Chapter 2: The Absolute Furthest Thing from Cool

"Daddy…" whined the adorably pitiful voice that Trey felt he was hearing a lot less of these days than he really should. "Is Donny coming over to play today?"

Trey looked up at his – however horrible and insensitive it might sound – favorite child, who at the moment was wearing a sad little pout. He wanted so badly to reach out and ruffle that soft, sandy blond hair, he wanted to be able to tell him that of course his best friend was coming over, he wanted to be able to promise that after that the two of them could get dressed up in superhero costumes and go fight supervillains on the jungle gym just like they used to, chase each other around the yard, wrestle in the grass, and that he would push him so high in his swing he would feel like he was flying…

He couldn't do any of that though because he was currently holding a baby in each arm, and Shannon had called earlier to inform him that she didn't think she'd be able to make it today, she was just so busy and she was really trying to work something out but it was just such an inconvenience. Trey wanted to tell her to get over herself and call her a bitch and demand that she bring Donny over anyway because he couldn't stand seeing Ash so lonely, but he wasn't the sort of person who did that. He had never in his life called a woman a bitch to her face. His mother had taught him better than that. He just sighed and set baby Eva down on his lap for a moment despite her fussy sort of protests because his left arm really needed a break. "I don't know, little man," he answered. "We'll just have to wait and see."

Ash came a little closer and leaned up against his father's knee, giving the baby currently located there a rather distasteful look. "Will you call his mommy?" he pleaded.

"Um…I already did and she didn't answer," Trey lied, because he didn't feel like there was any reason to let Ash in on how selfish and flaky Shannon really was. He tried not to talk badly about people in front of his son for the sake of setting a good example, although that wasn't too much of a struggle anyway because Trey had never been the gossiping type.

Ash played with the slightly frayed knee of Trey's jeans sulkily for a minute, which brought to Trey's attention the fact that his wardrobe was definitely looking a little threadbare these days. He couldn't remember the last time he had been shopping for himself. He didn't much care for trying on clothes anyway, he was fat and didn't look good in anything so there wasn't much point, and it was always kind of discouraging to have to go through all the racks to find a size XL in everything. It wasn't like he went anywhere that required him to dress nicely anyway. He didn't go anywhere at all.

"Then can I play Little Fox Music Box?" Ash asked quietly, in such a defeated tone that Trey practically felt his heart break.

"Of course," he said immediately, shifting Eva over a little farther so that he could reach into his pocket.

He wondered if it would make any difference if he explained to Julie how much her being gone was hurting Ash. He was sure she wouldn't be too concerned with the fact that he himself hadn't been getting anything close to the recommended eight hours of sleep a night for months, but she did care very deeply for Ash. Maybe if he told her how lonely the kid was and how much he just needed a little more attention…but what was the point? Julie wasn't coming back from her tour. If anything she would just get angry and remind Trey that he was the one who had wanted another baby and she had told him all along that it wasn't a good idea. It was always circular arguments with Julie, nothing ever changed, and despite whatever feeble disputes Trey's mind tried to put up he knew better than to voice them. It was best to just try to control the damage as well as he could while he waited for her to get back.

"Hey," Trey added to Ash as he unlocked his phone and pulled up the app, "I love you."

Ash just reached up to grab the phone and then took it over to his beanbag chair on the other side of the room. He didn't return the sentiments.

Certainly not used to being given the cold shoulder by a six-year-old child, Trey felt a surge of irritation and dislike towards the two as of right now essentially useless lumps of flesh settled against either of his hips. He despised himself for feeling that way, he really did, but he couldn't help it. All they did was cry, no matter what he did for them they just cried, and he was getting to the point where he was starting to understand how something like shaken baby syndrome could possibly exist.

It wasn't that he hated them because he most certainly didn't. He loved them, but he hated himself for not liking them. Each unkind thought he had about the girls felt like a knife twisting in his chest because they were just babies, they deserved to be loved on and adored, and plus the sole catalyst for their entire existence had been his determination to have the life and family that he'd always dreamed of, but it hadn't quite worked out that way. He wanted more than anything to feel completely smitten with the both of them, to have them bring him joy, for each little face they made to just melt his heart because that's what he had always imagined having a little girl would feel like, but it just wasn't. Perhaps things would be different if he didn't have Ash but he did, and the fact that taking care of the girls could only seem to happen at the total expense of the time he and Ash spent together made him very resentful indeed.

