came to Lia. “Yeah, I remember when Amanda was just a baby. She’s really come into her own. Stubborn, too, just like both her parents.” He took a sip of his coffee as he thought about Gus, who was, thankfully, doing better than expected. “He was quiet at first,” he admitted. “And I think he still thinks she’s a little boring, because she can’t play with him. And, of course, he hates her crying. But we’re trying to make sure he doesn’t feel left out. Like, Wren is with him right now. You know?” He loved both his children equally, and he never wanted either of them to feel otherwise.
“No,” Ella said, of knowing and she shook her head above that of Beth’s own mouse-blond curly one because she didn’t. She’d imagined when she was little and playing house, a little girl in the backyard with a wooden house bought for her birthday, she’d imagined children upon children, babies in a vague, lovely happy-ever-after. And when she’d met Cooper, her fingers threaded into his and talk of family and what it meant, she’d thought then that when they had the first, she’d have another, and possibly another until they had someone to play with always, all the same. No guns and nothing grown-up, childhood with warm cookies and mud and laughter. But there were going to be no more babies. Ella cuddled Beth tighter, who wriggled and began banging the spoon on the table, and someone in an apron came over quickly. Ella asked for coffee, quiet and clear and a cookie from the case - she pointed - and the waitress disappeared, busy with the other tables.
“No, I don’t. But I can imagine,” Ella smiled, sugar stirred into tea to take some of the blunt lacking out of it. “She’ll grow up though. And be entertaining for him,” she removed the spoon from Beth’s fingers with a skill that showed practice, and handed her a paper napkin instead. “But they’re gorgeous that age. So sweet and sleepy and heavy. I miss it.”
Too late he realized he’d used the wrong choice of words; of course she didn’t know, she only had Beth. And, with her husband gone, the likelihood of another was slim. Stupid. “That’s what I meant,” Luke said, a little too earnest to backtrack, and he distracted himself by, finally, easing Lia out of the sling to cradle her oh, so carefully, in his arms. She made a few noises from behind her pacifier at being moved, but settled easily without fussing. “The-- sentiment, of not wanting Gus to feel left out or less loved.” He smiled and nodded when she said that Lia would grow, because she would, but he kind of wanted to slow that process down as much as possible. He didn’t want it to happen too fast. “Yeah. For now, he has his animals,” he laughed. “I just don’t want her to grow up too fast. I didn’t… I missed out on that part with Gus, so.” He shrugged.
He watched as Ella swiftly replaced Beth’s spoon with a napkin, unable to hold back a smile. “So how’ve you been?”
The baby didn’t make much of a noise at all, she rolled into his arms like she knew she had all the love in the world and for one long minute, Ella’s heart squeezed, tight as a lock without a key, like it had been seconds ago instead of nearly two years. Lia blinked up at her daddy safe in the knowledge he’d see her walk, he’d see her first word and he’d cuddle her the same way until she was grown and then he’d cuddle her own babies. Luke was every single bit the proud papa and she figured maybe she saw a little of why Max was always so warm in talking about him, like he’d managed to turn out like love wasn’t anything at all to have to part with, even with Thomas. “That baby,” she said, her throat closing tight around it, and she smiled instead of letting her eyes sting, “Is just about the most comfortable thing in the world right now.”
The waitress returned with a cup of coffee in a cardboard cup, instead of anything china that small hands could grab at, and a cookie on a plate that Ella dragged in front of the baby on her own knee and broke into pieces before letting Beth at it. “I don’t think Gus is going to feel less loved, honey, you sound like you’re doing it right.” Beth tossed her napkin to the floor in favor of the cookie, scattering crumbs all over the tabletop and Ella didn’t consider the question, smiling over her coffee cup like life was tied up in ribbons.
“I’m fine.” It was better than Ian, and it was better than after Ian, and that was, Ella figured, as close as it would get over to fine now. “Apart from a real well-intentioned Cupid, everything is fine. How’s Wren? She doing okay?”
