Chapter One
“Where are the balls?” Josie shouted as she and Laura entered Jeddy’s. The warlock waitress was missing, and the joint was empty, so it wasn’t hiding behind some crowd of rowdy college students.
As she craned her head around to see if it had been moved, she was disappointed to find no trace of the cardboard monstrosity anywhere.
“Gone,” Madge croaked, eyeing Laura’s enormous belly. “You got triplets in there?” she asked, poking her tummy with a stylus. Laura wore a lovely pink cotton tent that used more fabric than a king-size duvet. Josie felt sorry for her these days, with cankles and sciatica and a belly that stretched so far she could use it as a sail after the birth.
It had been Laura’s idea to come and eat lunch at Jeddy’s, and against Josie’s better judgment she’d said yes. The place held a few too many memories for her, but for Laura it was all about the food. And when a hungry, overdue pregnant woman suggests the place that serves her favorite comfort food, you don’t argue.
“No, but I’ll happily eat for three,” Laura answered, making Madge’s face crack into a grin. No, really—it cracked in half and she looked like a Muppet for a second. How a dried-up old prune like that could smile and make it look almost human was beyond Josie.
“You threw the warlock away?” she asked Madge as they chose their favorite booth and Madge slapped the menus down on the scarred tabletop.
“No. My granddaughter asked us to donate it to some fancy autism charity ball auction.”
“Rich people want to buy a cardboard cutout that’s been fondled thousands of times?” Josie asked as she slid into the booth. Laura turned sideways and tried to tuck her belly under the table. Nope. Stuck. Madge watched, head cocked, as she struggled to get in.
“How’s that different from Paris Hilton?” Madge challenged, shaking her head as she observed Laura’s pathetic attempt. Josie felt a pang of compassion and stood, offering Laura a hand to unwedge herself.
“Touché.”
“You need a table,” Madge said, moving the menus over to a four-top.
“I need a crowbar,” Laura groaned. Josie smiled sympathetically and patted her hand. Two days overdue and Laura acted like the world was ending. The only part of her that seemed to function properly these days was her appetite.
“Let’s get you started with some fried green tomatoes,” Madge said, scribbling on her electronic tablet. “And you like the Peanut Butter Hulk Smash….” she mumbled, ignoring them.
“Coconut shrimp!” Josie interjected.
“With a side of Pitocin,” Laura begged.
Settled at their table, the two women leaned toward each other, Laura struggling with her girth but finally managing to make it a foot or so as Josie whispered, “So, have you decided what to do?”
Laura nodded. “We want you to be the only one who knows.”
Josie pulled back as if slapped. “What? Me? That’s crazy. Why? Why me?”
Laura inhaled deeply and slowly through her nose, her hands sliding across the table, fingers splayed in an effort to control her breath. Josie respected that. She imagined that right now Laura’s lungs were the size of quarters, shoved up into her collarbone by the baby.
“Because you’re the person that all three of us trust.”
“That’s not a good reason to pick me,” Josie protested. “I don’t want to be the only person to know that kind of information.”
Laura narrowed her eyes. “You’re clearly the only person who should know. It’s not exactly going to be my dead mom or Dylan’s judgmental parents, right?”
Josie swallowed hard. Loathe as she was to admit it, Laura was making sense. This issue of paternity had been her issue. Laura had slept with two men and found herself pregnant under extraordinary circumstances, and now living with both men under even more extraordinary circumstances. Dylan and Mike had no desire to know which of them was the father, choosing instead to live with a kind of loving ambiguity that Josie absolutely did not understand, but had grudgingly come to respect.
Laura bought into it. That’s what surprised Josie. If you were a baby’s mom, wouldn’t you want to know who the dad was? Lately, though, Laura, Dylan, and Mike had become this incredible threesome that exuded love and support and understanding.
Gag.
Josie wasn’t about to try to put fissures in that, knowing full well that there was a way out—and it was through her.
“How do you want me to do this?” she asked Laura skeptically as Madge flew by and threw glasses of water on the table. Being the only person who would know who the baby’s biological father was seemed like an outrageous responsibility to carry. Doing it for Laura was part of being a good friend, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“We figure that the baby will be born, and we’ll get the paternity tests done, and then only you will see the results. You can come in and put the father’s name on the birth certificate and I’ll never know as long as you cover that part when I sign. Neither will the guys.”
Laura blinked rapidly and Josie could see that she was barely holding it together, knowing damn well that that was about the stupidest plan ever. Of course Laura would see the name on the birth certificate. She’d have to pull it out a million times over the course of the child’s life for everything from getting a Social Security card to a passport to flying with her.
Treading carefully, Josie said as much in kinder words. “Laura, you’ll have to see it at some point.”
“Well…I’ll…I’ll just—”
Madge interrupted them with a plate of hot coconut shrimp and one of fried green tomatoes.
Laura scanned the table and looked at Madge with pleading eyes. “Where’s the cake?”
Josie laughed and grabbed two coconut shrimp and put them on her little plate, careful to use the pads of her fingers. She’d just done her nails in a pink glitter in honor of the pending baby. If she didn’t take her share, Laura would just plow through it and she’d never get any.
Madge shot Laura a derisive look and said, “It’s coming. Cool your jets. You’ve got more than enough here.” She looked at Laura’s belly, looked back at Laura, looked at Josie and saw how Josie had cupped her hands around the little plate of her two coconut shrimp and said, “Ah, all right. I gotcha. Hang on, I’ll get the cake out here. You need a side of ice cream with that?”
“I need two sides of ice cream with that,” Laura snapped.