It wasn't just his relationship with Ash that he felt was deteriorating though, it was his entire self-image. For the past six years Trey had resolutely and unwaveringly considered himself to be a good father and had been extremely proud of that fact, especially considering that his own father hadn't really been much to speak of. After Trey's parents divorced when he was five years old his father had become basically a birthday/Christmas dad, the type who would send a card when it was appropriate and visit a few times a year but never made an effort to establish any type of real bond. Trey himself wasn't like that though, not in the least bit. He and Ash had – or used to have as the case may have become – an incredible bond, a mutual sense of adoration and reverence for each other so strong that he had been sure nothing, not even his growing distance from Julie, could ever affect it. He had clearly been wrong where that was concerned, and it was killing him.

He watched as Ash sprawled out on the bean bag and pushed a few buttons on the phone. The quiet strains of "London Bridge" started up across the room, but Ash wasn't singing along like he normally did this time. He was just lying there with his chin resting on one fist and a glum expression on his face. Trey was sure he was bored with the app, bored with all of his toys, tired of playing alone, and that wasn't fair. Being six years old was supposed to be fun, and he supposed that technically being twenty-six was supposed to be fun too but at least Trey knew he had gotten himself into his situation and had no one else to blame. Ash had never done anything wrong, in fact he had been so completely wonderful that he had inspired in Trey a burning desire to live the whole experience over again with another son or daughter. Being an only child himself he had been unaware of what the repercussions of that might be and therefore had failed to take them into account, and now Ash was taking the brunt of the punishment for it. That was some pretty heavy guilt.

Unable to bear it any longer Trey awkwardly maneuvered his way down to the floor and set each of the babies down underneath their little mobiles in the most likely futile hope that they would find the shapes and colors interesting enough to distract them from the fact that they were being left alone. Eva, who was the slightly fussier of the two although Anna was never too far behind, made a threatening sort of noise that sounded like she was about to start crying and Trey froze. Shut up shut up shut up, he thought frantically.

Of course it didn't work, Eva started crying and then Anna joined in but Trey decided in that very moment that he no longer cared. He had always been very critical of the cry-it-out method of parenting that some people were into, believing that children were far too vulnerable to be left without comfort, but now he figured he might as well give it a try. Besides wasn't that basically what he had been doing to Ash for the past few months anyway? If he fell and scraped his knee the best Trey could usually do was hand him a band aid and tell him to walk it off before his attention was being called by someone much more needy, and when Ash got cranky and sullen, clearly trying everything he could come up with to get some sort of acknowledgement even if it was negative, Trey still ignored him just as much as he did the rest of the time.

Well, that wasn't going to work anymore, he decided. If Ash was getting ignored then it was only fair that the twins get ignored an equal amount as well so for the first time in the past two months he disregarded the crying babies and walked off in the other direction, feeling incredibly ashamed for it the entire time but forcing himself to keep going anyway.

"Hey, little man," he said, kneeling down next to Ash who was still staring at the screen of his phone with an expression of utter boredom on his face.

He looked up from beneath his long, dark lashes, his eyes still so sweet and innocent. "Hey."

"How come you're not singing?" Trey asked.

Ash sighed exasperatedly and handed the phone back over. "I don't want to sing," he explained with a vigorous shake of his head. "I want to play with Donny!"

That was one thing that was at least not Trey's fault, but he couldn't help but feel a little guilty about it anyway. "I know," he agreed sympathetically, "but his mommy's busy today."

Ash frowned and kicked the ground a little with the toe of his shoe. "What's she doing?"

Probably shopping, or maybe getting a massage or something else devastatingly important, Trey was sure. What he said though was, "I don't know, but it's none of our business anyway. Maybe he'll come next week."

"But I want him to come today!" Ash protested, kicking harder, repeatedly this time.

"Hey, stop that," Trey ordered, because no matter how much he felt he needed to make things up to Ash, he was not under any circumstances going to put up with a tantrum. "I know you want to play with Donny but his mommy's busy so he can't come over, I'm sorry. We can still play without him."

Ash immediately ceased his kicking and looked up at Trey in wonder. "You want to play?" he asked, almost disbelievingly.

Seeing the look of surprise on his son's face made Trey feel about two inches tall and he had to take a second to catch his breath again after that blow. "Of course I want to play with you," he said firmly. "I always want to play with you, sometimes I'm just busy but I always want to."

