Chapter 11
Renee quietly returned to her lover and laid down on her back beside him in exhaustion. With one eye still directed towards his granddaughter, Jack looked down at her, stroking her cheek with his hand. "You're tired," he noticed.
"I'll be fine," she replied, moving her hand over his, before getting up again into a sitting position and leaning against his side lovingly. It would never be too hot to feel him near and to feel his arm wrap around her waist and pull her even closer. They both looked at little Teri with a smile on their lips, Renee's somewhat wider than her lover's; it was just amazing how fast the happy, little child had trusted her. Renee was grateful, for Kim giving her that chance. She hadn't seen either of them lately and didn't even know Renee that good.
The preschooler was busy filling the bucket at her knees with sand by the aid of her shovel, making sure to be careful enough so that she didn't drop any sand beside it. She was one of a kind for sure. She was a Bauer, so that could cover it at least partially.
A little boy considerably younger than she slowly padded closer to Teri, looking at what she was doing with big, curious and maybe longing eyes. "Matthew…?" It suddenly sounded from beside Jack and Renee. Both looked up momentarily to see an African American woman in early thirties with another toddler on her hip, looking at what they assumed was her son.
She carefully put down her daughter, and shook her head smiling as all three adults noticed the little boy saying something, then Teri looking up before nodding her head. The boy sat down by her with a smile and began helping little Teri with his bare hands, even though he barely managed to carry any sand to the bucket, because most of it had already run though his tiny fingers by the time they reached Teri's bucket.
"He often runs off whenever he sees a chance. I merely have to lose his hand for one second, and the next he's gone," she sighed, now spreading a large, colorful plaid before sitting down on it. "Paige?" She called, pulling a tiny bottle containing something that looked like apple juice from the backpack she had carried earlier and showing it to her daughter, who came running over the plaid immediately to come get it. "She's a sweetie," the woman said.
"Yeah, she is," Renee agreed, looking at the little girl called Paige.
The African American woman smiled. "I meant your daughter," she said, nodding towards little Teri that was now playing happily with the little boy. In the seconds they had looked away, they had gotten to make a sand castle together – having turned the sand filled bucket upside down and having lifted it again to see the form of it in sand.
"Oh, she's not…" Renee began.
"She's my granddaughter," Jack finished.
The woman looked from Teri to both of them astounded with wide eyes. She didn't seem to know what to say at that information, but said after a few minutes of silence, in which she had most likely weighed her words carefully, "Oh. I'm sorry." At that, she turned all her attention back to her daughter, now pulling a book with little drawings from the depths of her backpack. The little girl immediately sat down by her mother's side to look into the book with wide, interested eyes.
Renee sighed, laying back down and shutting her eyes against the brightness of the sun. She could see lights flashing behind her eyelids for a couple more seconds, though, then squinted from between her lashes at the still cloud-free sky. She used to lay in the backyard of their home when she was little, looking at the clouds and trying to discover figures in them. When she had been very little, her mom would join her and help her, or question the things she saw teasingly. "That's no elephant, is it?" She would say. On which the little, already stubborn Renee would look into her mother's eyes in oblivion that she couldn't see it, saying, "Mommy. It is."
She sighed. Amazing, that she still could recall things from her childhood like that after everything. One hand intuitively rested on her lower abdomen. She quietly wondered how her life would have looked like as a married woman with children. She tried to imagine herself as one, but found herself unable to.
