The Tiger's Baby: A Paranormal Pregnancy Romance

by White, Jade

  “Hold me,” she whispered softly, her round ass jutting against him as she turned so that they were spooning each other. Rodney quietly laid a hand over her waist, and she guided it over her navel with her own hand. Almost on cue, the candle he had lit on the far fireplace dwindled, and she let herself close her eyes.

  For the moment, she didn’t let herself worry about anything. It was enough simply to exist, here and now, in his arms. She would have to take tests of course, but she had a feeling – something she couldn’t explain, except as a sort of extra-sensory perception – that somehow a new life had begun tonight. Her own hand touched the space between her navel and pubis, and she smiled.

  A new life, she thought bravely.

  Something she had desired for so long had finally come true.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “It says I have to wait five minutes,” Kristen said, emerging from the washroom, and held the small little blue stick in her left hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger.

  Gloria was seated at the kitchen table, and had an eager look on her face. Kristen was surprised at how easily her friend had adapted to Nelson – she now had a circle of her own friends, attended the daily markets, and had even started to sport the colorful hand-made DIY clothes that seemed common to the small hippie town. She’d even found a temporary job as a cashier at one of the local alternative bookstores. Very different from the straight laced style-connoisseur from Seattle, Kristen observed. While the changes in Gloria were self-evident, she wondered if she herself had undergone some sort of change since coming here.

  “Five minutes!? What are they trying to do, give us hysterics? I swear, if I were smarter, I would invent a pregnancy test that was immediate. I mean how difficult can it be?”

  “Four minutes,” Kristen said, setting the test on the table. She crossed her arms and began to pace.

  “Stop doing that. You’ll wear a hole in the floor if you’re not careful. Here, sit down, I’ll make you some tea instead. Mint, okay? I’ll make it strong,” Gloria offered, standing up and going to boil some water. That was another change, she seemed obsessed with tea these days, but Kristen could hardly argue. Every time she came home from work, there was always a hot beverage waiting for her.

  “I can’t help it. I mean, I’m almost positive, but… but what if it didn’t work?”

  “I’m just glad you two finally got down to business,” Gloria muttered, “took you long enough. If it was me, I’d have laid and made that handsome little paramedic on day one.”

  “You’d lay just about anything,” Kristen said, and tapped her fingers on the table.

  Rodney’s story about his sister, and about how even Shifter’s could suffer from infertility, had haunted her since he’d told her. And in a way, her own hypochondriac tendencies had caused her to wonder if she didn’t suffer from a similar affliction.

  “Knock it off, girl!” Gloria said, but without any sting. Kristen stopped tapping. “Three minutes now… pick up that newspaper. Read to me. That’ll keep us occupied for the next couple of minutes, and keep me from strangling you.”

  Kristen stuck out her tongue, but obliged by reaching for the newspaper. “Fine. Uh, lets see. Ah, great, perfect headline, Gloria. More Dead Animals Found On North Shore,” she read. “Geez, looks like a mess. I think Dave wrote this. Ugh.”

  Gloria set a cup of hot tea down beside her friend. “You know, I was talking about that with some of my friends at work. They say this has happened before, you know, a rash of animal killings. They say all the animals are just simply killed, not even eaten, like whatever’s doing it just does it for the pleasure.”

  “Rodney mentioned something about this the first day… he said the cops wanted him to check it out. I never asked him about it though…”

  “Thing is,” Gloria made a humph sound as she sat down and slurped at her own tea, “ow, hot, geezus. Erm. Anyway, thing is, they’re not sure what’s doing it. The wounds look like a bear or something, but it’s not consistent. If they had to guess, they’d say cougar. But the wounds, at least that’s what Alicia says, she remembers the last time this happened, oh fifteen years ago or so… what was I saying? Oh yeah, the wounds are too big to be a cougar.”

  It was all too much, and not really engaging her attention. Kristen was still focused on the small blue stick at the far end of the table. “Done, done… we’re up, right? Ugh, tell me what it says.”

