Twenty-Eight
Two Months Later
Ava came awake with a start and realized she’d been sleeping in a less than dignified pose. She’d kicked her covers off at some point, and the oversized t-shirt that was all she slept in these days had ridden up. Her belly was smooth and shiny as a melon, skin stretched tight over the active occupant within. She blinked and pushed up on an elbow and realized who had awakened her: Remy. Baby boy was doing somersaults in her womb; it felt like that, anyway, the way he was squirming and kicking.
“I can actually see him moving around,” Mercy said beside her, breathless with wonder, his gaze trained on her belly.
He lay on his side, white topsheet down around his waist, contrasting with the tawny, sun-glazed color of his skin. Head braced on his fist, Ava could see the small black shape of the tattoo on the side of his neck, the little gator that matched the one on her foot – the mark of remembrance for the child they’d lost.
The new sunlight picked out the lines on his face. She loved those lines; he’d lived, and he was the man beside her, reaching to cover her stomach with one careful hand because of it.
“He’s strong,” she said, as Mercy smiled, feeling the thrashing against his hand.
He was big, too. The doctor had already laughingly told her he was going to be “one whopper” to birth, when the time came.
She’d snorted. “You should see his dad,” she’d told Dr. Wyatt, and he’d laughed.
“I don’t doubt it.”
Ava reached to tug down her nightshirt, but Mercy pushed her hand away, continuing to smooth his own across the shape of their unborn son.
“Merc.”
“I like looking at you,” he protested.
“You always say that.”
“And I always mean it.”
Her face warmed and she rolled toward him, pressing her nose into his chest. Her stomach filled up the space between them; Mercy stretched so he was curved around her body, echoing the way she cradled the baby.
They’d settled on Remy Jerome, after his grandfather; the father Mercy had so lovingly, brokenly buried with his own hands in a patch of swamp outside New Orleans. Mercy had asked her, in the black of one night, in the hushed chill of early spring, if she thought the name was a curse, and would land him a fate like that of his late grandfather.
Ava had reached through the dark to tangle her hands in his hair. “No,” she’d whispered. “An honor, not a curse.”
There’d never been any real question, though. He’d been Remy before they knew his gender; and then they’d learned it was a boy, and Mercy had snatched her off her feet and spun circles with her in the kitchen. A boy. A son.
A lump rose in her throat when she thought about the kind of father he’d be. The same gentle, patient teacher his own father had been, big rough hands light as thistledown against the breakable limbs of the boy he’d raise into a man.
“What time’s the shower today?” Mercy asked, his voice a low purring against her hair.
“Two.” She sighed, not wanting to draw away from him yet, wanting to delay the rest of the day so she could wallow in soft sheets and the aimless weight of his hands against her.
She was due in just a few short weeks. She was terrified. She was thrilled. She felt young and stupid and blissfully happy all at once. She guessed that’s what it was supposed to feel like.
“Good,” he said. “We’ve got time for me to tell you a story.”
She smiled, though he couldn’t see it, lips curving against his clavicle.
“I don’t think I ever told you the one about Grandpa Louis and the raccoon in the attic, did I? Nah. Anyway, Louis had this old steamer trunk he brought over from Paris…”
**
The Teague house was packed with women, for once. Holly had been to a good many club dinners at this point, and the rooms were inevitably stuffed wall-to-wall with men in cuts. The patio was always clouded with cigarette smoke and the dinner conversation was dominated by Harley discussion, the women chatting between their menfolk as the volume of voices allowed.
Today, though, Ghost and Maggie’s living room was decked with powder blue pennants and balloons, sprays of fresh white roses in glass vases. The cake was three-tiered and there was a little black motorcycle on top. All the old ladies had come: Nell, Mina, even the sometimes-absent Jackie, looking tired but pretty in a floral dress. Stella who co-owned Stella’s Café had been invited, and Ava’s childhood friend Leah, and her friend from school, Samantha.
A pile of gifts in novelty Harley paper stood center stage, and Ava, in a simple black dress and sandals – comfy, casual, and still slender aside from her baby bump – sat behind them in a slipper chair.
“You guys did too much,” she said, eyeing the gifts with something like guilt.
“We did not, so don’t say that again,” Nell ordered, and everyone chuckled.
Maggie had a notepad in her lap. “You have to open everything the right way,” she teased her daughter. “Give us a little show” – she demonstrated showing off the gift – “and ooh and ahh over it.”
Ava nodded. “Got it.” She reached for the first present, the crackling of the paper sounding too loud in Holly’s ears.
Baby stuff everywhere. Rattles and bibs and onesies used as decoration. Hand-lettered banners welcoming the new member of the family: We Love You, Remy! Ava sitting there too pregnant for words. Opening up a tiny pair of toddler-sized jeans while everyone exclaimed over them.
