Quiet As It's Kept Read online

  “Sounds good,” Phillip said.

  “Do you need me to bring anything?”

  Phillip rolled his eyes. “Yeah, an empty stomach.”

  “Okay. I do need to stop by the store and pick up a couple of jars of baby food for Isaiah. I didn’t bring any real food with me.”

  “Man, don’t worry about that. Whatever Shelby has cooked, she can put it in the food processor and blend it right up for the baby. She did that with Nyah and P.J. when they were Isaiah’s age.”

  Will looked at his friend in disbelief. “I don’t know, man. I mean, I’ve read articles about babies and food allergies. And I’d hate for him to have an allergy to something.”

  Phillip got a sheepish look on his face.

  “What’s that look for?” Will asked.

  “Okay, don’t kill me.”

  “Kill you?” Will wondered where the conversation was about to go.

  “Okay, Isaiah has already had some of our table food. And he likes it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just some basics. Shelby steamed some carrots and potatoes for him and processed them and Isaiah loved it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, and think about it, at least we know how our table food is being processed. When it comes to giving him that baby food, you don’t know what that factory looks like on the inside where they bottle up all that baby food, which is mainly watered-down fruits and vegetables anyway.”

  Will thought about what his friend was saying, and he was right. And since the baby had already had some table food, it probably wouldn’t hurt to let him have a little more.

  “And, besides, my wife is a nurse. It isn’t like Shelby is going to give Isaiah anything that is going to hurt him or choke him.”

  With that, Will was sold. “Okay, then, we’ll follow you guys home.”

  “All right, see you in a few,” Phillip said.

  Again, Will felt relief wash over him. He was actually going to have a few hours to relax without being under a veil of anxiety about his wife. He never felt fully comfortable around his friends and with his wife at the same time. Morgan always seemed on edge around them and never wanted to visit for more than an hour. Will always found himself making excuses as to why they couldn’t spend more time with them. He’d gotten so tired of having to do so that he’d been avoiding visiting them all together.

  He felt slightly guilty about welcoming the fact that Morgan wouldn’t be around to spoil his visit—but only slightly.

  Chapter 13

  Will sat back on the couch, rubbing his hand on his full stomach. “Shelby, that dinner was good.”

  “Thank you, Will. Did you get enough?”

  “I got too much, if you ask me. I can’t move I’m so full. I think I overate because I haven’t really eaten much in the past couple of days due to my toothache.”

  “Well, I would ask how your mouth is feeling now, but judging from your body language, I figure you must be fine,” Phillip said.

  “Yes, thank the Lord and thank you, Shelby, for taking me over to the dentist and bringing me home. I don’t know what I was thinking. And I don’t know how I would have gotten back home in one piece.”

  “No problem. That’s what friends are for.”

  “Mom, can you come here for a second?” Phillip and Shelby’s daughter called from somewhere upstairs.

  Shelby answered her daughter, saying, “Yes, honey, I’ll be there in a second.” She turned her attention back to Will and Phillip. “Once your stomachs have digested some of that food, don’t forget I’ve got dessert in the kitchen.”

  “What did you make?” Will asked.

  “Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.”

  “Oh, dear Lord, you two are going to have to roll me out of here when it is time for me to finally leave.”

  Will was glad to have the home-cooked meal. It felt good not having to cook. He especially enjoyed the chance to enjoy his food in the midst of friends. It felt like only a short while ago that he and Phillip were college mates in their dorm rooms. And now he and his best friend were married with children.

  “Why don’t I let you guys catch up?” Shelby said. “I am going to check on Nyah and P.J.”

  As Will looked at Shelby, she knowingly said, “I’ll check on Isaiah too.”

  Isaiah had fallen asleep right after he ate his lunch of mashed potatoes and gravy, meatloaf and sweet peas. The baby had loved his food so much that he ate until his head was bobbing into sleep. Will figured the home-cooked comfort food had been like a sedative to the baby.