  She lowered her head into her hands, too afraid to look up. Gloria waddled to the far end of the table and picked it up. Her face was a completely stoic expression. Kristen made a mental note never to play poker with her.

  “Well? Well!?”

  “Thing is,” Gloria said, her intonation lowering, and her eyes became downcast as she pursed her lips, “I’ve always wanted to be an aunt!”

  The news was like a hammer. It struck Kristen right between the eyes, and she felt the reverberation of it signal all the way down her spine to her heart, where it suddenly resonated. Her limbs felt like jelly, and for several moments she couldn’t even move. It wasn’t until Gloria tugged on her shirt and lifted her off the chair that the reality of it hit home.

  “I’m… I’m pregnant?”

  “Read it and weep!” Gloria said with an excited flair, shoving the pregnancy test in Kristen’s face. It was positive. “I mean, don’t weep, unless you want to, but… you’re pregnant, hey!”

  Gloria jumped up and down, gripping both of Kristen’s wrists, and laughed uproariously. Kristen smiled, and it took over her face, inhabiting every muscle. She began to jump up and down with Gloria, and suddenly her eyes felt wet and she couldn’t stop crying. It started out innocently, and in seconds she was sobbing again through her smile.

  She reached out and wrapped her arms around Gloria’s neck and held her friend tightly. “I can’t believe it… I can’t….”

  “Believe it, beautiful,” Gloria said.

  “I-I have to go tell Rodney!” she said, almost sprinting for the door, but somehow Gloria was faster and skidded on the tiles to block her. “Hey, what… what are you doing? Gloria, it worked… I’m going to have a child.”

  “Yes,” Gloria said, but all the joy had suddenly evaporated from her frowning face, “but just hold on a second. I’ve been avoiding bringing this up, because… well, quite frankly, you looked happy and who am I to question that or get in the way of it? I don’t have that right… but I need to ask, Kristen.”

  “Ask what? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You said it yourself when we first got here. That you wanted to take it slow, which I admit was a good thing. But… but what do you intend to do, now that you are pregnant?”

  The question opened up a vacuum for her, and Kristen swallowed and sat back down at the table. The tea was still hot, and she pored over it as she circulated the cup in her hands. What had she planned to do, once she got pregnant? Go back to the Enclave? That was the obvious choice even though it had become a sort of unspoken fact she had taken for granted. But what about Rodney?

  Gloria seemed to anticipate the flux of questions unleashed in her mind, and breathed out slowly through her nose. “So you haven’t really thought that far ahead, have you?”

  I never do, Kristen though shamefully again, I’m always reckless like this. “I… I don’t know, Gloria. I mean, I guess, I always suspected that… that we would return, y’know?”

  “Is that what you want to do, now?” she asked, and when Kristen couldn’t answer, she asked a different question. “Listen, honey, you know me. I’ll follow you anywhere. I’m your sister, in all but blood. Don’t worry about me when making this decision but you obviously have to ask yourself: what is Rodney to you, now? I warned you about getting too close…”

  “You wanted this to be an actual business transaction,” Kristen said accusingly.

  Gloria gave her a smile that could well have been the sort of expression a knowing parent gives to a petulant child, and it hurt Kristen even more deeply. “No
, sweetie. I wanted what was best for you, to make sure you didn’t get hurt. All I’m here to do is offer my advice, to point out the consequences, the possibilities. You’re the one that has to make the choices,” she said resolutely, “and live with them. I knew that if you got too close to Rodney, if this became too, geez, I can’t believe I’m saying this… if this became too human, it would be difficult.

  “When emotions get involved, especially where children are concerned, it complicates things. I’ve seen the way you act around Rodney, the way you talk about him, the way you daydream when you think I’m not watching. I’m not here to dictate how you actually feel about him, but the question remains. How do you feel about him?”

