Free One More Day by Kelly Simmons Page A

nights when she rocked him and his eyes kept looking over her shoulder, searching for his father.
    They put Ben to bed together, neither willing to miss out. John sat on the alphabet rug next to the green chair, holding his son’s hand while Carrie rocked him. Later she would wish she could have a portrait painted of that moment, that synchronicity, her husband supplicant at her feet. She’d kept one of Ben’s pale pacifiers on the changing table, but he didn’t need it anymore; the world had weaned him of it.
    Ben’s eyes fluttered closed, and Carrie smiled, thinking of his happy dreams, the day he could relive when he fell asleep. She thought of Ben eating a cheeseburger, sipping a milkshake. His fat fingers dipping a french fry in ketchup. Ben standing in the leather booth at dinner, bouncing with happiness, and then, when John said something to Carrie, his hands on either side of John’s face, turning his head toward him. They’d both laughed, but then she felt a tear forming. She’d forgotten, forgotten entirely , that he used to do that—not only reach for John, but also take him away, own him. How was that possible, after all her cataloging, that she’d forgotten this thing he did nearly every single day?
    They stood over his crib a long time that night, watching his chest rise and fall beneath his fleece pajamas. Finally, John squeezed her hand and pulled her out of the room.
    â€œNot yet,” she said.
    â€œCarrie,” he said. “The windows and doors are locked. A car is patrolling the street, just in case.”
    She nodded; she knew. Forrester had taken every precaution. That was all it took for John to feel safe—these systems in place. She allowed John to guide her back to their room, two doors down. Ben’s bedroom, guest room, master suite. In bed, he held her, knew better than to ask or to push for more, knew sex could ruin the purity of the moment, so he kept his pelvis tilted away from her. She knew he did this and appreciated it.
    â€œDo you remember the day we brought him home?” she asked.
    â€œOf course,” he said, then immediately started gathering up details, in case she asked. How long it had taken the valet to bring the car while Carrie sat in the wheelchair, shivering. How he’d wished he’d brought her a sweater.
    Carrie recounted how much trouble they’d had installing that first car seat. They’d both thought it would be simpler.
    â€œRemember how I joked about how on earth you could possibly assemble our baby’s tricycle on Christmas Eve if you couldn’t put a car seat in a car?”
    He smiled back at her. Yes, that he remembered. He also remembered how Carrie had ridden in the back because she was so disturbed by the idea of the baby facing backward, when they couldn’t see him. They knew other moms who’d had mirrors installed to fix this problem and thought they were overreacting, nervous.
    â€œI drove you two home like a chauffeur.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd then you looked in the mirror and said, ‘John, I just realized the baby could have been riding backward and upside down for nine months in my uterus too!’”
    They both laughed, remembering this. For weeks, Carrie had fretted over Ben’s head bending sideways in the enormous seat. Why don’t they make smaller seats? she would ask over and over again, until they both saw, a month later, how quickly babies grew. How soon they filled the space provided. How much they outgrew, almost immediately. The difference between two years old and three years old? Enormous , she thought. It had to be enormous.
    They talked for a couple of hours, or Carrie did. She talked and John listened, commenting here and there. He was used to this, her need to talk. He knew her old boyfriend had loved to talk; she’d mentioned this once with a kind of light in her eyes, as if she’d loved him, and John tried to do the