Banks

“Tia?” Fallon bangs on the bathroom door again, and I see my own apprehension mirrored in his gaze.

She’s only been in there for a few minutes, but the anxiety in the room is almost tangible. As much as everyone knows this is our best option, it’s still scary as hell.

Especially for Tia.

“Give her space,” I say, even though I’m just as eager to know the results.

Finally, I hear the click of the lock, and the door opens.

Slowly, Tia comes out, and her eyes are wide, her mouth parted on shaky little breaths, and I know the results before she speaks.

“Well?” Fallon asks.

“Both tests were positive,” she says weakly, and I can tell she’s in shock.

“You’re pregnant?” Emerson says, rushing to her and scooping her up in her arms, and kissing her on the cheek.

She nods and gives a weak smile, but he doesn’t seem to notice her trepidation.

“Ye-yes.”

Fallon hugs her next. “We’re going to have a baby.”

I meet Giles’ gaze, see the somberness in it. His jaw clenches before he stands and pulls Tia into an embrace, then kisses her forehead. No words are exchanged between them, but I see her relax into him like she’s taking his strength.

And I wish I could offer that to her.

“We’ll need to go to the lab and run some tests right away,” I say, hating how cold and distant I sound.

This is what we wanted.

What we had hoped for.

But my gut clenches and fear squeezes my throat.

What if I can’t save her?

I can’t think like that.

“Okay,” she says, still in Giles’ arms, cheek resting against his chest. “But can we wait until Salinger and Huxley come home? I want to be the one who tells them.”

“Of course.”

“Are you okay?” Giles asks, looking down at her, and brushing his knuckles across her cheek.

She twists her lips, her obvious uncertainty filling the room. “I’m okay.” She sighs, then looks straight at me. “Mostly hopeful.”

“Good,” I say, her confidence in me the very thing I need right now. The fact that she senses that fills me with hope.

For us.

For this child.

For our future.

We’re already a family, but this completes it.

I’m going to be a father. For a moment, I let happiness replace fear, even though I know how dangerous it is. But I can take this small second, and... hope.

We sit down in the study and someone pulls out a bottle of whiskey to share a celebratory toast when Sal and Huxley get home.

When they burst through the door several minutes later, they rush to Tia in the study.

“What’s wrong?” Sal asks, hair sticking on end like he’d been pulling at it.

“We got the text to come home right away.” Huxley looks almost as panicked. “What’s happened now?”

“Nothing bad.” Her eyes are bright and clear when she tells them. “I’m pregnant. I took two tests and the lines don’t lie.” A real smile brightens her face. “Can you believe it?”

Salinger immediately wraps his arms around her, lifting her from the floor and twirling her around. He plants a kiss on her lips and their eyes lock.

I have to look away. The weight of my responsibility for everyone’s happiness is so fucking great it’s causing my chest to constrict. I need to get her to the lab as soon as possible, start the blood work and the shots. The more time I have to work with her treatment plan, the better the odds.

Huxley claps his hands as if in triumph. “We weren’t messing around when it came to getting you knocked up.”

“Huxley,” Fallon says, shooting him a look of annoyance but Huxley just brushes it off.

“I’m just having fun. It doesn’t always have to be so damn serious you know.”

I reach for the bottle of liquor to ease the tension and hand shot glasses to the men.

“You need one,” Emerson says, but I shake my head.

“No, I’m going to the office in a few minutes. And I’d like to take Tia. Start with the tests,”

“Well, we aren’t going yet.” She grins at me. “We should celebrate for a few more minutes first.”

The guys all lift their shot glasses and drink.

“How do you want to celebrate?” Huxley asks her. “I guess drinking is out of the equation for the next nine months.”

“I was wondering...” She chews on the inside of her lip before continuing, “Does anyone have any files with baby pictures? I know it’s kinda sentimental but none of you have shown me photos from when you were young.”

Emerson, of course, pipes in first. “I’ve got a photo album in my room.”

I try not to inwardly groan. But then Fallon and Giles both mention having a book of old photos too, and Salinger says he has a file on his hard drive that he can access from his laptop.

Huxley says he doesn’t have any from when he was young but has something else she might like, and when Tia looks to me, waiting for my answer, I feel my cheeks heat up.

“I have a scrapbook.”

“You do?” Tia’s face brightens. “Really? I guess I wouldn't think you’d hold onto something like that.”

“Liesel made it for me,” I tell her.

“Well, I’d love to see it, all of them.”

Everyone moves to leave, to go get their childhood mementos, and I take Tia by the hand, leading her to the window seat. “You sure this is the right time to do this? I mean, you need to get to the lab.”

“Banks,” she says softly. “It’s okay. We found out sooner than we should have and I need a moment to process. I want to focus on happy memories right now, I need to be in a good emotional place before I start doing blood work, otherwise, I feel like I’ll spiral into a web of fear. I don’t want that. Not for me or any of my husbands. Our baby needs me to believe in it.”

She takes my hand and presses it to her flat stomach. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m pregnant because of your fertility treatment, I have no doubt in that.”

My jaw tenses and my fingers tighten as she holds them in place. How the hell can I have so many emotions about a fetus the size of a pinpoint?

