I poured him a glass as I told him I had decided to move. “This is not my home anymore,” I explained and I watched his eyes fill with understanding.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Anywhere. I think I am going to find a nice, ranch home in the suburbs and just start over. A simple home with a fresh start. That is what I want.”
“I think that is a good idea. I think it is a great idea actually.”
“What about you? Are you happy where you are?”
He looked seriously back at me, “No.”
I smiled at him and he let his head fall to the floor, “I am going to raise the baby, Chloe.” I nearly choked on my wine as I sat up to look at him. “I wanted to talk to you about it, actually,” he said.
“Okay?” I asked cautiously. I wasn’t sure how to take the news.
“Would you want to raise it with me?” he asked nervously before reaching over to take my hand in his, “Chloe, I am just offering and there is no pressure. I just don’t think I have any more rights to be a parent to this child than you do.”
Raise the baby, together? I hadn’t considered the relation before, but now that he said it, it did seem like the child was ‘our’ responsibility. Obviously, Mila couldn’t raise the baby being in prison and Carson clearly was not an option.
My eyes filled with tears as I thought of having a baby. It was something I had always wanted but couldn’t have with Carson. But the completely logical side of myself was saying, this is not a just a puppy, Chloe! But accidental pregnancies are also not well thought out. Would it be so bad to jump into it and figure it out along the way?
“You and I do seem much better than foster care,” I finally said.
“I have been reading a lot about co-parenting,” he began, squeezing my hand. “Friends have children together much more than you would think, Chloe. It is actually a great system when it is done right.”
“You really think we could do it?”
“Chloe, you are the only friend that I have now. And a great friend at that. I think we would be great parents. Like I said, I have been thinking about it a lot. This isn’t a spur of the moment decision for me.”
I briefly thought about my childhood and the eight different foster homes that I landed in by the age of fifteen, if you can even call them homes. Each family was just as bad as the last and somehow, the older I got they grew even worse. Thinking of leaving this baby for that same fate brought a strangely clear perspective to me. It was a life I would never wish on any child. And I didn’t beat the system with a PhD, but maybe this was my chance at redemption. Being a twenty-seven-year-old widow was really pressing the limits of my biological clock and this could be my only chance of being a mother.
I smiled and jumped to hug him, “We are going to be parents!”
“That is a yes then?”
“Yes!”
He pulled me away from him and gently wiped the tears from my face, “So, we will need to live together…”
I laughed and hugged him again. “Well, let’s go house hunting tomorrow!”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah, let’s do this!”
What did I have to lose? I had a completely blank slate and starting a new life with Brian and a new baby was beyond exciting. We had spent every day together since Carson was murdered and living together would not really be much of a change from what we are doing now. If anyone could co-parent, I knew that we could. We were extremely close and there were no obligations between us. And oddly enough, there were no complications. Our shadowed pasts only brought us closer.
Sleep took a side burner and I spent the night shopping online for every book on parenting that I could find. Brian’s mother had passed away from breast cancer when he was only seven years old and I obviously never had one to begin with. So the luxury of a late-night phone call to Mom about a belly ache was not a luxury we were going to have. I cannot even name a distant relative, or cousin, or anyone that could be counted as family.
I was fifteen when I finally landed in the last foster home I would have to suffer through. After living in, rather being stuck in, several houses that served as drug dealing sanctuaries and men who thought excessive lashes from their leather belts were the only way to teach a small girl not to talk back, I was happy to settle down with an elderly woman who smoked cigarettes in between breathing treatments. Granted, she wasn’t necessarily in it for providing a loving home to a child in need, but I was fifteen and wasn’t looking for that either. She needed someone old enough to care for her and I needed somewhere to wait out the last few years of being a case number.
Etta, a fifty-seven-year-old biddy. She was as hateful as her cigarettes were long. My being there funded her habit that was slowly killing her and each time she received compensation for ‘taking care’ of me, I got to hear her rant on about how I wasn’t worth the headache. Fortunately, her lung capacity could only hold out for roughly three minutes of nagging before her rant would dissolve into rather disturbing coughing fits. And I would offer a glass of water, not to ease her discomfort, but to ease my own in having to listen to the thick phlegm pushing its way up her esophagus. It was disgusting and every time, I fought gagging from the sound of it. But as mean as she was, I was always fond of her for some reason. She was harmless in comparison to other homes and I was able to focus on school when I wasn’t playing nurse.
The best day of my young life, I burst through the door, barely able to hold the acceptance letter to Rhode Island University in my shaky hands, and fell to my knees in front of her. Her boney arm reached down to take the letter and she almost smiled that day. Two and a half years with Etta, and that was the closest she ever came. I know she probably never thought about me after I had left but she was the closest thing to a stable piece of my past that I had. I spent more time with her than I did any other home and hearing my sophomore year of college that she had passed away was surprisingly unsettling for me. Her funeral was the only funeral I had ever been to before attending my own husband’s.
