Free One Small Thing by Jessica Barksdale Inclan Page B

know what I’ve seen here.”
     
    It was done. She put the phone down and stared out at the pool. A twirl of squawking starlings flumed up and over the fence, their feathers dark and slightly iridescent in the morning light. Next door, either Valerie or Luis was taking a shower, steam rising from one of the vents on the roof.
     
    “What did you do?”
     
    She jumped, breathing hard. “What?”
     
    Dan walked over to her. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders. “Why, Aves?”
     
    She turned, pulling herself away from him, still holding the phone to her chest. “You’re asking me ‘why’?”
     
    “You want this so much. That’s all we’ve been talking about for years. We don’t have to change anything we’re doing yet.”
     
    Avery bit her cheek, winced, and looked at Dan. Yesterday, she couldn’t imagine that the Dan of the past and her Dan, this Dan, were the same person. But this morning, now, she could. She’d just missed the wounded, worried look around his eyes because he smiled so much, said the right things, assured her, his colleagues, everyone. His parents had known, so had Jared, and if she’d paid attention, she would have been able to see who they were really looking at. If she’d listened at all, she’d have been able to see Marian and Bill holding back, scared to give him their hearts again, knowing exactly what he was capable of. Avery would have seen the man she’d talked to last night, the one with a past she’d only seen on news programs; he’d been one of those teenagers hauled out of parental homes, struggling against handcuffs and shame.
     
    She had married both Dans, the past and the present, and he wouldn’t be who he was now unless the other had happened. Nothing was for good or for real. Her father’s death had taught her that. She shouldn’t have forgotten.
     
    “Let’s be realistic,” she said, flipping her hair off her shoulder and stepping away from Dan’s hands. “We can’t do this right now. We are going to have to deal with this boy. Daniel. If he’s yours, you aren’t going to want him in foster care.”
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “I haven’t been realistic for about two years. Maybe longer. I’ve been living in some kind of fantasy world. No one stopped me. It’s time I stopped myself.”
     
    “Why was it a fantasy, Aves? We want a baby like everyone—“
     
    “Everyone doesn’t get news like we did last night, do they? We have to be serious now. We’ve seen Sixty Minutes , the news. You’ve read the stories of 500 kids to one case worker. All that. You know what happens. The abuse. The neglect. Kids disappearing and no one noticing. If you don’t take him now, you’ll never get to know him. In eight years, he’ll be grown up. If he can have a father, he deserves one.”
     
    Dan shook his head and licked his lips. “But, you’re okay with this?”
     
    Without thinking, she barked out a jagged laugh. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not okay with it, Dan. I’m not okay that you didn’t tell me about your life. I thought we were married. I thought that we shared everything. I deserved to know about you. To know you in the first place.”
     
    Dan shook his head and breathed out slow and light. “I didn’t think you’d want me if you knew what I’d been like—who I was. What I’d let myself become with Randi.”
     
    “Is there anything else you want to tell me? Any other secrets you’re hiding?”
     
    Looking up, he seemed to think, replaying all the years before her. Avery’s stomach tightened, turning dark and ahrd, her hard pit. Finally, he said,
     
    “No. That was it. What I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d take it like this. So angry. I knew you’d turn away.” His voice was sharp, the tone she’d heard him use with co-workers when a system wasn’t delivers as promised or a client was upset. How could he talk to her like that, now, when it was he who had done it all?
     
    “Maybe you were