All the kids have been picked up, and together with the other staff I check all the rooms, tidy up, make sure nothing has been left behind.
“Caro— sorry, Deidre, go home.”
I look at the headmaster of the school, an older man with white hair and thick glasses and the sort of kind smile you only ever see in movies.
“It’s fine, Jack.”
“I keep calling you Caroline.”
“You’ll get used to my real name,” I say, winking at him.
“But, really now, go home,” he says. “I’ll stay to tidy up. Your belly is getting bigger than mine!” He rubs his beer belly, looks at it forlornly. “Except mine won’t ever go away.”
I smile. “You know, they say losing the pregnancy weight is pretty tough as well.”
“You’re young, you’ll manage. Go on, see you on Monday.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I say, climbing up from my knees slowly, my hand instinctively going to my belly. I’m nearly at six months, and due to start maternity leave fairly soon.
“And thanks again,” I say. “For giving me a contract.”
“I’ve seen you with the kids. You’re a natural. We’ll get you some more specific training after things settle down. But I think it’s good for the school to have a young, American teacher, anyway. To be exposed to different cultural elements at a young age.”
“You really think so?”
He shrugs. “I try to hire not just Australian teachers, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I had.”
“I think it’s good for them. Attitudes towards people that are different from us is something I believe kids pick up at a young age, and it just gets progressively harder to correct. The kids here at the school will have a head-start, in that regard, even if it’s an unconscious one.”
“I hadn’t considered that before,” I tell him. “I was going to do a module on diversity education and exposure for children… back at college before I was forced to leave.”
“Well, if you’re ever interested, I’m subscribed to all the journals. I could talk your head off.”
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“How will everything be, if I might ask? To take care of the baby?”
I sigh. “To be honest with you, Jack, I haven’t even begun thinking that far ahead. After everything that’s happened…”
“It’s okay, Deidre. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know?”
“No worries,” he says. He nods at me, shuffles his feet for a moment, then continues down the hallway outside.
I gather my things, say bye to everybody, receive no less than four rubs of my belly, and then go outside. It’s warm, the sun is shining, and I soak it all up in my black sweater, feeling a little like a cat.
With a hand over my eyes, I look around for the car, see it parked a small ways up, and start walking. Duncan’s leaning against it, reading a book.
A book.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him read a book.
“Hey,” I call, smiling. He snaps the book shut, comes to me, holds me and kisses me.
“I missed you.”
“Yeah right,” I say. “I saw you eight hours ago. What are you reading?”
He opens the door for me, and I climb into the car, and then he hands me the book.
The Happiest Baby on the Block.
I turn around, look in the back seat, and see piles of books on parenting, on what it’s like being pregnant, on giving birth.
He gets into the car beside me, and I say to him, “Someone went on a shopping spree today.”
“Well, we’re getting closer,” he says. “Things have calmed down now. I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“I’ve got some books at home, Duncan.”
“I know,” he says. “I’ve read them all.”
For some reason, that makes me laugh.
“What, were you reading in secret?”
“Just while you were at work.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that complicated. I mean, we’ll manage.”
“I want to give our son everything I never had, Dee. Everything you never had. I grew up without parents. How can I possibly know how to be one? Now is the time to learn whatever I can.”
“You’re over-thinking it,” I tell him. “Nobody knows how to be a parent the first time. People manage by following their hearts. Parenting is instinct, you can’t just read a book and then follow some sort of blueprint.”
“I know it’s not a blueprint, Dee. I’m not treating this like fighting training.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. But in my mind, over-thinking it is probably better than under-thinking it. At least I’ve read about other people’s experiences. I mean, Dee, I never had parents. I was never once told off by my mother, never kissed goodnight by someone I cared for, never been shouted at by someone I didn’t want to let down. I never had a father to look up to, to learn from. I never felt a soft touch when I was upset. These are experiences people draw on when they become parents, and it influences how they behave to their children.”
I suppose I can’t really disagree with that.
“It’s not just the baby stuff, changing diapers and all that. I’m worried about discipline, communication, all that stuff. How to form a bond.” He shakes his head, and his voice trails off.
I pat his arm. “It’s fine, I was only teasing you. Read everything you want to.”
“Fuck if it hasn’t just made things more confusing, though, I’ll fucking tell you. Competing theories, contradictory advice. Fuck me…”
“I can tell you one thing for sure.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to start swearing less.”
He laughs, but agrees with me, then pulls us out into the lazy afternoon traffic.
“The money came through.”
“Good,” I say. “That’s one less thing to worry about now.”
“I figure we should find someone to invest it. Someone we can trust.”
“I’ll speak to my colleagues at work,” I say. “You can talk to Pierce about it? Surely he’s had to have someone money-wise around him to start that gym.”
