Chickadee jumped up and held her. “Dilly dear, take a deep breath, this is — you know this. You sat at enough bedsides to know how to do this.” Dilly stared down into the box. “But Luna — the baby.”
Luna was watching, tears sliding down her face.
Chickadee said, “Just one drop and then another. What’s the first thing?”
“These minty oils.”
“Sure, of course, they’re probably fine, right, Luna?”
Luna said, “That sounds okay. Maybe nothing directly on my stomach.”
Chickadee nodded her head looking from Luna back to Dilly. “Exactly, and we’ll read the ingredients. Right Beckett, right Luna?”
Beckett nodded. He was having trouble watching, he was instead focused on a fork.
Dilly decided on three small bottles. “Okay, these are — I’m so sorry Luna.” She sniffled. “I didn’t mean to scare you. This was simply a small little freak out, but I’m better now. I only need to mix a couple of things. Please don’t let my little breakdown worry you.”
“It’s okay Dilly, we’re all scared. give me the first thing.”
Dilly squirted three drops into Luna’s tea and gave Beckett oils to massage onto Luna’s feet.
Chickadee dropped into a chair and watched, chewing her lips, quieter than Luna had ever seen her.
Beckett held Luna’s feet in his lap and rubbed them silently.
Dilly puttered around, reading from a book of recipes, mixing, chopping, passing things to Luna to take.
Finally Dilly said, “That’s all we can do, for now. I’ll give you more tomorrow.” She put the box away on a lower shelf.
They all four sat for a minute. Then Chickadee banged her hand down on the table. “Well, I for one think we need find some way to uplift this pissy-ass mood. My shows are on, and we could all use a laugh. I’ll pop popcorn. “
Dilly said, “I don’t know, popcorn might not be. . .”
“I insist. Would you like popcorn Luna?”
“I Would. With butter.”
“No harm in butter. Butter is literally the only good thing in the world.”
Chickadee popped the corn while Dilly warmed the butter.
Beckett found his ability to speak again. “You okay with this?”
Luna nodded. “I could definitely use the laugh.”
Chapter 53
Chickadee sank into her reclining chair, with a bowl of popcorn perched on her stomach. Dilly perched at one end of the couch, with another bowl in front of her. Luna sat at the other with pillows all around her legs and belly for support. Beckett chose to sit on the floor, leaned back in front of Luna. She wrapped her fingers in his growing hair and he wrapped and arm around her calf. Shark sat beside Luna curled up asleep.
The shows came on, they were funny, hilarious at parts. Luna allowed herself to switch into a better mood. She giggled and her laughter was infectious. Dilly turned the lights down and the glow from the television lighting their faces, giving them a focal point, helped them ignore the stark reality of what they might be waiting for — six days. But in the in-betweens, the pauses between jokes, the moments before the ad jingles came on, the distraction gone, it would come back — six days.
During an ad for protein bars Luna thought, six days of tinctures and remedies and worried faces and maybe I’m going to die. Maybe the baby will die.
The baby kicked.
Luna put her hand on her stomach feeling the baby’s familiar toss and turn, fluttering under her ribcage, rolling across her whole stomach.
The show returned from the commercial break, the family in this story, sat around a table exchanging wisecracks. The son was being a total ass, but his mom deserved it, she was really, really stupid.
And Beckett was watching intently. The glow of the images flickered across his impassive face.
Luna reached for Beckett’s hand and pulled it to her stomach, and in an instant his attention shifted, from show to baby. He placed a hand on each side of her stomach and kissed the front of it as Luna curled down and kissed the top of his head.
Dilly said, “Aw, you guys are the best. Do you see this Chickadee?”
“I do, I see it. They’re making me all weepy-eyed right when I’m trying to enjoy this comedy.” She pushed a handful of popcorn in her mouth.
Beckett kissed Luna’s stomach again. “Want to go to bed now?”
Luna nodded. He stood and led her by the hand to their room.
