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“You look beautiful, Fi,” Dad hums immediately, offering her his palm. She slips her fingers through his and takes a deep, steadying breath.
“Seriously, Mom, you look hot as hell.”
“Taylor Marie.”
“What? You do.”
“Can we perhaps keep the swearing to a minimum when we get there? To pretend, for just one afternoon, that we are a family of culture?”
“What?” I tease. “Rich people don’t swear?”
I expect Dad to chuckle or pipe in with a quick quip or a word of comfort, but he does neither. He just stares ahead at the road with a deadpan expression on his face. Like a pirate’s victim about to walk the plank.
“I want to make a good impression,” Mom says firmly. “I should have worn the red dress. This one is too big on me.”
“It’s not like Cee gave us much time to shop for alternatives,” I mutter, pulling down the hemline of my strapless black mini. It’s both tight and short, and completely inappropriate for an engagement lunch.
Excuse me—luncheon.
But the way I see it, I won’t be able to fit into this dress in a few months. And God knows my partying days are going to be dead and gone once the baby comes, so I figure, there’s no time like the present, right?
Not that Mom sees it that way. She throws me a disapproving look over her shoulder. She’s unaware of my airtight logic or the ticking time bomb in my belly, but I’m in no hurry to tell anyone about my…situation… just yet.
For one, I want Celine to have her moment in the spotlight.
And two—I’m a coward.
“We could have gone shopping this morning,” Mom persists. “If only someone had answered their phone before half past ten in the morning.”
“I overslept,” I mumble quickly. “And my phone was on silent.”
The second part at least is not a lie. My phone was indeed on silent. But I hadn’t been lying in bed like a loaf—I’d been flat on my back on an examination table with ultrasound gel smeared on my belly.
“Is the father coming?” the doctor had asked me.
I answered with the only thing I could say: “There is no father.”
She’d given me a sympathetic smile and proceeded to confirm what I already knew: in seven-and-a-half months, I would be a mother.
Which felt extremely anti-climactic, somehow. You expect the big moments in your life to come equipped with a built-in soundtrack. Sound effects, at the very least.You’re going to be a mother. BOOM—confetti, laser beams, a line of dancers doing the can-can.
But no. It’s just you and the doctor, staring at an amorphous gray blob on the screen. And all those big feelings you expect to feel don’t actually come.
At least not until the doctor looks at you and asks what you plan to do.
“What do you mean?” I’d asked.
“Taylor, you’re clearly very young. You’re here alone. It doesn’t look like you were trying to get pregnant. I’m asking if you plan on keeping the baby.”
And then it hits you. You don’t actually have to have a baby if you really don’t want to. Which begs the question—do I want this baby?
And the surprising answer is…yes. Yes, I do.
So after I cried on the doctor’s shoulder for a good ten minutes, after I’d sufficiently embarrassed myself, I’d picked myself up, driven myself home, and gotten myself ready for my sister’s engagement party.
“We’re here!” Mom gasps suddenly, shocking me out of my thoughts. “We’re here. Zakharov House—that’s what Celine said it was called.”
You know a family is wealthy when they name their properties after themselves. I lean forward, sticking my face between my parents’ seats. “What should we call our house?” I ask. “The Theron Thatch? Overgrown Garden Cottage? The Yellow Villa doesn’t rhyme unless you say it kind of weird, but—”
