by Terese Ramin
“Kate?” he asked quietly.
She glanced at the kids, shrugged her face, turned to him and nodded. “Yes, I’m expecting a baby.”
The silence went from surprised to stunned. The kids looked bug-eyed at each other, at Hank, at her. Their mouths opened, closed; questions formed visibly on their faces, got lost before they could be voiced. The translation process from disbelief to reality hit them each differently.
Mike viewed her with abstract interest; if there were undercurrents of impropriety in her announcement, it didn’t occur to him to recognize it. Babies, schmabies. Lots of kids had come to live with them in his short life, what was one more? A big family was fun, and besides he always got to give and get some sort of present when they came, so hurrah for them.
That none of them had been infants delivered from Kate when they’d arrived was neither here nor there, as far as he was concerned.
Bele, who knew his adoption was not yet complete and whose eight-year-old misperceptions understood only that part of the reason he’d come to live with Kate was because his birth mother had died while delivering a baby sister who’d also died, looked apprehensive. He neither wanted anything to happen to Kate, nor did he want to have to leave this home and family, too.
Grisha appeared ready to discuss the event as it related to his naturalist’s mind and his somewhat vague memories of when his mother had been pregnant with Ilya. He also shot a took at Jamal and Ilya that said something to the effect of All right, it’s not us in trouble this time.
Ilya missed the significance of the event altogether, because it didn’t apply to him specifically and didn’t look as if it would in the immediate future. Long-term affect was not yet up his alley. On the other hand he did eye Hank with speculation, as though forming an opinion.
Jamal’s face took on a look of pinched concern; unwed pregnancy was not new to his life; he’d seen it happen a multitude of times, but didn’t know how to react in this specific instance. He was looking to Kate for his cues on whether or not to congratulate or console or protect. He also shot her a somewhat judgmental look that stated louder than words that she was no better than anyone else he knew if she couldn’t follow the very rules she’d blathered on about regularly to every kid in earshot.
Staring at his mother, Tai sat down in the nearest chair looking as if someone had punched the air out of his gut and stolen the one sacred relic of his existence.
Li darted shocked glances from Kate to Hank to Megan and back; her mouth worked, forming expressions and discarding them, settling finally into an ambivalent but hopeful half smile. As in, maybe she wasn’t really here at all and had heard Kate wrong, to boot.
Megan’s jaw clenched and relaxed in concert with her fists; a single word slid out with the softness of expelled breath, hung in the air unheard. Her expression remained hooded, her gaze focused at a point near her left toe. Fury, terror, revulsion and excitement quarreled among themselves, supersized emotions competing for position. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone, couldn’t let her be happy, could he? He always had to get in her way, no matter what it was she wanted, he always had to ruin things. How could he do it, how could he?
It wasn’t enough he’d always been able to take her mother away from her by walking through the door, now he had to do the same thing with Kate. Why did he have to come here with her for the summer? Why couldn’t he have just let her come to Stone House by herself? If she’d just run away and complained to somebody he was...oh, hell, she didn’t know, abusive and neglectful and oh, God, anything, maybe he’d never be here at all, never have been able to pull his damned Mr. Charm act, walk through the Andens’ door and steal Kate away when she’d found her first.
And it wouldn’t even be so bad if he’d only taken Kate away from her by dating Li’s mother and turning her into one more adult on his side against her, but he had to go and do what he’d done to her mother, too. He’d taken Gen away forever by getting her pregnant and leaving her to die, now he had to make a baby with Kate and maybe kill her, too.
She couldn’t let him do this to Li and Bele and everybody, take away the only constant any of them had ever had in their lives, but preventing the act was beyond her control. It was already done.
Oh, God, she’d wanted the baby sister the doctors had said Gen would have borne if she’d survived; she wanted the sibling inside Kate, wanted the family she only had here with the Andens, but in her head the pain and commotion were too much, memory flaunting her ability to contain it. All the why’s she didn’t know; the wherefores no one had ever explained to her about Gen and Gen’s death—and she knew there had to be some excuse for some of her mother’s behaviors, her mother’s...ways, for everything her father had done then, did now...