Will they throw me one of these? Holly wondered, dimly thrilled at the idea. She had another month or so before her condition would be too obvious to hide.
She had another week or two before her expanding waistline could no longer be explained to Michael as overindulging. He hadn’t said anything yet, and maybe he hadn’t noticed. But Holly had stood in front of the bathroom mirror that morning and panicked, because to her, it was so obvious now, and she hadn’t worked up the courage yet to tell her new husband that they had less than eight months before they would be welcoming a little bundle of their own.
Holly had never counted on children. In a life plagued by fantasies of listening to music, watching a movie in a theater, walking down the street between strangers and feeling safe for the first time, she’d never had a chance to want kids. A husband and babies and a house of her own had never been attainable, and so she’d given them no thought. She’d wanted to be free; she’d wanted not to die in her own filth tied to a semen-soaked bed.
Now she had Michael, though. Never had she dared to hope for something like him. She felt she’d cheated somehow, stolen something, every time his warm hand fished through the sheets to find her in the middle of the night. The sterling, precious magic of the way he always wanted her, the way he was patiently teaching her that the things she’d always feared were exquisite tortures in the arms of a man who loved her – would a baby shatter that?
By the time Ava finished opening gifts, Maggie recording a list of them, everyone exclaiming over every pacifier and diaper, Holly was in a cold sweat. Her stomach, already in knots, gave a great grab, and she lurched to her feet.
“Excuse me,” she said, as the room swayed around her, “I–”
She bolted, tripping over someone’s feet as she darted down the hallway and to the guest bathroom. She managed, with shaking hands, to get the door shut, and lift the toilet lid, before she lost her hold on the bacon-wrapped melon appetizers she’d choked down before.
When she’d retched her stomach empty and her throat raw, she flushed and sat down heavily on the edge of the bathtub. “Damn,” she whispered, smoothing her hair back from her damp forehead. “I’m the worst shower guest in the world.”
She sat still and breathed raggedly through her mouth for a few minutes, willing her stomach to quiet. She couldn’t hide her condition anymore. She’d have to tell Michael. She had to tell him tonight, even if the prospect made her want to bawl her eyes out. Better to get it over with; better to face his wrath now than worry herself to death for a few more weeks.
She splashed her face with cold water and rinsed her mouth. When she emerged, she found Ava waiting for her in the hallway, folded hands resting on the top of her round belly, her half-smile knowing.
“Have you told Michael yet?” she asked.
No beating around the bush, then. Holly put her back to the wall and let it hold her weight, shaking her head. “I’m afraid,” she admitted. “I love him more than life itself, but he’s not like Mercy. He’s never said anything about wanting a family.”
Ava shrugged. “So? I have no idea if Mercy ever wanted a family; he wanted to have a baby with me, and that’s not the same thing.”
Holly blinked, surprised.
Ava’s grin stretched. “I don’t think it matters at all whether he wants kids or not. He loves you, he married you; he won’t turn away from the baby you have together.”
Holly breathed a humorless laugh. “Well, I’m glad you’re confident about it.”
“I think you should tell him,” Ava persisted, tone softening. There was true understanding in her eyes. “Mercy knocked me up when I was seventeen,” she said in a tone of admission, and Holly stiffened in shock. “I had a hard time telling him, for the same reason you don’t want to tell Michael, and then…” Her breath caught. “Then something happened, and I…I lost it.” She shook her head, blinking against a sudden sheen of tears.
Squaring her shoulders, she said, “You didn’t make a baby by yourself. I think…I think if a man gives you one out of love, he won’t look at it as a mistake. Whether he wants to be a father or not.”
Holly nodded, throat tightening.
Ava reached out a hand for her, a silent gesture of friendship.
Holly took it.
Michael was on the back deck when she got home. She let herself out the rear French doors and found him barefoot, in an old Lean Dogs silkscreened t-shirt and busted-up jeans, drinking a beer and turning burgers on the grill. The greasy, charcoal-stroked smell of the meat almost sent her back inside, her stomach turning over. But she swallowed down the gag reflex and let the doors close silently behind her, stealing a moment to soak in the sight of him and smile to herself.
From the moment she’d met him, he’d possessed a tension that had been so constant, it was merely a part of him. Like the hazel of his eyes, or the brown of his hair, his shoulders and spine were tense. But watching him now, as he grilled their dinner, she saw none of that tension. He looked loose-limbed, at ease. Happy. He was happy these days, and it pained her to think she might be about to shatter that.
He turned, glancing at her over his shoulder. His face would always be a granite mask, but that was fine, because she could read the fine twitches of it, and the deep emotions the smooth surface belied.
“You’re back,” he said. “You wanna make a salad or something? There’s potatoes in there, I think, if you wanted to make those fries you did last time.” He tried hard not to look hopeful, but Holly noted the little gleam in his eyes.
