“I was afraid the bank would ask me where I’d gotten it, so I hid the money in my freezer.” I rubbed my eyes wearily, staring into the dancing flames of the fire. “I actually thought it was quite insightful at the time.”
She gave me a critical look over the top of her glasses but held her tongue.
I hated the glasses. I knew I was in trouble when she’d put them on halfway through our conversation. They magnified her eyes and alway
s made me feel like when she was staring at me, she was debating whether or not something so defective could have possibly come from her.
I stared back as bravely as I could, but it was always difficult to tell exactly where she was looking. In the end, I gave up and buried my face in a pillow. “Could we please not make this about the popsicles—please?”
She raised her eyebrows dangerously and the glasses fell to the very tip of her nose. “Oh, I’m sorry, Rebecca. You’ve been lying to me for the last ninety days, and now you want to tell me how to react to it as well?” Her voice scorched the air between us. “My mistake.”
But the longer the silence stretched on, the more she seemed to soften. After a few moments, she reached out and squeezed my knee beneath the blanket. I looked up, feeling utterly broken and ashamed, tears still falling down my face.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. And I meant it with all my heart. “I thought this would all be over before anyone had to get hurt. But somehow everyone’s gotten hurt. And now…”
For the first time, I put my hands tentatively over my belly. I didn’t look any different. I didn’t even really feel all that different. But something about me had undeniably changed.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
It seemed like too simple a closing statement to possibly cover it, but it was true. There was simply no better word for how I felt.
Then my mom reached out slowly and put her hands over mine, surprising me and meeting my tentative gaze with a warm smile. “It’s okay.”
Despite how many times I’d shrieked the contrary over the last few hours, a tingling feeling of relief started to creep through my body, warming me from my head to my toes. Not that I completely believed her.
“Okay?” I repeated in disbelief. My mother once had a small aneurysm when the mailman confessed to putting her first class mail in with the rest of them. Something like this could never be…okay.
She leaned forward and squeezed my hand. “The fact of the matter is, Rebecca, while this may have started out as some horrible kind of lie, it’s turned into a genuine relationship. Somewhere along the line, you and Marcus actually fell in love.” Her eyes sparkled. “As your mother, and yes,” she peered down over her glasses, “I mean as your mother, Bex, how can I not be thrilled that my baby girl has found a man she loves? No matter how your story got started, you’re both here now. That’s what counts.”
I blinked. In every hypothetical variation of this conversation I’d ever had, I’d never imagined it playing out like this. Then my eyes fell on the DVDs of When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail sitting next to her television across the room.
“That explains it,” I murmured jokingly, bringing my hand up to my chest. “I caught you at a good time.”
“What?” She followed my gaze to the movies and smacked my shoulder. “Damn right you did. Good thing you didn’t tell me last week. I was on a Michael Bay binge.”
“You just would have blown me up?”
She chuckled. “Probably.”
We sat in comfortable silence for a while. My mother, thoughtfully digesting the absurd amount of information I’d just dumped on her; and me, caught up between the exquisite relief of having come clean to my mother, and the mind-numbing panic at the prospect of becoming one.
“I never wanted to have kids,” I finally whispered, still staring into the fire.
“I know, honey.” She squeezed my hand. “I know.” We sat for a while longer before she asked, “What does Marcus think?”
I sighed. “I left him at the doctor’s office and came right here.”
She shot me a look somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “Bex—”
“I also ran out into the lobby still wearing that ridiculous doctor’s office gown.” The tears, which had abated somewhat upon my confession, came flooding back in full force, and I brought my knees up to my chest. “It’s just been a really awful day.”
“Oh, honey!”
She gathered me up against her, wrapping her arms around me and holding me to her chest as she rocked me slowly back and forth. The fire crackled and broke apart, sending up a million sparks as she held me there, smoothing back my hair and sporadically kissing my forehead until I was able to calm down.
“It could have been worse, you know,” she said once I finally pulled away. “I found out I was pregnant with Max at your Grandma Christina’s house and threw up on her Pomeranian.”
Chapter 5