"Okay," said Ash excitedly, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "Can we build a fort?"

And just like that Trey knew he was forgiven. It was that easy. Why couldn't adults be more like little kids? "Definitely," Trey responded. "Come on, let's go get some blankets."

They got up and walked out of the living room and Trey had to fight an obligatory sort of urge to go console the babies who were still crying, albeit rather half-heartedly at this point. They were fine, they didn't need anything, and when Trey felt Ash slip a tiny hand into his own the urge to change directions immediately vanished.

Now that the babies were here and he finally had someone to compare him to, Trey realized with a sense of uncomfortable dread that Ash was getting very grown up and understood that at some point his role would have to change. The societal expectations, at least of the area they lived in, seemed to be that as a child grew up the father-son relationship was expected to become more distant, less physical, less emotional even. It was about kids respecting their elders, being punished and threatened into obedience and eventually one day learning to be grateful for it. Maybe things weren't quite as extreme here in southeastern suburbia, but in the slightly more rural area that Trey had grown up in if a father was proud of his son he expressed that with a clap on the shoulder and a few subtle words, that was all. There were no hugs or long, deep conversations about life or love or anything of that nature. Even worse if a father was disappointed in his son he showed it with the buckle of his belt, and Trey didn't think he could ever bring himself to do that. He just didn't have it in him.

He was not at all ready for Ash to make the transition from little kid to pre-teen or even worse adolescent, but he was already halfway there, wasn't he? And when did that change officially take place? How old could a kid be before it became unacceptable for him to hold his father's hand like this? At what point would wrestling and tickling and building forts together stop being sweet and start being frowned upon? Trey didn't know exactly but he had a sinking sort of feeling that it was going to be a lot sooner than he would have liked and he vowed to himself not to waste any more of this precious time. How Julie could possibly justify missing so much of it to herself was far beyond him.

"Can you move the big chair behind the sofa and then put the blanket over both of them?" Ash was asking excitedly. "Oh! And then can we take the pillows from the sofa and make a big wall so nobody can get in except for us?"

"Yeah, sure," Trey agreed.

"Or wait, can we use the pillows from your bed instead? The really big ones?"

Trey couldn't help but laugh a little at the unbridled enthusiasm. This fort was turning into quite the project. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. "Why don't you go get the ones you want?"

Ash dashed off towards Trey's room – he no longer though of it as his and Julie's room because she was hardly ever in it with him, even when she was home she often slept in the guest bedroom upstairs where she practiced her cello – and Trey went to the hall closet to try to find the biggest blankets he could. Ash was going to need a truly spectacular fort to take his mind off the fact that Donny was most likely not coming over today. Seeing as it was five minutes past three and Shannon was usually at least ten minutes early Trey was pretty certain that it wasn't going to happen, but no sooner did he have that thought than the doorbell rang.

Trey frowned and shut the closet door. It had to be some Jehovah's Witnesses, there was just no way Shannon had actually shown up.

As it turned out it wasn't Shannon or Jehovah's Witnesses, but it was Donny, Donny and some teenaged-looking kid Trey had never seen before. "Hi," he said in mild surprise.

"Hey," the unknown kid replied with a good-natured grin. "I'm Kevin. Sorry we're a couple minutes late, I got lost. This neighborhood is really confusing."

It was a confusing neighborhood, Trey had to grant him that, all the streets were named after flowers and the majority of them either dead ended or went in a complete circle, but the more pressing matter was that Trey had no idea who the guy was. "It's fine," he said, confused. "Who, um…who are you again though?" He hated to be rude but he just didn't remember ever meeting this kid before.

"I'm Kevin," the kid repeated. "I'm Donny's stepbrother. Did Shannon not call you?"

Trey shook his head. "No, the last I heard from her she said she was too busy to bring Donny over at all today."

"She was," the kid explained, "but he seemed really sad about it so I offered to bring him instead. I thought Shannon called you, she said you were definitely going to be home."

Of course she would have said that. She didn't see any reason to call because she knew Trey had no reason or opportunity to leave the house which was true but still a little insulting. All the same though, he was glad Donny had been able to come after all. Ash was going to be so excited. "She didn't call," he said, "but that's okay. Come on, Donny. Ash is getting pillows to build a fort."

