Chapter Thirty-Seven
A rcher was in the kitchen when there was a knock at the door.
‘I’ll get it!’ Olive yelled, hopping up from her position on the couch where she’d been watching her favorite after-school show. It was some kind of kids’ baking show and if contestant number three burned their caramel sauce one more time, Archer was going to have a stroke.
‘We’ll get it together,’ he said, wiping his hands on the dish towel as he followed Olive to the door. The neighborhood welcoming committee had slowed their visits considerably, which he took as a sign of their budding confidence in him, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the ladies with a freshly-baked something on his doorstep.
It was a typical Tuesday night. He’d gotten home from the diner and relieved the new nanny, Will, who did not live here, and then he’d started on dinner for him and Olive. The diner wasn’t the only place where he’d been working on new recipes. While he had a whole repertoire of pancakes named after townsfolk now, at home he’d come up with lots of compromises. Food that Olive would eat and that also tasted good. Tonight, he was making her favorite: homemade chicken nuggets.
And like any other weeknight, they’d eat dinner together and she’d tell him every minute detail of her day and he’d try his very best to listen. Then a bath filled with rubber ducks and bubbles, far too many bedtime stories and, if he was lucky, a few quiet hours to himself.
Those hours were the hardest. The hours when memories of Iris would creep back in after keeping them at bay all day long. It had been weeks since she’d left, and Archer had given up on any hope that she was coming back. She’d made her choice. She didn’t want this life and he couldn’t force her to want it.
Just because he’d changed his mind about how he wanted his life to go, didn’t mean she ever would.
‘Maybe it’s trick-or-treaters!’ Olive said, hopping from foot to foot in front of him.
‘Liv, it’s July.’
She gave a little shrug like the month was inconsequential and Archer laughed. It was impossible to stay melancholy for too long with this kid around.
He opened the door, rattling the jingle bells he still kept there, even though Olive hadn’t sleepwalked in weeks, expecting it to be a neighbor or a politician with a clipboard, or frankly even trick-or-treaters would have made more sense to his unsuspecting brain than the person who stood on his doorstep.
‘Iris!’ Olive shrieked and flung herself at Iris.
‘Hey, kid,’ Iris said, scooping her up and letting Olive wrap her legs around her waist. She held her tight, her face pressed against Olive’s little cheek. ‘I missed you.’ The confession was barely a whisper, but Archer heard it and he stood frozen in the doorway because he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what this meant.
‘I missed you, too! But I knew you were going to come back. I told Dad. I said you were going to come back and here you are!’ Olive was petting Iris’s hair now and squirming in her arms. ‘Guess what?!’
‘What?’ Iris asked, her eyes shining with tears, and still Archer didn’t know what was happening. Was she back ? Or was this some kind of visit? Did she feel guilty for leaving Olive?
Did she care about leaving him?
‘I got a bunny!’
‘A bunny! Wow!’
‘Yep. I named him Sir Reginald Hoppington.’
A choked up laugh left Iris’s mouth. ‘Wow, that’s quite a name. You’ve improved.’
‘Thank you. I call him Reggie.’
‘That’s a good name.’
Iris still hadn’t looked up, hadn’t taken her eyes off Olive, and Archer still stood in the door, waiting, aching for her.
‘Do you want to come see him?’ Olive asked, and finally Iris lifted her gaze. Their eyes met over the top of Olive’s head. Archer’s heart leapt back to life in his chest.
‘I … uh … I need to talk to your dad first.’
‘Oh.’ Olive deflated in her arms.
‘But I’d love to meet him later. Maybe have a cup of tea or something.’
Olive laughed. ‘Bunnies don’t drink tea.’
Iris frowned. ‘That can’t be right.’
‘They don’t!’ Olive said, delighted to correct a grown-up. ‘They only drink water.’
‘Hmm. Well, if you say so. Maybe you should go check on him?’
‘Good idea!’ Olive squirmed down from Iris’s arms and ran back into the house, leaving Archer without a buffer, without anything between him and the woman who’d left him.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice still a raspy whisper.
‘Hi.’
‘Can I come in?’
He wanted to say no. He wanted to say she could only come in if she promised she was staying, if she promised not to hurt him again, if she promised…
‘Yeah, of course.’ He moved out of the doorway and let Iris follow him to the kitchen. He supposed it was only right that they have whatever this conversation was in their usual spot, a counter separating them. ‘What’s up?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s up?’
He blew out a long sigh, resting his hands on the counter in front of him. ‘What do you want me to say, Iris? Why are you here? Why haven’t you responded to my texts? Where the hell have you been? Why did you leave?’
