“Tomorrow,” I say.
CHAPTER 30
After dinner that night, I wander back to my and Nolan’s room. The noises that trickle from our cracked bedroom door and down the hall pique my interest. Through the sliver between the door and the doorposts, I watch Nolan and Michael as they sit on the floor, playing with Michael’s toy train set.
Nolan has taken the wheels off one of the train cars and is sliding the wheels against his cheek. He rakes them over his beard, to where, though it is well-trimmed, it looks disheveled.
“You know, I never would have thought to do this,” he says to Michael, who is watching the caboose in his own hands intently. “But now that I’ve tried it, I see the appeal. It’s almost like a massage.”
Michael stretches out his caboose-free hand.
“Oh, you want this?” says Nolan, placing the wheels in my little brother’s palm.
Michael wrenches them away, balancing the wheels against his chest as he scoots toward the center of the room. Once he’s situated, he attaches the wheels to the train car where Nolan had taken them off. He then sets off to linking the train cars until thetrain is formed. After that, he pushes the train along the floor in the opposite direction from Nolan.
“So you knew how to do that the whole time,” says Nolan.
Michael doesn’t respond, and Nolan rolls his eyes—but in an endearing sort of way.
Nolan grabs a set of tracks and begins clicking them together. It doesn’t take long for Michael to tsk at the wayward arrangement of Nolan’s tracks and quickly rearrange them to form a perfect circle.
“Ah, yes, I can see how that is better,” says Nolan as Michael places the train on the tracks and drags it across them.
“Choo choo,” says Nolan, to which Michael says, “Wrong,” and begins blowing air through his nose after pressing his lips tight together—a much better imitation of a foghorn than “choo choo.”
I place my palm over my mouth to suppress my giggle.
“You’re right. That is a much better imitation of a train,” says Nolan, at which point he sputters through a poor attempt at matching the sound. Though Michael is now at a point where I can no longer see him through the crack in the door, I hear him let out the smallest of giggles. Not only that, but he imitates Nolan’s sputtering sound—this time breaking into a cackle.
Nolan smiles, clearly pleased with himself. I press my thumb and forefinger into my lips. I don’t know why I’m trying to contain my smile or hide it, but there’s something about the boys playing together that makes me feel that if they see my approval, one of them will toughen up and stop.
Nolan’s ears twitch, and he glances toward the door, smile faltering a bit when he sees me in the doorway. I knock gently on the door, though he already sees me, and let it creak as I step into the room.
“Seems like the two of you are getting along,” I say.
“Yes. I’m being taught many a thing about playing with train sets,” says Nolan, studying Michael fondly.
“I think he’s warming up to you,” I say, watching my brother as he steers the train in the circle back toward us.
Nolan’s smile is faint, as if he can’t bring himself to believe such a ridiculous notion. We watch Michael in silence for a while, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re thinking the same thing—of a little girl pushing the train along the train tracks, the image quickly replaced by an alternate reality of an empty room.
The two realities oscillate between each other, jumping back and forth in time. An infant girl swaddled against my chest as Nolan is on the floor playing with Michael. Another image where we watch my brother dead-eyed, wondering if our son out there somewhere enjoys trains and train tracks, neither of us able to speak such a notion aloud.
“It’s going to be a girl,” I say, though my voice is only a whisper. “It has to be a girl.”
Nolan nods and places his hand on my stomach for the first time, not that there’s anything to feel. I haven’t felt so much as a flutter in my belly.
But even the idea of the baby feeling its father’s hands on its little body gives me comfort, though fear quickly comes and steals such comfort away.
“It’s a girl,” says Nolan. “It has to be.”
His fingers tremble at my belly before he draws them away, and I’m left with nothing but the deceptive feeling of emptiness in my gut.
CHAPTER 31
The next two weeks pass in a blur. By the time we dock, I hardly have the mental capacity to recall the name of the town we’ve docked in, despite Nolan telling me multiple times.
It doesn’t really matter where we are anyway.