Luke knew, logically, that when Lia cried it wasn’t his fault or Wren’s, that all babies cried and neither of them should take it personally. But still, it felt special when she was content, when she smiled or gurgled up at them like she knew, like she loved them even though she was so very small. That was how he felt then, and there were few people in this world that he’d ever looked at the way he looked at his daughter; in fact, there was only three. Maybe his parents, too, when they’d been alive, but never Thomas. That kind of love had just hurt more than anything. “You think?” He dragged his gaze back up with a laugh, a little sheepish. “Don’t let her fool you. She can be pretty loud when she wants to be,” he said, but it was all fondness.
He watched Beth, imagining what Lia might be like at that age, and thinking a little bit too about what Gus had been like, but that train of thought usually let to remembering that he hadn’t been around, that he hadn’t known, and the ache that followed wasn’t worth it. “Thanks,” he said honestly. It was nice to hear it from someone else every now and then, because he wasn’t always very good at convincing himself. He smiled when the little girl tossed her napkin to the floor, and Lia’s blue gaze flickered over, momentarily, taking in all that could be taken in with wide eyes.
Fine didn’t always mean fine, he knew, but Ella seemed okay. “That’s good.” He hadn’t had a Valentine of his own, but he knew about it. “What did you get?” he asked, curious, and for once he didn’t have to pretend or be careful with his answer when she asked about Wren. “Wren’s good. Spending a lot of time with Lia. She hasn’t gone back to work yet.” He was comfortable with that; he certainly wasn’t pushing her to go back. “I don’t want her to rush. I want her to be ready.”
She’d loved Cooper more than her heart had had room for, more than music and chances and lights up on stage. She’d loved him so much she couldn’t breathe but she’d loved Beth from the second Beth had been put in her arms so much more. Ella watched Luke gaze on at his little girl like she was the sun and the stars and the moon, and she stirred her coffee and thought about Lin, about mothers who weren’t meant to have babies when babies themselves and about daddies who didn’t know the meaning of the word. Lia in Luke’s arms looked warm and sleepy and precious, with the weight of all that clean baby smell. She’d grow faster than imaginable, but loved. She leaned over, scooped up the dropped napkin and tucked it into the curl of her palm, and she ran a fingertip up Beth’s arm from wrist to shoulder, soft-pale skin stained sun-gold.
“I got a dress,” she said. It wasn’t a dress, it was a Dress, hung on the back of her wardrobe like a Disney princess had stopped by on her way back from a ball. Ella hadn’t worn anything formal since high school prom, and even then it had been something stitched up from Joann’s. “And some kind of attempted set-up with just about anybody I know.” It hadn’t made her laugh. It had made her curl up on the couch with her knees to her chest, tight-as-tight, feeling like a pawn knocked around on a chessboard, like someone who hadn’t even half-made it to bishop yet. But she was deliberately light now, she kissed Beth’s whorls of hair and she sipped her coffee and she was calm, outward shellac of nothing-wrong-at-all. “They went all out to just about everyone, customers, friends, people I barely know.” Only the jerky little shoulder movement meant to be a shrug said anything was wrong at all.
“I’m glad,” she said, of Wren and of lengthy time at home with babies. She’d tried, to be home as long as she could until the bills stacked up in threatening red. She smiled and she thought of the girl who had been, and she looked at the content baby, and Ella figured it was something to do with both. “You don’t get that time back.”
“A dress?” Luke looked up and smiled. It sounded like a nice enough gift and, clearly, she’d asked for it, or at least that was how this exchange was meant to work; he’d gotten that much from Bruce. At first he thought maybe the idea of a set-up was kind of cute, an attempt by a well-meaning Cupid, and he almost said as much. Almost, but he watched her expression first and he reconsidered whether he’d want somebody anonymous talking to everyone about him. Much less trying to get him a date, had he been single. “Oh,” he said, careful. “Could you have done without the setting up part?” Some people might not have minded, but some, he knew, definitely would.
He sipped more of his coffee and nodded. “No, you don’t.” He hesitated. “We both missed out on so much with Gus. I don’t want to miss even a second with Lia. Going to work is hard,” he admitted. “She’s still so young, but I keep worrying that I won’t be there for her first step, or her first word. If Wren is, though, that’d almost be as good.”
