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“Ah! So, it’s Justin’s fault.”
“Well, sort of. Anyway, that’s Annie’s story. So how would you like to move our date up a few weeks? It will mean I have to stop drinking sooner than Lent.”
“Hey, if you’re ready, I’m more than ready. I mean, are you ready right now?”
“Ha! Like lock the kid in his bedroom so we can have sex? No, I think I can wait until he goes to sleep later. I have feeling there is going to be a lot of lovemaking in Cypress Cove tonight.”
Chapter 10
Summer was in full swing. The women were reaching their goals. Annie completed her thesis, defended it, and received her master’s degree. Chris had a big party for her with everyone she knew in Cypress Cove, including Aunt Elizabeth and the Casson family, ex-husband and mother-in-law included.
After getting a provisional license to practice by their parish, she hung out a sign on the old Cypress Cove Hotel and rented a room on the third floor where she’d meet clients. Justin continued to see Annie, making breakthroughs in his struggle to understand his mother’s death.
She still wasn’t living with Chris, but they’d made a compromise. The weekends were spent at Chris’s house, making it a home and preparing for their baby.
With a passion, Maggie had taken over the wild horse preservation group as their contact with the Bureau of Land Management. Every morning as soon as Rhonda arrived, she saddled up Dale or Lightning and took off to ride the range for two hours, making sure the bands of wild horses were safe and healthy. Anything she saw that seemed to be untoward, she made note of. On Wednesday, Justin and Grace Breaux, retired veterinarian and wife of dockmaster Gus Hebert, accompanied her to follow up on any issues. They spent the time observing and making plans for the group meeting the following Sunday morning.
Justin and Maggie stopped using birth control right before Lent, but nothing happened for her in the conception department. At first, she was relieved. But now, with Annie six months and Katrina five months pregnant, she was nervous, and although she wouldn’t admit it, a little frightened.
“Do you want to see someone about it?” Justin gently asked, knowing how sensitive Maggie could be.
“I don’t know. I should probably wait a while longer. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel left out.”
“I do, too. If nothing happens in a year, we should go. I’ll go first and have my boys checked for motility.”
“Oh God, I don’t want to have to do this. I need to get over it and be satisfied with my perfect little girl.” They both looked at Tina playing in the sandbox they kept on the porch, away from cats and raccoons.
“She really is perfect. But there’s nothing wrong with wanting another child, Maggie. I don’t mind going. All I have to do is take a sample.”
“Oh, great. Do you have to jack off in the doctor’s office?”
“No. We can do it here. The real way, with a condom on. I’ll stick it in a jar and go.”
“Please, too much information,” she cried, holding her hand up to stop him. “I’m not made for this!”
“I know. I’m so sorry. We can light a candle tonight and pray, okay? We can do that much.”
That was it for Maggie and she uncharacteristically began to weep. “Okay, that much we can do. In the meantime, my friends are going to come here with their little bellies. For the first time in my life, I’ll be sorry to be the thinnest woman in the group.”
***
For Katrina Blanchard, being pregnant again meant worrying about the baby’s well-being. So far, baby was just fine. As much as she and Dave loved little Davie, the apprehension they had before he was born when they discovered he had Down syndrome, was not an experience they were eager to have again. The other issues she had while she was pregnant, preterm labor the major one, put her into the high-risk category.
For this pregnancy, Dave went with her to every appointment. At about nine weeks, she had a blood test to determine if the baby had Down syndrome by doing a chromosome study. The good news, baby was fine.
“Now, do you want to know the sex of your baby?” the doctor asked.
The couple looked at each other, smiling, and shrugged their shoulders. “Sure. I don’t really like surprises,” Katrina said, squeezing Dave’s hand.
“You’re having a girl!”
Katrina later admitted that she felt like she was floating in the air and had to grab the armrests of the chair. They were driving home after the visit, holding hands.
“This feels unreal,” she said. “I don’t know how to describe it, but I never thought I’d have a girl. I liked being the mom and having a son with a dad. Now there’s another girl in the house. I hope I can be a good mother to a girl.”
“What are you talking about? You’ll be a wonderful mother. Does Annie know what she’s having yet? It would be nice if she had a girl.”
“They didn’t have that test. She said they’ll do an ultrasound at sixteen weeks and tell her then.”
