Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

his waist, tucked in at the hipbone. “Decided to wake up?” He started for the chest of drawers, then changed his mind and came to sit next to me. He nuzzled behind my ear, letting me know that he and I were clearly riding on different wavelengths that morning.

“Westley,” I said, shrugging away from him. “I don’t feel so good.”

Knowing I’d yet to dissuade or refuse him, he leaned back, lifted my chin with his fingertips, and peered into my eyes. “You don’t look so good either.”

I hung my head again. “Thanks. And I’m serious. I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“I think you’re just tired,” he said, standing. The mattress rocked and I held on as if I were in a wave-pitched boat. “But if it continues during the day, let me know and I’ll bring you something from the drugstore.” He placed a cool hand on my forehead. “No fever.”

“No.”

“You’ve been overdoing it …”

“Overdoing it?” I looked over at him. He’d dropped the towel to the floor and now stepped into his underwear followed by a somewhat wrinkled undershirt. “The house is a mess, the laundry’s piling up again, and I feel like I hardly accomplish a single thing all day. Every day.”

He returned to the bed with a pair of slacks he’d taken from the closet. I stared at its door, which he’d left open. “Well, I think I know how you can get caught up …” He shoved first one leg into the pants, then the other.

“How?”

He shifted to face me. “I got a call from Cindie yesterday.”

A shiver ran through me. Gooseflesh covered my body, something I’d hardly expected. Had she changed her mind? Was school not working out as she’d thought it would? Things rarely did. I could certainly attest to that. Not to too much else, but at least to that. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“I needed to process it.”

“And?”

“She’s coming home for a week between terms. And she wants Michelle while she’s here.”

As much as the idea of an entire week without the munchkin should have thrilled me, it didn’t. For one, I’d grown so attached to her … and her to me. We fit together. When I held her . . . the way she cradled against me. When I rocked her, the way she laid her head against my heart to hear its steady beat. When I carried her on my hip, the way her chubby hands held on, one of them usually against my breast. Something maternal had taken over me. Holding and caring for Michelle came as naturally as I ever expected holding and caring for one of my own would feel. But something else concerned me, something more important than my own feelings. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“What do you mean? She’s her mother, Ali. I promised her when we signed the papers that I’d never keep her from her own child.”

The words stung. Yes … Cindie was Michelle’s mother. I knew that. I did. And I never wanted to take her place. Because I couldn’t … surely, I could not. “I know, Wes, but … Michelle is just now getting used to being here. She just this week started sleeping through the night … we’ll have to start all over again.”

Westley kissed my forehead and stood, once again rocking the mattress in ungodly ways. “She’s a baby. She’ll get over it.” He looked down at me. Sick as I felt—not only physically, but now emotionally as well—I found nothing but love and compassion in his eyes. Understanding. “Look,” he said. “The last thing in this world I want is Michelle over at Lettie Mae Campbell’s for a week—”

“Then—”

“But I made a promise, Ali. Much as I hate it … a promise is a promise. And she is her mother. Put yourself in her shoes.”

I tried, but I couldn’t. I could only put myself in Michelle’s and my own … and the heartache I expected to feel at having her gone for so long. Or the fear that Cindie wouldn’t bring Michelle back. That she would find it impossible. “When?” I asked as a slow wave of nausea rose within me.

“She’s driving home on Friday … so she said she’d come get her Saturday morning.”

“Here?” The wave grew larger. I had yet to meet Cindie and I knew, without a doubt, that I didn’t want her coming to my house with it looking such a mess.

Westley’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You look like you’re going to throw up …”

I bolted from the bed. “I am,” I said around a gag. I stumbled into the small bathroom, my knees barely reaching the cold tile before I vomited into the toilet.

The wave had crashed.

Michelle woke shortly after Westley left. By then the nausea had passed and I’d managed a shower and getting dressed. I ate a slice of toast with butter and even started a load of clothes. In the sudden rush, Westley had failed to tell me—assure me—if he planned to meet Cindie somewhere other than our home. So, just in case …

The baby and I arrived at Miss Justine’s a little after ten. Rose Beth—now referred to lovingly as Ro-Bay by Michelle and, subsequently, Westley and me—opened the door with admonishment on her lips. “’Bout time,” she said as the door swung wide. “Miss Justine,” she hollered over her shoulder, “they’re here and one of ’em looks like death warmed over.”

I stepped over the threshold and into a foyer that continued to impress, but no longer intimidat me. “I take it you mean me,” I said wryly.

“Well, I don’t mean that sweet chile …” She stretched her arms for Michelle, who struggled to be free of me, the irony striking harder than expected. “Come on to Ro-Bay,” she said as Miss Justine’s house shoes slapped against the floor in rhythm to her walk from the back of the house. “What’s kept you so …” She stopped and stared at me with her fists