Page 26 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances
JAKE
I ’m driving home from the hardware store when I get a call from Lara.
“Hey, did you change your mind about coming over tonight?” I ask when I answer.
“I wish,” she says, bypassing a greeting altogether, sounding like she’s just run a marathon. “Jake, I know this is a big ask, but— do you think you could pick the kids up from daycare?”
I’m quiet for long enough that Lara starts to backpedal.
“Sorry, that’s too much. I’ll see if I?—”
“No, Lara, it’s okay. I can.” I flick on the turn signal. There’s only one daycare in town, and I’m willing to bet that’s where they are. “Sorry, it caught me off guard. When do I need to get them?”
“Oh, thank God , they’re out in ten minutes, but I called ahead and they can keep them?—”
“I can be there in five. The one on the corner? By the ice cream place?”
“Yes. Thank you so much. I would never spring this on you like this, but there was an issue today during clinicals, and we have to stay to file reports. My parents are in Minneapolis, and Zachery still isn’t answering my texts?—”
I wince, remembering the way she cried the other night when telling me about what had happened between them.
“It’s okay, Lara. Easy-peasy.”
For the next five minutes, she goes over the pick-up protocol with me - which lane to use, how I’ll have to talk to the teacher about getting their spare booster seats.
Five minutes after I get off the phone with her, I’m waiting in the pick-up lane when a familiar face pops up beside my passenger window.
“Jake Bradson , is that you?”
“Ruby, how are you?” I step out of the car and give my old babysitter a hug, learning that she’s working at the daycare now.
“I was so sorry to hear about your father’s passing,” she says, touching my arm lightly, and I thank her while trying not to make a face. When I explain the situation to her — that I’ve never done a pick-up here before — she disappears and returns with two other adults, all holding booster seats.
Aster, Chrys, and Daffy trail behind them, their eyes wide when they see me standing there.
“Hey, guys,” I say, smiling and hoping I don’t look as nervous as I feel. “You all are coming home with me today!”
After the daycare workers show me how to strap in the booster seats, help me get the kids buckled in, and one of the workers tries to slip me her number, I hop into the driver’s seat and realize I have nowhere to take them.
I can’t take them back to my place; it wasn’t kid-proofed before the demolition started, and it’s definitely not safe now, with power tools sitting out and hazards littering the place like a mother’s haunted house. If I had a key to Lara’s place, I could take them there, but I don’t.
“Jake?” Daffy says, kicking her feet into the seat hard enough that her light-up sneakers make the backseat look like a rave. “I have to pee.”
“Okay,” I say, anxiety rising inside me. I took the Kings to the Stanley Cup this year. I captained Michigan through the Frozen Four twice, bringing home the trophy once and winning MVP the other. I can handle an afternoon with three kids.
“Like, really bad,” Daffy adds, and I shift my truck into drive, eyes already locking on a place across the street I’m sure can solve all my problems.
Five minutes later, I have the three of them out of the car, out of traffic, and into the ice cream shop.
Daffy insists she can go to the bathroom on her own, and I listen at the door to make sure she washes her hands.
An attendant gives them each a scoop of their choosing (non-dairy for Aster) and then we’re sitting at a table together, the air conditioning blasting around us.
“I made this for you,” Chrys says, reaching into her pocket and producing a tiny, perfectly folded white square. I stick my spoon in my scoop and take the paper from her, raising an eyebrow while I unfold it.
“Did you fold this?” I ask, even though I know that’s not the point. She doesn’t answer me, but I get the picture open and realize what I’m looking at, and the ball that lodges in my throat is hard to talk around.
It’s a crayon-drawn picture of Lara, the triplets and me, at the beach. I’m in the water, in my yellow swim trunks, tossing Aster and Daffy much higher than I did in real life, and Chrys and Lara are sitting on the beach together, watching us.
I can pick out each person by the color of their swimsuit and hair. The sky is even, somehow, the exact same color it was that day.
