A Second Chance by Bernadette Marie Page B

mouth.
    “ I’m glad you’re getting
better.”
    “ Thank you.”
    “ Look.” Eduardo smiled at
her. “She’s eating.”
    Madeline looked down at her plate and
realized she’d eaten half the food on it while she cooed over the
baby in her arms.
    “ I guess I am.”
    “ Good, you’re getting too
skinny,” Carlos added.
    “ Oh, I don’t think there
will ever be a day I think that.”
    “ You never would. You’re too
hard on yourself.”
    “ Maybe.” She managed another
fork of food to her mouth.
    “ You are such a natural,”
Zach added his opinion. “Did you always manage to be so calm around
babies?”
    “ She was always good with
babies and kids. I don’t think she was sick a day when she was
pregnant,” Carlos offered.
    “ And that wives’ tale about
having heartburn if you child had a lot of hair didn’t apply to me.
Ed had more hair than most full-grown men.” She gazed at her son,
who shook his head as he drank down his milk.
    “ Oh, he was hairy like a
monkey,” Regan reminisced.
    “ C’mon, that’s gross,”
Eduardo piped up and they all laughed.
    “ Oh, and you were
enormous!”
    “ Dad!”
    “ You were. You were fat and
round. I don’t know how you’re mother managed to carry you for an
extra four days.”
    “ He was nine pounds.” She
laughed as she said it. “Talk about being all baby.”
    “ And you carried him all up
front. To look at you from behind, you wouldn’t even have noticed
she was pregnant,” Curtis added to the conversation.
    Carlos threw his napkin at his
brother. “What were you doing looking at her from the
back?”
    “ I was nineteen. I looked at
every woman from the back.”
    The family laughed. Everyone but
Kathy, who looked at her plate as she ate.
     
    After dinner was finished and the men
had returned to the football game, Madeline walked into the
kitchen, where Emily and Kathy sat at the table with cups of
coffee. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”
    Emily stood and kissed her on the
cheeks. “I’m so glad you finally came.”
    “ So am I.” She turned toward
Kathy, who had stood too. “Thank you so much for being so kind and
letting me join you all. It means the world to me that you’re so
kindhearted and let me be such a big part of Carlos’ life. I know
I’ve been a real pain lately.”
    “ Oh, no. You’re very
important to him. You’re part of our family,” Kathy said with a
smile that reminded Madeline just how kind a person she really was,
but also with a tightness to her lips that let Madeline know that
as welcome as she’d felt in her presence, it wasn’t more than a
one-time deal.
    “ I’m going to talk to the
kids about going back to our normal schedule. I know he misses
them, and I have to start back to work in a week or so. It’s helped
me having them around, but they need to be with you both
too.”
    “ Well, if you wouldn’t mind,
could we have them next week? I’ve planned for pictures. Engagement
pictures, actually, but I’m not marrying just him, so I want the
kids in the pictures too.”
    The thought gnawed at her. Kathy was
right. She wasn’t marrying just Carlos. She was marrying the whole
family. Madeline swallowed back the pain of the thought and smiled.
“I think that sounds nice.”
    “ I’m glad you’re feeling
better. I know how he worries about you.”
    “ Well, I think things are
looking up. Hopefully by next Christmas I’ll be cancer free and
I’ll be able to go to the company Christmas party in a strappy
number and show off my new cleavage.” She laughed, but it was
forced because no matter what her hair or body looked like, she
wouldn’t be on the arm of the man she loved, and that hurt even
worse.
     

Chapter Six
     
    Kathy had sagged in the passenger seat
of Carlos’s car like a deflated balloon when the kids went home
with Madeline. The fewer people she had around her, the better off
she would be.
    She sat with her hands clenched in her
lap, listening to Carlos go on and on