“I’ve had two kids myself and I know how bad it is when you hit the, what—493rd week?” Madge snorted. “But you don’t have to bite my head off.”
Josie tapped the table. Laura and Madge looked at her. “When you’re pissin’ Madge off, you know you’ve crossed the line.”
Laura’s eyes filled with tears. Aw, shit, Josie thought. “I’m sorry,” Laura said, her lip trembling, wide, wet eyes looking at Madge like she’d just run over her cat. “It’s just…you don’t…it’s just…” She flinched and grabbed her belly, bending over and taking a deep breath. “It’s just hard.”
“Is something wrong?” Josie asked.
“No.” Laura’s breath caught, a hitched gasp, and then smoothed out. “It’s just these stupid Braxton Hicks contractions.”
Madge waved her hand. “Early labor. Whatever. Call me when you’ve gone through twenty-one hours of labor alone ’cause your car’s broken, your husband finally gets you to the hospital, and you end up giving birth in the lounge on top of some stranger’s trench coat.”
“That happened to you?” both women asked in unison.
“No. Just call me when it happens.” Smirk.
Josie and Laura shared a WTF? look and then Laura dug in as if she’d just spent a year on Jenny Craig and this was her first off-plan meal. Josie had been right. Within minutes all the coconut shrimp were gone, Laura using her finger to scrape the last of the dipping sauce. Chugging down her water, she banged the glass on the tabletop like a Viking. Madge, as if reading her mind, zipped by with a pitcher, leaving it on the table for the two to share.
“I know it’s not a perfect solution,” Laura said, wiping her mouth, looking around the restaurant for Madge. Josie could almost hear the words “where’s that cake?” coming out of Laura’s brain. “But this way, the guys don’t know, I don’t know unless I choose to look at that part of the birth certificate, and yet the baby will be protected in case something happens to me because the real father—” She cringed at the words.
“Biological father,” Josie helped.
“Yes, the biological father will be listed.”
Taking a sip of water, Josie nodded slowly. It could work. She could see that. Or, at least, she could easily pretend that this would work. The hard part would be knowing and keeping her mouth shut. For—well, ever—she would have the answer to a secret that was at the fundamental core of Dylan and Mike’s, and really Laura’s, being. One that they wouldn’t know, and one that could alter so much in their relationship if it were revealed.
She’d rather shit an eight-pound football than carry that around.
Almost.
Biting her lip, she decided to stuff her mouth with more food, and then looked down. She’d only eaten one coconut shrimp and now the other one was gone. “Hey,” she said, tipping her head up and looking at Laura, who was now chewing suspiciously.
A guilty look crossed Laura’s face. “Sorry.”
Madge to the rescue with two pieces of cake. Josie wrapped her arm around hers and snarled at Laura. “Mine.”
The three women laughed. “It’s only yours if you eat it before I eat mine.” Laura mugged and they began the chocolate fest.
“Not to bring up a touchy subject,” Josie said through a mouthful of cake. As if the baby’s paternity hadn’t been a heavy topic. “But when are you going to finally have this kid?”
Laura glared at her. “You think that I’m hanging on to her for no good reason? She’ll be born when she’s born. Or when they make me give birth to her. Time’s ticking right now, and Sherri says they can give me five more days. After that, it’s going to be tough.”
Sherri was Laura’s certified nurse midwife. Josie admired the woman’s approach. With a master’s degree in nursing, she was sort of like an obstetrician and a midwife combined, except she couldn’t perform surgery. If Laura needed a C-section she would have to use the obstetrician who supervised Sherri, or whoever was on duty that night.
Josie knew from enough years of working in hospitals that that was a crap shoot. Sometimes you got someone great, and sometimes you got a completely incompetent asshole. Most of the time, you got somebody in between, so she really hoped that Laura would have a smooth birth. The problem of too much fluid in the womb, the polyhydramnios diagnosis that Laura had gotten in her second trimester, had resolved enough that she could stay with the midwives, but she was still enough of a concern that Josie had some serious trepidations about the birth.
The medical issues were one thing. The other part made her scratch her head and wonder how this would work operationally. There were two dads, and while she was sure that the staff at the hospital was an enlightened group by and large, they probably didn’t get too many situations where two men were in the room.
Rather than saying anything, because Laura was about as sensitive as any forty-week-and-two-day pregnant woman would be, she just nodded and said simply, “You’ve got my number programmed in your phone. You know where and how to find me, and I’ll show up in my pajamas and barefoot if that’s when this baby decides to be born.”
Laura looked up from her plate, chocolate and peanut butter smeared at the corners of her mouth, her cheeks persistently pink and rosy, as they had been the entire last month of the pregnancy. “You will?” she asked.
“Of course I will. You know that,” Josie answered. “And so will Dylan and Mike.”
“They will, no matter what,” Laura said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “They live with me now. They have no choice.”
About a month ago, the three had all moved into Mike’s cabin. For the past two weeks, though, they’d been staying at Laura’s place—her lease didn’t run out for a bit. Her place was closest to the hospital where Laura hoped to give birth. Josie had forgotten one day, absentmindedly dropping by for morning coffee, greeted at the door by a very wet Dylan wearing only a towel.
That was the end of her morning ritual with Laura. He’d invited her in, and Mike had poked his head around the kitchen to say “hi” and welcome her to join them for breakfast, but it had felt intrusive. As if she would be the outsider. Begging off had been easy. Finding a cup of coffee at a shop was simple.
Wiping the tears on the way to work and figuring out why she was so sensitive still plagued her.
“And so…how are things going living together?” Josie asked, a leer on her face, trying to scrub her own sad thoughts away.
