His Best Friend's Baby by Molly O'Keefe

moment passed as though it hadn’t happened. Except that he felt a little lighter or cleaner or something. He felt closer to his effervescent niece and that, in turn, made him feel good.
    They worked their way around the corner of the house, past the giant trumpet plant, picking up shingles and tossing the stick forWain, who fetched with less and less speed until he finally collapsed in a patch of sunlight to gnaw on the stick.
    In front of the porch, Jesse finally straightened, ready to call it a day. Maybe he could convince his niece to run down to the Dairy Dream and bring back a pint of rocky road ice cream. He turned, ready to make his pitch to Amanda, and saw Julia Adams on the opposite corner wrestling her screaming son out of a stroller that listed precariously to one side.
    His body turned to stone, while his heart ran to liquid, the way it always did when he saw her.
    At the sound of the boy’s cries Amanda dropped her garbage bag and ran past him toward the corner, ready to offer her assistance.
    “You gonna come help her?” she paused to ask.
    Julia had walked past his house twice a day for days. Every time he could feel her eyes on his back, on his legs, on his chest like a caress. But when he turned to face her she’d stare straight ahead, pretending the air between them wasn’t on fire with her desire—that same desire that filled him and spurred dreams of her. And when he wasn’t dreaming of her, he dreamedabout the crash. The situation would be laughable if it wasn’t such agony. And now he was supposed to play knight in shining armor?
    “No.” He leaned down to grab another armful of torn shingles. The rough asphalt bit into his arms and hands and he pressed his flesh against the pain as hard as he could. It reminded him he was here only to finish this house, not to spin wonderful dreams about his best friends wife and her son.
    “Mom was right. You can be such a jerk, Uncle Jesse,” Amanda said, without much heat.
    The words still stung even after she went running across the lawn towards Julia. Jesse dumped the shingles in the bag and continued working.
    You don’t know the half of it, kid .
       
    J ULIA MANAGED to get Ben, screaming as if he’d been attacked by bees, out of the collapsed stroller. The screw holding the two crossbars in place had vanished and the whole damn thing had given up the ghost.
    Ben had one long scrape across his shin, but most of the commotion was because the poor kid had been startled out of a sound nap.
    “Sh, sh, sweetheart. It’s okay.” She murmurednonsense into his ear until the screaming faded to whimpers.
    She wished she could scream. Just lie down on the ground and have at it until all her stress, worry and frustration were gone, or until someone picked her up, comforted her and whispered soothing nonsense into her ear.
    But she knew better than anyone that that didn’t happen in real life. Not for her.
    Standing on the sidewalk with her sniffling baby in her arms and his stroller in ruins at her feet, she had to wonder the same thing Agnes had been insinuating for days. What the hell was she trying to do?
    Tears burned behind her eyes. She couldn’t go back to that house right now. She was so raw, so…lost that she just couldn’t take Agnes’s censure and pity.
    What made you think this was going to be easy? The voice in her head was her husband’s again and she wished that her memory of his voice had faded as much as her memory of his handsome face.
    “Ouch, mama,” Ben whined. “It hurts.”
    “I know, sweetheart.” She lifted his little calf to see the blood beading up from his scrape. “Let’s go home and get that cleaned up.”
    Home was still a couple of blocks away. She took a step forward but the stroller wouldn’t roll properly and she had to drag it. She took three awkward steps then bowed her head, defeated by the stroller, her empty bank account, the ghost of her dead husband and his living family.
    Oh, please God, help me. I