“I went to see Pierce today, actually,” he tells me. “He offered me a job working with the boys.”
“What did you say?”
Duncan looks at me briefly. “I said yes.”
I smile. “That’s really great. I’m happy for you. What will the hours be like?”
“Mostly after school to early evening. You know, that’s the time to keep them occupied so they don’t get up to things. A lot of them are latchkey kids, and some of them live in homes.”
“That’s perfect,” I say. “It means you’re free when I’m at work. To take care of Thom.”
“Means I’ll see you less.”
“Like I said, we’ll manage.”
We drive in silence for a while. I consider everything he’s said. The money coming in is great, we’re going to need it. It’s a lot, something I’m happy for if only because it provides stability for the future as long as we use it right.
I was surprised to find out how much he had saved up from all those fights. It had simply never occurred to me that it was sitting in a bank account all this time, collecting practically no interest, or at best, something equivalent to a fine layer of dust.
“Do you want to work for Pierce?” I ask.
Duncan chews his lip for a moment. “Yeah. You know, I think, if there was a place like that I could have gone. One that wasn’t overloaded, one that wasn’t so lacking in funding… things would have been different.”
“We might not have met.”
He shoots a look at me. “Nah, we still would have met.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s what I choose to believe.”
“What, like destiny?”
“Do you believe in fate?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Me neither,” he says.
“So how can you choose to believe it?”
“The alternative is worse.”
“Isn’t that like sticking your head in the sand?”
“Yeah, but doing so about some fake alternate reality doesn’t bother me so much.”
“Well, as long as working at the gym is something you want to do, Duncan, then I’m all for it. You’ll need to keep yourself occupied, anyway.”
“I agree. There’s something else.”
“What?”
He pauses for a moment.
“Just say it,” I say.
“I got a call from the district attorney back home. He wanted to know if you’d changed your mind on testifying. He said if you don’t want to, he won’t pursue it, but he’s eager to get everything he can on Glass.”
I shake my head. Damn it, why does the DA keep bothering me with this? “I already said ‘no’,” I tell Duncan. “And I meant it. I still mean it. What’s his name, Windhorst? Windham?”
“The second one.”
“I don’t see why he doesn’t just leave it alone.”
“He could get a court summons.”
“How does that even work internationally?”
Duncan shrugs. “Something to look up, I guess.”
“Well, anyway, I’m not testifying against my father.”
“After all he did to you?”
“He’s my father, Duncan. I… you know I can’t. That whole business with the gun… I’ve done as much as I can already. I don’t want to be there in court to put the final nail in his coffin. It’s not about him… it’s about me. I don’t want to do it.”
“That’s fine, Dee. You know I’ll support any decision you make.”
“They’ve got enough on him to put him away until he dies of old age, anyway. They don’t need my testimony. I’m not going to add needless years to his sentence. Anyway, speaking of Dad, I got a letter from his lawyer.”
“Yeah? When?”
“This morning.”
“I thought they weren’t supposed to be in contact with you.”
“It’s not related to the trial.”
“What did it say?”
“Dad wants me to come and visit him some time. I mean, in prison. He knows he’s not going to get out of this, and I’m sure none of the other families are willing to lend a hand. They all hated him. Dad rubbed people like that.”
“Are you going to?”
I sigh, shrug. “I don’t know. Not yet, anyway. I won’t ever forgive him, but he’s going to be an old man alone in prison, with enemies on the inside. With all his henchmen giving him up for their own deals… snakes, all of them. But he’s going to need somebody.”
“If you ever go, I’ll come with you,” he says. “If you want me there, I’ll be there.”
“Thanks. Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to come to that.”
“But you considered it.”
“Of course. He’s my dad. Let’s change the subject. How was Pierce?”
“Penelope and him are going to have a baby.”
I scrunch up my face. “What, really?”
“Yeah, he told me today. They just found out.”
“Huh. We can be new mothers together.”
“She’ll probably look to you for advice, since you’ve got a head start.”
“Fair enough,” I murmur, and put my hand on Duncan’s thigh. We don’t talk much more on the way home, and I just watch the world go by outside the car.
It’s oddly calm, and I’d be lying if a small part of me didn’t almost… almost miss the thrill. My whole life, I’ve been a mob boss’ daughter. I’ve had a bodyguard shadow me, I’ve had people cower when they found out who I was.
I ran away, lived life for several months constantly looking over my shoulder. It was draining, tiring, consumed every last ounce of strength I had.
And we almost lost it all… Duncan almost died. I came so close to certainly having my baby taken from me.
It’s crazy, now, that everything is so still. I feel like there needs to be some wind, some rustle.
The therapist tells me that’s normal, that there’s an adjustment period. I was glad when Duncan said he’d absolutely go with me to therapy. I almost expected him to scoff at the idea, or act all macho about it, but he was receptive at once.
