All Fall Down Read online

  “Peace, do you need a diaper?”

  The little girl simply stared.

  Liesel paused in the guest-room doorway. The door was ajar, but it also creaked like most of the others in this house. She could see just inside to the bed, where a huddled lump and shock of blond hair showed her Happy was still asleep, at least. From this angle she couldn’t quite see if Sunny was still in bed, but since the only sounds in the room were the soft, in-and-out sighs of breathing, she figured the girl probably still was. Which meant that unless she wanted to wake them, no diaper.

  Ah, well. She’d have to make do. In the kitchen, she settled Peace on one of the bar stools at the counter and poured her a plastic cup of milk. “What kind of cereal do you like?”

  Peace stared, then pulled the cup closer to her. She sipped it cautiously, then drank back a gulp that had her sputtering. Liesel grabbed a clean dish towel and wiped Peace’s face, then tucked it around the little girl’s neck as a bib. Peace ignored the entire process while she concentrated on drinking the milk as fast as she could.

  “I have Froot Loops and Cap’n Crunch,” Liesel said as she looked in the pantry. “Those are Christopher’s cereals. Christopher, your…”

  Grandpa? Pappy? Pop-Pop? What on earth were these kids going to call him? At just past forty, Liesel’s husband wasn’t old enough to be a grandfather. She sagged against the wire shelves in the pantry for a second. Yesterday had been like some sort of TV-movie drama, the sort she watched on the rare days she stayed home sick. Today it hit her even harder.

  Liesel drew in a shuddering breath and looked over her shoulder. Peace was still busy with the milk. Some of it had spilled. Liesel pulled the plastic container of Froot Loops from its place on the shelf and poured some into a bowl. She added milk, found a spoon. She pushed the bowl in front of the little girl.

  “Here, honey. Try that.”

  Annabelle would’ve dived into that bowl like a starving wildebeest, but Peace first pressed her hands together and bent her head. She waited a second or two, then looked at Liesel with a question clear in those bright blue eyes, so much like Christopher’s that Liesel was too distracted to realize Peace was waiting for something from her.

  “Bwessing?”

  It took Liesel a second to interpret. “Oh. Blessing… You want to pray?”

  Peace nodded, solemn.

  Liesel’s parents were nonpracticing Jews who made much of their cultural heritage but hadn’t done much beyond the bagels and lox. Christopher’s family were Christians of various Protestant varieties, with a few far-flung Mennonites in the mix. She and Christopher didn’t put up a tree or light a menorah, but they exchanged gifts on Christmas Day, and if they weren’t traveling to New Jersey to spend the holiday with his mother and sister, Liesel usually made a turkey.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said a blessing over anything, or even if she ever had.

  “Um…” Liesel’s teeth caught her lower lip, and she forced herself to keep from giving in to the bad habit of biting it. “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food?”

  Peace’s brow furrowed. Her tiny rosebud mouth pursed. “That not what we say.”

  Liesel didn’t mean to laugh at the little girl’s disdain, but a chuckle slipped out. “Okay. Why don’t you tell me what you usually say?”

  Peace sighed, very put out. “Fank you for de winds dat blow, fank you for de seeds dat grow, fank you for de earth to plow, fank you for de love you show.”

  Then, using the daintiest of touches to pinch one neon-colored circle between her thumb and forefinger, Peace lifted it from the bowl, smelled it, let her tongue come out to taste it. She looked up at Liesel with wide eyes, then put it in her mouth as cautious as she’d been with the milk. Happy had done something similar the night before, been so careful with the chocolate milk before he drank. Apparently, the food suited, because Peace lifted the spoon and started eating.

  “Careful, honey.” It was useless to tell a little kid not to spill, Liesel knew that much. As soon as you said it, that’s just what they did.

  Peace ate with the spoon as daintily as she’d done with her fingers. Liesel leaned with her elbows on the island to watch her. The perusal didn’t seem to bother Peace at all. She hummed under her breath as she ate and ignored Liesel.

  The girl had the same downy blond hair as her brother and several shades lighter than their mother’s, though her tangled mess of curls wasn’t quite as long. Soft, though, under Liesel’s palm when she stroked it. So soft.

  Liesel hadn’t ever imagined she’d be the sort of woman to get the baby bug. In fact, when Becka had started “breeding”—her term for it, not Liesel’s—Liesel had been a little appalled at how easily her best and oldest friend slipped into the role of mother. They’d become wives around the same time and that change hadn’t made much of a difference in their friendship, but that first baby had come between them in a big way.

  Dexter had been a cranky kid, now grown to a cranky teen, who took after his dad in looks. Becka had been smitten at once, talking endlessly about the color of poo and sleep training and dozens of other things Liesel hadn’t given a damn about, but pretended to because she loved her friend. There’d been times in their friendship when one or the other of them had fallen hard for a guy who’d stolen most of their attention, but this was way worse than that. Liesel had never felt she needed to compete with a boyfriend, because no matter what happened it had always been sisters before misters.

  There’d been no competing with Dexter.

  So, sort of like the time Liesel had taken up with the teammate of a minor-league baseball player Becka was dating, not because she was into sports or even the guy, but because it meant more time with her friend, Liesel took up…babies.

  She grew to appreciate, and in fact, love, the sweet smell of a baby’s head. The weight of an infant sleeping bonelessly in her arms. The sheer joy of being the one to elicit a tiny baby giggle.

  As Becka kept breeding, Liesel’s baby envy grew. By the time Annabelle was born, Liesel had decided she was ready to become a mother herself. Maybe not to four kids, that was a little too much, but at least two. Two sweet and perfect children with Christopher’s eyes and her hair. His sense of humor and her creative streak.

  Only it hadn’t happened. She’d gone off the Pill, taken her prenatal vitamins, kept track of her ovulation. Nothing. They’d been at a baby impasse for a few years, and now…

  This.

  Peace finished the cereal and now tipped the bowl to her mouth to slurp at the milk. “More?”

  “More? Really?” It had been a pretty big bowl for such a little girl, but who knew what she’d been used to eating? Liesel poured another half bowl of cereal and added milk.

  Peace didn’t go through the ritual of the blessing or smelling and tasting the food before she ate it. This time, she dug right in. She crunched happily, still tunelessly humming and kicking her bare toes against the island.

  “Honey, I’m just going to go look for Christopher. Are you okay here?”

  Peace crunched away, not looking bothered at all at being left alone. Liesel hesitated, but it wasn’t as though Peace was an infant. Besides, she wasn’t going to go far. Even if the little girl fell off the stool, Liesel would be close enough to get to her in half a minute.

  “Okay,” Liesel said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She found her husband where she’d expected to, feet up and reclining in the battered easy chair that had been his dad’s. All the other furniture they’d had before they got married had been replaced over the years, but Christopher refused to let go of this chair.

  Liesel understood the sentiment. She held on to things, too. Ticket stubs, postcards, matchbooks. It wasn’t that she hated the chair, even though it was the ugliest thing she’d ever