“Hey, there, baby dude,” I whispered, and picked him up. “What’s wrong?” I carried him over to the rocker in his room and sat down. “Why so sad?”
He said something. It was definitely a word—I just didn’t know what word. It sounded a little like “uggy” so I repeated it. “Uggy?”
He shook his head and said it again.
“Oggy? Uppy?”
He moaned in frustration and hit me—lightly—with his fist. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, just letting me know I wasn’t getting it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish you could talk.”
“Me too.”
I looked up over his head and saw Luke in the doorway.
“He wake you up?” he asked as he came over to us.
“I was awake anyway.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I can take him if you want to go back to sleep.”
“I’m okay. I just wish I knew what he was trying to tell me. I think he had a bad dream or something and he’s trying to tell me what it was about.”
“Uggy,” Jacob said again.
“Uggy?” I repeated, and his body became rigid with fury.
“No!” He collapsed against me, sobbing.
“See?” I said to Luke. I stroked Jakie’s back. “You know what he means?”
“No idea.” Luke sat down on the corner of the bed nearest us. “Poor little guy. He’s so frustrated.”
“You’d be frustrated, too, if you couldn’t speak the language.”
There was a pause.
“Luke?” I said.
“Mm?” His hair was sticking up funny and he was wearing retainers—his teeth were shifting but of course he couldn’t have braces put on, what with his TV appearances and music performances, so the orthodontist made him retainers to wear at home whenever he could. Sometimes I wished all the women who adored him could see him like this. He just looked so normal.
I touched the top of Jacob’s head and said quietly, “I really don’t think Mom’s being crazy when she says there may be something going on with him.”
His face tightened. “I never said she was crazy. I’m just trying to protect him from being boxed into a corner at the age of two.”
“He’s almost three. You should look at those books Mom bought today. A lot fits.”
“Your mother just starts jumping to conclusions—”
“It’s not jumping to a conclusion if you’ve really thought about it—it’s reaching one, and that’s different.” I hugged Jacob hard. “This guy is amazing. He’s smart and cute and wonderful and nothing changes that. But I want him to learn to talk to us. Don’t you?”
“He’s in speech therapy.”
“I know but maybe there’s more we could be doing.”
“I want what’s best for him, Ellie. You know that. I’m just not sure that what he needs at this stage of his life is a bunch of doctors and a label.”
“Mom’s not sure either.” I rocked Jacob slowly. “But can’t you guys try to figure it out together? You could read those books and talk to the therapists and if the two of you just keep talking to each other about it all—”
“Ellie—”
“You’ve told me a million times that you love me and would do anything for me. Well, this is what I want you to do more than anything else in the world: I want you to listen to what Mom’s saying. Really, really listen. Please, Luke?”
He sat there for a moment, staring at Jacob, who was calm now against my chest. “I promise,” Luke said finally, with a sigh. “You always win, don’t you, little girl?” He held out his arms. “I’ll take him now. You go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” I got up and let Jacob slide into his arms, where he settled down contentedly against Luke’s broad chest. “Good night.”
“Hold on,” Luke said. “We haven’t talked about you yet.”
“What about me?”
“You know how I feel about those Nussbaum boys. I trust them more than anyone else in the world. But George is a lot older than you and in a different place in life and—”
I stopped him with a raised finger. “You don’t need to worry,” I said with my most disarming smile. “He doesn’t have an attractive young stepmother. So I think this could really work out.”
Luke laughed, just like I’d hoped. “There are other potential issues, you know.”
“He’s a good guy,” I said more seriously. “He would never take advantage of me in any way. But I will probably take advantage of him in every possible way I can.”
“Good,” Luke said. “That’s exactly how I want it to go.”
thirty-five
I had to tell Heather. We always shared the important stuff. And keeping this a secret from her would only make my betrayal worse when she eventually found out.
I called her from the car on my way back from school on Monday. After we’d said hi, I took a deep breath and told her that her friendship was one of the most important things in the world to me and that it was hard for me to tell her what I had to tell her.
“What’s going on?” she said. “You’re scaring me. Did you hear about college? You did, didn’t you?”
“No. This is about George.”
“He told you he doesn’t like me. Oh, God. Did you bring it up? Why would you bring it up?” The hysteria in her voice was mounting.
“It’s not that!” Deep breath. “It’s just . . . he and I are sort of going out now.”
“What?” she said. Then again. “What?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “When we talked about him and you said you were interested, I swear I wasn’t—or at least didn’t know I was—or I would have told you. But then we were running some errands together and somehow I just realized that I liked him and he realized that he liked me and things kind of went from there.”
“Let me get this straight,” she said, her voice trembling and tight at the same time. “You waited until I said I liked him to decide that you liked him? Is that what you’re saying?”
“The last thing I wanted to do was go behind your back or hurt you.”
“Oh, well, thanks,” she said. “Thanks for not wanting to hurt me.” Then, “What about everything you said? How he was too old for me? How it was weird for a guy his age to date a high school student? About how you didn’t want to date until you were in college?”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I was stupid and wrong about everything, especially about myself.”
There was a long pause. Then: “Well,” she said in a very cold, very distant voice, “I guess this proves what I’ve always known, which is that the great and powerful Ellie Withers gets everything she wants and I don’t get anything I want ever.”
“Heather—”
“I have to go,” she said, and hung up.
Once I was home, I tried texting and calling her but she wouldn’t respond, and later that night her mother answered her cell phone and told me to leave her alone, then hung up on me.
It hurt a lot. Especially since I blamed myself for her unhappiness: I’d thought she liked Aaron when she liked George, and I’d thought I didn’t like anyone when I basically worshipped George. If I’d just been more aware, less dense . . . But the damage was done.
The one thing that cheered me up a little was that Luke and Mom went out to dinner alone that night, and Mom told me after they got back that Luke had—for the first time—let her talk freely about her concerns about Jacob and told her he’d read whatever she wanted him to with an open mind. “I’ve never loved him more,” she said, and even though she said it lightly, I don’t think she was actually joking.
Tuesday was the last day of school before Thanksgiving. That afternoon the members of the Holiday-Giving Program assembled food baskets for the shelter residents. Students and their families had been donating nonperishables for the previous few weeks, and then that morning everyone brought fresh bread and frozen turkeys. Most of them were donated by school families, but Skyler’s uncle had a friend whose family owned a supermarket chain, and they had donated a few dozen turkeys, so we were in good shape.