The FaceTime call wakes me at 7 am. I grab the phone before Kane can be roused, haul my whale-self out of bed, and waddle into the kitchen. My back aches. It’s been bothering me a lot the last couple of days, but I must have slept funny, because today it’s fierce. I press my hand to the achy spot, and the pain subsides.
“Hey, Mom.” I keep my voice low.
Every time I say it, I wonder if I should just call her Lori. And yet there’s still this small part of me, the part of me that remembers the adventures and the good times, that can’t give up the childhood name: Mom.
“Hi, Mari!” she says. She’s in an up mood today, which is good. Our calls go better when she is.
I lean the phone against Kane’s flour canister while I start a pot of coffee. Not for me, for Kane. It’s a habit we’ve gotten into lately. I wake up earlier, usually, because the baby is kicking my bladder. So I brew coffee for Kane, who wakes up, drinks the coffee, and cooks breakfast for me.
My back pain flares again, and I rub a hand over the sore part. I’ll ask Kane for a back massage when he wakes up.
“Where are you?” my mom asks. That’s always one of the first questions we ask each other.
“Still in Rush Creek,” I tell her. I’d sent her a couple of texts right after I landed here to let her know that I was doing a job and would be staying put for a bit.
“Still?” she says. “Huh. I have to be in Portland next week. I could stop by and see you.”
Something freezes in my chest. “Sure, Mom.” I swallow hard.
“I know I didn’t show the last time, but that was different.”
“Yeah?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. She’s talking about the last time she said she’d “stop by,” when I was doing a job in Iowa City and she was crossing the country on her way to Philadelphia.
It never happened. A few days after she’d said she’d arrive, she called me from the East coast to say she hadn’t had time to stop, after all.
“Yeah. I had a deadline that time, and I was running behind. This time I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, one hand idly massaging my back.
I hear the sounds of Kane rustling out of bed in the room behind me, and my heart turns over. I should have known better than to take the call in the house, when he could walk in. It’s not rational, I know it’s not, but I don’t want to have to explain Kane, or what I’m doing with him, to my mother.
“Morning, sunshine!” he calls, and his bare-torso-self steps into the kitchen. He is golden and better than breakfast.
“Whoa,” my mother says. She leans towards the camera, like that might let her peer around me. She can’t, of course. “Who’s that?”
“Mom, this is Kane. Kane, this is my mom. Lori.”
“Hi, Lori,” Kane says, waving.
“Hi, Kane.” My mom gives me great big WTF eyes.
“Coffee’s ready,” I say, then snatch up the phone and take it into the bedroom.
“Mari.” My mom’s definitely curious. “Who is that hottie?”
“I told you. That’s Kane.”
Something in my voice must tip her off. She frowns at me. “Are you living with him?” And then, even more fiercely. “Mari, he’s not—he’s not the dad, is he?”
As much as I don’t want to answer, Kane matters to me, and I don’t want to make him into a lie. Not even to avoid a showdown with my mother. “Yeah. He’s the dad.”
“I thought you didn’t know who the dad was.”
In a few brushstrokes, I catch her up on the story. How I met both Clark and Kane in Vegas separately and didn’t realize they were brothers, how Kane and I hooked up, and eventually Clark summoned me to do the work we’d talked about in Vegas.
“So, what, you’re all bunked up like a happy family?” she demands. “What happened to looking for an adoption?”
I think of the self I was a few weeks ago, lying in bed with my phone out and the adoption profiles up. Still believing what I’d told myself, that I was too much like my mother to do this right.
“I changed my mind,” I say. “Things changed, and I changed my mind.”
She draws a sharp breath. “Mari, that’s not a good idea. Take it from me, sweetheart. It’ll be fun for a little bit, and then you’ll go out of your ever-loving mind. You’ll last a year, and then what? Are you going to take the baby with you on the road? Or leave it with some guy you don’t even know? It’s not too late to change your mind again. Seriously, hon, listen: You know how the Barrymores are. We’re wanderers.”
These are the words she said to me when she gave me the bracelet. She’s repeated those words to me tens of times since.
Those words, they’ve always felt like a mallet striking a gong with the ring of truth.
But something’s different this time.
Maybe it was her saying, “Some guy you don’t even know.” Because it doesn’t feel like that describes Kane at all. Kane’s not some guy. He’s—
He’s my guy.
He’s not just hot breakfast and homemade Boston cream pie and foot massages. He’s adventure and safety, zing and physical comfort.
He’s thoughtful and generous and creative and loving.
And he makes me want to stay put.
“Thanks for the warning, Mom,” I say. “I know you’re worried about me, but I’m going to be fine.”
“That’s what you think now,” she says. “But just you wait, Mari. Wait till the baby won’t stop crying and you’re nursing around the clock and you know you’re going to have to live the rest of your life in the same small town with the same small-minded people. You think you care about this guy, but it’s not going to be enough then—”
Bun gives a gigantic kick of outrage, straight into my bladder. There’s a ping sensation, and fluid trickles down my leg.
For a split second, I think what any non-pregnant human would think in this situation: Holy crap, I wet myself!
And then I remember something Lucy said when we were shopping for baby clothes: When your amniotic sac breaks, you’re going to think you wet yourself.
“Mom,” I say firmly. “I have to go.”
I end the call and turn to find Kane behind me. His mouth is open as if he’s about to say something. But before he can get the words out, a hard, mean cramp wraps around from my back to my belly, and a sharp sound of alarm jumps out of me.
“Mari!” Kane leaps to my side.
Oh. That wasn’t back pain earlier.
That was…
Labor.