Damn, oh damn, oh damn. She couldn’t hold on to the rush of thoughts, the worry, the fear that somehow it wasn’t all Hank’s fault, it was hers for not being good enough, for being too troublesome, too erratic the way her mother had sometimes been erratic—for making her mother want another baby badly enough to die to try to get one. Please, God, please, don’t let anything bad happen to Kate, God, Please. Oh, God, she couldn’t be here, she couldn’t do this. She had to drown the agony, numb it, kill it for once and all. Her mother was gone and she couldn’t just stand here and watch it happen because of him again, not to Kate, she couldn’t. She had to get out of here now because if anything happened to Kate before the baby was born it wouldn’t only be Hank’s fault for not being able to keep his hands to himself like grown-ups were supposed to be able to, it’d be hers for letting her father get anywhere near Kate at all. And, God help her, she would do her damnedest to punish him for that.
Watching her father, she sidestepped an inch, then a pace, then another toward the door. Hank didn’t take his gaze off Kate.
Eyes full of Hank, Kate, too, missed Megan’s move.
Hand unconsciously guarding her belly, Kate searched his face, soaking up expression and nuance, both uncomfortable under his scrutiny and hoping their baby would get Hank’s honey-mead eyes, wheat-brown hair and beautiful, tempestuous mouth.
Well, maybe not the tempestuous part, at least not right away.
She couldn’t be sure how he felt, but she thought he might be...pleased. Also a wee bit apprehensive. She saw his glance flicker over Megan and Tai, alight briefly on Li, then Jamal, Bit over Grisha and Ilya, linger on Bele then Mike, to return, furrow browed, to Bele.
She took her own quick tour of the kids’ reactions, found a multitude of expressions that would have to be sorted and dealt with individually. The apprehension on Bele’s face, however, was her most immediate concern. She opened her mouth to ask him about it, but Li broke the silence first.
“When is the baby due?”
Releasing a sigh she hadn’t known she was holding, Kate turned to Li. “The middle of April.”
“April?” Tai repeated, indignant. “As in a month after Carly’s planning the wedding, so you’ll be built like a house at it?”
Half laughing, Kate shrugged apologetically and nodded. “Timing’s lousy for you, I know.”
“April. Geez-oh-man.” Tai rolled his eyes and slumped in his chair, resigned. “Great, just great. Thanks, Ma. What, you couldn’t listen when you explained to us where babies come from and why we plan when the llamas will have theirs, so it’s best for the crias and the girls, as well as convenient for us? I mean, for pete’s sake, you never heard of condoms?”
“Yes,” Kate responded tartly, “I have. And I believe I also suggested to you that condoms—a man-made item, if you’ll remember—can leak and are therefore not foolproof, in which case, the only sure prevention is abstinence.”
“Abstinence?” Tai eyed her pointedly. “Since you’re the one telling us you’re pregnant, I don’t get your point.”
“Tai—” Hank started, anger rising, but Kate held up a hand stopping him.
“Gee,” she said levelly, viewing her son pointedly back, “I guess now you’ll understand
that if you don’t practice what I preach it can happen to you.”
Tai’s grin was instinctive, reluctant and appreciative. “That’s good, Ma, I didn’t see that one coming. And, yeah, I guess it does prove what you preach—in a backward sort of way.”
Grisha nodded. “Examples are much easier to remember,” he agreed seriously and Hank choked. “Like when they show you a picture of what a word in English means, instead of only telling you in Russian.” He cocked his head and studied Kate innocently, speculatively, the nosy mind of the naturalist-philosopher who read everything that crossed his path ready to ask embarrassing questions simply because he truly wanted to understand the answers. Hank saw the fact they’d be mortifying coming but, totally miscalculating the direction they’d take, failed to step forward in time to prevent them. “For example,” Grisha wondered, his accent thickening with thought, “are you get...knock up on purpose from a...sperm bank? Or are you get—”
“Grisha!” Li gasped.