“I’m not going to talk about my sex life anymore with you, Josie.”
“I’m not asking about your sex life,” she said. “I’m just asking how things are going.” Truth be told, she wasn’t asking about their sex life. That she knew more than enough about. What she wondered, though, was how you move in with two guys and live as a family unit. Laura had never lived with a guy before—at all—so this was an enormous step. Not quite marriage…but not not like marriage. Add in two guys and she figured there had to be a pretty significant adjustment phase.
“Okay,” Laura said, shoveling another spoonful of peanut-butter sauce into her mouth. “The hardest part is that these two have been living together for ten years or longer, and they used to live with Jill, so they have all these ideas about how it works to live in this...” She put her hands up in the air in a gesture of helplessness. “This…whatever-you-call-it, and I don’t. In some ways, I’m the odd person out in my own home and in my own…threesome.”
Huh. Josie wasn’t expecting to hear that. “What do you mean?”
After licking every drop of chocolate sauce off the rounded back of her spoon, Laura paused to explain. “Here’s an example. It’s first thing in the morning and I wake up to Dylan handing me a lovely decaf latte. Mike rolls over and snuggles and asks me how I’m feeling. They both put their hands on my belly and feel the baby kick, move around, or sing ‘Ave Maria.’ You know, because our daughter is already gifted.”
Laura shot her a big grin as she rolled her eyes playfully.
Josie felt sickly jealous. “And what’s wrong with all that?” She struggled to keep the incredulous tone, the one that screamed, Why are you complaining? out of her voice.
Jesus, woman. You have most of the coconut shrimp and two billionaires in your bed making you coffee. And your problem is…?
Biting her lower lip to avoid saying that aloud was leaving deep teeth marks in the pink flesh in her mouth.
“That I don’t mind. But then maybe I want a shower, but Dylan’s already in there, and so I have to wait. Meanwhile, Mike makes Dylan’s eggs exactly how he likes them, and has the plate set up when Dylan’s out of the shower. By the way, Dylan walks around naked most mornings, so—”
“Yeah, I noticed the morning I stopped by for coffee and got a bunch of eye candy instead.”
Laughing, Laura stood slowly, rotund and awkward. “Gotta pee. I’ll be right back.” Her waddle would have been funny on almost any other day, but right now it made Josie nearly cry, knowing that this was one of the last days—if not the last—before everything changed.
Sunlight poured through the front window of Jeddy’s, rays flashing across tabletops and chairs, the breakfast counter, and the rows upon rows of glasses ready to be filled for customers who hadn’t come in yet.
Josie swallowed and took a deep breath, carefully cataloging her surroundings, taking a moment to be still, chuckling on the inside about how much that was like Mike. “Just be,” he would say at times when she came over to their house and talked about her problems.
She knew he was right; moments like this confirmed it. As she took the time to look around, to breathe, to just be, she saw everything for what it was in a tiny flash of insight. Laura, walking away, ripe and ready, just waiting for the perfect moment for her baby to release itself from the tree that had given it life on the inside. That life would start on the outside soon—all too soon—if Josie and her intuition were right.
People moved on, didn’t they? She certainly had. The little girl from Peters, Ohio, the daughter of the sainted, late town librarian and the local barfly had gotten out of her hometown as fast as she could, leaving everyone behind. Even Darla, her little cousin, who had also become fatherless in the same famous moment eighteen years ago.
People move on.
Don’t they?
Laura’s daughter would have two fathers. A pang of mourning hit Josie like a brick thrown from an overpass, smashing her consciousness in the face and shattering the atmosphere of the steady hum from the restaurant. The room closed in with a cold gasp that she had to breathe her way out of, using Mike’s techniques, grateful now for the hours she’d spent in his presence, willing herself back to a surface-level calm.
“You okay?” Laura asked, returning to the table. She bent herself into a seated position that took the weight off her back, legs spread wide as she perched on the edge of her seat like a tuba player.
Josie’s heart pounded in her chest, but her mind came back, the shattered pieces assembling into a loose facsimile of what she’d been seconds ago. Nodding, she kept her head down and pretended to eat a sliver of something from her plate, the texture like Styrofoam peanuts.
She pondered the way Laura’s hand grasped the fork as she ate her food with such joy and enjoyment, how Madge raced to and fro, not in a frantic way, but with purpose, with a drive that Josie admired. She wasn’t generally the type to get sappy or reflective like this. It came as a surprise, like so many other things these past few months.
Staring at Laura, she felt her heart grow and a tiny part of her wanted to shave off just a little of what Laura had with Mike and Dylan, to hold it inside her chest, to turn to it when she was lonely or desperate.
The relationship that those three shared was something that Josie studied carefully. Everything from the nuanced looks between Dylan and Mike to Laura’s plaintive gasps as she described how the three had worked these past few months to fit together as one. Laughter filled most of their conversations. It was awkward for Laura to be the new one in a three-way relationship, but as time passed, she had navigated it with increasing grace and ever-lessening insecurity. Josie felt her preconceptions, about everything from what daily life must be like to whether Dylan really was as much of an ass as she had initially thought, melt away as Laura’s groundedness grew.
It turned out Dylan wasn’t an ass at all.
Being wrong was not part of Josie’s repertoire. Even that, though, was fading as she realized how much of the world she thought of in black and white terms. She was right, they were wrong. She was smart, they were idiots. She was emotionally evolved, they were assholes. You couldn’t see the world as black and white so easily in a long-term threesome relationship, could you? She opened her mouth to ask Laura that question, pretty much knowing the answer. Black and white means that there are only two options—so when there’s a third, that you absolutely have to include and respect, then how does that relationship math work?
