David kissed my hand.
“Well, I’m not going to lie to you Casey, you’re going to get pretty darn big. Especially with twins. Especially at the end. But it’s natural and only temporary. I bet you’ll look adorable all big and round.”
That did not make me feel better.
“Oh great,” I said sarcastically. “I’m going to be a big, fat whale.”
“You’re going to be beautiful,” David said. He looked at me, then at my belly in wonder. “I’m excited to see you all super-pregnant. Do you think your boobs will get even bigger?”
Of course, that’s what he was interested in. I couldn’t help my smile. “Probably, yeah.”
He grinned and eyed my bustline eagerly but ripped his eyes away and became serious again when I sighed. “Ok. What else? What else are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of just being pregnant. A lot of things can go wrong. And I’m afraid of giving birth.”
He thought about that for a while. “What did Dr. Cruz say? Is everything alright so far?”
I nodded in true relief. “Yeah. She says everything looks good in the picture.”
“I can see why you’d be scared of those things,” he said slowly. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I wasn’t thinking about me.”
He smiled. “I know. You were thinking about them. See, you’re already a good mother and you haven’t even held our babies yet.”
Our babies. He said our babies. My heart fluttered in my chest. Although I wanted to stay morose and grumpy, it was hard when he was so excited.
“I’m afraid the world is unsafe. There’s so much war, conflict, and hate. I’m afraid of bringing innocent babies into a world that has a lot of issues.”
“Spoken like a true history major.”
“I’m serious!”
“I know. But in a lot of ways the world is safer than it’s ever been. People live longer, better, healthier lives. They get more education. They have more options to be who they want to be. Our kids will have every advantage in life, I can promise you that much.”
I nodded reluctantly. It was hard to argue with that. David had enough family money to last many lifetimes. His current personal situation notwithstanding, the Durant dynasty would have to work hard to squander their fortune.
“What else? What else are you scared of?”
“Have you got all day to spend on making me feel better?”
“I’ve got the rest of both our lives, if you’ll have me.”
He was so unexpectedly romantic that I paused. Maybe we could make a go of this together. David certainly seemed committed. I shook my head in wonder. What had I gotten myself into? This was going to be one hell of an adventure.
“See those two, um, splotchy thingies?” I asked, pointing at the ultrasound.
David squinted and then gaped. “Is that… is that them?”
“Yep. Those are our babies. They’re between ten and twelve weeks old.”
David stared at the picture for a long time. He cocked his head to one side, then the other.
“Casey is it bad that I think our babies look sort of like potatoes?”
I giggled and grabbed his hand. He looked genuinely concerned.
“It’s not bad. They do. I thought kidney beans, but potatoes are more apt.”
He kissed me on the cheek, then the lips. He might seem to be taking all of this in stride, but his hands were trembling slightly. This was all affecting him more than he was letting on. I found his shaking bizarrely comforting. As if it validated my own.
“Ok good. I think…I think that I love our potatoes.” His voice was soft.
“I think I love them too. But I’m still mad at you.”
26
David
Fatherhood. I’d never really considered it’s meaning before, but now that I was looking it square in the face—or rather, I was looking at a fuzzy ultrasound that looked like a pair of potatoes—fatherhood, with all its weighty consequence had snuck up on me. Regardless of what I said to Casey to comfort her, I knew that I should be afraid. I should have used a condom as backup. I should be sniveling, quivering in fear and hiding under a table. My entire universe was realigning at a dizzying pace. The feeling was beyond bizarre, more so because it was pleasurable. I felt like I was drifting through a particularly strange, confusing, but lovely dream.
It was with a sense of unreal-ness, then, that I approached Curtis and Trevor with an unsteady Casey by my side twenty minutes later.
“Do you remember our conversation in Manila?” Curtis asked me after I laid out the full details of my deceit. The two men had absorbed the entire saga in bemused silence.
I nodded reluctantly. Being menaced by the ginger gorilla had been memorable, if nothing else.
