I heard his voice; he sounded worried immediately.
“Christy’s okay,” Maria said. “She’s with me. Grocery store drama. I’ll let her explain later. But I’m stealing your wife for the afternoon.”I whispered, “Maria.”She held up one finger.“Yes, she’s fine. No, you don’t need to come. We’ll be home this evening.”She listened.Then smiled.
“Perfect. Keep the baby alive.”She hung up.I stared at her.“He said yes?”“He said, and I quote, ‘Please don’t bring her back before she eats something.'”That made me laugh.
For the first time all day.Maria drove me to a spa.Not some luxury resort.Just a quiet place across town where she apparently knew one of the receptionists.She bought me lunch first.Then she paid for a massage, a facial, and one of those ridiculous scalp treatments where someone spends 20 minutes making you wonder why you’ve ever washed your own hair.
For three hours, nobody needed anything from me.
Nobody cried.Nobody asked me to feed them.Nobody touched me unless I said yes first.At one point during the massage, I fell asleep.When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was for maybe three seconds.Then I realized I felt rested.