The dress was pretty. It was long and it was the dark red of spilled wine and laughter and it hung clear to the floor from the back of her closet door. When she’d imagined a dress, she’d pictured something like the sundresses her mother had made for them both, crisp-clean cotton and sandals. She’d worn something from Goodwill on her wedding day, there hadn’t been wedding ceremonies and dinners, just pancakes at the local diner. Ella’s expression sifted like sand beneath glass, tightly compressed. “I could have done without the setting up part,” she confirmed, with a little nod, curled in on Beth like there was nothing that pulled attention more. It rubbed raw, that quest of Cupid’s. She didn’t much mind the point, it reminded her of Max, of her insistence there’d be another. But she minded Cupid talking to people about her, where she couldn’t see, whispered secrets and humiliation.
Ella sipped her coffee and watched Beth crumble the cookie with both fists, “I missed hers,” she said, of Beth and it had hurt, it had hurt a lot when it had happened, but now it was dulled over by time, by the words and steps that followed, “It doesn’t matter what you see or you’re there for, honey, so long as you can be as much as you can.” She smiled at Lia, and she looked at Luke, “Could I maybe hold her?”
Ah. Luke nodded in understanding. If he thought about it, it made sense; especially after what she’d been through with Beth, trusting people couldn’t be easy and some well-meaning cupid had gone around trying to set her up with somebody without her permission. He figured whoever it was had probably just been trying to do something nice but people reacted to things differently, and Ella was just as justified in how she felt as someone who didn’t mind would be.
He wasn’t so sure missing things didn’t matter. When it happened, and it had already begun, he knew it would hurt. He’d wish that he’d been there and he’d wish that, somehow, he didn’t have to work the hours that he did but wishing never accomplished anything. “I hope that’s true,” he said, the closest he would get to admitting that he wasn’t so sure missing out wouldn’t matter. He was a little surprised when she asked to hold Lia, but he only hesitated for a moment. Aside from himself and Wren, Max and Jack were the only two people who’d held the baby, but Ella had experience and he trusted her. She was, after all, family, in a convoluted sort of way. “Sure,” he said, standing slowly and crossing the short distance to her side. “I guess I don’t have to tell you how to hold her, huh?” He held the baby carefully, ready to slip her into the second set of arms once she was ready.
Beth was preoccupied with her cookie so Ella didn’t much have to concentrate on anything but the warm, boneless slide of infant into the crook of her elbow. “Nope,” she said, smiling up at Luke as Lia stirred and then settled. It felt as familiar as breathing in, and not long ago enough and too long all at once. She’d figured she’d have at least three, maybe, and a yard for them to play in and someone who was kind, the way she’d imagined a daddy being. The way her friends’ daddies had been and the way the General had never ever been at all.
“She’s gorgeous,” she said, and this close she could see Lia’s itty bitty eyelashes, the down of her eyebrows, all the parts that made her up. There was going to be some shade of Luke in her face, and of Wren - Wren who she remembered as soft and quiet and pale but couldn’t imagine fully grown. “I missed some things,” she said and she ran one finger over the petal-soft cheek of the baby, “When Beth was gone. But I figure when you love them so much you notice what you’ve missed, maybe that makes up for it.” Ella wasn’t sure missing things didn’t matter, but she’d woken up half a dozen times wishing she could change things she couldn’t, and never would. It wasn’t something Max would do, even if she missed things all the time.
“Or at least, the parts you see, you’re real happy to see.” She smiled at Luke, and then at Beth, “I figure she’s an only, so she’ll get just about every speck of attention I’ve got.”
Luke hovered, only because he couldn’t help it. He’d done the same with Max and Jack, and it had nothing to do with trust, really; he knew he was overprotective and he figured he always would be. But Ella held Lia like she really did know what she was doing, and that soothed his nerves a little. He smiled back, wider when she said the baby was gorgeous. “She is,” he agreed. “Just like her mother.” His voice turned fond, adoration for the two girls in his life evident. “I think she looks more like Wren. Or she’s going to, I guess.” Beth’s disappearance was, he knew, a tender subject, but she’d come back safe and sound and he figured that was what mattered, more so than whatever Ella had missed.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I think loving them counts for a lot,” he said. “And being there makes up for the times you’re not. I just want to make sure I’m there for more than I miss.” He felt like he had a lot to make up for with Gus, considering he’d missed years, but he was trying. Both he and Wren were. “I don’t doubt she’ll grow up loved,” he said, smiling down at Beth and her cookie.