“What conversation in Manila?” Casey asked innocently. She was looking at me and not Curtis, so she missed the I’m-going-to-cut-your-throat gesture that he made across his throat with a single finger. Trevor hadn’t missed it, however, and giggled.
“Oh nothing,” I replied. My voice was a half-octave higher than usual. Surely Curtis wasn’t serious? And even if he was, I was significantly younger and stronger. I’d be able to hold my own. Right? At the very least, I could probably run away.
Before I could dwell on the threat of violence to my person by a coworker, Casey made a huffy little frustration noise. It was actually an adorable noise, and not unlike the noise my mother’s dog made when denied his rightful belly rubs. Of course, Casey didn’t buy my act. She looked between Curtis and me with a suspicious expression. Both of us kept our faces carefully neutral. We’d sort this out between ourselves. Or not. Either way, Casey didn’t need to be involved.
“Also, it appears that I’m pregnant,” Casey said after a moment.
Her announcement was met with stone-cold, nonplussed silence. This silence was quite a bit different than the earlier disapproving silence that greeted my revelation. This silence was speechless. It was Trevor who recovered first.
“Congratulations.” He looked at Curtis and then at me with wide eyes. “Congratulations, right?”
A blink. “Right,” Curtis said after a moment. “Congratulations Casey.” He smiled warmly at her, although I could only imagine he wanted to stab me even more now that I’d knocked up his boss. I’d have to remind him that leaving the kids fatherless would be deeply uncool.
“You should go home,” Trevor said to Casey. His voice was patronizing. “There’s no way you should hike up a volcano while pregnant. Elevation, humidity, heat, heavy lifting, physical exertion… none of this is a good idea for a woman in your condition. You don’t need this sort of stress.”
Saying this was a colossal mistake. A beginner’s mistake, really. Poor dim Trevor. I may not be perfectly smooth, but I like to think my odd, eccentric awkwardness has its own charm. I’ve got a few things figured out. Trevor hadn’t developed the subtle art of communication with the fairer sex. Evidently, he failed to perceive that women deeply dislike when men behave like pushy assholes (although the reaction is hardly gender specific). He says what he’s thinking without actually thinking about it first.
Casey’s face turned an irate shade of red. Her sparkling eyes narrowed dangerously.
“I’ll be the judge of what I can and can’t do. If I’m in doubt, I’ll consult a doctor. Besides, pregnancy is not an illness.” Her tone offered no compromise.
“But—” he started, only to be silenced by Casey’s death glare and Curtis and I shaking our heads at him urgently.
The only thing more reliably ill-advised than ignorantly ordering a woman around is arguing with a woman that he knows better than she does about what she should do with her body. The fact that this woman was pregnant only made his mistake graver.
“I would be the last person in the world to suggest such a blatantly sexist thing as Trevor here, but it probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea for us to have a plan in place for if any of us needs medical care or ge
ts injured on the hike,” I ventured carefully. “We may be camping for several days.”
Casey pouted, probably feeling ganged up on. But she could hardly argue with such a sensible, non-gender specific suggestion. Hell, even one of Klaus’ spooky mercenary goons had gotten injured hiking around.
“I suppose you’re right. If, that is, we are all still proceeding.”
She looked from Curtis to Trevor and back. For any sign they might quit or complain. I could see her steeling herself for the worst.
The moment of uncertainty hung in the air. It was even heavier than Casey’s pregnancy announcement.
“This doesn’t really change anything from my perspective,” Trevor said. “I’m getting paid either way.” He flipped his greasy hair back with a confusing nonchalance.
While correct, at least in the short run, I was shocked he wasn’t, well, angrier. Instead, he legitimately looked like he didn’t much care.
“This is all a big adventure for me. I can always go back to Forgotten Extraterrestrials, too,” he added with a shrug. Curtis nodded in agreement.
“The only person you really fucked over is Casey since she’s now quit her job twice and poached from the crew,” Curtis said. Disapproval was heavy in his tone. He didn’t mention the fact that I’d also gotten her pregnant, but perhaps he didn’t need to. His glare said it for him.