_____________________
Luna climbed into the sheets on her side, and pushed a pillow between her knees to support her upper leg, this pregnancy thing had gotten very uncomfortable. Beckett pulled his shirt over his head and climbed in behind her and wrapped around her body. His hand on the side of her stomach. His mouth on the back of her head.
“Is this what we have to do now, for six days?”
“Just lay in bed and wait.”
“Oh.”
He kissed the back of her hair, a long kiss, that stayed, and—
Her shoulders began to shake. He pulled enough away to ask, “Luna?”
She continued to cry, tears wetting her cheeks and rolling down to her pillow.
He tried to pull her face up to explain, but she curled it tighter down into her fists and cried harder. He understood, if anyone deserved a cry it was Luna on the day she found out their road trip might have been her death sentence. But her lonely tears made him panic. He wanted to grab her into his arms and rush her out, to somewhere, safe. Secure. Alive.
Where would that even be? Not the hospital. Luna wasn’t even going there for the birth. She had decided to stay home, find a midwife. Beckett had agreed because in his experience people checked into the hospital sick and never came home. Like his parents. Like so many people at his school. Like most of the people on the mountain.
“Luna please say it.”
She sobbed. “I hate it here.”
His body tensed, the familiar constriction around his chest, lungs squeezed. “Me?”
She cried harder, unable to speak, ashamed of the words.
“I’m so sorry. I just wanted to make you happy. I swear I wanted to keep you safe and I—”
She sobbed more, tears wracking her body.
Beckett held on as if she were the last board in a violent storm. He thought she was going to pull away, that their knot would go, and that would be it — but if he could just hold on.
Like choking she said, “It’s being on land. It’s so mean. And scary. I don’t understand this world. Why it’s like this. How it can be so awful.”
Beckett turned her to her back, kissed her shoulder, and nestled into her neck. “I know baby, I know. It is. I’m sorry it is. If I could protect you from it, I would.”
“But you can’t. You try, and it’s. . .”
She looked up at the ceiling. “I miss the ocean. It was simple there. I only had to worry about the weather.”
Beckett stilled. The knot was loosening. She was pulling away. “But the weather Luna. That was big too.”
She blinked on the tears welling in her eyes, still staring at the sky. “I understood it. I navigated by the stars. I can’t even see the stars in here. I miss the currents and splashes and glistens and waves. I love you. I love Chickadee and Dilly, you’re my family and I can’t imagine life without you, but I miss not being scared. I’m so scared.”
Beckett dropped his head to the pillow. “You’re scared all the time now?”
Luna nodded.
“I haven’t been home for very long, I feel like, if given the chance, I could fix this, make it better. We have to wait for six days but the—I screwed up Luna, I took you to the lake without researching first. Can you please give me more time to make this work? I’ll do better, I’ll make our home happier. I promise.”
Luna looked up into his eyes. “Oh Beckett. I’m not leaving you. This isn’t me saying that I’m leaving you. This is me saying that I have to go back to the ocean, once the baby is here and ready, and t
hat, please, please come with me because I can’t live without you.”
Beckett searched her face and then nestled his face into the soft part between her neck and shoulder. “I can’t live without you either. Please make it through.”
“I’m trying.”
“Me too. Just please. Hold on. Okay? Live through. If you can. I’ll fix this. I’ll make it better.”
Luna stroked her hand down his cheek. “I know, you’ll try. You will. We’ll lay here and try to keep me alive, and we’ll get married and have a baby, and we’ll try to make this work.” She gave him a sad smile.
Beckett said, “That’s not exactly what I mean, I mean yes to all that, but also I’ll build a boat.”
“Oh.” Luna pulled away and drew her eyebrows together. “You’ll build a boat for me?”
“I will.”
“I’m lying here in a puddle of tears, telling you that I hate this place and you’re saying,” she lowered her voice, “I’ll build you a boat?”
