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When he banged on her door at one a.m. two days later, she buried her head under a pillow that still smelled of him. If she let him in, she’d never let him go, and he needed to go. She knew it.
She thought that going back to work would be an escape, but designing wedding cakes wasn’t helpful.
Two days later, while she worked on a flowery design in the back room, her mother took up one of the cloths they used to clean the surfaces and came to wipe the counter next to her.
“You won’t believe what I have to tell you,” Linda said. The expression on her face was that of concern, not gossipy and amused.
Knowing what was coming, Anne pressed the leaf-shaped cutter down on the vanilla gum paste.
“Avery is pregnant. From that boy you used to tutor in high school. The swimmer. Marie Brennen’s kid. Finn.”
“Really?” She also grabbed a cloth and wiped it over her reflection on the shiny metal surface.
“Yes. But no one should know about this. Your aunt and uncle don’t want people to know Avery is pregnant. She’s not showing yet, but she will soon, so Darian is worried, what with Avery being a teacher and all.”
“I won’t tell.” The words came out robotic. “What is she going to do?”
“She’s keeping it, obviously. She’s almost twenty-eight, you know. She told him and his mother, and now Darian and Marie are working on them both to do the right thing and get married fast before Avery shows and before anyone does the math later on.”
“Is she sure it’s his?”
Linda stopped wiping the counter and gave her a sharp look. “Why are you talking about your cousin like that? Of course it’s his!”
“Avery wants to marry him?” She felt sick to her stomach just uttering the words. She wished, not for the first time since Finn had told her, that it had been her who was pregnant. But she was responsible enough to take pills.
“Why wouldn’t she? He’s a beautiful boy, and he’s a swimming champion, and he just got a great job coaching a team in Blueshore, and they’ve already … you know.”
She knew. She so fucking knew. With every pained fiber in her.
Why did it have to be Avery of all people? They might have made it through this somehow, in some format, like him just being in the picture, if it wasn’t Avery.
“But, do they know each other? Love each other?” she challenged futilely, trying hard to keep the bitterness from her voice, because it wasn’t like her mother had taken sides. She was oblivious to the whole thing. She wondered how her mother would have reacted if she had told her.
“Love?” Her mother said it as if it was irrelevant. “They’re going to have a baby! They’ll learn to love each other … with time. What matters now is the baby. And Marie is … well, I guess you remember she was a single mother, and she wants better for her grandson.”
Grandson. They were already family-terming it all while, to her, he was still her Finn. Her Finn, who waited all night outside her house in his car and hardly let her out of his arms when she came out at six a.m. to go to the bakery to work on several orders.
“I’m not mad at you, Finn,” she had whispered against his neck that morning. “I just … don’t know what to do.”
He hadn’t contradicted her, just whispered, “I love you.”
She threw down the cloth and took up the cutter again. “Finn turned out great,” she said then immediately regretted it. No one knew about them yet, and now no one should or could ever know. “I mean, he sounds great, and he was, from what I remember. So what if his mother was single?” She didn’t add the opposite example—Eric Hays had grown up with both parents and was a piece of shit.
“This generation!” her mother exclaimed, putting extra energy into polishing a surface that was now squeaky clean. “If a baby can have both parents together, why deny it of him?” Her voice then softened. “We grew up different, Janey. My brother-in-law is going to make sure they get married.” She placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and Anne had to brace herself to not shake it off.
“You know, dear, you should go see Avery. You’ve been back four weeks now, and you haven’t seen your cousin yet. I really wish you would be closer. She needs our support now. Who but your own family would support you? And when she marries that boy, he’ll be like a brother-in-law to you.”
And he was.
On November eleventh, her birthday, a little over a week after he had knocked on her door in complete shock, she went to town hall in a blue dress, with the cake her mother had asked her to make.
“It’s all a bit rushed. They don’t have time for niceties. Let’s at least make a nice cake for them to make it a little less shabby,” Linda had said.
With a numb heart, she had decorated it in pinks and blues—“because we don’t know the baby’s sex yet,” her excited mother had said.
That entire week had been a haze. Finn came over the day before his intended marriage, and she had let him in.
“I want you,” he’d said, his face already buried in her neck and hair. “I’ll never want anyone else.”