“I’ll worry about me, Curtis,” Casey told him seriously. She cast her gaze around to Trevor and me. “None of you need to worry about me.”
She might as well command the sun not to rise. Still, we all nodded obediently. Casey grinned.
“Well then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
27
Casey
The island was drop dead beautiful, but not soft, welcoming, or easy. Tigers are very beautiful, too. But just because they’re stunning doesn’t mean I want to cuddle with one.
“Can we please take a break?” Trevor was the first to say it, but only because we’d all been playing a silent game of chicken for the last thirty minutes. Curtis and I exchanged a victory glance.
David was utterly oblivious to our exhaustion. He was quivering with excitement. The man had more energy than could possibly be normal or even healthy. It was great attribute when he was going down on me, but it was damn irritating when hiking up the side of a volcano in eighty-five percent humidity.
“Let’s just get to the top of this rise,” he urged. “We’ll have a better view up there anyway.”
We trudged along behind him, reluctantly shifting tired feet over the harsh volcanic land. The ground beneath us was black, sharp, cooled lava. It had hardened in rivers and pools of itself, forming the island as it solidified. Any vegetation that grew here looked hardy. It had to be to find a foothold here.
“Wow,” Curtis said, drawing my attention up from my shoes as we made on top of the hill. I felt my jaw drop open in abject shock and wonder.
Ahead of us, the green island spread from horizon to horizon. Its geography was punctuated only by the cone of the volcano, the tiny town we’d walked out of, and a few low structures poking out of the green. The sun was now hanging low over the ocean, bathing the water in golden, dancing, shimmering light. To the east, opposite the shimmer, a dark cloud promised rain. Between, blue sky glowed.
“If we don’t want to camp, we probably want to head over there,” Curtis added, pointing down in the direction of what I could only describe as a hamlet.
“You really think that’s St. John’s?” Trevor asked, again asking a question first so I didn’t have to. Merely forming thoughts was enough of a challenge at the moment. Words were almost out of the question.
There were only three small buildings, and none of them particularly looked like churches.
“Dr. Cruz said it was modest,” he replied. He shrugged his shoulders. There was modest and then there was modest. As we got closer to the little settlement, I realized that one of the ‘buildings’ was actually an overturned fishing boat like the one that had ferried us over. Staying at St. John’s might mean camping whether we liked it or not.
Curtis seemed unphased by anything we’d seen or done so far. For an older guy, he was also seriously holding his own on the hike. Curtis, Trevor, and David had somehow worked out the packing so I wasn’t carrying any gear but my own clothes, and despite my efforts to help with the load, they said it would be more troublesome to repack everything. Still, I was positively beat. We’d been out here for six hours with no hint of the fire leaf fern. We’d seen plenty of tropical shrubbery and grass, but nothing more than that. We’d made the collective decision about two hours ago to press on to the small settlement that Dr. Cruz suggested rather than waste the remaining light walking back to the village.
We broke out our film equipment as we approached the buildings. I wired up the microphone for David without lingering on his flat, muscular stomach. As I expected, my irritation had returned once I had time to mull it over during our hike. The man had lied to me and knocked me up. Now I was climbing a freaking volcano because of it. That was just plain rude.
“Hello?” David asked as he knocked on the main building’s door. As always, David projected an easy confidence. Part of me hated him for it. Another part admired it. I was no shy and retiring violet, but I couldn’t hope to project the sort of confidence that seemed so natural to him. .
David’s effortless self-possession and unassuming friendliness was probably the only reason that the older gentleman who peeked out the door didn’t immediately slam it shut in our faces. He certainly didn’t look very pleased to have visitors. If anything, he looked confused.
“Who are ye then? Wha’ do ye want?” His accent was pure, unadulterated Scottish brogue.
“Is that any way ta greet a guest?” A second voice, this one feminine but similarly aged-sounding, snapped at the man. “Wha’s gotten inta ye’ Lachlan?”
