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“Of course,” Mum replied. “We don’t need to talk about it right now. I’m just booking my flights. This one has a layover for nine hours in LA, which is perfect because I’ll be able to pick up some uterine recovery tea that a renowned herbalist makes,” she mused.
“You’re booking flights?” I asked, M&M poised before my mouth in shock.
“Booked! I’ll be there in three weeks,” she said triumphantly. “Oh, darling, I just can’t wait. Oh fuck, I’ve got to go. I’m late for my Reiki healer. I’ll be in touch, love you!”
“Bye, Mum,” I muttered, not returning the ‘I love you.’ It wasn’t lost on me that I couldn’t say those words to my mother or my husband.
The front door slammed.
“Babe!” Kip yelled.
“In here,” I yelled back.
I didn’t get up to meet him. Getting up was harder these days, and I was still digesting what just happened.
Kip didn’t take long to make it to the nursery.
“There are my girls,” he said, smiling as he walked in, his gait easy, posture relaxed.
He looked like he always did fresh off the worksite: faded jeans, dirty tee, cap. He smelled of him and sweat and wood, and I inhaled deeply when he leaned in to kiss me. First my mouth, then my stomach.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, like he always did when he came home. Every day.
“Still pregnant,” I replied, the same thing I always said back to him. Sometimes I supplemented with ‘hungry’ or ‘horny.’ “And I just talked to my mother.” I waved my phone.
“How did that go?” Kip perched on the arm of the chair. I’d told him about her. About my childhood. Not much more about my marriage, because what else was there to say?
We’d spoken about my losses too. Not a lot. Again, what else was there to say? Plus, I worried speaking about them too much would unleash some kind of dead baby juju and leech into the perfect little girl in my stomach.
“I told her about you and the baby,” I replied.
He raised his brows.
“And she’s coming over. Here.” I looked around the nursery. “She’s a lactation consultant now.”
Kip nodded. “Well, it’ll help with breastfeeding,” he said with a fucking straight face.
I scowled at him. “We don’t have anywhere for her to stay,” I pointed out. “This was our guest room, and I’m not inflicting my mother on Calliope or Rowan and Nora.”
He considered this for a moment before standing to get his phone from his pocket, tapping the screen, and putting it to his ear.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
He held his finger up to shush me.
I leaned back in my chair, eyebrows raised. “Did you just fucking shush me?”
Kip smirked at me. “Rowan, brother, need to get a team out to my place tomorrow. We’ve got company coming, and we need a guest addition on the cottage.”
A pause.
“Yep, sounds good.”
He put the phone back in his pocket.
I gaped at Kip. “What was that?”
“We’re getting a guest room,” he said by way of explanation.