“Where was I?” Laura asked. “Oh. Right. So the guys are on autopilot all the time. They’ve been together for more than ten years, and so this is all old hat to them. There’s no room for my ideas. For me to imprint on the way everything flows.”
Before Josie could even open her mouth to speak, Laura’s eyes got wider than Josie had ever seen them, as if her eyeballs were about to pop out. The clanking of the fork against Laura’s plate was all Josie could hear as she watched her friend’s pale, creamy hand reach down below the table and grasp her abdomen, her head pitched down and an audible, long inhale coming through her nose.
“Braxton Hicks?” Madge muttered, eyebrow cocked up as she walked by.
Josie was starting to be on Madge’s side, silently counting to herself as Laura started to breathe again on the exhale, in and out, for what Josie counted to be thirty-seven seconds. The nurse in her shifted to a different kind of math, not relationship math but labor math. How long were the contractions? How many minutes apart were they? How intense were they?
Laura’s hands reached up for her face and smoothed her blonde waves away. Calm eyes peered back at Josie, though Laura’s face was considerably flushed. “It’s okay,” she said—long inhale, long exhale. “Just a crazy Braxton Hicks contraction.”
“Okay,” Josie said simply. Who was she to argue with a pregnant woman? Nature would win. No need to poke the ripe lady.
Laura reached for the fork and started to stuff a piece of cake in her mouth, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, she looked at Josie and said, “So, I have a business proposition for you.”
Whoa. Big topic shift. As her shoulders relaxed, Josie realized how relieved she was to change the conversation. More talk about the cozy world the threesome created threatened Josie’s tenuous stability right now.
“No. I won’t host a Mary Kay party for you,” Josie joked.
“No, not that. But, hey! You know, my mom did really well with them.”
“Yeah, I know. The pink Cadillac kind of tipped everybody off.”
Laura’s face went from an amused, flushed look to one of nostalgic sadness. Josie had only met Laura’s mom once, before she’d passed away a few years ago, a freak asthma attack that turned deadly. Obviously, she would never meet the baby—and Laura’s dad had taken off years ago. They’d bonded over being fatherless when they had met in college. It was a club no one wanted to be in.
It wasn’t a surprise to Josie that Laura, feeling alone in the world, had been so happy to find a whole instant family in Mike and Dylan.
“Laura, you realize ‘a business proposition’ makes it sound like you want to rope me into some MLM scheme.”
“MFM, actually.” Laura coughed.
“Wha?”
Laura put her fork down, leaning in, an intense stare practically pinning Josie in place. “I think, financially, we’re a little beyond that. MLM, I mean.”
“Well,” Josie answered. “Mike and Dylan are. You…”
Insecurity poured out of Laura in waves stronger than any contraction. “You know, just because the guys told me to quit my job and just take care of the baby and that they would support me, doesn’t mean—”
Josie held a palm up. She could see that Laura was on the verge of tears over this and had really struggled already, pride almost overriding their offer. “Laura—Laura, I’m just joking,” she assured her. “I know the drill, and if I were in your shoes I’d have quit in a heartbeat too. Trust me, anything to get out of the daily grind.”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” Josie confirmed. “Do you have any idea what it’s like working on a research trial for Alzheimer’s? Talking to old people every day”—she corrected herself—“that’s fine. The problem is that I’m dealing with people who are deteriorating. So every time I see them for a new appointment, most of them, first of all, don’t remember me, and, second of all, they’re worsening. It’s pretty depressing to work a job where all of the people I see and serve are getting worse.”
Laura furrowed her brow. “You went into geriatric nursing, Josie,” she said slowly, as if talking to a child. “Didn’t you expect that to be the case?”
Leave it to Laura to state the obvious. “Sure,” Josie protested. “But Alzheimer’s is a different animal. It’s one thing to work with some ninety-year-old woman who forgets things once in a while but is otherwise sharp and has a body that’s failing her. You try seeing a sixty-two-year-old or a seventy-three-year-old with kids and grandkids, who points to his wife of thirty or forty years and says, ‘Can you tip the cab driver?’”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Day in and day out. Not nearly as hard, though, as having Dylan bring you coffee in bed and Mike not attune to your shower desires.” Meow. Where did that come from?
A patient, controlled look clouded Laura’s features. She took two deep breaths and smiled sweetly. “You really want me to start talking about the shower desires Mike does meet? Because I have some stories that—”
“Stop!” Josie shrieked, fingers in ears. “I deserved that. Just stop,” she begged.
“Go into another kind of nursing.” Laura tapped her belly. “Labor and delivery.”
Josie had an answer for that, but before she could open her mouth and spit it out, Laura leaned over again, grabbing her belly and doing the deep inhale. By Josie’s guess, that was about seven minutes. Slowly, Laura worked her way through the contraction—about the same amount of time as before, thirty-eight seconds.
In her phone, Josie had programmed Mike’s number, Dylan’s number, the labor and delivery numbers for all the hospitals in the area, and even a handful of personal cell phone numbers for the OBs she knew in at least a casual way.
Without violating any confidentiality, Josie had called the doctors about a month before, explaining the basics of Laura’s situation. Depending on which professional she talked to, the polyhydramnios made the delivery moderate or high risk, but Laura was determined to have a natural birth.
Now was probably a really terrible time to explain to Laura that she would make a horrible labor and delivery nurse. During her rotation of clinicals as a nursing student she’d actually dropped a baby once—fortunately, only three or four inches before catching it again. And the experience had chilled her so deeply that she had no desire whatsoever to do it professionally. Be there with her friend through the whole thing, from start to finish, as another body in the room there to support the mom? No problem. Have an actual professional role with responsibilities? No way.