  “I’m afraid to answer that,” Kristen said, and sipped at the tea. It was almost lukewarm now. Outside, the leaves had reached their full pinnacle of color, and some were beginning to droop and litter the roadsides in yellow piles. “I care about him. I do. And I know whatever decision I make, he’ll be okay with it… but that’s not the point anymore.”

  “What is the point?” Gloria asked pointedly.

  “I thought this was all about me. I was prepared for this to be all about me. But it isn’t anymore. As much as I wish I could just reproduce asexually, it doesn’t work that way. This baby, it’s part of Rodney as well. I don’t feel I have the right to take it away from him.”

  “That doesn’t answer how you feel about him,” Gloria said, “but, we’ll leave that for the moment. The next question is: do you think he even wants to be a part of the child’s life?”

  Kristen stood up and took her jacket off the rack. Without a word she zipped it up and tied her shoes, and this time Gloria didn’t stand in her way. At the door she finally turned, maybe it was the effect of realizing she was pregnant, maybe it was a lot of things, but suddenly she felt a clarity wind its way through her. It wasn’t confidence – she didn’t think she’d ever be able to use that adjective to describe herself. But it was as if certain parts of her life had fallen into place, some proverbial existential Tetris game, and the last piece had somehow come into focus, and fit perfectly where it should.

  “Only one way to find out,” she gave a brusque nod, and closed the door behind her.

  As she walked down the steep roads toward main street and toward the first café where they’d met, she sent a quick message to Rodney on her cellphone and slipped it back into her pocket. She breathed in the deep scent of the maples. The slow revolving of the seasons seemed to echo the movement of her life, an inexorable cycle. In life you can make choices, she thought, but there are other things, other events, other forces, that you have no control over… all you can do is hold on.

  It occurred to her that this way of thinking, a sort of laidback acceptance of things beyond her scope, was in fact something that had changed in her since moving to Nelson. People here had a slower pace of life, and didn’t get caught up on the small hitches that confronted them. It seemed like a more libertarian way of living, less stressful – even her job at the local newspaper was degrees less strenuous, and there was plenty of room for her to exercise her own creative processes. A good place for a child to grow up, she thought against her will, and lambasted herself for thinking it at all. What about the Enclave? Was she willing to give up the only home she had ever known, in order to stay here?

  “I’ll take two mochas, Jen, thanks,” she said to the barista behind the coffee bar.

  “Coming right up, K,” the dread-locked woman replied, “my, you look radiant today! Normally, at this time of year, right in between summer and skiing season, folks are grumpy. What's got you in such a great mood?”

  “I really can’t say,” Kristen lied. I only just found out I’m pregnant, is it that obvious to others?

  “Well, as a thank you for bringing a smile in here, I’ll give you second mocha free. Not a lot of business this morning anyway, so the boss isn’t around. Just keep it between us.”

  The café, Oso Negro, was a charming little artistic residence. Local artists had their paintings on the wall, and there was even a small garden behind the shop with herbs and local flowers. Most of them had died and withered by now, but it was still a safe little enclosure of nature that she enjoyed, despite the growing cold. She zipped up the collar on her jacket tighter, and the flection of the burgundy leather squealed.

  “That for me?”

  She turned and saw Rodney. “How do you that?”

  He took a seat beside her on the cold stone bench and breathed into his hands. “Sneak up on you? It’s pretty easy… I’m a Tiger.”

  “So am I,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah, but I’ve had more practice,” he winked. “What’s the big news, I came as soon as I saw your text. Just got off shift, so I’m totally free this time – no interruptions.” He held up his pager as evidence and flipped off the switch.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were on a call…” she started, “nothing too serious?”

  He squirmed uncomfortably. “Just more…” he stopped, “no, no nothing. It’s fine. I’m glad for the distraction actually, heh. So what is it? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost or something?”