"Awesome!" exclaimed Donny, his face lighting up with excitement.

"He's in my bedroom, do you remember where that is?" Trey asked.

Donny nodded in confirmation and then took off down the hall and around the corner as soon as Trey stood back to let him in.

The kid, Kevin apparently, was still standing on the porch and smiled at Donny's retreating back. "Thanks," he said to Trey. "I'm really sorry, I just assumed Shannon had called."

"Don't worry about it," Trey told him. "I'm glad you brought him."

"Me too," said the kid. "He about had a fit when Shannon told him he couldn't come, I felt so bad for him." He paused for a second and then shrugged. "Anyway, what time do you want me to come pick him up?"

"Well, when Shannon brings him they usually play for about an hour," Trey answered, "but I'm not on any kind of schedule so whatever's convenient for you."

"I'm not on a schedule either," the kid replied. "I was just going to go down the street to like, Starbucks or something and read until he was ready to go."

"Oh," Trey said, taken aback. He had just assumed that being a teenager this kid probably had a life and pressing things to do and therefore hadn't invited him in, but he realized now that he had probably come off as pretty rude. "You don't have to do that," he continued. "I mean, you can come in. I can make coffee if you want, or tea or something - " He cut off and felt his shoulders unintentionally tense up as the sound of a panicked, high-pitched wail reached his ears from the living room. He had left the babies in there alone, on the floor, and he didn't know where Ash was. That was a really bad combination. "Hang on," he said to the kid, starting to turn around. "I mean, come in. If you want, I mean, you don't have to, but…" He trailed off because he didn't have the presence of mind to really gather his thoughts when he was panicking over the possibility that Ash might have hurt one of the girls.

It was Anna crying, he could tell the difference and he knew it was her, and when he got into the living room he saw Ash and Donny sitting behind a huge wall of pillows, one of which appeared to have fallen over and hit Anna in the stomach. She wasn't hurt then, she was probably just startled which was a relief, and Trey considered that a legitimate reason to cry so he knelt down and picked her up, resting her against his shoulder and rubbing his hand up and down her back. "Shh, it's okay," he soothed. "You're fine. Ash, you guys need to be careful around the babies please."

"Sorry," said Ash, although he didn't really sound sorry at all.

Now that he had determined everything was safe Trey did feel kind of bad for just rushing away from the door like that and looked up to see if the kid had by chance followed him into the house. He had, he was just now rounding the corner into the living room, peeking cautiously around like he wasn't really sure if he was allowed or not.

"Come on in," Trey directed in what he hoped was an exceedingly polite tone of voice. "Sorry, I just - "

He was cut off by a gasp and then a delighted "Aww!" from the kid who was now fully in the room. "Oh my gosh, you have twins!" he exclaimed, like it was the best thing he could possibly imagine. He just had no idea. "Donny told me Ash had a baby sister but he didn't say he had two!"

"Yeah…" Trey said, trying not to sound too exasperated about it.

"Aww, they're precious!" the kid continued. "Are they identical?"

Trey shook his head. "Fraternal. They do look a lot alike though."

"They do," he agreed. "They kind of look like you too."

Trey didn't really know how to reply to that because he wasn't necessarily sure it was a good thing. He had never had anyone besides his mother tell him he was handsome or even remotely attractive at all, he knew perfectly well that he was overweight, and in the shallow, superficial 21st century he couldn't help but feel that two chubby, unattractive little girls were going to constantly be at a disadvantage. Ash wasn't going to have that problem, he was a beautiful child which stood to reason because Julie was a very pretty woman and while he lived Ashton Shay had been, unsurprisingly, quite the stud, but the girls…Trey just really, really hoped that when they grew up they turned out to look more like Julie.

"Look at you!" the kid was saying in amusement as he watched baby Eva put her fist in her mouth. "What's your name?"

"That's Eva," Trey answered. "And she's hungry," he added to himself. "Awesome." He gingerly set Anna down, picked Eva up instead, and then got up and walked into the kitchen to make a bottle.

"Daddy, can you move the big chair?" Ash shrieked.

"Um…yeah," Trey said distractedly, rummaging around in the pantry for the baby formula. It was a pain having to do this seven times a day, and technically fourteen since there were two babies. If Julie was around she could breastfeed like she had for Ash, but she had never expressed any interest in doing that for the girls and for some reason Trey felt a tiny bit offended by that. Were his babies not good enough for her or something? That was a stupid question actually, they obviously weren't. If they were she would be here right now. "Give me just a minute," he called over his shoulder to Ash. "I have to feed Eva first."