Laura took a deep breath, drank about half of a glass of water, and gave Josie a giant smile. “Oh, well, maybe I’m just a little dehydrated.”
Or maybe you’re just about to have a baby, Josie thought, but smiled back with the same fake look. “Okay,” she said.
She was saying that a lot lately. It was about all she could say because what she really wanted to say was, “Jesus fucking Christ, Laura, get in the goddamn car and let me take you to the hospital right now.” But she wouldn’t. She would be Nice Josie and keep her mouth shut.
“This business proposition,” Laura said. “As you know, Mike and Dylan are filthy stinking rich.”
“I kind of noticed, and most of Boston knows that too, now that there was the news report.”
“Yeah.” Laura just shook her head. “Hell of a way for me to find out, right?”
Josie softened. It was hard to realize it had only been a couple of months ago. “Right.” When Laura had met Dylan and Mike they’d kept the fact that each had inherited more than a billion dollars from their late lover, Jill, from Laura. She’d found out from a local newscast. Not the most romantic way to begin a relationship. Shortly after, she’d discovered she was pregnant. The reunion had been rocky. So far, so good, though, and the three had carved out a most unusual, though thriving, relationship.
Something about Laura’s demeanor put Josie on alert. It was the silences, the pauses, that were getting to her, not the actual words in between. The crafty part of her brain started to feel suspicious. She’d had a feeling that this conversation was coming, but she hadn’t expected it to be so soon.
“Mike and Dylan have given me…some…”—Laura stumbled over her words—“leeway in spending some money.”
“You mean they give you an allowance,” Josie said bluntly.
Laura pursed her lips. “Yeah.” As if in retribution, she leaned over and speared the last fried green tomato and shoved it indelicately in her mouth.
“Why fight it?” Josie said, waving her arms in an expansive gesture. “You’re with two billionaires. They make more money every year off the interest of that trust fund than most baseball players or football stars. Just go with it, Laura.”
About seventeen different emotions flashed across Laura’s face. Fortunately, for now, none of them was pain. A furtive glance showed Laura’s belly higher and tighter. That was good. As long as it didn’t suddenly drop lower, this was still fine. Avoiding a mad run for towels and shoelaces to boil in the back here at Jeddy’s was her short-term goal. Although, if the baby was born here maybe they could name her Jeddy. Or Madge.
Or Coconut Shrimp.
Josie stifled a giggle and tried to look serious as Laura was saying something to her.
“And so I figure all you’d need is an office, very little advertising money, and maybe an assistant, a computer system with software—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Josie shook her head as if in a fog. “What are you talking about?”
Madge interrupted them. “Anything else?” She tore the bill off a pad, which Josie found puzzling. They used a computerized system for everything, and yet Madge still wrote out all the bills by hand. Slapping the paper down on the Formica, she said, “You need something, you flag me down.” Madge started to run away, stopped herself, turned around like a robot, and marched back. Squatting down slightly, Madge put a hand on Laura’s shoulder and caught her eyes. “It’s going to be okay, hon. You’re going to do a great job.”
Laura’s eyebrows raised high, and her bright green eyes watered, seeming to thank Madge without words. Josie felt tears fill her own eyes, the compassionate gesture catching everyone off guard. Satisfied that her words had helped, Madge’s impossibly clay-like face cracked into a semblance of a grin.
She stood up and said, “Besides, everybody forgets the pain of shitting out a ten-pound turkey.”
“Bring me a hot fudge sundae. NOW!” Laura gasped.
Madge cackled as she typed the order into her little device and ran to the kitchen.
Josie just rolled her eyes. “What is up with that woman?”
Laura waved her hand. “Eh, forget about it. I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to talk about shitting an eight-pound turkey.” Laura frowned. “Does it really feel that way?”
Josie pointed to herself. “How the hell would I know? I’ve never had a baby.”
“I still think it’s barbaric,” Laura said through gritted teeth.
Oh boy, here we go, Josie thought. For the past month Laura had ranted about how barbaric birth was, and how unfair it was that biology had designed women’s bodies this way. Why couldn’t there be a better way? And on and on and on. Even Mike—calm, peaceful, mellow Mike—was getting tired of the rant. It was born (pun intended) of fear. They all knew that. None of them had ever given birth, and two out of the three of them weren’t even capable of it.
Josie could just watch and observe and cringe on the inside as she imagined what Laura was about to go through. She knew all the arguments that the suffering was worth the baby, but the pain, the loss of control, and the sheer horror of just imagining the pain, had consumed Laura recently. The three of them might be there to support her, but they really couldn’t offer anything but a few clucks of sympathy and what they hoped were helpful factoids.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Laura said, shaking her head, her voice clipped and no-nonsense. “I want to talk about this business idea.”
“You want me to go in on a business with you?”
Laura snorted. “I don’t exactly need capital funding for a business project, Josie.” Madge delivered the ice cream sundae and Laura absentmindedly took a bite. “I want you to run the business,” Laura said, her voice low and serious suddenly.
“What business?” Josie asked.
Laura cocked her head and took a deep inhale, her upper body lifting higher as the rest of her stayed in place, like she was two parts of one being. “The business I was just describing.” She tried to lean forward and whispered, “I can’t be any more discreet because I can’t reach forward more.”
“Why do you have to be discreet?” Josie hissed back.
“Because the idea is for a dating company that…you know…” Laura motioned as if it were a secret or something to hide.
Josie mimicked Laura. “You know what?”
“A threesome dating service,” Laura whispered.