  Maybe I really am that easy to read, she sighed, and brought both hands up to her face to massage the tension out of them. She felt Rodney’s hands slip out and touch her shoulder, and took in a deep breath.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said at last. She had hoped that getting it off her chest would somehow alleviate the uncertainty she felt, but it only served to increase her tenuous grip on her emotions. Rodney did his best to hide his own. His face went through a transition of different expressions, and she could barely keep up with them. Joy? Anger? Sadness? It was impossible to tell. “Please say something,” she said after he had failed to speak up.

  “I… I’m sorry, it’s just,” he rubbed his head, “I guess this is what you wanted right? What you’ve been working towards. It’s just big news… but I’m happy, Kristen! Really. Just surprised – I don’t know why I should be.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said, relaxing against his touch and leaning her head on his shoulder.

  “So, what now?” he asked, “I suppose you’ll want to head back to the Enclave.”

  There was a note of resignation in his voice, but it was hiding something else, something he didn’t want her to see. But I did, she bit her lip. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know it’s standard, and that it’s expected of me – return to the Enclave, bring up my child there. But… but it feels, strange. I don’t know.” She gulped; afraid of what came next. There was no hiding from it, though. “I like you, Rodney.”

  They must have been the words he was waiting to hear because he suddenly lunged forward and wrapped both arms around her. His arms slid on the leather jacket and she tucked her head in against his shoulders, feeling the monstrous weight of him surround her. His elbow hit his coffee and spilled over the cold stones of the patio, but neither seemed to notice.

  At last he pulled back, and she took in a deep breath. “I like you too, Kristen. More than that,” he blushed but kept his gaze level, “I know I shouldn’t, but there it is. Maybe we both slipped up, but I’ll own up to my part – I think I fell in-”

  Kristen quickly held up her finger and pressed it against his lips. She didn’t want to hear that from him, not right now. She was still overwhelmed with everything else. “I… I would like to stay in Nelson, it’s not been very long, but… I feel like I’ve found a place here, and I know Gloria has, too. It doesn’t seem fair to pull her away.” He smiled, more at the fact that Kristen was using Gloria as a reason to stay, but let it go. “Is… is that okay?” she asked sheepishly.

  He reached down and picked up the fallen coffee cup. The dark liquid had scattered into the cracks of the stonework and its steam seemed to lift off the hard surface like a whisper. For the first time she felt a shiver as a gust of cold wind came up and over the garden of Oso Negro and snuck under her jacket. “That’s perfectl
y okay,” he said, holding up his empty cup comically, “but a small little loft like the one the two of you’ve got… and going up and down these steep hills to work, that’s a bit of a chore isn’t it? What if you… I mean, don’t freak out, but what if you moved into my place?”

  Kristen hadn’t really expected the offer. It would be easier to make it to work, and as the pregnancy progressed, it would be nicer to be more centrally located. “Are you asking me to move in?” she said dumbly.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what I just did,” he said.

  She leaned in and kissed him, almost slipping on the stone bench as she did, and Rodney reached out to catch her. His own lips pressed against hers with a certainty that belonged to only one kind of emotion, the kind she had prevented him from voicing just now. She kissed him back, gripping both cheeks with her hands, and felt his arms encircle her waist again.

  As she searched her own heart and feelings, it was like looking out of a pitch black cave. Still very far away, like a rumor she could hardly dare to believe in, was a glimmer of light, something she could dream of, and only glimpse at through the corner of her eye. But as it came closer and grew brighter, she knew she felt the same way.

  I love him; the thought reached an epiphany only when Rodney finally pulled away from her full wind-bitten lips, and his fierce greyish eyes relaxed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By the time the last leaves had fallen, autumn decided to hit Nelson with a barrage of storms that dragged for days across the sky like grey coiled serpents. Kristen looked out the window of her ‘office’, which was more like a corner that had been shunted off with fake plaster walls. But it was quiet, and it was hers, and it had one of the only windows. She watched as more rain thundered across the downtown area. Even from here she could almost make out Rodney’s home next to the lake.