Ash let out a frustrated sounding sigh and the kid, Donny's stepbrother, spoke up. "I can move it. Where do you want it to go?"

Oh, that's right, Trey thought. Somehow in the past ten or twenty seconds he had already forgotten that the kid was here. He just wasn't exactly used to having guests in his house. The only person who had come over recently was Shannon but she usually messed around on her phone the whole time and didn't require a whole lot of entertainment. Trey's mother had come once to see the girls when they were first born, but had almost immediately launched into a stern lecture detailing all of the reasons that he should leave Julie and he had gotten so angry that he'd told her to get out. They hadn't spoken since.

Trey removed the lid from the baby formula container, filled the bottle with the correct amount of powder and water, screwed the top on, and shook it up all with one hand. He had gotten quite good at that seeing as he did it about a hundred times a week. "Did you say you wanted coffee?" he asked the kid who was in the middle of moving the big chair, closely scrutinized by both Donny and Ash.

"I mean, if you're making it I'll drink some," he answered. "Don't make it especially for me though."

Trey was well aware of the fact that he was being a pretty terrible host and would certainly have made coffee especially for the kid anyway, but he did feel like it was about time for another cup himself. He drank coffee constantly, it was the only way he could force himself to stay awake all day. "I'll make some," he responded as he put the bottle in the warmer and mentally snapped at whiny Eva to be patient.

The kid was busy helping Ash and Donny drape Trey's king sized comforter over the back of the sofa when Trey finished making the coffee and sat down to feed Eva. No sooner had he done that than Anna started to cry, and it was a hungry cry too so he sighed, took the bottle out of Eva's mouth, and set her back down under her mobile so he could go make another bottle.

Eva started to cry next which made Anna cry even louder, of course, and Trey felt that familiar urge to just tear out his hair because he didn't think he could stand much more of this. He had to at least appear composed in front of Donny's stepbrother though, so he took a deep, calm breath and then picked Anna up instead. "Calm down, honey," he urged quietly. "I promise I'll feed you but you have to wait your turn. Daddy only has two hands."

"Do you want some help?" the kid, who had evidently been listening closely, asked. "I mean, do you want me to feed one of them for you?"

"Oh, no, don't worry about it," Trey said quickly, not wanting to appear like he couldn't handle himself just in case this kid was going to go back and give a full report to Shannon or something. "You said you needed to read, didn't you? Go ahead, I don't mind. I know it's kind of loud right now but once I feed them they should quiet down."

"I don't need to read," the kid clarified. "I was going to because I didn't have anything else to do, but it's just the summer reading book for my freshman English class so I have until the middle of August to finish it. It's not really that good of a book either," he added bluntly, "so I'm not like, thrilled about reading it or anything."

Trey smiled a little at that. He had always hated English class too.

"Seriously," the kid continued, "I don't mind helping."

"Well…" Trey thought for a moment. Nobody besides himself had held the girls since Julie left for her tour so he didn't really know how they'd react to a stranger, but at the same time it probably wouldn't hurt to try. "Do you know how to hold a baby?" he asked.

The kid shrugged. "I mean, I think so. I held this baby at work the other day."

It struck Trey as rather strange that a teenage kid would have a job that involved holding babies. From his experience he thought most teenagers tended to work the low-paid positions in retail or food service or that type of thing. "What's your job?" he inquired.

The kid got kind of a sheepish look on his face. "Well, it's not technically a job," he explained. "I mean, I'm not technically getting paid, it's just an internship, but it's at the Sanders Hospice House off exit fifty-two."

Now Trey was even more confused because why the hell would any teenager in his right mind work an unpaid internship at a hospice house? Hospice was where his grandfather had eventually ended up before he died of cancer after sixty plus years of chain smoking. Trey had gone to visit him once before he died and remembered it being a very dismal place, drab and dim and heavy with the feeling of death. It was not a place he ever hoped to go again in his life. Granted that wasn't this particular hospice off exit fifty-two, but they had to be pretty similar, didn't they? "Why do you - " he started, but luckily managed to cut himself off before he could ask such an insensitive question. "I mean, what do you do there?" he corrected.