“What?” Josie screeched. She reached across the table and grabbed Laura’s sundae. “Gimme that. I need it more than you do right now.” Plunging the spoon in, she shoved a big gob of vanilla ice cream covered in hot fudge and salted caramel sauce into her shocked mouth. She enjoyed the rich, yummy goodness long enough to let Laura’s words sink in. Through a muffled mouth she said, “Are you out of your mind? You want me to run a business like that?”
And just then Laura bent her head down and took a deep inhale, and Josie knew exactly what the rest of her day was going to be like.
This one, by Josie’s calculations, was five minutes from the last one and forty-five seconds long. She knew that if she suggested to Laura that they go the hospital right now Laura would freeze, get angry, and rip her tongue out. Not necessarily in that order. It was time to be covert and to betray her best friend.
Josie stood and nodded toward the bathroom. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Laura smiled, a shaky grin that Josie hoped was a sign that somewhere on the inside she was facing reality and realizing that this baby was coming. Maybe not right now, but soon.
The bathroom was exactly the same as it had been the last time she’d been here, and probably the way it’d been ten years ago. No doors, shower curtains the only sense of privacy. No big deal to her because she didn’t need to use the toilet; she needed to use her smartphone. Dialing Mike, she hoped she’d get through to him because he’d be much easier than Dylan.
Luck was on her side.
“Hello?” his deep baritone answered.
“Hey, Mike, it’s Josie.”
“Oooooh,” he said, the word long and slow. “This isn’t a call to invite us over for dinner now, is it?” he said, a spark of merriment in his voice.
Of the threesome, Mike had taken Laura’s pregnancy most in stride, viewing it as an opportunity to work on patience, love, calmness, and that awareness thing that he was always going on about. He and Dylan had gone with Laura to an eight-week birthing course that focused on hypnosis. Mike had been a thousand percent into it, while Dylan cracked jokes the entire time, asking the instructor where exactly in the parking lot Laura could sign up for the epidural.
“No, I’m not calling to ask you if you want to watch the next game or come over for a Super Bowl party.” She could feel the smile in her voice coming through as if it matched his, met it in the middle, and danced with it. “I think it’s time. I can’t be sure, but the contractions are coming about five…six minutes apart and probably—well, the last one lasted forty-five seconds.”
He gasped. “That close?”
“Yep. She’s claiming they’re Braxton Hicks contractions and is guzzling water as if it were going out of style. But…I-I mean, I’ve never had a baby.” Josie stumbled over her words, trying to explain her feelings about this. She could be wrong, and this could be yet another example of false labor, but something about the way Laura was handling these was different. She tried to explain as succinctly as possible. “Bottom line: you and your hyperactive Speedy Gonzalez partner will be ready for me to call you to meet me and Laura at the hospital sometime today.”
“Today? You know, you don’t have to spend the whole day with her,” Mike said, his voice so neutral Josie had a hard time reading it on the phone. If they were face to face she could see the way the skin around his eyes wrinkled, the emotion in his irises and pupils, whether his hands were tight in fists or loose and free around his hips. Did he mean he didn’t want her to spend that time with Laura? Did he mean that he was grateful that she would spend that time with Laura? All of this reading of intentions and emotions was making her tired, and she wasn’t even part of the threesome.
She was, however, a fourth wheel most of the time—and maybe that was why she read intent and emotion into so many things. She was a foreigner in the country of Mike, Dylan, and Laura; culture shock, perhaps, had set in recently along with a healthy dose of jealousy. That was getting tiring, too.
“Mike, I want to spend time with her. This is important for me too, you know? And I think you guys will be there for the birth and she’ll need you two hundred percent.”
He chuckled. “And we’ll need you there, too.”
Her heart swelled at being acknowledged, at being wanted—needed—in the moment that represented the great bridging over for her best friend from “just Laura” to “Laura the mommy.”
“Thank you,” was all she could think to say.
“No, thank you,” he said, and sighed. “I guess I need to go let Dylan know, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“You know he’s going to go and buy another eight-foot bunny.”
“Yes,” she said. The baby’s room was already filled with toys Dylan had been buying for the past few months, or that his parents had sent. The whole family had an apparent fondness for oversized African animals.
There was a hesitation on Mike’s end of the conversation. It was melancholic, uncertain, and she reached out to it. “Hey, Mike.”
“Hmm?” As the conversation continued she could sense him pulling into himself, charging up for the biggest event of his adult life. Hers, too. Hell, everyone’s.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“I know.” The smile came back in his tone, an easy, warm baritone that made her feel safe and secure, shaking off her earlier shattering. “It’s going to be great,” he answered.
*
“It’s going to be horrible,” Laura moaned as Josie wandered back to the table to find the sundae glass empty and Laura tight-fisted, leaning forward in her seat.
“What’s going to be horrible?” Josie asked.
“The birth!” Laura practically shouted.
Aha. Time for a walk.
She threw a few bills on the table to cover the check and grabbed Laura’s elbow, helping her to stand. Josie peered at her, staring her down. Laura’s face was more flushed, with a red that crept down into her neck and upper chest, the outer edges of her hairline starting to get wet with sweat. Trying desperately to keep the accusing tone out of her voice, Josie said, “You had another contraction while I was in the bathroom, didn’t you?”
“I had a twinge.”
“You had a twinge?”
“A surge.”
“Twinge” and “surge” and “pressure” were the euphemisms that a lot of the people in the natural childbirth community had been using for contractions. It was a way to train the mind to think of the pain differently. “Searing, fibrous, ripping pain that makes you want to eat morphine-laden donuts and drop acid to avoid it” wouldn’t make anyone want to have a baby, right?
