Page 95 of The New Place

“Oh, she’ll be so excited.”

Something in Ned relaxes. “You think so?”

“She talks about him all the time. And really, Ned, I am happy for you two. You picked a good one, and if Peggy is going to have a stepparent, I’m glad it’s him.”

“Oh,” Ned says softly. Stepparent. That’s…that’s a word. A big one.

“So tell him congrats from me, okay? And welcome to the parenting squad, I suppose.”

“The squad,” Ned echoes.

“It’ll be an adjustment, I’m sure, and Peggy will have questions, but whatever you need, Ned. If you want to talk to her together, or with all three of us and her, just let me know.”

He stares down at her. This is so…easy. So incredibly simple.

“Okay,” he gets out. She looks genuinely happy. “I’m not asking to change anything with custody or anything like that.”

“Good. I think it’s working the way it is,” Jen says. “For me at least, and it seems to be for Peggy.”

“Yeah, it’s good. For me too.” No, it’s not just him anymore. It’s him and Abbot. Stepdad, he thinks and swallows. It sounds like a really odd word. It sounds…good, too. Right. Kind of exciting, if he can quiet the rest of the noise in his brain and focus on the thought of Peggy having Abbot in her life for good. “Us, I mean.”

“I’ll go get her and you two can be on your way.” Jen pauses in the doorway. “Enjoy it. I guess you only get to tell her this once, right?”

“Right,” Ned says and leans against the counter for support.

Once. This is it. This isn’t real, but it’s going to be for her. Adding a third parent to her life. Telling her Abbot’s going to be here, for better or for worse.

Ned’s glad it’s too cold for ice cream. He’s not sure he could eat anything right now.

It’s too cold for the park too, so he drives to a coffee shop and orders her a slice of cake and a hot chocolate. This probably falls under the category of bribery, but he’ll deal with that later. Like when this was all supposed to happen, that safe, comfortable later he still wants to cling to, where he’d shuffled all things relationship and future until it had imploded on him.

He sips a coffee he doesn’t want. It’ll keep him up all night, though he likely won’t sleep anyway, the disaster of his life leaving him tossing and turning.

Once, he and Abbot wouldn’t have slept for other reasons. Now, Ned will lay in bed with his mind churning.

But that’s later, too, and this is now, and he has to actually tell Peggy before they leave here, no matter how nice it would be to ply her with sugar and drive her back home, the only stress in his evening that he went and spoiled her dinner.

“Sweetie, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” he starts.

She fits a bite of cake into her mouth that’s so large it bulges out her cheek. “Mom says Baxter isn’t feeling good.”

“He’ll be alright,” Ned says, then pauses because he doesn’t actually know that.

He has to push the worry away. Baxter’s still young, and he’s always been healthy, and besides, Ned’s credit card can’t take a dog’s cancer treatment on it or whatever else it might be, so he’ll assume everything will be fixed with some supplement he can buy for a handful of dollars. That’s how it’ll work. That’s how it has to work.

“He has a really good vet,” Ned says, wishing he could walk back his last words, but it’s too late now. Well, great, another mess to deal with, and he’ll handle that when the time comes. This current fiasco is right in front of him, and he can only sort through so much of his disastrous life at once.

“Katie’s dog had surgery and they shaved him and he looked naked.” Peggy forks up another bite of cake, sticks her finger in the whipped cream on her hot chocolate to add a dollop to her bite, and stuffs it in her mouth. Crumbs fall onto her cape.

Ned’s not sure she swallowed that other bite, but it’s a bit late for that. Table manners, he adds to a mental list. Something to be dealt with when this latest crisis is behind them. And which Abbot will probably come in handy for, he’s so naturally neat and polite.

Yes. Jen’s right. If Ned is going to end up with anyone, Abbot is the right choice. Of course he is, which Ned has always known on some level. This is just putting words to what’s always simmered beneath the surface for them: They’re it for each other. All they’re doing is speeding up their timeline, and…well, there’s something exciting in that. Some security that they’d have gotten here anyway, that later was hurtling toward them unannounced, but not necessarily unwanted.

“I’m really happy to get to tell you this,” Ned says and he is, he finds, all his nerves coalescing into something a lot closer to joy than to the panic he’s used to feeling. It puts a smile on his face, a real one, and he reaches for her hand, her finger wet with whipped cream. “Abbot and I are getting married.”

Peggy looks at him. She chews her bite of cake, with her mouth closed at least. “Why?”

“Um.” Because of Chris fucking Hausman. Because Ned can’t be without a job. Because his and Abbot’s relationship had been built on a ruse, though they found something real beneath the subterfuge. And a real future together. He squeezes her warm, wet little hand. “Because we love each other, and we want to officially be a family.”