Behind The Mask. Metsy Hingle

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СКАЧАТЬ the big, comfy bed at Gertie’s house.

      “I know you don’t, baby,” she soothed, and pressed her hand to his forehead. “It’s because you have chicken pox. But the shot and medicine Dr. Brinkman gave you is going to make you feel all better real soon.”

      “I’m going to fix you a special treat this afternoon,” Gertie Boudreaux promised as she came into the spare room and joined the pair.

      “Cookies?” Timmy asked hopefully.

      “Something better than cookies,” Gertie assured him. “But you need to be a good boy and take a little rest now while your mama goes to work.”

      “I not seepy,” Timmy informed her.

      “I know you’re not, sweetie. But if the medicine is going to work and make you feel better, you need to rest,” Lily told him.

      “You bring me ’prize?” Timmy asked her.

      “All right. Mommy will bring you a surprise.” Lily kissed his forehead. Then she planted a kiss on his teddy’s forehead, as it was her custom.

      “And ’prize for Teddy, too,” Timmy added.

      While she knew Timmy was pushing it, there was no way she could refuse him. “All right. Two surprises. One for you and one for Teddy. But that means you need to be a really good boy, and do what Gertie tells you until Mommy comes back.”

      “’Kay,” Timmy told her, and hugging his teddy close, he snuggled beneath the covers and closed his eyes.

      She sat on the edge of the bed a few minutes longer until his breathing had settled into the steady rhythm of sleep. But even when he’d dozed off, Lily found herself reluctant to leave him.

      As though sensing her thoughts, Gertie placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come on, child. What he needs now is to rest.”

      With leaden feet, Lily stood and followed Gertie out of the room and into the kitchen of the small cottage. But her thoughts remained with her son. “The doctor said it’s a mild case, but he looks so sick.”

      “If you ask me, you look a lot worse than he does.”

      “I’m all right.”

      “Uh-huh. That’s why you look as though a strong gust of wind could knock you over. I bet you didn’t sleep a wink last night. And you were probably too worried about that boy of yours to bother eating anything this morning, weren’t you?”

      Lily saw no point in telling her that when Timmy had awakened her saying that he didn’t feel well during the wee hours of the morning, she’d panicked upon discovering he had a fever. When she noted that what she’d thought was a rash during his bath had spread to his belly, she’d been terrified. The emergency call to the pediatrician, and his diagnosis by phone that it sounded like chicken pox, did nothing to ease her worries. She’d been unable to sleep a wink after that and had sat beside her son’s bed until morning, when she’d taken him to the doctor.

      “You better sit down before you fall down, and let me fix you something to eat.”

      “Thanks, but I’m not hungry. And I need to get to work.”

      “Work isn’t going nowhere, and you’re not leaving here until you have something in your belly,” Gertie insisted.

      Knowing there was little point in arguing with Gertie Boudreaux, Lily sat down at the small kitchen table where she’d sat, for the first time, two and a half months ago and poured out her troubles to her grandmother’s friend. To this day, Lily hadn’t figured out how old Gertie was because she had the same white hair and plump figure now that she’d had all those years ago when she’d lived next door to Lily and her grandmother in Alabama. And just as she had done when Lily had first shown up on her doorstep with Timmy in late November, scared and desperate after narrowly escaping Adam’s men, Gertie had set about calming her with food. Gertie served up two cups of coffee, placed a plate with steaming biscuits in the center of the table. A dish with real butter, not margarine, followed. She plopped a plate, napkin and utensils in front of Lily.

      “I still can’t believe I let Timmy catch chicken pox.”

      “And what makes you think you had anything to do with it one way or the other?” Gertie asked as she took the seat next to her. She picked up the dish and peeled back the cloth to reveal the hot flaky biscuits and held them out to Lily. When Lily selected only one, Gertie added a second one to her plate, then served herself.

      “The doctor said Timmy probably came into contact with someone, maybe one of the children at the playground.”

      “Or he might have picked it up from someone in the grocery or at that hamburger place he likes to go to,” Gertie informed her. “He’s a child, Lily. Children get chicken pox. Nothing you do or don’t do is going to stop that.”

      “But did you see his eyes? How pitiful he looked?”

      “Looked like he was laying it on pretty thick so you’d agree to bring him a surprise, if you ask me,” Gertie replied. “The little scamp’s got you wrapped around his little finger, Lily, and he knows it.”

      “I wasn’t the only one who promised him a surprise.”

      She dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “Us honorary grandmothers are allowed to spoil grandchildren.”

      Lily leaned over and kissed the older woman’s wrinkled cheek. “Thank you for loving him.”

      “Hard not to. That boy of yours is a charmer. Mark my words, he’s going to steal a lot of hearts.”

      He’d certainly stolen hers. From the moment she’d known she was carrying him, she had loved Timmy. If only Adam had been able to get beyond his obsession with her to love his son. And just as she’d done so often during the past seven years, she questioned her own blindness to what Adam was. Lily thought of her grandmother, remembered how she’d told her the reason her mother didn’t live with them was because of the choices she’d made. Her mother had wanted to be famous, see her picture in fashion magazines, go to fancy parties, her grandmother had explained. Having a baby girl didn’t fit in with the lifestyle she’d craved. So when she’d been three months old, she’d left her with her grandmother and had never come back. It had been her mother’s choice.

      And while she might not have felt she’d had a choice about marrying Adam since he had supported her following her mother’s death, she could never regret having done so. Because had she not married Adam, she wouldn’t have Timmy. No matter what had happened or would happen, she would never regret her son.

      “Child, you going to butter that biscuit and eat it or just admire it?”

      “Sorry,” Lily said, and smoothed butter onto the warm golden bread. Her eyes strayed toward the bedroom and she thought of her son asleep in the next room, how warm he had been.

      “Lily, you need to stop worrying about him. He’s going to be fine.”

      “I know. It’s just…he’s so little to have chicken pox already.”

      “No littler than you were when you got them,” Gertie told her.

      “I had chicken СКАЧАТЬ