"Well, I want to be a social worker," the kid explained, clearly aware of what Trey had been about to ask initially, "and my friend's aunt knows the social worker at this place so she got me this internship so that I can like, see what she does and everything. I've only been working for two weeks but it seems pretty cool so far."

It seemed cool? Trey couldn't fathom that. The place where his grandfather had died seemed like the absolute furthest thing from cool, all the beds lined up in a long row, cold, unsmiling nurses tiptoeing around with syringes to load all the patients up with morphine, crisp white sheets tucked tightly around each emaciated body and the air full of the sound of shallow, rattling breaths. No, that had not been the least bit cool. No one could have paid him enough to take an internship at a place like that.

"So…what sorts of things do social workers do there?" he asked in an attempt to appear interested and not repulsed by the idea. As he spoke he gingerly passed Anna over and was pleased to see that the kid obviously had some sort of idea of the proper technique because he slipped one hand under her head and made sure to support it.

"Mostly case management," the kid answered, like Trey had a clue what that meant. "We figure out what the people need as far as like, financial resources and try to get it for them, try make sure they're comfortable or whatever, and also we just kind of talk to them a lot, the families too."

Trey was pretty certain there had not been a social worker at his grandfather's hospice home because he didn't remember any of the employees showing even the tiniest bit of interest in talking. "That's, um…" He was trying to think of a nice thing to say about it but he really couldn't, it still sounded like the worst job in the world.

"I know," the kid said cheerfully, looking down at Anna's sobbing face and bouncing her gently a little in an attempt to get her to stop. "It seems like it would be really depressing, but it's actually not bad. Most of the people that are still, you know, with it and all seem to really like having someone to talk to, and I love to talk so it's perfect for me." He laughed at his own little joke. "Plus the kids are really cute and fun to play with and all."

"The kids?" Trey asked. "You mean the patients' grandkids or something?"

He shook his head. "No, they have all ages of patients. There are some kids with like, cancer and other chronic diseases and stuff where they just can't handle any more chemo or the doctors have said there's nothing else they can do but their parents don't want them to die in the hospital. They have a whole separate wing for them with this huge playroom, I got to go in there the other day and…"

He kept talking but Trey stopped listening because he was absolutely horrified at what the kid had just said. They had children there, terminally ill children whose parents had at some point had to make the decision to stop their treatment and take them somewhere to die…he felt his heart ache just at the thought of it. How could the kid sit there and talk so casually about how nice their playroom was? What the fuck did it matter about the playroom? If Ash ever…no, he couldn't even go there. He couldn't let that idea even enter his mind. That was the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person and he got up off the floor in a daze and went into the kitchen to make Anna her bottle, willing himself to stop thinking about it.

"The coffee's ready," he noted weakly. "Do you like cream and sugar?"

"Yes please," the kid replied, "tons. I love it. Like, when I'm at work I literally get half coffee, half cream, and then ten of the little sugar packets."

Trey shook his head. Teenagers. He wouldn't be such a fan of sugar once he ended up with diabetes and had to have his foot amputated like Trey's grandmother who, quite coincidentally, had also ended up in hospice. He didn't say anything about it though. "Okay," he agreed. He put Anna's bottle in the warmer, one hand still clutching a squirmy, screaming Eva to his shoulder, before taking the kid his diabetes in a mug.

"Thanks," he said appreciatively as Trey set the coffee cup down on the end table. "Hey, do you have a rocking chair? The baby I was holding the other day at work really liked being rocked, I wonder if yours would like it too."

Trey didn't even respond to the question because a much more pressing and disturbing thought had just crossed his mind. "Wait, why were you holding a baby at work?" he demanded. He had never clarified that point earlier and now that he knew the nature of the kid's job he was kind of terrified to even hear the answer.

"It's kind of a long story," the kid started, and Trey felt himself relax just a little bit. It wouldn't be a long story to say that the baby had been one of the dying patients, would it? But then the kid kept talking and Trey's worst fear was confirmed.

"She was really premature and had like, so many problems," he said frankly. "I think they said fetal alcohol syndrome and some serious heart defect and a really underdeveloped brain so she was just not going to be able to survive, and I guess normally they'd let the mother take her home from the hospital since there was nothing they could do but her mom was in jail and wasn't allowed to take her back, so…yeah. She came to us instead, and it wasn't even like, a real admission, she wasn't technically a patient because it was only for a few hours."