So surge it was.
“All right. It wasn’t a surge,” Laura admitted. “It feels like somebody is reaching into my belly, and twisting it, wringing it like you would squeeze out a wet shirt.”
“And how long did that last?”
Laura glared at her. “You’re trying to figure this out, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Time to be blunt, Josie thought.
“I’m not in labor,” Laura said.
“And I’m not eighty-three,” Madge said as she walked by.
Ambling out the front door, Josie kept Laura on track, one step at a time. “Let’s just go for a walk. You’ve got plenty of water in you, plenty of food in you, and a walk will help you stretch out and just be—uh, feel more pleasant.”
“Okay.” Laura perked up. “We can talk about the business.”
“The business,” Josie said.
“Yes.”
“The weirdo threesome matching business that you want me to run.”
“You were listening,” Laura said with relief.
“Oh, I was listening. That doesn’t mean I agree.” She said it lightly, though.
Her sarcasm meter had to be dialed down to zero as far as Laura was concerned. So many snappy comebacks, so many wisecracks that just pressed against her lips and teeth. She wanted to make bad, crude jokes about threesomes and dating services. About what was already happening and what was coming. But she couldn’t. Her own coping strategies had to be put on a back burner for her friend.
Josie calculated out lead time. Mike would need a minimum of a half-hour to forty-five minutes to get into the city to reach the nearest hospital that they could choose in an emergency. This didn’t seem to be an emergent situation, though—not yet. Laura’s contractions were coming at a steady pace, at ever-decreasing intervals, and in ever-increasing duration. By the time it really was time, there would still be plenty of time for Mike and Dylan to get there.
Early May in the Boston area was a crap shoot. It could be seventy degrees and sunny, or thirty-five degrees, overcast with the lingering threat of very rare snow still in the air. A few years before, one winter had seemed to stretch into three, culminating in a Mother’s Day sprinkling of snowflakes. This year, though, May had begun spring in earnest. The baby would be born in the perfect month for new beginnings.
*
“Did you ever notice how blue the sky is, Josie?” Laura asked as they waddled along the city streets. Passersby shot Laura some very nervous looks, especially the moment her hands cradled the bottom of her enormous abdomen and she shouted, “Oh my God! Make it stop!”
If it weren’t really happening it would have made a fabulous prank. Why didn’t we try this before? Josie wondered. A pillow and a loose dress and they could have had some fun poking at worried passersby.
This, though, was all too real.
Crouched down in a near-fetal position, amazing even Josie with her dexterity and ability to limbo as low as she did, Laura defied gravity as she squatted, the contraction overwhelming her. A placid look and long, even breaths in and out attested to her hypnosis training, but Josie wondered: If it took this much effort to control one of the earlier, deeper surges, what would a tsunami feel like?
Trying to inject a little humor into the situation, Josie knelt down and sang the limbo song, which yielded only a prompt, ferocious glare from a thoroughly unamused Laura.
“I don’t think I practiced my breathing well enough,” Laura moaned, the sound of her voice shifting from a groan to a whimper as the contraction peaked.
“Just take a deep breath in,” Josie intoned, breathing for her, providing an example. Laura followed and then breathed out—and soon the contraction subsided. Josie’s mental math began a steady chatter of alert inside her head. Time to assume they were going in.
She knew that Laura knew this, that forty-five seconds to a minute, five minutes apart meant that you might want to consider heading to the hospital. She also knew, however, that if she suggested to Laura that they head off to the hospital, Laura would freak. And so, rather than poking the laboring bear, she decided that the most prudent action would be to play along with Laura’s fantasy.
Walking with as much purpose and gusto as she could muster, Laura managed to get a few leg lengths away, her rounded ass enormous now and stretched by the baby, by the added fluid, by the pregnancy—and more than a few trips to Jeddy’s. But Laura’s time in the gym before the pregnancy showed; Josie still had to hustle to catch up.
“I think we can do a two-mile loop. What do you think, Josie?” Laura said, walking so fast that Josie almost burst into laughter at the level of delusion that her friend was in.
This baby was coming now, and if Laura wasn’t ready, nature didn’t give a shit. Josie sure as hell wasn’t ready. The last thing she needed was to be reminded how far behind she was when it came to love, and relationships, and being a grown-up. Never one to dwell on the long term, she found a balance in life that involved picking a goal, focusing singlemindedly until it was accomplished, and only figuring out how she felt about that goal afterward. Then squaring herself toward the next goal, and moving on from there.
It’s how she had escaped her little town in middle-of-nowhere, Ohio, full of people who lived in trailers and who thought that a high school diploma was a sign of an elite education, a few, though, choosing college. What others thought of as their first two years of college had taken her four, going to classes part-time at the local branch of a smaller state university and then finally transferring to the school where she and Laura had met.
Being the poorest kid was something that she was accustomed to but ready to put behind her, so her first goal had been finishing college and getting a degree in something useful, something highly employable. Nursing had been it.
Her second goal had been to never, ever have to move back to a place where Friday night fun meant boozing it up at the local VFW and a fancy dinner involved cloth napkins and a higher cut of prime rib, with bits of bacon in the green beans they served on the side.
It wasn’t that she hated Ohio, or even her hometown of Peters. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of it, even. It felt more like being born into her community, where having your first baby by seventeen was something that didn’t raise eyebrows and having three before the age of twenty-one was all too common, had been some colossal cosmic accident.
Her entire goal in life for the first twenty-four years had been to right that giant wrong. She had focused on the fact that having children too young meant that she would have to stay. Now, having spent the last thirteen or more years of her life trying desperately not to get pregnant meant that thinking about doing it on purpose gave her massive pause.
