Chapter 38
Emma
L ife doesn’t go back to normal, not even when December turns into January, with February close on its heels. How can it, when I’m not only mourning the loss of a bright future and trying to plan for an entirely new one?
I can tell Raleigh wants to return to her beautiful country home with her husband and child, but she delays so she can help me find my feet. As if I didn’t owe her enough, she helps me shop for prenatal vitamins and schedule doctor’s appointments. She sympathizes with my morning sickness, rubbing my back as I brace myself against another wave of nausea. She says mine has been far worse than hers as she brings me ginger tea, saltines, and cold compresses, constantly checking in to see if anything helps, even if only for a moment. But what helps most is that she never gets tired of me bursting into tears in her arms.
Still, I can’t settle. My place in the Warwick family was already up in the air before I left, but now? It seems I’ve gone from being a former street punk mystery to being lauded as some kind of hero for the ‘sacrifice’ I made, but that doesn’t do me any good. I didn’t want to be a hero, I just wanted to do my part. My accidental ‘undercover work’ had impressed even Thomas, but that does me no good now. Risking my life to do more of that kind of work for the estate with a baby waiting at home is out of the question.
So… what now? Do I learn bookkeeping and make myself useful in Thomas’s accounting department? I never finished high school, so I can’t imagine I’d excel there. I’ll do whatever I have to do, of course but… do I even want to be an accountant?
No. I want to go back to-
Every time I nearly indulge in that line of thinking, I have to stop myself. It’s too painful to think about Achilles and Sidony and the brief home we found with each other. It’s too painful to wonder what Achilles would think if I got to tell him I’m carrying his child. Would it just make him resent me more? Or would he keep me at a polite distance for the sake of our baby?
Which of those possibilities is more painful?
As my first trimester comes to an end, I find myself studying the shape of my body in the mirror. I’m so petite that my pregnancy is already beginning to change me, just a little. My breasts, cheeks, and hips are a bit fuller, and when I put a hand to my stomach, I can almost imagine there’s a bit of a bump there too.
It should make me feel entranced, curious, excited. And it does.
But it also makes me want to cry until I have no tears left in me.
My first ultrasound appointment is later this morning, and I’m a jumble of nerves. I never went to the doctor as a kid. As a teenager I only dragged my ass to a walk-in clinic when I had a fever that was so bad I started hallucinating, and I had to lie about every one of my personal details, especially my age. Now that I have months of mandatory doctor’s visits ahead of me, I’m discovering a fear I didn’t even know I had.
Still, it’s one I’m going to have to get over, for the sake of my own child. I’m not repeating a single one of my father’s mistakes.
Raleigh chatters my ear off in the back of the town car on our way to the office, graciously ignoring how clammy my hand is in hers. She’s left Roman with his father, but I can tell she hates being away from him for even a moment. Whenever they’re apart, all she talks about his him.
Is Achilles that kind of parent? I know he’s always thinking of Sidony, but if he were living a more peaceful life, would he talk about her all the time too? Would he share her funny turns of phrase with Freddie in The Cooper’s Arms in the middle of a collection call?
I can’t help but imagine it, and I can’t stop my imagination from stretching just a little further.
Would he coo endlessly over a new baby, nap with them without care on the couch, play with their toes and make them laugh? My throat and chest ache at the cruelty of such beautiful moments that won’t ever exist.
I’m so anxious by the time we arrive at the doctor’s office that when he takes note of my blood pressure and heart rate, he asks if I’ve been feeling sick lately. I stammer that I’m just nervous for this appointment and excited to see my baby for the first time, and that’s true enough. The idea that there’s a tiny living thing inside me has been in the back of my mind for weeks, but I’ve had so little tangible proof of it that sometimes I wake up and think I’ve imagined the pregnancy entirely.
Today, I’ll be able to see the baby inside me. Today, this will finally start to feel real.
I feel a little better once I’m lying down, and the cold jelly the doctor spreads over my stomach is enough of a shock that my nausea finally dissipates. Raleigh sits in a chair on my left, still holding my hand steadily in both of hers. For a brief second, I imagine what it would be like to have Achilles here with me instead of her, holding my hand and excited to get a first look at our baby. The next moment, my stomach twists at that ingratitude, but I can’t help it.
The doctor is on my right, fiddling with his machinery. He presses the nozzle thing to my stomach, sending another chill through me, but I stay as still as a corpse as he moves it over my skin, searching for a good angle.
“There it is,” he says, watching his screen. His tone is casual, almost bored, as he adjusts the nozzle again. “And there’s the… oh… two!”
Wait, two? Two what?! Limbs? Heads? Tumors?
He shifts his screen so I can see it before I can fling myself off the bed. My heart stutters in shock. Through the shifting black and blue shapes, I see two little forms curled up tight.
Two.
“Twins?!” Raleigh gasps. I’m not sure which of us is clinging to the other in a death grip, but my fingers are aching and I can’t even care.
I’m pregnant with twins.
Paul is smoking on the back porch when I find him a few days later, but he stomps out his cig when he sees me coming.
“How ya feeling, kid?” he asks, like he does every day.
He knows most of what Raleigh knows now. I didn’t care about keeping my pregnancy a secret, and once the information was out, there were very few guesses about who the father could be. And then of course I had to explain that everything that happened between Achilles and I was consensual in order to smother the immediate fires of rage that popped up all over the estate. Thomas was especially enraged, since he knew that at least part of the reason it happened was because I was complying with my captivity, a captivity he couldn’t save me from quickly enough. So then I had to explain that I did, in fact, have feelings for Achilles, which made the situation ten times more awkward and painful.