Tai slid out of his chair onto the floor from laughing too hard. Li kicked her brother. He rolled out of range but couldn’t stop snickering.
Hank could only stare at all three of them in amazement, laughter startled out of him. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
As indignant and huffy as Hank had ever seen her, Li turned her back on Tai, poked Grisha in the chest. “That’s not the kind of thing you say,” she told her foster brother flatly.
“Why?” Grisha asked, genuinely puzzled. “You don’t want to know who the...sire...are—is so you know what comes in the baby? You know, like we only keep a few of the boy llamas... intact because they’re the only ones who will make good fathers and breed the right long fiber or something?”
Incensed, Li sputtered, “Llamas are not people. You don’t breed people for the right kind of baby—”
“Hitler did,” Jamal began, eyes alight.
“I’m the father,” Hank said firmly before that discussion could get started.
“Well, of course you are,” Grisha, Ilya and Jamal agreed, surprised he felt the need to announce a paternity they’d assumed by his presence.
Tai stopped laughing and rolled to his feet. Li stood beside him, accusations softer and torn printed on her face.
“I thought,” Tai said somberly to Hank, “you told me you wouldn’t hurt her.”
Hank looked at Kate, then back at her eldest son, who held his gaze steadily; a muscle ticked in Hank’s cheek. What to say, when so much needed to be said and he hadn’t enough words to say anything? How could he explain without appearing to make excuses, reassure without seeming to patronize or sugar coat?
“What do you want me to say?” he asked, holding out his hands. “That I didn’t intend—”
Mike tugged at Kate’s arm, pulling her attention away from her elder children and Hank.
“Bele’s scared,” he said, concern showing. “He thinks you could die from having a baby like—”
Kate dropped to her knees and reached for Bele before Mike could finish. “Oh, Bele, your mama—”
“I’m not afraid of anything.” Unhearing, frantic to shut Mike up and not be seen as a scaredy-cat, Bele socked him in the arm. “An’ anyway I said don’t tell, everybody always worries when you tell.”
Mike socked him back. “You always tell for me and besides, Ma says we don’t hafta face everything we’re scared of alone until we’re older’n Tai at least, and you are too afraid she’ll die and never finish adopting you an’ you’ll hafta leave, you just tol’ me you were.”
“Bele.” Gently Kate took his chin in her hand. “Is that true?”
Bele looked at the floor. “Sorta.”
“Which part of ‘sorta’?”
Bele’s mouth twisted as he viewed Kate sideways. “Sorta all.”
“Oh, sweetheart!” Kate pulled him into her arms. “Your birth mother was sick from the ebola virus when she died. Your father was afraid you’d get sick, too, and asked me to take you home with me and adopt you when he found out he was dying, too. I’m not sick from anything and I’m not going to die from being pregnant.”
“Are you sure?” Mike asked, checking the facts for his too-anxious-to-ask-himself brother.
Kate swallowed a smile. “Very sure.”
“And Bele won’t have to leave, ever?”
“Why would he have to leave?”
“If you don’t finish adopting him cuz of the baby.”
“The baby?” Kate asked, astonished. “What does the baby have to do with anything? Of course I’m finishing adopting Bele, what are you twits talking about?” She hugged both boys fiercely. “Nothing could make me not adopt you, Bele. I love you, you’re my son just like Mike. You’re ours. We see the judge the day after Labor Day and take the day off school and have a cake to celebrate, the same as we did for this guy—” she grinned at Bele and squeezed Mike “—and he’s a lot more trouble than you’ll ever be.”
Bele sucked air, tremulous but relieved, and slouched against Kate. “He is a lot of trouble, isn’t he?”
“Not more’n you,” Mike told him indignantly. “You get in the same trouble I get in.” He relaxed, tapped Kate on the head. “But it’s still good he doesn’t hafta go away like Risto, cuz I didn’t want to hafta leave like I told Bele I would if he couldn’t stay.”