“I’ll have to figure out how, but yes.”
“You aren’t mad? I mean I love it too. It’s home, but I miss the ocean so much.”
Beckett kissed her on the top of her head and thought for a few minutes. “I know that, and it’s okay. We’ll live here when we need to, but we’ll have a boat.”
“You’re surprising me. I thought you hated the ocean.”
“Well, a beautiful and wise young lady once told me that I had a lot in common with my great-great-great-grandfather, a sea captain, and ever since I’ve been reevaluating my stance on the sea. I figure, what the hell, let’s build a boat.”
“Beckett I adore you.” Her smile turned happy. “Do you even know how to build a boat?”
“I have tools.” He smiled his full dimpled smile. “That same beautiful woman said I look really hot when I’m wearing my tool belt. So yeah, I’m sure past that it’s just easy.”
Luna giggled. “Easy to build a boat?”
“The girl I’m in love with has mad skills too, she can probably figure it out.”
“She sounds awesome.”
Beckett tightened his arms around her shoulders. “She is, and this is what I’m saying, what I’ve been saying. Me and you, we, we’re doing this right? Right now we’re land-based, but when we need to, we’ll float. You saw me on the paddleboard this morning. I’m one more day away from living on one.”
Luna solemnly shook her head. “That’s not exactly what I saw.”
“You haven’t considered this: Have I ever not done what I set out to do?”
Luna blinked and did indeed consider. “No, you always do it.”
“So see. Boat is as good as built. Maybe I have to buy one, I might have more money than actually ability, but the intent is the same. I love you, Luna.”
“I love you too.”
“Get some sleep, you’ll need rest to kick this.”
Luna kissed him under the jawline and tucked into his chest to sleep.
Chapter 54
On the third day of Luna’s quarantine, Dilly was out in the back field and Chickadee had taken a call and stepped out onto the porch leaving Beckett and Luna finishing their breakfast. Beckett cleared away their dishes and pulled down the box of remedies and took out a small notebook and the thermometer. “So, we need to take your morning temperature again, so we can have a base reading for the—”
“Why?”
Beckett turned to her with the thermometer in his hand. “You know why, so we have a base reading, your normal temperatures, so on day six —”
“Yes, so we can see if I have a temperature spike on day six. So we can know-know, but why, if it’s not helping? It’s just worrying—”
“It’s not helping, it’s not just anything, but—” Beckett gripped the thermometer. “I don’t know what to do, Luna. I don’t have the skill set for saving your life. Not from this. I can build a wall. I can toss sandbags. And I can shoot. I have enough guns, tucked away in this place, if people wanted to hurt you, I could stop them. If they made it up the mountain, past my neighbors to Mountainview Pass? I could sit on the roof over the porch and pick them off before they got within sight of the house. I wouldn’t even be scared because I can do it. Kill them before they get to you. I learned it in the Army and I was good at it. It sucks that that’s what I know. I should have gone into the Navy, Dan was a hundred percent right about that. But I don’t know how to save you from this sickness. I don’t know at all. So Dilly showed me how to use this thermometer, and she told me to write your temperature down in the morning, at noon, and after dinner, so we would know. And it’s all I’ve got. Maybe it’s the dumbest thing in the world to do, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Luna moved around the table, stood quietly in front of Beckett, and pushed her hair back from her forehead. His hands shook as he pressed the thermometer to her temple and counted to five. Then he glanced at it’s screen and transcribed the number, 99.1, under last night’s temperature, 98.9. He didn’t know if that tiny uptick was a statistical anomaly or a terrifying portend, but either way it was noted.
Luna waited for him to finish and then asked him to go for a walk. “Show me something you haven’t shown me yet.” After a long day full of whispers and, “How are you feeling?” And “take this too, swallow it down,” and “you should sit down and rest dear.” She wanted to go long and far away.