Ella figured babies looked as much like dough as they did their parents, all formless readiness to take on the way the world knocked at them until they held some shape that was all their own. Max looked like the General and she looked like her mother, and Lin looked like Max down to the set of the chin in a way that had to throw back to some other relative, far off. That she looked like neither, like some far-too fluffy duckling from another nest and that her high school biology textbooks said something about how that all worked out, had not been lost on her. Ella stroked a line down Lia’s little nose and let Luke hover like she had china in her hands ready to tumble, because it was proud papa right down to the bones. He was grown, they all were, no longer children playing at adults.
“How’s work?” she said now, with an ease to the way she handled the baby that Lia understood right off and yawned her tiny head off. “They come up with much on the shooting yet?” And then she looked up at the boy-grown-man and pulled a face, “I guess you can’t say anything about that.” Ella didn’t doubt Beth would be loved. She was loved by her mother and she was loved by her aunt and that was enough for one little girl. “And you hear much from…” her voice died, she cuddled the baby close-tight. “I haven’t heard anything in a while.”
Marriage, a job, getting older; none of those things had made Luke feel like an adult more than having kids. Sometimes it faded, sometimes he still felt young and hopelessly out of his depth, but Gus and Lia made him want to grasp that maturity that came with adulthood and hold tight. He needed to be a parent, for them. “Work’s good,” he shrugged. Technically, she was right; he wasn’t supposed to talk about open cases outside of work. “I can’t, really,” he admitted. “But honestly, there isn’t much to tell. Nothing new anyway. We’re kind of stuck.” Nothing they got on the journals could be used as evidence, after all, and if the Murphys had been responsible then they’d covered their tracks really well. He knew Iris, and Bruce knew Iris; it wasn’t her. Proving that was the tricky part.
He shook his head, aware that she couldn’t actually say Max’s name. “I think… I think she might be having a hard time. I mean, I haven’t talked to her in a while, but the last time I did she just sounded kind of defeated.” It worried him, but he wasn’t sure what he, or anyone else, could do.
She had. And the last time Ella had said anything at all to her, it had been something that sounded like she blamed Max for being their father’s kid as much as their father for raping a little girl. Ella wore guilt like a blanket around her shoulders, and she leaned over and kissed the baby’s forehead before sliding Lia back into her father’s arms, fuzzies from holding someone so small and little and warm draining away. Maybe Max and she didn’t work at all unless they weren’t thinking about them at all. Maybe she’d continue to hurt Max and Max would continue to hurt her and maybe they weren’t sisters in anything but blood. Ella figured staying on out of Max’s business was the best way of it, but Max just didn’t allow for anything unless you pushed.
“I think she is,” she said, and she addressed a napkin to small sticky fingers beside her, cookie crumbs and spit producing some kind of binding agent that adhered the plate to the table. “Her not-quite-an-ex is a bag of D-I-C-K-S,” Ella said serenely, sounding out for little ears, “And I guess I made her feel terrible, last we spoke. Maybe Amanda could come visit? Visit you, that is?”
Luke eased Lia back into his arms with a warm, unthinking smile; he trusted Ella but he never quite felt right until his daughter was back with him or Wren. She made a few small noises, not upset, just the coos and snuffles when she was re-settling, and then she was quiet. As for Max, he knew she was difficult. Thomas was, too, but more so. They’d had their problems and their differences but he’d had a lot of time to accustom himself to the way she was, and he could get past her walls a little better now. He just wished he’d managed the same with Thomas. But that didn’t matter now, and he circled back around the table to sit again as he listened.
“Oh, him.” Max had alluded to some guy, not Thomas or Jack, and he frowned at the thought of another man letting her down. “She deserves to find someone decent,” he sighed. “What did you two talk about?” Amanda was something, though. Maybe. He was pretty sure her daughter was the one thing that mattered to her more than anything. “That’s an idea,” he agreed. “It might cheer her up.”