Although I haven’t called Rosalie for anything since Carson’s body was found, she was still on payroll and I imagined her to be a pretty good choice for a nanny. I could at least take some comfort in knowing she would be around when needed.
Brian was shaking my feet at the end of the couch as I slowly opened my eyes. “Good morning,” he shouted and I smiled up at him in his white t-shirt that fit him perfectly. There was no denying there was a physical attraction between us but neither of us ever mentioned it or acted on it. But I could see it in his eyes the same way I knew he could see it in mine.
“Good morning,” I laughed while he pulled the blankets off.
“We have an appointment with a realtor in two hours.”
“Okay, okay. I am getting up.”
He walked off into the kitchen with a cheerful bounce and I followed him as I appreciated his perfect figure in the sweatpants he was wearing. He looked back at me and I quickly looked up to meet his eyes.
“How many bedrooms?” he asked.
“Uh…”
“I think four would be good,” he said chipperly while he grabbed the coffee from the cabinet.
“Yeah, that sounds good. Oh, my God,” I burst out, “When will we know if it is a boy or girl? We get to decorate a nursery!”
“I am going to get everything settled tomorrow. My lawyer has already made adoption arrangements with Mila for me so I will call him about your information. We should be able to be present for every doctor visit from now on.”
The thought of being around Mila made my stomach queasy but the excitement for the baby won over. “Okay!”
Her trial had been pushed back until she had delivered the baby. The lawyer argued that it would hinder the jury’s ability to rightly prosecute and the judge agreed, so did I. I hadn’t seen her since the day they found the knife and I thought of how she would react to seeing me and how I would react to her.
“Are you going to shower here
?” I asked.
“Is that okay?”
“Yeah, I washed some of your clothes the other day. I am going to shower now, I won’t be long.”
I hurried in the shower and wrapped a towel around me as I walked to the closet. I was so focused on the excitement of what was happening that I didn’t even see Brian. I ran right into him and nearly dropped my towel.
“I am so sorry,” he said shyly before turning away from me.
I laughed when I saw his embarrassment, “It is okay. I didn’t see you there.”
“I was just looking for my clothes. I am so sorry.”
“Brian,” I said, reaching for his hand. He slowly turned back to me and his face was flushed as he looked down at me in my towel. “If we are going to be buying a home together, you are probably going to need to get used to seeing me in a towel.” I walked into the closet and grabbed his clothes that I had folded on my shelf.
“Yeah, I just didn’t mean to impose.”
“Here,” I said, handing them over. He smiled sweetly back at me and turned to walk away.
“I know you like brunettes, anyway,” I teased.
He stopped and I waited for him to turn back, but he didn’t. He walked into the bathroom and slowly shut the door without commenting on his preferences.
Another great thing about Brian is that I don’t have to worry about wearing heels and a pencil skirt to go into public with him. I was getting used to the comfort of my jeans and sweatshirts and Brian never seemed to even notice them.
I was waiting for him on the sofa when he came down the hall. He made a b-line to the coffee table and I watched him moving the vases around. “What are you looking for?” I asked.
“That pen.”
“What pen?”
“The pen from the pool deck. I might be able to get it to work and we will need a pen today. I don’t like to borrow other people’s pens,” he said.
“Oh, well I have pens in my purse. It’s not a big deal.”
“Chloe, that pen was laying on this table the night the window was busted.” He was so sure of himself that I found it unlikely he had mistakenly laid it somewhere else.
“You think someone robbed my house and only took a pen that didn’t work?” I asked, unable to hide my amusement.
“No. I think whoever was in your house is the same person who left that pen laying on your pool deck. And I think they took it back.”
I got chill bumps on every inch of my body when he said that. I hadn’t put any thought into where the pen came from but what if it had come from the same person who laid in my bed with that dress and been leaving me the roses? How many times had this person been to my house?
“Let’s go,” I said, ready more than ever to find another place to live.
We pulled into a small café and he hurried to open my door. The realtor was sitting at a table next to the window and she flailed her arms at us when we walked in. I watched her glasses sliding down the brim of her nose and waited for them to fall, intrigued by how they managed to stay rested on her narrow face.
“Hello. Brian…” he began, reaching out to shake her hand, “and this is Chloe.”
I smiled at her and quickly shook her hand while she studied the two of us.
“Is this your first home purchase?” she asked.
“No. Well, it is our first purchase together,” Brian tried to explain.
“Are you newlyweds?” she asked. Her face lit up girlishly while she straightened her back waiting for our answer.
I nearly choked on my coffee and Brian’s face turned a light shade of red. “No, we are just very close friends,” I said to her and watched her struggling to understand.
I guess for someone else, this would seem like a strange arrangement and I didn’t even bother trying to explain the details.
“Okay, well what are you two looking for?” she finally asked.
“We need a family home,” Brian answered and I could feel his tension growing because he knew we were being picked apart from the woman staring us down.