Trey felt his grip on Eva instinctively tighten just a little and he found himself turning his head and kissing her wet, tear streaked cheek which was not something he had done in quite awhile. That was just so unbelievably awful, so much worse than having healthy, screaming babies who never let you get a full night's sleep.

"Anyway," the kid continued, "I just happened to be walking by when the nurse brought her in from the ambulance and she asked if I was busy and I said not really, so then she asked if I could take the baby into a quiet room and just rock her for awhile so I did."

"Wait, but…but you said she was only there for a couple of hours?" Trey asked with trepidation, fairly certain he didn't actually want to know the answer to that question.

"Yeah," the kid replied. "Just like, two, maybe three hours at the most. She was cute though," he added. "I mean, she was kind of messed up looking from all her issues, you know, but still cute. She was like, really limp because she had some sort of spinal cord deformity but they said that was actually a good thing because it meant she didn't feel any pain…and she was so sweet when I was rocking her, I think she really liked it. It was like she kind of just went to sleep, you know? And then the people from the funeral home came and got her."

Throughout that little monologue Trey felt himself get progressively sicker to his stomach and had a sudden urge to tear over there and snatch Anna back into his own arms. This kid who was sitting on his couch rocking his two-month-old daughter had apparently just a few days ago rocked another baby to death. A human child had died in his arms and he was sitting there talking about it like it wasn't even a big deal, like it was something he did every day, and now that Trey thought about it apparently it was. He was horrified. It couldn't possibly get any more morbid than that.

The kid, who was clearly quite the talker, kept right on going, evidently not noticing how appalled Trey was by everything he was saying. "My friends all thought it was so weird when I told them about it, they were like, how did you not cry? But the way I see it, it's really a good thing, isn't it? For pretty much all the hospice people death is a good thing because it means they're not suffering anymore. That baby would never have had a good life, there was just too much wrong with her and plus her mom was in jail and nobody knew who her father was, but now she's with God and he'll take care of her."

He said it with such fervor that, as shocking as it was, Trey was convinced that he really believed it. He hadn't taken the kid for the strict Christian type because he just couldn't imagine a man who raised his son that way ever marrying someone as shallow and nasty as Shannon, but he supposed he didn't really know the circumstances. In retrospect it made sense anyway, someone would have to have ridiculous amounts of blind faith to have such a positive attitude about working such a dismal job.

Trey swallowed hard and forced himself to speak because the kid was looking up at him expectantly like he was ready to hear what his thoughts were on the matter. "I just…that's just so horrible for the parents," was all he could say, because it was all he could think.

The kid nodded. "Yeah, I know. I felt really bad for her mother, I've been praying for her a lot. At least the father probably didn't even know she existed, but I've been praying for him too just because I feel like if he had known he would have wanted to be there."

Trey felt his jaw clench a little. The kid had a pretty high opinion of fathers if he thought the guy would have cared at all. If he hadn't cared enough to stick with the mother then it was unlikely that he would have had any more interest in the daughter. Trey was very critical of deadbeat dads, the way he saw it there was just no excuse. If he could have sacrificed his education, his career, his friends, his lifestyle, everything to take care of another man's child then there was no reason why all the rest of the men in the world shouldn't be able to take care of their own.

He abruptly remembered that he had put Anna's bottle in the warmer and that it was probably ready so he went to get it, grateful for something to do that didn't involve talking about dead babies. While he was in the kitchen he focused on thinking of a way to change the subject because he was not at all comfortable with the mostly one-sided conversation that had just occurred. "So…you said you're starting college this year?" he asked when he returned to the living room and handed the bottle over to the kid.

"Yeah, I'm really excited," he replied enthusiastically.

Trey settled back down on the floor to finish feeding Eva. "What school?"

"State," the kid said. "Just up the road a little bit."

"Oh, so you'll be close to home," Trey commented, not that he guessed it really mattered. He was just looking for something to say.

"Well, sort of," the kid replied. "Technically I live with my mom, I'm just staying with my dad this summer because his house is closer to my internship, but…yeah, I guess I'll be close to him." He made a little face as he said it, like the prospect of being close to his dad wasn't exactly a pleasant one, and Trey was a little curious as to what was up with that but felt it better not to ask. The kid kept talking anyway so even if he had wanted to he wouldn't have gotten the chance. "State has a really good social work program though, that's why I wanted to go there, so I'm really excited."