When I asked him why, he said it’s because he trusted me. If I thought it was a good idea, then he did, too.
I’m glad because there are a lot of things that have happened, and it’s affected us in ways we don’t realize. I don’t want to be carrying around any emotional baggage… for the baby. I need to get it all out, get it all sorted out in my mind, and he does as well, before we start raising a child.
Duncan was never great at examining his own emotions. I don’t blame him, he’s had to keep them locked up tight for most of his life.
But now is the time to figure all of that out. We need to put everything behind us, and look only onward. We can’t be distracted by the past when the future weighs on us heavily.
We’ve got a kid to raise, and we’ve got to raise him right. We’ve got to give him a good life, but not spoil him. He’s got to be our total focus. One-hundred percent.
How could we do that if we were still battling our own issues? I know it’s not impossible, but we don’t need a handicap. I personally feel it’s vital for the health of our family.
The therapist says we’ll need to stay in therapy together for at least a year, and likely more. She says that it’s important we work through it together. She says, in Duncan’s particular case, that he needs to let me know if he still feels anything residual… about me running away like that.
It’s a process, the therapist says, but a good and necessary one.
When we get home, Duncan pampers me. It’s sweet, and makes me laugh, because the baby, the prospect of family has changed him so much.
Truth be told, if you took me back in time to when he walked through our front door, didn’t take his eyes off me, told me he was going to be the best fighter ever, kissed me in the gym room, then talked back to Dad… I would have never thought he could be tamed, least of all by me.
We are both still so young, and yet it feels like we’ve lived a lifetime. I’ve seen things in my youth that people don’t ever see in their lives, and for him it’s the same.
He brings me a hot cup of lemon water, my book, and a blanket. I lie on the sofa, read for a while in the afternoon. He’s said he’ll cook dinner tonight; he’s going to try making homemade sushi. No raw fish, just cucumber, egg, teriyaki chicken, and smoked salmon sushi.
Not only is it not exactly authentic, but it’s going to be disastrous… I’m fairly certain of that. He’s still working on his cooking skills – all he knows how to do is brown rice, broccoli, and chicken. But even I tried it once myself, and it didn’t taste like the real thing at all.
And after dinner, we watch television together. It’s something so banal, so domestic, and yet it is something that makes me surprisingly happy. And when the episode of Game of Thrones finishes, we turn the television off, and Duncan still kisses me like he used to. He tells me how gorgeous I am, and with soft dabs of his lips on my neck and shoulder, he makes me shiver and hum, and then he climbs under the blanket and he makes me shudder and moan.
We go to bed together, and we make love, and then he holds me tight, and I know that he’s never going to let me go. It’s like this every night. I’ve never felt so secure, and yet that is not enough to stop me from sometimes second guessing myself.
Did I do the right thing, running away, taking the baby, keeping it a secret? If I hadn’t have done that, then Duncan might not be here with me now. Dad would have had him killed.
Before bed my mind kicks into overdrive, like it does most nights now, and I consider how at one point, not so long ago, I thought that I’d have to live out the rest of my life on my own. That I’d have to be a single mother, and that I’d have nobody to turn to.
That I’d have to be endlessly strong, that I wouldn’t have somebody to rely on, to let my guard down around, to protect me and my child in the warm embrace of his arms when I wasn’t feeling up to it, when I wanted a break. When I couldn’t be that iron woman, forged in fire, that somehow I feel I’m expected to be.
Duncan falls asleep first, unburdened at night in the same way that I am. He’s so well-trained to sleep as soon as he shuts his eyes, from all the naps he used to take throughout the day after heavy training sessions so that his body could recuperate. I sometimes envy him.
But his slow breathing, his arm around me, and knowing that he’ll be there for me, really knowing… I couldn’t ask for anything more, I guess.
It all sort of worked out. We saved our baby, saved our relationship. We’ve got money, lots of it, and we’ve got jobs. Duncan’s not fighting anymore, and Dad’s not in the picture anymore.
It’s crazy, insane, really. It could have so easily not worked out.
But it did work out in the end.
Duncan rolls over, half-asleep, and murmurs, “Stop thinking so much.”
“Go to sleep,” I tell him softly.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “Things are only going to get better.”
“I know,” I tell him.
He wraps a leg around me, as if somehow trying to make even more of me his. “I love you more than anything, Dee. I think we’re going to be fine.”
And like that he falls asleep again, and when he sleeps his body is perfectly still.
I slip my fingers in between his, force myself to stop thinking, to shut my eyes.
I think we’re going to be fine, too.
Thank you for reading Untamed.
**Coming up is the included bonus book Uncaged, which tells the story of Pierce and Penelope, who we have met briefly. To read Uncaged, flick to the next page!**