She pulled out her laptop and started showing us different listings. Some looked promising and others were definitely out of the running. Either the location was bad, there wasn’t enough space, or the school district was not ideal. Which was my favorite reason for passing on a listing she showed. I was just so excited to be able to even say we were concerned with the school district at all. She pulled up a listing for a two story, four-bedroom home in the suburbs and Brian and I both looked at each other. “We want to see this one,” he told her while he smiled at me.
“I can get us in today!” she boasted, quickly closing her laptop and fumbling through her bag for her phone.
On the drive to the house, I played over the realtor’s reaction to our arrangement. Her clearly doubtful opinions raised my own reservations and I worried she could have been right to judge the situation. But my worries quickly faded when we pulled to a stop in front of a beautiful newly built house. The gray and black brick was perfectly surrounded by a beautiful white porch wrapping the entire house. The landscaping was simple and I imagined several different gardening plots while we walked inside.
There was something about it that was so inviting and almost familiar, it was nothing like the seven-figure home Carson and I had bought together. The entry had large white pillars enclosing the marble entrance and the staircase led up from both sides to an overlook from the floor above. The home had two master bedrooms, each with their own fireplace, real fireplaces at that, and the would-be nursery for the baby was perfectly situated at the end of hall. I fell in love.
“Brian, this is it,” I said.
He smiled at me and silently agreed before turning back to the realtor, “We want to make an offer!”
He turned around and hugged me as he lifted me in the air to spin me around. This was going to work. We were going to raise a child together; the child that our spouses created with each other. Talk about irony.
When we walked out of the house, there was a single red rose stuck in the handle of the passenger door of Brian’s Mercedes. Brian hurried passed me and took it out as he looked around. “Brian?”
“Where did this come from?” he asked, holding the rose out to the realtor.
“I can assure you I do not know. But I think it is lovely,” she said, smiling down at the lush and vibrant petals.
“For you,” I said, taking the rose from Brian to hand it to her. Her face lit and I noticed a tear building behind her glasses which gave me the impression she had never been given a rose before.
“Thank you.”
“Chloe, this is getting out of control. It has to stop. We need to call the police.”
“Yeah, and have to deal with Detective Pete again? I wouldn’t even be surprised if were him leaving the roses, Brian.”
“I don’t know what to do. What if something happens when I am not around? What if I hadn’t been there the night the patio door was busted? Would they have gone inside?”
Even considering it made me shudder but I hurried to distract myself. “You know, it could be a simple crush. The roses anyway. Maybe someone just knows that I am a widow now and it is just a romantic gesture. A courting per say.”
“And busting out your patio door and laying in your bed with one of your dresses is normal courting?” he asked annoyed.
“No, it isn’t normal. I just don’t know what to do either. I know Detective Pete scares me just as much as those roses though.”
“I am going to upgrade your security system and our new house will have the highest possible security features. No one will step foot on your property without us seeing it.”
I smiled. We were going to have an “our” house…
Chapter Twelve
I could hear the echo of Brian’s foot tapping against the hospital floor. Mila was just on the other side of the wall and within minutes, we would know the sex of the baby, our baby. Brian was able to request her examinations take place at the local hospital s
o we could be present. I had no idea that prisons even offered prenatal care but they do. We weren’t allowed in the room with her, but neither of us wanted that anyway.
“What do you want?” I asked him after I failed at trying to make myself choose one over the other.
“I want a baby girl,” he said without hesitation.
The door opened and I turned to look at Mila. Looking at her for the first time since the arrest, I expected to feel hatred, but instead I was drawn to her protruding stomach that was carrying what would soon be my child. And seeing her like that made me worry for her well-being. My stomach twisted with concern while I watched her being led away in chains. Was the prison food healthy for the baby? Was she getting enough rest? Could the stress from the situation be a strain on the baby? What if she was jumped in prison by someone who wanted her commissary? Mila looks like the kind of woman who would get picked on in prison. She surely couldn’t take care of herself, at least not without a weapon anyway.
She walked with her head down, never looking back to me or Brian. My attention was shifted when Brian softly took my hand and I turned to see the doctor eagerly smiling with the sonogram in his hand.
“You are having a baby girl.”
I squealed involuntarily as Brian lifted me off my feet. A daughter, I was going to have a daughter. The doctor offered his congratulations and I took the image in my hand to admire the unrecognizable life forming that was captured in beautiful shades of black and gray.
Brian drove us straight to Harperlle’s, an upscale Italian restaurant, to celebrate the news. When we both ordered the filet minion, the waiter suggested a bottle of merlot and Brian quickly dismissed the idea by telling him, “The lady prefers white wine.” He ordered a chilled bottle of Jermann chardonnay and I applauded Brian for knowing me well enough to order my favorite wine. Although I wasn’t surprised that he had gotten to know me so well, I still appreciated the sentiment. I don’t even know if Carson knew what color eyes I had, but I did know that he never picked up on small details about me the way Brian did.
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