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“My mother struggled with infertility. I think Quana did, too, but she’d never admit it. I’ve always worried I’d never be a mother.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Hobo mutters, not sounding convinced. “My parents and their cult would make the kid’s life miserable.”
“No,” I insist and rest my body across his lap. “If they were a threat, you’d kill them. Problem solved.”
Hobo smirks at my words, but he struggles with his feelings toward fatherhood. Whenever I catch him watching Eagle with Clementine, he’s clearly curious about having his own child. Yet, he also gets very tense if the little girl cries. After spending his own childhood watching out for Kourtney, he might not ever be ready to become completely responsible for someone else.
Two weeks before my pregnancy test comes up positive, the club buys Old Thelma’s BBQ and asks me to run it.
“You don’t need to be there all the time,” Ruin clarifies when Hobo gets irritated. “Just fix the place up, so it’s somewhere people will come with their kids. And make good barbecue like Maggie used to and like you did during the Fourth of July party.”
With the house completed and my routine quiet, I’m excited for a new project. Even better is how I’m fixing up a place so special to Hobo.
Of course, he isn’t particularly happy for me to become busier. Though I’m always willing to drop everything for him, he still worries I’ll lose interest in him when something more exciting comes along.
That’s why I volunteer Hobo to help me with the restaurant’s design. We enjoy working together. The process also makes him nostalgic, and he soon settles down. I know he’d like to recreate an important part of his childhood, especially after I turn up pregnant.
“We won’t stress,” I say to him, though the words are just as much for me. “We’ll get through each day. No matter what happens with the baby or the restaurant, we’ll still have each other.”
Hobo seems almost in denial of the pregnancy until the day he feels our baby move inside me. His icy blue eyes reveal pain and fear. I’m not particularly surprised when he packs up supplies and disappears into the woods for two days. Hobo did something similar when we were getting ready to move to the house. He came back then, and I know he will this time.
One day, I’m confronted by his weirdo parents. That’s when I see how much Kourtney looks like her mother. Hobo also inherited his jaw and nose from his father. Their parents show up with Six and a few other cult members I’ve never seen before. I’m loading groceries in my car, when they surround me.
I don’t waste time reaching for my pepper spray as they begin to hum and speak of the key I’m carrying. I just say the three words that’ll get rid of them.
“It’s a girl.”
Their disappointment is so palpable that I nearly feel sorry for them. They’ve wasted their lives on an unattainable dream. That’s something I can understand.
However, their dream led to Hobo and Kourtney suffering. Those children didn’t deserve to live in poverty and filth, just so these pathetic people could avoid reality. As I watch them shuffle away, hoping for a boy one day to open the door to their fantasy land, I decide their suffering is a suitable punishment.
The reality is they’re lucky I’m not carrying a son. If the baby was a boy, Hobo would likely kill them all. I’m relieved he never has to end those pathetic people. A part of him is still the little boy who hoped his parents and their bizarre friends would love him right. If killing the cult was easy, he would have done it years ago.
Old Thelma’s BBQ has her grand reopening two months before I give birth. It takes forever to get the place fixed up to code before we can even consider fun stuff like decorating.
Like back in Vegas, I take the chefs under my wing. Unlike in Vegas, they don’t immediately ditch the restaurant and go somewhere better once they’re trained. I’m also lucky with my managers and wait staff. The restaurant runs well, as does the shop. A few of the employees from Old Thelma’s BBQ will keep XYZ Coffee open for me during my maternity leave.
My delivery is more painful than I expect yet thankfully shorter. I get to the hospital too late for an epidural, forcing me to scream my way through pushing. Hobo stares at me as if I’m dying. He’s just as horrified at the sight of our daughter.
When the nurse asks if he wants to hold her, Hobo nearly slugs the woman. Backing away, he glues himself to the wall and won’t get any closer. I’m in no position to soothe his beast. Trapped in bed, I watch him trapping himself in the past. I don’t know if he can break free without my help.
Entering the room like a hurricane, Kourtney behaves as if everyone did a shitty job, and she’s looking to sue. Her gaze softens when she sees me with Meadow.
“Where’s Hobo?” she asks, having missed her brother flat against the wall behind her.
Following my gaze, Kourtney loses her angry edge. Her expression pinches as she moves toward him.
“No,” he says.
Kourtney speaks to him in a whisper. “It’s your daughter.”
“I know. I don’t want to hold her.”
“You will eventually. Why not now?”
Hobo looks at his hands. “I can’t wash them clean enough. You go hold her.”
Kourtney walks over to me, tears filling her blue eyes as she mumbles, “Can I take the baby?”