  After Shelby left the room, Phillip spoke. “So, what’s been up? You’ve been over here more in the last week than you have been in the past year, but we still haven’t had a chance to talk. You swoop in and out when you are dropping Isaiah off and when you come back to pick him up.”

  “I know. I’ve been on a mission to find a job.”

  “How has that mission been going?”

  “Well, I got a job offer the other day,” Will said.

  Phillip’s eyebrows rose in anticipation of hearing the details about Will’s job offer.

  “Don’t get too excited. It wasn’t anything big, and Morgan let me know it.”

  Phillip’s eyebrows now furrowed in confusion.

  “In a nutshell, it was a job at the mall that barely paid over minimum wage.”

  “Okay?” Phillip said with question.

  Phillip was the type to try to gain as much information as possible before giving feedback. So Will continued to speak. “Morgan basically told me that my new job would only be paying for daycare and the gas to get back and forth from work. She felt like I’d be wasting my time taking the job.”

  “Oh.” Phillip still chose not to add anything, just in case Will wanted to continue talking.

  “So that got shot down pretty quickly.” Will shook his head. “At the rate I’m going, I’m worth more dead than alive.” Will chuckled in spite of himself.

  “Don’t say something like that. That’s not something to laugh at.”

  “I’m just quoting my wife.”

  Phillip looked at Will in disbelief. “Morgan said that to you?”

  “Yep, but she was only joking.” Will didn’t want Phillip to think that his wife was serious about what she’d said. She had apologized profusely to him. “She said she was trying to make a joke but wasn’t a comedian, so it probably came out wrong.”

  “I’d say. I don’t even see where a comedian could make that kind of a statement funny.” Phillip mocked a fake laugh and said, “Hardy-har-har.” He shook his head. “Not funny.”

  “Seriously, don’t sweat what I just said. Morgan didn’t mean it,” Will said. He really didn’t want to get into it further with his friend. The conversation might lead to other topics, like the day Will had come close to almost breaking Morgan’s arm.

  Changing the subject back to the job search, Phillip said, “You know I’m here for you if you need anything.”

  And Will knew exactly what Phillip meant. Phillip would hire him on the spot and work out the technicalities later. But they were friends and even friends knew where to draw boundaries. Will knew that it would be best if he wasn’t his best friend’s employee. Plus, he knew that if Morgan had a fit about him taking a job in the mall, she would really have a fit about him taking a job to work for Phillip. He didn’t want to imagine how that conversation would go.

  “I know you’ve got my back if I need you. And, brother, if I need you, believe me, I won’t hesitate to call.”

  Will and Phillip talked for almost an hour nonstop, catching up on things. Phillip updated Will on the events going on in their fraternity at the alumni level, and he also updated Will on the activities their church men’s group had been having. Will hadn’t been an integral part of either group since he’d been laid off from his job.

  The time flew by as they talked and before Will knew it, Shelby was bringing Isaiah back down to him. The baby was awake and ready to get
down on the floor so he could crawl around and play with the children. He was a fast crawler and had even started pulling up on things to stand up. At home they’d had to move items off of the coffee table and other things out of his reach so he wouldn’t pull them down and break them, or, worse yet, eat them.

  After Will ate dessert with his friends, he said his good-byes and returned home. When he pulled into the garage, he saw that Morgan still hadn’t made it back, and it was almost four o’clock in the afternoon. He checked his cell phone and home phone to see if she had called, but she had not left any messages.

  Will changed his and the baby’s clothing. He put some of the baby’s toys on the floor in the den, and sat at the computer to search for more jobs. While Will typed and searched, the baby played contently with the toys.

  He had used as many key words as he could think of to conduct his job search. He then clicked on the history icon so that he could look at the Web sites he’d previously visited. That way, he wouldn’t waste time backtracking and repeating his work.