Luke was sweet, and he was capable these days, Papa with a family and Wren at home, but he wasn’t Max and he wasn’t Lin and it wasn’t her story to tell, not when she thought maybe the General might not be hers at all. Ella shook her head no on the detail, and she finished wiping up Beth’s fingers with the napkin. “I said something that wasn’t right and she took it wrong and I haven’t heard a word from her since,” she said now. Dylan was maybe a nice guy but she didn’t know why in hell Max wanted him so bad when he wasn’t anything like anyone she’d heard of Max liking before. Even Thomas, with his clean-cut good looks and silence, she understood better.
“I think if you and Wren wouldn’t mind, I could help some,” she said of Amanda, with the last swallow of her coffee. “I’d have her myself, but she knows you better. I’m happy to take her part of the time. But I think if we could manage it, maybe that’d help her.”
Luke knew secrets too well to push when Ella shook her head. Whatever it was, it wasn’t her story to tell; he could respect that. “Oh,” was all he said. “Are you going to try talking to her again, or wait until she gets in touch with you?” He could understand her wanting to give Max space, but maybe she had too much of that these days.
This was something he needed to clear with Wren first, he knew. Max had never liked her, Thomas hadn’t approved either, and he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about their daughter actually staying with them. “Yeah, we could work it out between ourselves. I’ll check with Wren.” He didn’t feel like getting into their history, into the unpleasantness there, so he just left it at that.
Amanda was a sweetie, but maybe Luke and Wren didn’t have the space. They had the new baby; Ella’s forehead creased up minutely, “I can take her,” she said, “If y’all can’t. You’ve got the little one,” she nodded toward his arms. And maybe money was tight but money was tight all over and maybe Max needed reminding that there was a reason for being something other than scorned by the government. Max didn’t say much about her except when she was there, but when she did it was warm and maternal and full, somehow. “But maybe you can talk to Thomas?” she suggested. She knew the man not a bit beyond a vacation, and maybe he had one day been her brother-in-law, but she’d hardly been a sister at all.
“I don’t know,” she said of Max because she didn’t. Pushing Max only got so far, maybe because Max pushed so much herself she didn’t like it so much, but she was difficult, like eggshell-walking was difficult. But she loved her, and maybe leaving her be would work and maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she’d take a visit from Amanda as prying, and maybe she wouldn’t. Ella straightened up, and she folded a handful of bills under the lip of her plate. “We’d best be getting back, she,” she tipped her head toward the toddler, “Needs a nap or she’ll be grouchy all afternoon. Thanks for the company, honey.” She reached out a hand and squeezed Luke’s shoulder, “And for letting me cuddle Lia.”
Luke bit down on the inside of his lip, scrambling for the right words to explain. “It’s not that we can’t,” he said carefully, “but I work and Wren’s going back soon, I think, and… not that it has anything to do with Amanda, but Max never really liked Wren.” The only difference between now and then was that he’d made it clear he wouldn’t tolerate Max saying anything bad about his wife, and so she kept her opinions to herself. There were a lot of reasons why his life had taken the turns that it had, a lot of them bad, but Wren wasn’t one of them no matter what anyone else said. “I’ll check,” he repeated. Even if Max and Wren had been best pals, there was still the issue of work and someone being around to watch Amanda; two kids was already hard enough. Between the two of them it did make more sense for him to talk to Thomas, and fear of speaking to him had faded to mere nervousness. He nodded. “I can do that.”
He flashed a quick, sympathetic smile when she said she didn’t know what she was going to do about Max. “Right, naps are important,” he agreed. “You’re welcome. It was nice seeing you and Beth again.” He waved goodbye to the little girl, and settled back against the seat, not ready to go home just yet.
Ella lifted Beth onto her hip and she waved once more at Lia. If Max was as difficult about Wren as she knew Max could be then maybe Amanda coming out would be a headache. But maybe, just maybe, it would warm her sister back up to acting like a human being again and if it meant a few days without the shifts at the diner than maybe something could get squeezed together.