She winced a little and it broke his heart all over again.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Archer’s thoughts stopped, his words stopped, the actual rotation of the earth stopped.
‘You’re—’
‘I’m pregnant, and I’m sorry and I kind of freaked out, but I thought about it and I want to keep it—and it’s yours by the way, of course it’s yours—and I wanted to tell you, but I know you already have Olive, and I know I hurt you both and I’m so sorry but I was scared and I?—’
He was in front of her, holding her face in his hands before she could finish, before she could say any more. He dropped his forehead to hers.
‘You’re having my baby?’
A tear slid down her cheek.
‘Yes.’
‘Iris…’ Her name was cracked and raw, torn from his throat.
‘You don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to, I just … I wanted you to know.’
‘Jesus, Iris. Of course I want to be involved.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’ More than anything. He wanted this, Iris, a family, his baby . More than anything.
‘Do you still love me?’ she asked.
He huffed a disbelieving sigh. How could he have stopped loving her? ‘God, yes.’
He could feel her smile more than he could see it, the way her cheeks lifted beneath his palms. ‘Do you still love me?’ he asked.
Her hands were on his arms now, squeezing, holding him in place. ‘Yes. I love you and I’m so sorry for leaving.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s not. But I promise not to do it again.’
‘Good.’
He pulled back, letting his hands slide from her face down the sides of her body, over the small swell of her belly.
‘You’re having my baby,’ he said again to make sure it was real.
‘Well, it’s our baby,’ she corrected with a grin, putting her hand over the top of his.
‘ Our baby.’
‘So, you’re not freaked out?’ she asked, her gaze searching his face.
‘Of course I am. I barely have a grasp on a five-year-old. A newborn is going to be a shitshow.’ His life was about to turn upside down again but this time he wouldn’t fight it. This time he wanted it, however crazy it was. He wanted it with Iris.
Iris laughed, tears still filling her eyes.
‘But I’m happy,’ he said. ‘And I’m so fucking happy you’re back.’
‘Dad, don’t say that word.’ Olive sauntered back into the room, holding Reggie. The caramel-colored bunny dangled from her little arms looking entirely unamused.
‘Sorry.’
Olive looked from his face to Iris’s and back again and then her gaze held on where their hands were resting on Iris’s stomach.
‘Does Iris have a belly ache?’
‘Uh … nope…’ There probably wasn’t any hiding this from Olive but he didn’t know how Iris wanted to handle it. His gaze met hers and her mischievous grin grew.
‘Hey, Olive,’ Iris said, turning toward his daughter. ‘How about I move back in and me and your dad kiss more often, and in a few months we all have a new baby?’
Olive’s little nose scrunched as she considered it and Archer bit down on a smile even as his heart thundered in his chest, even as everything he wanted seemed to hang in the balance waiting for the approval of a kindergartener.
‘I want you to move back in,’ Olive said. ‘And kissing is yucky, but I guess if you want to…’ She shrugged a little at the mystery of grown-ups. ‘And can I name the baby?’
‘No,’ Archer and Iris answered in unison.
Olive scowled.
‘But you can help change all the diapers you want,’ Iris told her, and Olive squealed in disgust.
‘Ew! No way.’
Iris grinned. ‘Okay, fine. Dad can change the diapers and you can be in charge of snuggling and…’
‘And teaching the baby new songs!’
Iris laughed. ‘Sure. New songs.’
‘And dances!’
‘Yep, definitely dances. The baby will need all the musical training it can get.’
Archer was holding back a laugh, but Olive was beaming.
‘Yay! Okay, we can have a baby.’
‘So glad you approve, since it’s already in my belly.’
Olive frowned again. ‘How did it get in there?’
‘Uh…’ Iris looked at Archer in panic and the laughter pushed further up his throat.
‘How will it get out?! It’s trapped in there!’
Olive looked truly concerned now about the baby’s well-being.
‘Oh God,’ Iris groaned.
‘Liv, why don’t you go put Reggie to bed and we can talk about all this later, okay?’
Olive narrowed her eyes at him, knowing full well he was trying to stall for time, but Reggie was getting heavy and slipping further and further down her arms.
‘Okay,’ she relented. ‘But I still want to know how we’re getting that baby out!’ she said as she left the room.
When he turned back to Iris, her eyes were wide and a smile played around her lips. ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really think that through.’
Archer chuckled. ‘We’ll figure out what to tell her.’
‘We should probably be honest, right?’