"I knew a couple people that went there," Trey said. "Not for social work obviously, but just in general. They said it was really fun, lots of crazy parties and stuff which is what they were into, although I don't know about you…"

The kid wrinkled his nose. "I mean, I'm not super into parties. I don't like, do drugs or anything so I might not fit in too well at the crazy ones, but it's a really big school so I'm hoping there will be other people like me there."

"Of course there will," Trey said quickly. He didn't want to scare the kid or anything. Most of Trey's friends from back in the day had been pretty hardcore partiers, Trey himself had been one as well at one point, but they were probably the extreme end of the spectrum. "There will be all sorts of people," he added in a reassuring voice. "You don't need to worry about that, I'm sure you'll have fun. I mean, I didn't go to State so obviously I can't tell you from firsthand experience, but everyone I know who went there loved it."

"Where did you go?" the kid asked curiously.

Trey lowered his gaze. He hated this question. "I, um…I didn't go to college," he admitted. "Well, I did one year of community college, but I got married when I was nineteen and Ash was born when I was twenty so…" He trailed off and shrugged. "Just couldn't really fit it in."

"Oh," the kid said. "Well, I mean, that's good though. You're obviously an awesome dad, that's something to be proud of."

Trey wondered if that was the sort of thing they taught people to say in social worker training. It's not that it felt fake or anything but, at least to him, it seemed kind of reached-for. "I had a good job," he explained in an effort to defend himself. "I mean, well…it wasn't complicated or anything, I just changed and repaired tires, but I made pretty good money anyway without a degree and I had opportunities to move up in the company so college didn't seem as important as taking care of Ash…" Again he trailed off because saying it out loud like that didn't sound very impressive, not when he was saying it to this bright-eyed, seemingly idealistic rich kid. Trey got the feeling that someday this kid was going to get hit hard with a big dose of reality and find out pretty quickly that it wasn't nearly as rosy as he seemed to think it was.

"That's very cool," the kid was saying, even though Trey knew it wasn't really cool at all. "That sounds like a good job, you get to like, get out and do things instead of just being shut up in an office all day."

Well, that was one way to look at it, Trey supposed. "Yeah. I worked with a lot of my friends too, we had fun." He looked down at Eva wistfully. She was almost done eating.

"You don't work there anymore?" the kid asked in surprise.

Trey shook his head without looking back up. "No, I had to quit when the girls were born because someone had to stay home with them and Julie, that's my wife," he added because he couldn't remember if the kid had heard about her yet or not, "travels for work and…couldn't take time off." It was a lie, but the kid didn't need to know that. Trey didn't feel like going into all of the details about Julie, just thinking about it exhausted him so he was sure talking about it wouldn't be any better.

The kid took a breath like he was about to say something else, but thankfully at that moment Ash stuck his head around the back of the couch and glared at Trey. "Daddy, are you going to come inside?" he demanded impatiently.

"Yeah, I am," Trey promised. "I've just got to finish feeding Eva."

"No babies allowed in our fort," Ash stated authoritatively, and Trey was pretty sure he heard an adamant, "Yeah!" from behind the sofa that he attributed to Donny.

"Okay, let me put her down then," Trey said, and then looked skeptically over at the kid who was still feeding Anna. "Are you okay if I - "

"Yeah, of course," he interrupted. "We're just having a lovely time over here, aren't we, precious?"

The kid seemed to be decently adept at holding the baby, and Trey was only going to be a few feet away behind the couch and under a blanket so he figured there wasn't too much that could go wrong. He set the for now contented Eva back under her mobile and then rounded the corner of the couch and peeked beneath the blanket, ready to get started on what he had promised he would do all along.

"Look, Daddy!" Ash ordered from behind the big wall of pillows he and Donny had set up around the perimeter of their fort. "This is our protection wall and it's bullet-proof and fire-proof - "

"And explosion-proof!" Donny added in an excited shout.

"Yeah, and explosion-proof and cannon-proof and tank-proof and…and…" Ash looked back over his shoulder at Donny for assistance in remembering what other sort of attacks their wall could withstand.

Trey, incredibly pleased and relieved to see his son so happy, felt his face relax into a genuine smile for the first time in weeks, and for a few minutes at least he forgot all about Julie, Shannon, and dead babies.