A couple weeks ago, she’d sliced baking potatoes into thick steak fry wedges, soaked them, fried them and seasoned them with pepper and chili powder and garlic; save the handful she’d put on her own plate, he’d eaten all of them. They’d been a hit.
She nodded. “That’s fine.”
He turned back to the grill.
Now, she thought, breath catching in her throat. She had to tell him now. Waiting until after dinner felt too much like lying.
She swallowed. “Michael.”
Something in her voice brought him around fast. He closed the grill on the burgers, set down the spatula and his beer on the deck rail, and fixed her with a searching look. A what’s-wrong look. A ready-to-leap-to-her-defense look.
She swallowed again, throat burning. “Remember how I didn’t feel so great last night?”
He nodded, taking a step toward her. “You still sick? You need to go to the doc?” Another step, like he was already prepared to bundle her into the car.
She shook her head, staving him off with a hand against his chest. She felt his heartbeat thrumming against her palm, elevated, worried. “I’m not sick,” she said, wincing. “But there’s something wrong.”
He caught her upper arm in one hand, squeezing in question. His face had clamped down into a tight, terrified expression. “What?”
“I…” All the breath rushed out of her lungs, her confession riding it. “I’m pregnant.”
She stared at the faded lettering on his shirt a long moment, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The thunder of his heart. Finally, she lifted her eyes, prepared for any number of awful snarls, or dark frowns.
Instead, his face was perfectly blank. Wide eyes and a relaxed jaw and smooth brow, he stared at her like he didn’t know who she was, or what she’d just said.
“Michael–”
“You are?”
She nodded, and closed her eyes, and turned her face away from him, fighting the awful sting of tears.
She heard him swallow, the audible gulp. His voice was wooden. “You were on all kinds of meds, after your surgery…”
“Yeah.”
“And so you…” He exhaled, breath rustling against her hair. “Okay,” he said. “Okay…yeah.”
Holly looked at him, startled. “Okay?”
“Well what am I supposed to say?”
Her eyes tracked wildly over his face, searching for anger, panic, resentment. “You’re not upset?”
“Are you?” he countered.
She prided herself on reading him, but in this moment, she could glean nothing. “I…”
Upset wasn’t the word for what she was.
“It’s too much,” she whispered. She drew in a shuddering breath. “How could someone like me get so much? I’ve got you, and that’s more than I–” She sniffled, hating the tears that tried to fall. “There has to be a price, doesn’t there? Shouldn’t I have to pay some kind of price, because I got you?” Because he was her avenging angel. Her guardian. Her salvation. St. Michael. “A baby’s too much,” she repeated. “To much to hope for, or to have, or…”
He took her by both shoulders. “Stop thinking like that,” he said firmly. “Stop it.”
“But–”
“Do you not get it, Hol?” Now she saw the anger, blazing in his face. “You live in this old-ass house, full of ugly-ass shag carpet, and you live in it with me. Me, Holly. Your car’s older than you are, you work in a truck rental office, and the highlight of your week is watching Stallone movies while I try to shove my hand down your pants. How in the hell is that ‘too much’?”
She frowned up at him. “Are you trying to tell me my life’s lame?”
“It is lame. You could have gone anywhere, had anyone, done anything, and you stayed here with me. You stayed here with me,” he repeated, and she saw the flashes of pain and gratitude and wonder deep in the centers of his eyes, and she understood. “You ought to have everything you want,” he said firmly. “There’s no such thing as too much.”
“You aren’t mad about the baby,” she said, knowing it was true.
He swallowed, his throat working, Adam’s apple punching. “I want you to be glad that you stayed. Honey, only one thing scares me, and it’s not babies.”
Tears blurred her vision. She smoothed her hands across the soft cotton covering his chest. “I never thought…and I never expected…never felt like I had any right to want–”
She threw her arms around his neck, squeezed him as tight as she could.
His arms came around her and he stroked her hair, hands gentle against the back of her skull.
She allowed herself to open up to it, let the idea of it all wash into her, warm and healing as saltwater waves. A child that was hers, and his, something new and untouched by darkness, something pure and whole born out of their own broken souls, forged in love and warmth.
How did she deserve it? How did anyone?
“I think,” he said quietly against the top of her head, “that there is a price. And I think we paid it already.”
She sighed against his shoulder, where her face was tucked into the warmth and strength of his spare frame. “Angels are expensive,” she agreed, and she fitted her hands over the wings on his back, imagining she could feel the texture of feathers through his shirt. All those feathers, light, and soft, and hope-scented, lifting her to heaven.
THE END
~*~
The Lean Dogs –
And their old ladies!
- will return in Dartmoor Book III
The Skeleton King
Summer 2015
~*~