‘We should probably google it,’ he said and Iris burst out laughing.
‘We are so bad at this,’ she said between giggles.
‘We’ll get better,’ he said. ‘Together.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, and her voice was gentle and sweet. He stepped between her legs again and she wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘I’m really glad you took me back,’ she said.
‘There was never any question about that, sweetheart. You belong here, with us.’ He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. And it had only been a few weeks since he’d kissed her, but God, how he’d missed it.
She kissed him back, her hands in his hair. ‘I missed you both so much,’ she said, her lips leaving his to murmur the confession.
He smiled. ‘We missed you, too.’ He kissed her again and again, his lips and his tongue and his teeth retracing all their old steps. He would have done more, he wanted to do more, but it would only be a few minutes before Olive would be back with her questions.
He pulled back and grinned at the sight of Iris’s flushed cheeks and swollen lips. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘I want you in my bed.’
Iris grinned. ‘Well, technically, it’s our bed now.’
Archer laughed and his heart could barely stand it all. Our bed. Our baby. Our family. Christ, it was too much. It was everything.
‘You’re lucky you missed the barfing part of this whole thing,’ Iris added.
‘Oh, God. I’m such an asshole. How are you feeling? Should I be doing things like rubbing your feet or feeding you weird pregnancy food?’
Iris was looking at him like she couldn’t love him more, and he would do anything to keep that look on her face.
‘I don’t think I need anything like that right now,’ she said. ‘My feet feel fine and the only weird thing I’ve been eating is copious amounts of frosted flakes.’
‘If you’re craving sweets, I can bake.’
She grinned. ‘I know you can.’
‘And we should get you one of those pregnancy pillow things.’
Still smiling she ran her fingers through his hair again. ‘Okay, sure.’
‘Anything, Iris. Just name it.’
Her fingers felt so good he let his head tip back and his eyes close. She leaned forward and kissed a trail from his jaw down to his neck, and he groaned.
‘Okay, Archer. But we’re a team. I’m here for you and Olive, too.’ She licked over his pulse point, and he shivered.
‘Later, sweetheart,’ he murmured, and Iris’s breathy laughter blew over his wet skin.
‘Later,’ she agreed, and he lifted his head to meet her gaze again. ‘But I’m serious. You don’t have to convince me to stay. I’m here for real. I promise.’
He pressed his forehead to hers again, needing the closeness. ‘Okay, I know. But you are carrying our baby, and it is my job to make that as comfortable for you as possible. So you have to let me.’ He planted one more kiss on her smiling lips right as Olive stormed back into the room.
‘Kissing already?’ she asked, climbing onto the stool next to Iris.
‘Yep. Super gross, right?’ Iris said, pulling Olive closer and planting a kiss on her forehead. Olive grinned.
‘Super gross.’
‘Okay, ladies. I have chicken nuggets to prepare,’ Archer said, retreating to his side of the counter.
‘Nugget night? I picked the right time to come back,’ Iris said, and Olive nodded in agreement. They sat side by side, watching him move around the kitchen and Olive filled Iris in on everything she’d missed in the weeks she’d been gone. Iris commented and laughed or sighed or groaned at all the right places. She clapped when Olive sang her latest song and demanded retribution when Olive told the story about her favorite rainbow crayon being stolen at school.
And in between dredging chicken in his secret bread crumb mixture and pan frying them and chopping veggies for Olive to dip in copious amounts of ranch dressing (another compromise), Archer paused to look at the woman he loved loving his daughter, and he could hardly believe he was the same person who landed here a few months ago. That guy had wanted to return to his old life as quickly as possible. He wanted to go back to the grueling hours and that cramped apartment and those toxic relationships. Archer didn’t feel an ounce of regret for the job he’d lost or the apartment he’d given away.
As he watched Iris’s fair head tilt toward Olive’s brunette one, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for his old self. That guy that wanted nothing more but to work himself to the bone, to spend countless hours striving for perfection in kitchens around the world, kitchens that were slowly draining him of the joy and fun of cooking.
When all he really needed to do was to perfect his chicken-nugget recipe and feed it to the people he loved most in the world.
‘Is it ready?’ Olive asked.
‘It’s ready.’ Archer carried their plates to the dining room and the girls followed him. His girls.
Olive immediately dug in, but Iris caught his eye across the table. She was glowing.
‘I think you’re the best chef in the world, Dad,’ Olive said between bites.
Iris grinned. ‘I agree. Nuggets and pancakes. What more do we need?’
Archer smiled back. This food with these people. He didn’t need anything else.