  Looking through the Web site history, he saw the list of sites he’d previously visited, but also noticed a few sites that he had not typed in. This was odd to him at first because he was normally the only one to use the computer. But then he realized that Morgan must have gotten on to the computer at some point, and it must have been within the last forty-eight hours, because it had at least been that long since he had logged on.

  At first, none of the sites Morgan had viewed looked very familiar, but a few of the words caught his eye—words like “life” and “quote.” Then he saw a Web site for a life insurance company he did recognize. One by one, he clicked on to each of the sites and realized they were insurance companies, mainly life insurance companies. He wondered if his wife was looking for affordable dental insurance for him. As his curiosity got the best of him, Will continued looking at the previous pages that had been viewed.

  The pages revealed information about life insurance policies. This was odd, because they already had life insurance. It was one of their monthly bills. Even though things were tight, they always paid their life insurance premiums. If anything should happen to one of them, there would at least be a little financial security to help take care of their child.

  Will stared at the last Web site he’d opened. He was truly perplexed as to why Morgan would want to add another bill to the ones they already had. Morgan hardly ever got on to the computer at home. She always said that she did all she needed to do on the computer at work. And he was also puzzled because he couldn’t figure out when Morgan would have had a chance to get on to the computer, unless it was in the middle of the night or while he was at church. But that wasn’t possible because she’d left for work at the same time he’d left for church.

  He shook his head, then felt a hand on his thigh. Looking down, he saw Isaiah pulling up on him.

  “Hey, little guy,” Will said to his son.

  The baby put his fingers up to his mouth, indicating that he wanted to eat. Will looked at the clock on the computer. It was now after five, and he figured that was why the baby was hungry. He picked his son up and sat him back down in the middle of the toys.

  He pulled from the refrigerator the containers of leftovers that Shelby had packed. He found the one that had the pureed foods prepared specifically for the baby. It had been a thoughtful gesture on Shelby’s part to fix containers of food that would be enough for all three of them to have dinner.

  When Will glanced over to his son in the den, he noticed that the baby had moved from his spot in the middle of the floor, and he was now trying to push keys on the computer. “Oh, no, man, I can’t have you breaking the computer. We can’t afford another one of those right now.”

  He picked the baby up and held him in his arms until he finished warming the food. Then he fed him and gave him a training sippy cup filled with formula. The baby took the cup and held it with both hands up to his mouth.

  Later, just after Will finished changing the baby’s diaper and placed him into his playpen, he heard Morgan’s car pull up. It was almost six o’clock. His wife had been gone for almost nine hours. It made him wonder what was so important that she had to go into work for nine hours on a Sunday.

  A few moments later, Morgan stepped into the laundry room and then into the kitchen. She looked energetic and refreshed, more refreshed than she had ever looked on a regular workday. “Hey, baby,” Morgan said.

  “Hey back,” Will said, unable to muster up the energy his wife was exuding. “How was work?”

  “Work? Ah, it was good. I was able to catch up on a lot.” She stepped into the den and picked Isaiah up. She raised him into the air and gave him a kiss on both of his cheeks.

  The baby giggled and squirmed, wanting more kisses from his mother. Morgan gave him repetitive kisses on his cheeks, and he giggled as hard as he normally did when his aunt Nicole was talking gibberish to him.

  “Nine hours is a long time. There must have been a lot of work for you to catch up on.”

  Morgan placed the baby on her hip and let out a huff, as if annoyed by his comment. “Well, if I want to show my boss that I can handle all the responsibilities he gave me, I’ve got to go the extra mile. Two people quit last week and he split their duties between me and the other manager. I am also hearing rumors that my company is planning on cutting some jobs and I don’t want to be one of the people they let go.” She walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and looked in. “Now, I know you can understand that, can’t you?”

  Will didn’t like the condescending tone his wife was speaking in. He knew what it was like to be laid off, but the layoff had been a complete surprise to him. There hadn’t been any rumors floating around his office, and even if there had been, he knew he couldn’t have done one thing better than he had so as not to have been laid off.