“Chrys, this is amazing,” I finally manage to say, looking up at her with genuine wonder. Maybe every new parent feels this, but I think to ask Lara if this is normal, if our daughter is some sort of artistic genius.
“Thank you,” Chrys says, blushing and looking down at the table, and Daffy and Aster immediately lean in, their hands sticky as they grab at me.
“What is it?”
“I want to draw you a picture!”
“Yeah, me too, I want to draw you a picture!”
In the midst of their talking, I realize the ice cream dishes are empty, and unless I keep them here and pump them full of sugar until Lara is off work, I need to find somewhere to take them.
Preferably somewhere they can all do some coloring.
It takes me ten full minutes to get them back in the truck, each into their booster seats, which are wedged into the backseat in a way I don’t really understand.
At first, I accidentally put Daffy into Aster’s seat, and then Chrys into Aster’s seat, but the kids are good sports about it, giggling and rearranging themselves into the right spots so I can buckle them in.
When I see the library at the end of the street, it’s almost too obvious, and I laugh under my breath, turning into the lot and cutting the engine so we can go inside.
“Aster! Daffy! Chrys!” the librarian at the front smiles and waves to them when we come in, and when her eyes dart to me, the smile falters.
“This is Jake!” Daffy says, grabbing my hand territorially, almost like she can see the question in the librarian’s eyes.
“Friend of the family,” I say, clearing my throat. “Lara was running late from work today.”
“Oh, that poor thing, working the feet right off her body. I’ve never met anyone who needed a spa day more than her,” the librarian says, shaking her head. “Are you guys here for story time?”
At the mention of story time, the triplets promptly forget about drawing, and we shuffle into a large, colorful room in the children’s section, where another librarian reads to them for half an hour about dragons and other monsters who are really just misunderstood.
I sit in the back with the other parents, and when I catch one of the moms looking at me curiously, I wave and point to the triplets.
When story time is finished, we move to a craft table surrounded by books, and I sit on a tiny chair with them, really getting into the process of coloring a page. We’re there for a few minutes when someone says my name, the voice like a wormhole sending me right back to high school.
“Bradson?”
I sit up, turn around, and look right into the face of my old hockey coach. How is it that I’ve been in town for weeks, and only on the day I pick up the triplets I’m running into people I know?
“Hey, Coach,” I say, standing up from the table and feeling the triplets’ curious eyes on me.
“Been a while, huh, son?” he asks, crossing his arms and looking me up and down.
Sensing we’re into an adult conversation, the kids turn back to what they’re doing, and I note the way my old coach has aged — gray hair gone bald, arms and legs thinner than I remember, belly more pronounced.
“Yeah, it has. How has the team been doing?”
In stilted, sometimes awkward phases, we talk about the team’s performance, how they almost made it to the semi-finals, and how he’s been looking for an assistant coach for two years now.
I think he might say something to me about it, and I might have to figure out how to turn him down politely, but then he says something I wasn’t expecting.
“Yeah, missus wants me to retire, so I put in my notice just this last year. I think they’re having a hard time finding someone to take over. It’s not an easy job.”
Memories flash to mind of him screaming at us, throwing fits, his clipboard flying through the air at every minor mistake.
For the first time in my life, it occurs to me, I could be a better coach than that.
“Is that so?” I ask, and for the rest of the conversation, I’m thinking about all the things I would do differently than him.
Eventually, his grandkid runs up to him and declares it time to go, and he slaps his business card in my hand, saying it might be good for the guys he coaches to talk to a pro like me.
I take it and sit back down with the triplets, who thankfully don’t ask me a single question about the interaction.
By the time my phone rings in my pocket, I’m wearing a green mask Aster made for me, Daffy’s purple bracelet around my arm, and two big pink stars stuck to the top of my sneakers by Chrys.
“Jake, hey! I just got off work. I just realized you probably didn’t have anywhere to take the kids?—”
“We’re at the library,” I say, watching their faces light up when they realize I’m on the phone with their mom. “We can meet you at home.”