Day 34

So, I did this assignment where we had to write a story start using a relationship we normally don't write about, so brothers, sisters, spouses, cousins, lovers, stuff like that. Here is what I just finished trying out.

"Can you hold him? Just-" Marie hands her mother the squirming mass in her arms and spins on flat toed slip-ons, cheap plastic looking ones. She catches Jeb as he rounds the corner from the living room. "Just stop for a second, okay buddy? We're going to talk soon." Marie has a gentle hand on his shoulder while she look up to Florence, her mother. Flo looks back, rocking the bundle, little Carla, with mechanical slowness. She seems like two different people doing one thing, the way she gently swings the baby and gives full attention, her eyes watching Marie intently behind bi-focaled lenses.
"Can you, uh?" and Marie stares at Jeb, like the question fell onto his cheek.
"Uh," he mimics and Flo smiles.
"Pick him up," says Flo and Marie gets off a knees and hoists her son to a shoulder.
"We'll just sit."
"Should we just, uh?" And again Marie pauses, on the threshold of shag carpeting, "Are we going to talk now?" Her bottom lip is puffy from nipping at it, she's nervous.
"No, not just yet. Set him down, in there, I got the little one. You keep grabbing things and bring them in. We'll take them upstairs later."
"But should I-"
"No, not just yet." Flo interjects and walks around Marie to sit on a couch that creaks loud enough to hide the pop of her bad knee. "Just that for now."
Marie's head bobs through her mother's words, visualizing the steps as she sets Jeb down in the center of the carpet. He sits and runs his fingers through the deep brown threads until his mother is out of sight. He wobbles his head until it finds his grandmother and then smiles, his hands going out to her.
"Can you come here Jeb?" Flo coos and when he smiles she can see the boy's father and the mechanical rock skips a beat. His face fully his father's, no one's is, but it is close already, even at nearly two years, there is a framework that could easily be filled in with a little work, if he broke that nose, maybe, that would do it. Flow wondered if any of her husband would end up in that face, and decided that Terry's blood was weaker than Clay's, but she still hoped.
The door crackled shut and Marie slung two bags onto the floor.
"The rest is food. I was going to leave it out there, it'll be okay. Right? Its mostly canned stuff for Carla, and I've got plenty for right now in my bag."

Flo nods to slightly it may just be the rock of her body with Carla swaying in her arms. Jen scuttles close to her dress hem. His smile is now Clay's too, not Terry's or Marie's. And as he crawls closer a feeling of a kettle about to boil over in another room erupts in Flo.
"Pick him up."
"Why?"
"He's upsetting Carla, please do as I say."
Marie has Jeb pulled back before he had his chance to tug on the hem with his pink hands.

"So, are we supposed to talk now? I mean-"
"Not just yet."
"Oh...Are you sure?"
"Yes, we need some more time. Their father isn't far enough away." Maris is silent as she holds her boy and Flo holds her granddaughter. "We'll talk when everything of your husband is far away."