Read When It All Falls Apart (Book One) for Free Online Page B

upset. I get it. I understand. I just don’t think it does us any good to get all worked up. Besides, one of us has to be the calm one. One of us has to be able to think straight. I’m just trying to stay calm.”
    “I–” He opened his mouth and then quickly shut it again. “Never mind.”
    “I should go home and get some stuff since we’re going to be here overnight. I thought maybe I could bring her new pajamas and get some stuff for you and me to sleep in too?” I hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding like a question.
    “Sure.”
    On the drive to our house I called Robin to fill her in on the details. I quickly brought her up to speed.
    “God, hon, that’s so awful. How are you?” she asked.
    “I’m okay. I mean, it totally sucks. I hate that she’s sick, but I’m not going to get freaked out until I know there’s something to get freaked out about and honestly, I really don’t think there’s going to be something seriously wrong with her. She’s such a healthy kid. I feel bad for David, though. He’s a nervous wreck.”
    “I would be too! That’s scary shit!”
    Maybe I should’ve been more scared, but I didn’t have the alarmist button that most parents had. All the parents I knew looked at every instance in their child’s life as a major life or death situation as if one wrong move would alter their lives forever, but I never saw things that way. I didn’t walk around in a panicked state like Rori’s life was always teetering on the edge.
    This difference was obvious each time I took Rori to the park. I watched as the other mothers anxiously hovered around their children waiting to catch them in case they fell. Meanwhile, I sat on the side of the sandbox as Rori scampered up and down the equipment by herself. All I could think of as I watched the other parents and kids were the concrete playgrounds with steel equipment that my sister and I played on when we were kids. We’d managed to survive and I didn’t think the Teflon floor underneath the equipment would do anything except spring Rori right back up even if she did fall.
    Unlike me, David had gotten the alarm button. He’d been so worried about Rori’s head when she was an infant. He acted as if her head would roll off her neck and bounce on the floor like a basketball if you let it go. He was constantly calling out for me to watch her head—keep my hand on it. His fears about her head grew with her as if her skull was made of paper instead of flexible bone. He’d been sure she had a concussion when she took her first slip in the bathtub and hit her head even though she seemed fine to me. She’d cried, but I’d heard her cry louder when she was hungry. He’d insisted on taking her to the pediatrician despite my voice of reason that she was fine and she was.
    Robin was as neurotic about brain injuries as David. She’d call me constantly with all of her worries and I spent just as much time reassuring her that everything was alright with Emma as I did David. She freaked out when she put Emma in her wooden cradle for the first time. She was afraid she’d rocked her too hard and given her Shaken Baby Syndrome. I calmly explained to her that cradles were made to rock babies and I was pretty sure there wasn’t a single case of Shaken Baby Syndrome due to cradle rocking.
    “How was your day?” I asked her looking to change the subject.
    “Clearly not nearly as dramatic as yours. Emma did have an ear infection. We took her to the doctor this morning and they put her on antibiotics. She seems fine now.”
    “What’d you think about what Larissa said last night?”
    “That she’s about to have sex with someone other than her husband which officially makes it an affair?”
    I laughed. “Yeah, what’d you think?”
    “Really? Your daughter is in the hospital and you want to gossip about Larissa? You crack me up,” Robin snorted.
    I laughed again, but it was nervous laughter this time. “You know how much I hate it when