Since that mess exploded in my lap, everyone has been very indulgent about me and my situation. I’m still being paid, for god’s sake, even though I haven’t had an official job on the estate for months. I appreciate the concern from Paul and Raleigh, but I can’t stand it from anyone else.
Worse, I feel like I know the answer to Paul’s daily question less and less as time goes by. After the bombshell of my ultrasound appointment, I’ve been getting through each day in a haze. I haven’t told anyone else the results, and Raleigh agreed to keep it secret until I was ready to talk about them.
Paul must see just how lost I am on my face, because he turns to me fully. "Guessing not great, huh?" he says, his voice softening as he reads my expression.
I lean against one of the posts holding up the porch. Since the appointment, I’ve carried my sonogram in my pocket, folded into quarters. My hand finds it for the hundredth time, and I pull it out and pass it to him. Paul unfolds the picture, and when he realizes what he’s seeing, he looks up at me with an open mouth.
“No way. Twins?”
I nod, but I can’t quite look at his face. If I didn’t know what to do with my life after giving birth to one child, I doubly don’t know what to do with two. It’s not that I’m not happy, but how can I really be excited when I have so little idea what comes next? More than ever, I feel too young to be a mother on my own.
I’m still not looking at him when I ask, just in case I’m overstepping some line that upsets him, “How did you do it?” My voice cracks a little, and I swallow to steady it. “How did you stay away from her for ten years?”
Paul sighs, and I chance a look at his face. He’s not angry, but my question did hurt him, and that sends a pang through my own chest. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth are deeper than they were a moment ago.
The story of Iris and Paul’s secret marriage is legend on the Warwick estate, and even without asking either of them about it, I know the outline of it. After Thomas Sr. and his friend Morgan Speare suffered their schism, Morgan took a large chunk of Thomas Sr.’s men with him. One of those men was Paul. And one of the people that chose to stay behind was Iris.
Despite the civil war sitting between them, they managed to bridge that gap and hold onto their love for each other. And without either of their differing sides knowing, they even married. With hardly any contact, they kept their love strong for ten years before Morgan was brought down and Paul was able to return to the Warwick family. They’re inseparable now, a power couple unlike any other.
Their situation isn’t exactly the same as mine of course. Achilles and I weren’t forced apart. He turned his back on me, and for good reason. There isn’t anything to keep alive until we meet again.
But that doesn’t stop me from needing to know… how .
“Part of it was stupidity,” he says frankly. “I was in an accident, and Morgan saved my life. I felt like I owed him my service, and to back out on that would mean I had no loyalty as a man.” He snorts and shakes his head. “Stupidity,” he repeats. “The other part of it was more important, and luckily for all of us, that part won out in the end.”
I find myself leaning forward a little, desperate for the answer. Desperate for some clarity. “What was it?”
He cocks his head at me, one corner of his mouth smiling crookedly. “It was Clara.”
Of course. She’s a Warwick now, but back then, Thomas’s wife was Clara Speare, Morgan Speare’s niece and favorite punching bag.
I didn’t live in Morgan’s house, so I never got the chance to meet her before moving in with the Warwicks, but I heard of her through my dad’s drunken ramblings. He’d talk about how stupid and weak she was, how she probably wouldn’t even last until Morgan could sell her into marriage. He mentioned once how Morgan took one of the pictures she’d painted and burned it with a lighter in front of her. My dad thought it was funny. I thought it was disgusting and cruel.
“She lost her mother a few years after Morgan parted ways with Thomas Sr.,” Paul explains. “I couldn’t let her go through that alone. I had to protect her, not just physically but emotionally too. She’s stronger than anyone’s ever given her credit for, but she didn’t know it back then.”
He pulls himself out of his memories and looks me over. “There’s no one here like that for you,” he says abruptly. It almost sounds like a rebuke, but I know he doesn’t mean it that way. “Raleigh’s happy and healthy, and Derrick’s the kind of guy who’ll do all he can to keep her that way.”
My throat feels tight. “What about you?”
Paul laughs at that. “If you want to compete with Iris for who gets to look after me, you can be my guest,” he jokes. When I don’t laugh, though, his smile fades. “Listen, kid, you’ve got enough to handle on your own. Don’t add me to your list.”
Again, that hurts even though I know he doesn’t mean it to. If my dad were halfway decent and hadn’t gotten himself killed being a deadbeat, would I be taking care of him right now? Would that give my life some feeling of purpose?
Or am I just looking for purpose in all the wrong places?
“The thing is,” Paul says gently, “I knew where I stood with Iris. I knew she loved me, and I loved her, and that our mutual goal was to get back together someday. You don’t have that sure knowledge, and that’s what’s going to eat you up inside no matter how much time passes. That what if will ruin your life if you don’t leave it behind now. Or you can commit to finding the answer, no matter how much it might hurt.”
My eyes well with tears. I know he’s right. Even if I hate the answer, I have to at least ask the question if I want to move on with my life. And if I think of it another way, Achilles deserves to know that I’m carrying his baby- his twin babies. Then he can decide whether he wants me or not with all the facts in tow.
“You’re so determined to find someone to take care of,” Paul goes on, “but just this once, can you let one of us take care of you? Just tell me you want an answer, and I’ll help you get it, no matter what.”
“What if I don’t deserve it?” I blurt out.
For some reason, this makes Paul look sadder than ever. He chucks me under the chin, making sure I’m looking him in the eye when he says, “Impossible. You deserve the world.”