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My mother starts to lead her towards a chair. “Yakov was saying Dr. Jenkins could bring the ultrasound machine here. Maybe that would be a better option if you aren’t feeling well.”
Suddenly, I realize why my relationship with my mother has improved so much lately: because she is so busy fussing over Luna that she doesn’t have any time left for me.
I swoop in and wrap Luna’s hand around my arm. Deftly, I pull her away from my mother and towards the door. “Luna feels fine, Mother.”
“Of course you think so. You’re a man,” she snaps. “You don’t know the toll pregnancy can take on a woman’s body.”
“I’ll be with her the entire time. Nothing is going to happen to her while I’m around.”
To my own ears, I sound confident. But when I glance down at Luna’s considerable bump, it’s impossible to forget what exactly I stand to lose.
“We never came up with names!” Luna gasps as we pull into the hospital parking garage. Kuzma and Savva are right behind us. They slip into the space next to ours as I park.
“Yes, we did. Yuri and Olivia.”
Luna turns to me, mouth hanging open. “You remember that conversation?”
I grip her chin and force her mouth closed. “I remember everything.”
“Apparently not or you’d remember I nixed Yuri.”
“And I nixed Olivia,” I remind her.
She throws her hands up. “See? No names! We are about to find out the babies’ genders and we don’t even have names.”
“We don’t need names to find out what’s between their legs.”
“You sound like your sister,” she mumbles. “And it feels like we should have some idea what we’re going to call them. I mean, this whole exercise is so we can get to know them, right? What better way to get to know someone than to give them a name?”
I grab her hand and pull it over to my lap. “You’re nervous.”
She frowns, but doesn’t deny it.
“We know the babies are healthy. You just heard their heartbeats at your appointment yesterday.”
She blows out a breath. “Yeah. I know.”
“And Dr. Jenkins isn’t going to hand us their birth certificates today. We don’t need to fill out anything official. We have time.”
“Not much. I’m twenty-eight weeks today. We’re in the third trimester.”
Believe me, I fucking know. Lately, it’s felt like there’s a countdown clock hanging above my head.
“Even once they’re born, we can change their names as many times as we want. If we get sick of one, we’ll swap it for another.”
“We can’t just change their names!”
“Luna, we can do whatever the fuck we want.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “But once we find out that you’re carrying two little boys and we name them Yakov II and Yakov III, we won’t want to change a thing.”
She slaps my chest, biting back a laugh. “You’re so not funny.”
“Who’s joking?”
We walk through the parking garage hand-in-hand, Savva and Kuzma trailing not far behind us. The building is covered and no one is going to get within a hundred feet of her. Still, the moment we walk through the doors into the hospital, Luna tenses. Her fingers clamp down around mine like her life depends on it.
“You’re fine,” I reassure her.
She gives me a tight smile. “I don’t have great memories of being here.”