Kate groaned in mock exasperation, covering stronger and more maternal emotion. “What did I tell you about Risto? He was never staying in the first place, he was only visiting for a year. And second...” She tickled both boys, who squirmed but not hard enough to leave the circle of her embrace. “What would I do for entertainment if you guys left, huh? I’d be bored to death and you wouldn’t want that on your consciences, would you?”
“Well, we are pretty interesting,” Mike agreed.
“And we’ll never bore you,” Bele promised. “We’ll always find something to keep you busy.”
Kate cringed. “Don’t work too hard at that, okay? For a mother, a little boredom sometimes can be a wonderful thing. But I will need you to entertain the baby. She or he will worship the ground you walk on and feel so lucky to have two such terrific big brothers.”
The boys looked at each other, pleased. Something passed between them, an unspoken, apparently telepathic understanding that Kate had long since learned to be wary of.
“What?” she asked with misgiving.
Mike looked at Bele who looked at Kate. “Could we have a girl?” her dark-haired son asked.
“Yeah, a sister,” the blond agreed.
She eyed them strangely. So far as she knew, they both thought girls one of God’s less useful inventions, especially when they were your sister. “You don’t want a little brother?”
“No.” They shook their heads and shuddered.
“Nathan Leung has a new baby brother,” Mike informed her, “and he said it pees straight up in the air on him when anybody has to change its diaper.”
“Yeah.” Bele nodded. “And we’re not changing poopy diapers, either.”
“I see.” Kate choked back a laugh. “Not that you’ve ever changed poopy diapers before, but I suppose that’s beside the point. Anything else?”
Before they could put together a list and get back to her, she was distracted by voices raised on the other side of the room. She caught the tail end of Tai’s vehement tirade, something about Hank’s responsibilities to his mother and the baby, interrupted by an exasperated, frustrated Hank who sounded as if he’d had enough of being verbally castigated and had already attempted to tell Tai the same thing he told him now in six other ways.
“Damn it, Tai, shut up and listen and quit being your mother. I am not, N-O-T, going anywhere, I don’t want to go anywhere, this baby is mine as well as your mother’s and I damn well intend to be as much a part of its life as she is and more, if necessary, because I want this baby as much as I wanted Megan. Can you get that through that pigheaded skull of yours? I’m staying. Period, no arguments, got it?”
“Oh, I hear
that part,” Tai said evenly. “It’s the rest of it I wonder about.”
“What rest of it?” Kate got to her feet and came to stand protectively beside Hank. “There is no ‘rest’ of it.”
“Yeah, there is,” Tai responded flatly, eyes on Hank. “There’s a lot more.”
“Like?”
“Like...” Li hesitated, looked from Hank to Kate to her own feet, then squared her shoulders and faced them both. “Like is he going to do the right thing and marry you?”
“What?” Kate asked, dumbfounded. The idea of marriage had never occurred to her once while she’d been holding her breath wondering if she was pregnant, nor when she and Hank had continued to be lovers.
Li swallowed and repeated herself. “Is he going to do the right thing—”
“Yes,” Hank interrupted quietly, firmly, “I am going to marry your mother,” while at the same instant Kate asked flatly, “Right for whom?”
Astonished by their opposing reactions, Kate and Hank stared at each other.
Houston, Tai thought with resignation, we have a problem.
Chapter 14
“Out!”
Kate cast one infuriated look at Hank and waggled a thumb between the kids and the door, ushering them quickly out. She spun on Hank the moment the door closed behind them.
“What do you mean, ‘of course’ you’ll marry me? Did you even intend to ask or were you just going to tie me up and haul me off to the nearest Vows-R-Us wedding chapel or whatever it’s called and file my ‘I do’ at gunpoint?”
Hank winced. He’d known the moment the words started to leave his mouth he’d made a mess of his intentions. “I spoke out of turn, I’m sorry, and yes I intended to ask you—”
“I mean,” she interrupted, too incensed to acknowledge the apology, “it’s not like we’ve ever even talked about marriage or anything, or like I ever planned on it in my life, or like I haven’t done just swell raising God knows how many kids on my own and Risto doesn’t count, I didn’t have him long enough or young enough to do anything with him and—”