Her best friend was about to have a baby; colleagues in their late twenties and early thirties were finally setting aside their own birth control and changing patterns that were more than a decade old. It made her feel as if she were missing an alert that every woman but her could hear.
Beep beep beep—time to have a baby!
Josie didn’t like change unless she initiated the change. While she had control over her own body, right now she was watching her best friend lose complete control of hers, managed and manipulated by a tiny little being within who wielded power like a sociopath in an amnesia ward.
“Two miles it is,” she said as brightly as possible, trying to point them in the direction of the nearest hospital.
“You think I’m crazy.”
“No, I don’t,” Josie said, plastering on another fake smile.
This one, apparently, was a little too fake because Laura could see through it and she frowned. She stopped, forcing Josie to come to a screeching halt. Laura planted two angry hands on two very lush hips and then lifted one finger and pointed it right at Josie’s nose.
“You have no idea what I’m going through right now, so wipe the fake smile off your face and give me a real one.”
Josie’s face muscles twitched and tinged, and did all sorts of weird things that they’d never done before as she tried simultaneously not to scowl, frown, laugh, or sputter. Whatever mask came out was enough to make Laura burst into uncontrollable giggles and then whoop in a loud, strangled, weird respiratory sound that made her double over again.
Three minutes.
Three minutes this time. As Laura struggled to let her muscles go loose and to release the tension through her breath, Josie counted the seconds, hitting thirty, then forty, then fifty. If she didn’t do something to convince Laura to get to the hospital, whatever thin thread of control Laura hoped for in planning her birth, in having it at the hospital she wanted, with the midwife she wanted, with Mike and Dylan and Josie at her side, was about to evaporate. The baby would be delivered here, outside one of the ubiquitous cell phone stores littering this part of the city. And then Josie’s own inner loss of control would begin its lonely process.
“Laura.”
“Yes?” she gasped.
“I think it’s time.” Infusing that statement with as much empathy as possible, Josie felt her voice crack, could hear the change in her tone, and hoped Laura could feel all of the things that words failed to say. A pale hand reached for Josie’s and grasped it, fingernails digging hard into her palm. Josie needed her own breath to control the transfer of pain.
“I know. I know,” Laura said simply. “I just needed to pretend it’s not about to happen.” Tears started to pour down Laura’s cheeks and dot the fabric of her knees as she rested in a crouched position, her bloodshot eyes so bright and green they made Josie think of Caribbean waters reflecting white clouds and the air of possibility.
“Baby’s coming,” Laura said simply.
“Yes, honey, she’s coming,” Josie said.
“What have I done?” Laura asked. “Nine and a half months ago I sat in my apartment making you the nine thousandth pot of coffee ever and you made me go on this dating site—”
“I didn’t make you.”
“You made me. Don’t try to pretend you didn’t make me.”
“Okay,” Josie said, humbled. “I did.”
“You made me write this stupid want ad to go whore myself out.”
“You didn’t whore yourself out.”
“Hey—I’m the one having the baby, I get to pick what I say. Quit interrupting.” Josie couldn’t argue with that. “To whore myself out and then I go and find Dylan and…and then it turns out that Dylan and Mike were partners looking for a woman to share their life with...and…”
That whole secret billionaire thing, Josie thought.
Laura stopped talking as yet another wave hit her, and Josie felt the kinetics of the contraction kick into her through the strength of Laura’s fingers, her fingertips pressing their tension into Josie’s wrist and hand. Josie could even sense the layers of her uterus cramping and clamping and pulling, the fibers all acting in whatever strange pattern the body needed to weave in order to push this baby out into the world. If Laura had teleported Josie’s mind into her body she couldn’t have transferred that feeling any better.
Closing her eyes, Josie saw a red, blooming mist behind her lids, like the audio that Laura sometimes listened to, training the brain to perceive pain in a different way with hypnosis. Josie thought that was a big load of shit, and yet, somehow in this moment of intensity, this pinpoint of biological destiny, that was where her brain went—to that stupid, insipid, ridiculous image of a misty cloud blooming. Maybe, though, just maybe, it was her own internal pain receptors panicking and not some new-agey bullshit…because damn, did Laura know how to destroy her hand or what?
“We’re going to get you back to my car,” Josie said.
“Where’s your car?” Laura cried.
“It’s back near Jeddy’s.”
“That far?”
“It’s a block, Laura.”
“We only made it a block?”
“Yeah, hon, we did.”
“No, I was walking…was…no.”
“It was a long block,” Josie reassured her as they slowly, step by painstaking step, made their way back.
“Why does it feel like I have a bowling ball between my legs?” Laura said, widening her stance and walking like a toddler with a heavy load in a disposable diaper.
Because you do, Josie thought, except it’s coming out of your front door later on today.
Laura came to a grinding halt and gaped openly at Josie. Oh, shit, she thought, did I say that aloud?
“I am not giving birth to a bowling ball,” Laura said, her voice trembling. Two people walking past stopped and gawked at the two of them, then looked at Laura’s belly. It was a couple, a man and a woman, and the woman’s face changed to an expression of sympathy.
“Dear, I’ve been there. The bowling ball eventually comes out,” she said, and pointed to the man next to her who looked young enough to be her son, a guy in his early twenties.
Horror dotted his face as he stared at Laura’s crotch and mumbled, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“But,” Laura said, “it doesn’t really feel like a bowling ball?”
The woman and Josie exchanged a glance, and Laura began to wail like a small child. “But that’s not true!” she shouted.
“No, of course not,” said the stranger.
Oh boy, Josie thought, this is going to be a long birth.