  He had been a model employee who was dedicated to his job 110 percent. And in the end the company had not cared about any of his efforts. When they’d decided to cut his division, they cut the entire division and that was it. So he’d felt helpless then and helpless now. He didn’t need his wife constantly reminding him about jobs and layoffs.

  Will took a deep breath before speaking. “I can understand trying to do your very best to hopefully thwart being let go. But this is Sunday, the day we are supposed to rest. When you said you’d have to go into the office, I figured you only meant for a couple of hours, not all day.”

  “It wasn’t all day. I was so engrossed in all of those reports I needed to review that time just got away from me. I didn’t even get a chance to get a decent bite to eat, just some chips and a soda from the vending machine.”

  She pulled the containers of food from the refrigerator. “Um, what did you cook? I am tired and hungry. All I want to do is eat something, take a nice long bath, and relax with my husband and my baby.” She kissed the baby’s forehead, and then started opening the containers. “So what did you cook?”

  “I didn’t. Those are leftovers from Phillip and Shelby’s. They invited us over for dinner after church.”

  She stopped opening up the containers of food. It was obvious that Morgan wasn’t happy to hear about their dinner visit. But at that moment he really didn’t care, and he didn’t feel like moving around her like he was on pins and needles, either.

  “You went over to Phillip’s house for dinner?”

  “Yeah. When I got ready to call you and tell you about the invite, I found the message you’d left about continuing to work.”

  Morgan pushed the containers farther back on the counter. “Humph, wasn’t that nice. And Shelby packed up leftovers for us.” Morgan’s smile looked more like a sneer. She handed the baby over to Will. “I am not as hungry as I thought I was. I think I’ll go ahead upstairs and take my bath. I’ll eat something later.”

  Morgan turned to leave the kitchen. He guessed her appetite could turn from hot to cold just like her attitude.

  “Hey, before you leave, I’ve got a quest
ion for you.”

  She turned and looked at him as if annoyed to be stopped.

  “Why have you been looking at insurance companies on the Internet?”

  “Oh, that? I felt sorry for you and your tooth. I mean, what will happen if you chip another tooth? We don’t exactly have another four or five hundred dollars to blow again. I wanted to check out some companies to see if they had any reasonable rates.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you find any?”

  “No, I sure didn’t. You’ll just have to be careful with those teeth until the next open enrollment. I am going to have to put you on a soft-food diet like Isaiah.”

  “Ha-ha, real funny.”

  “Just joking, Will. Man, can’t you take a little joke?”

  “Yeah, I can take a little joke, but it seems as though your jokes are all steered toward me,” Will said.

  “Oh, honey, don’t be so sensitive.” She turned and continued out of the room and up the stairs.

  Will wondered why his wife had just lied about looking up rates for dental insurance and hadn’t mentioned anything about the life insurance sites she’d been to. He wasn’t being sensitive, just suspicious, and with good reason.

  Chapter 14

  After Will put the baby down to sleep for the night, he decided to clean out both his and Morgan’s cars. He had not detailed them in a while, and Morgan had been standoffish with him ever since she’d gotten out of her bath. She had also come back into the kitchen and made a sandwich to eat for dinner, ignoring the home-cooked meal that had been provided for them.

  Will was tired of trying to understand why Morgan didn’t like his friends, but tonight he didn’t want to address it with her and possibly cause an argument. Instead, he’d do something that would give him time and solitude to think.

  He first cleaned out the insides of the cars. Then he drove each vehicle in turn to a nearby car wash and vacuumed them out thoroughly: under the seats, in the crevices, and even inside the ashtrays. Neither he nor Morgan smoked, but oftentimes they threw candy or gum wrappers in the ashtrays. Instead of using the facility to wash the cars, he used his cleaning supplies and hose at home to wash them both.