“Hey,” she says, resting the back of her hand against my cheek, caressing it lightly. “You okay, Banks?”

“I don’t want to be the thing that kills you,” I admit, unable to look into her gorgeous eyes. Shame courses through me as I reveal frail humanity to the woman I love. Still, she deserves to know the thoughts running through my mind.

“One step at a time. Right now, the pregnancy means I am sovereignly yours and no law can take me from my husbands. Tomorrow, we will have a new problem to face, to work through, but now? Now, let’s be glad.”

I nod, and I don’t have to swallow my doubts, because Tia’s gentle words wash them all away for now.

Fallon and Giles return with old albums, and Tia’s face lights up when she sees them. I slip away to my room to dig up the one that Liesel made me all those years ago. As I climb the stairs, I hear Tia’s shrieks of laughter and I realize my wife is more than brilliant.

She’s a wise sage -- she understood what this house needed before we got weighed down with uncertainty once again. I stand on the stairs, listening to her and her husbands.

“Your hair was so red!” she tells Giles. And then she says, “Your mom is so beautiful, she was so young, Emerson.”

At that, I turn to go, not sure how I’ll feel digging up my ghosts. I go to my bedroom, and in the closet, I pull down a box holding the few things I saved from my life before. Setting it down, I take a deep breath, and fumble for the book Liesel had made me so long ago. Suddenly I’m transported in time. To my father’s mansion, to Liesel’s small hands and slender face. Her hair golden ringlets and her voice so soft. She was fourteen when my father bought her, a child in her own right. Yet wise beyond her years. Tia would have loved her.

“One day you’ll have a happy wife and a healthy baby,” she said matter-of-factly. “And you’ll want to have these photos tucked away in a special place.”

We were sitting on the thick carpet in the media room. The house was quiet, she and I had stolen away as we often did. The same age and both restless. Our lives not at all our own.

I looked at her sheepishly, knowing nothing about happy wives and healthy babies. All I knew about marriage were sobs which echoed through every corridor in the great house and narrow coffins that took hope away.

“How do you know I’ll want that?” I asked her.

She had laughed, picking up the slim stack of photos she’d found in the basement, all taken of me when I was less than a year old, and she began sliding them in plastic sleeves, and then adhering them to the pages of a ringed album.

“Because, Banks, you’re too wonderful of a person to spend your life alone.”

“You really think that?” I asked, my voice cracking, betraying my age, even though I felt so much older than I was. I’d seen and heard too much already.

Liesel had looked at me with tears in her almond-shaped eyes. “I’d have wanted to be your happy wife, Banks.”

I had been so close to her, our knees touching, our fingertips brushing against one another’s. It was so innocent, so pure.

I would have kissed her had I been more brave if her lips were mine to taste.

But control, a desire for absolute mastery of myself had already begun to take shape.

I wouldn’t have taken what wasn’t mine.

God, how I wanted Liesel, every good and beautiful thing about her.

So I kept the memories of her hidden, buried deep in my heart because this broken world had no use for them.

When she died, a few years later, it drove home so damn much in me. Things I didn’t want to learn, that the world was cruel and that life wasn’t fair, and that no woman on this godforsaken planet was in charge of their own destiny.

And I thought that was true until I met Tia.

She ran when she should have stayed. She fought when she should have been quiet. She sacrificed when it could cost her everything.

She begged because she wanted to.

Because she wanted me.

I want a happy wife and healthy baby. For Tia, for me, for the memory of Liesel. She didn’t get her own happy ending, but I can still fight for one myself.

I stand, the photo album in hand, and return to the study. My hands shake as I hand over the album to my wife. The past few months everything I knew about life has been shaken to its core.

What is the point of having control if the need for it begins controlling you?

“Thank you,” she says, accepting the album, and patting the seat next to hers. “Sit.”

I do as she asks, smiling at the chubby baby staring up at us. Thick hair, dark eyes, swaddled in a bassinet.

“I hope our baby has hair like this,” Tia says. Then she threads her fingers through my own thick hair, dragging my face to hers, kissing me squarely on the lips. “I love you,” she tells me.

“I love you too.”

When she finishes thumbing through my album she asks Huxley what his surprise is and he smugly produces a tablet and hands it to her.

“What’s this?” she asks smiling.

“Baby pictures.” He leans in next to her and slides the device on. Then clicks on an icon. “Your baby pictures, Tia.”

“What?” She gasps, covering her mouth. “How on Earth?” She shakes her head in disbelief. “I’ve never even seen these.”

“How’d did you manage that?” Salinger asks, his eyes narrowed. That gets my attention. I thought these two were in on everything together.

He shrugs. “Eh, I have my sources.”

“Nothing dangerous, though? Right?” Fallon asks, his protective streak shining through.

“Of course not. But when we learned Tia’s identity, I did a little sleuthing. And I’m glad I did. These photos of you are pretty damn cute.” He flips the tablet around so we can all see a toddler-sized Tia walking through a library. She’s holding up a book proudly.

“That’s at Saint Augustine’s,” she says in a whisper. “How have I never seen these?” She bends over, taking each image in.

All six of her husbands watch her.

She may have been someone else’s baby once, but now she is our wife.

Now it’s our job to make sure nothing happens to her or our child.