David looked over his shoulder at the camera, raising an eyebrow. It was a beautiful shot. Better than if I’d choreographed it, too, because it was genuine. Dr. Cruz had not mentioned there were Scots on the island. At least not to David.
The woman who flung the door open and pushed out was all pink cheeks, curly white hair, and smiles. She looked like Mrs. Claus (not Mrs. Klaus, mind you. She’d be rather frightening, I assume). She even wore a lacey apron over her floral dress.
“You must be the film crew the Doc radio’d about!” she exclaimed. “I’m Fiona. We got the call from the Doc this mornin’. You’ll be wantin’ ta rest, I expect. The hike is verra bracing, isn’t it?” She looked at me affectionately. “Especially with that bairn yer carrying.”
Verra bracing? Bairn? Was this the English I spoke?
The older man, Lachlan, looked at me appraisingly. “Yer with bairn? Well I suppose we must let ya in then.” He pushed the door open wider in reluctant welcome. “Mi casa es su casa,” he said, butchering the pronunciation so badly I could hardly make out the words. He also didn’t look like he believed them. He scowled grumpily at us as we entered, and Fiona elbowed him until he put on a pained smile.
Within the little metal building, which was not unlike a tiny airline hanger, we found a small slice of Scotland. Antique furniture and landscapes of the highlands were everywhere. In the corner of the wide structure, a small cast iron stove heated what I assumed was traditional Scottish food. A goddamned Scotty dog poked its head out from behind a wingback chair before waddling over with an eager, working tail.
“Lachlan and I moved here back in nineteen-ninety,” Fiona said. She correctly interpreted our shocked expressions. “We were the second off-islanders to set up shop here. Dr. Cruz, she was the first.”
“You’re missionaries?” Asked David politely. He hid it, but he was skeptical.
“Missionaries?” Lachlan scoffed. “Christ almighty. He thinks we’re missionaries? We’re misanthropes. Rather the opposite. I can offer ye no divine succor, lad. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the exact wrong plac
e.”
David didn’t know what to make of that, if his expression was any clue. I shrugged.
“Yer a misanthrope Lachlan dear,” Fiona said fondly, ruffling his thinning white hair. “I’m just an indulgent wife with too much affection and the patience of a saint.”
Lachlan accepted the hair tussle with a toss of his hair and a frown that didn’t quite convince me he didn’t like her fussing over him.
“We verra well aren’t missionaries,” he huffed.
“No dear, we aren’t.” Fiona’s voice was soothing. “We’re artists,” she explained to the camera. “I’m a painter. Lachlain here is a poet, god help ‘em, when he isn’t grousing.”
“I don’t grouse,” he snapped at the camera. “I brood. It’s bloody romantic. Teenagers grouse.”
“Yes, love. Yer a regular Heathcliff,” Fiona replied proudly.
These two were reality television gold. They deserved their own show. Two aging Scottish misfits, utterly in love, living on an isolated island in the South Pacific? I’d watch the shit out of it.
“I hope you don’t mind our intrusion,” David said smoothly. He grinned rakishly at Fiona. “We promise we’ll be no trouble.”
“Ye better no’ be,” Lachlain answered. “I’ve got a gun.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “Don’t ye mind him. He has a rusty harpoon gun that he dunna’ know how to load or fire.”
She definitely was indulgent. It was obvious that she adored her husband, and him her; he looked at her like she hung the moon.
“What’s a bairn?” I whispered to Curtis after he lowered the camera a few minutes later.
“It’s Scottish for child or baby,” he replied, pointing at my stomach. I looked down at it, confused. I definitely wasn’t showing yet.
Dr. Cruz told them? That was inappropriate. However, it was also the reason we wouldn’t be sleeping outside this evening, so I supposed I would forgive her. Besides, for all I knew, the Philippines didn’t have the same HIPAA rules.
Lost and Found (Scions of Sin Book 4) Page 15