Beckett led her along a path, through the woods, in a direction she hadn’t gone before. She had always walked west toward the viewpoint, or east to the sunrise field, but today Beckett took her to the south. The path joined a dirt road for a quarter mile, and then separated from it, crossed a field, and dove back through the woods, for so long that Luna had to ask, “All of this is yours?”
“Yes, and more.”
“Oh.”
He helped her clamber over a fallen tree. Until the path turned out of the tree line at a craggy cliff. Beckett swept out an arm. “Bug Boulder.”
A boulder as big as a shed stood to the side of the path, warming in the direct sun. Luna said, “Tell me about it.”
“This is where I used to hide after my mom died. When my dad was pissed. When Uncle Jimmy was out of his mind.”
Luna put her hand out and pressed it to the side of the warm rock. “Little Beckie would come all this way by himself?”
“I slept here too. Sometimes for days.”
Luna took in the scope of it. “You’d sleep on top of this rock, no shelter?”
Beckett grinned. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. That’s why this is such an excellent hiding place. Yes, you can sit and sleep on top. And pretend like you’re riding a bug I might add. That was cool.” He picked his way around the smaller rocks at the front of the Boulder. “But over here. . .”
Luna followed him around the rock.
“See how the cliff curves over right here? The Boulder juts out right here, like a cave.”
Luna cocked her head. “It’s really small, you could fit in there?”
“It was tight, but it worked for its purpose. It kept me mostly dry.”
Luna turned around. “You would be out here in the rain?”
“It rains a lot.”
“True, and I was out in the rain a lot growing up, but land-based animals don’t usually choose to sleep outside.”
“There wasn’t a lot of choice in the matter.”
“Yeah, poor little Beckie.” She rubbed her fingers down his arm, feeling the taut muscles under his skin. He clenched when he couldn’t relax. “We have a lot in common, you and I, you floating here, under a big sky. Except you were alone. I had my whole family with me. You’re crazy brave to sleep here.”
Beckett’s mouth turned up in a half smile. “I felt like a coward at the time.”
“Little kids don’t understand much about the world do they?”
“Not at all.” He picked a path to the back of the boulder, where it met the cliff, and with two leaping steps deftly climbed to the top. “Come up?”
She laughed. “You made that look easy!”
“Ah now see, the tables are turned, just pop up here.”
Luna picked a place for her hand and with some awkward scrambling, and Beckett pulling her up by the other hand, she made it to the top. She joked, “I totally would have made it by myself if it wasn’t for the baby.”
Beckett chuckled. “I have no doubt.”
Luna appraised the spot. “You’re up high, but there’s not much view. Too many trees over there.”
“They cut down on the wind and keep the temperature a little better, but a view would have probably terrified me, Bug Boulder is for staring up at the sky.” Beckett dropped down to a sitting position and lounged back. “Except when I was nine I fit, now I’m way long, my legs hang off.”
Luna looked down at him for a moment, then dropped down beside him, looking up at the sky. “Oof, lying on my back is too uncomfortable.” She curled to her side.
Her eyes traveled across his lips to the indent of his dimple to his angled jaw and down the taut neck muscle that stretched to the collar of his shirt, disappearing at that small spot she loved to kiss, right at the base of his throat, where his mind and heart met and gave them voice. It vibrated, with heartbeat and current and possibility, and she would keep her lips there forever if she could.
He asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“You.” She trailed a finger along the edge of his neck.
He lifted her fingers to his lips, kissed them, and placed them over his heart. The sun was warm on their skin. The stone warm on their backs.
“Beckett I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If something happens to me—”
“God Luna, not that, don’t.”
“Beckett. If something happens to me. . .”
He shook his head.
“If something happens. . .”
“Please don’t.”
“Just listen, my love, okay? If something happens to me, if I’m not here, don’t do this. What you do when you hide from the world — alone. Don’t live here at Bug Boulder. Don’t run away to an Outpost. Don’t be alone.”
Deep (Luna's Story Book 3) Page 15