I thanked them for their time and walked them to the front door. When they were gone, Daniel helped me clean up the broken glass and tape cardboard over the hole.
“Want to go back to my place?” Daniel asked.
“Would you mind?” Even if the person who’d broken into my house hadn’t stolen anything, I still felt unsafe. Maybe it was time for me to sell the house and move. Although I had no idea where I’d move to. Where was safe anymore?
Daniel picked up the unopened bag of bagels from the kitchen counter. “I don’t know if we can find a glass repair shop that’s open on Sunday, but we can definitely buy you a home security system.”
“No dog?” I asked.
“Sorry, I’m allergic.”
Clearly, he thought he’d be sticking around for a while.
I texted MJ the next afternoon and told him to meet me at my house after school instead of the office because I was still waiting for the glass repair person to arrive.
“What’s up with the camera?” he asked, pointing to the doorbell device Daniel had installed for me the night before, along with motion-activated lights and broken-glass sensors.
I held open the front door and motioned for him to come inside. “Someone broke in over the weekend. Nothing was stolen. The cops think it was neighborhood kids pulling a prank. You would never do anything like that, right?”
“Heck no. If I was gonna break into someone’s house, I would steal something for sure.”
“MJ!”
He laughed. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said as I locked the door behind him. “But it’s not funny.”
He gave me a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”
MJ followed me into the kitchen and headed straight to the refrigerator. “You got anything to eat?”
“Just healthy stuff.” If I knew we were meeting at my place today, I would’ve bought a bag of chips. I normally don’t keep junk food in the house.
“S’okay,” he said, pulling a large red apple out of the fruit bin. It sounded so crisp and crunchy when he took a bite I had him grab me one too.
“How’s baby Aaron?” I asked as we sat at the kitchen table munching on our apples.
MJ swallowed hard. “He cries a lot.”
“All babies cry a lot.”
“Sofia didn’t.”
He could be forgetting, most of us do, or maybe it was a sign of something, although I didn’t know what. I’d have to ask Tim if Sofia was having any problems in school. “Does he have colic?”
“I dunno,” MJ said then took another bite of his apple.
“How are Tim and Richard doing?” I hadn’t seen them much the last few weeks because they’d been consumed with the baby and I’d been consumed with Daniel.
MJ shrugged. “Fighting some.”
They were probably both exhausted. I still remembered how tired I’d been with Amelia. When I drove MJ home, I’d stop in and offer to babysit. Even just a few hours of downtime can help.
MJ and I worked on his Great Gatsby essay while we waited for the glass repair person. When my back door no longer had a hole in it, I drove MJ back to Tim and Richard’s house. It was even more chaotic than usual, and Tim looked frazzled. As MJ had predicted, baby Aaron was crying.
“May I?” I held my hands out for Aaron, who Tim was holding in one arm, while stirring something on the stove with the other.
“Sure.” He seemed relieved to pass him off to me.
“What’s wrong, Aaron?” I asked as I stared into his beautiful brown eyes.
He cried in response.
I checked his diaper, which was dry, then tried lifting him up and down like Jonah used to do with Amelia. That quieted him, but as soon as I stopped, he started crying again. “Have you tried the vacuum cleaner?” I asked Tim.
He looked up from the stove. “Is that a joke?”
“No. Didn’t you read the book about the fourth trimester?”
“Look at this place,” Tim snapped. “Do I look like I have time to read books?”
It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to me, and I was taken aback.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just so tired. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
I stared into his exhausted face and the memories of those first few months with Amelia came rushing back to me. There were times I would literally beg her to stop crying and I would’ve done anything to get her to go to sleep.
I turned off the stove and took the spoon from Tim’s hand. “Go take a nap. I’ll watch Aaron.”
