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“Do you think your baby will be morose, too?”
“Don’t you dare.”
“You can’t fight it. You have given me the greatest gift, my sweet boy.” She presses her thumb against my pulse, and I choke.
The next morning, I woke up in a cold sweat. I’m freezing. I feel something wet lapping at the soles of my feet. When I open my eyes, the realization hits me:
I’m at the beach, and I don’t remember how I got here.
Chapter 11
Eleanor
Imakeanappointmentwith the only OBGYN in town for October 30th. I can’t be more than three months along, but I already have a little bump that protrudes out of my sweater.
The morning of our appointment, I choke down a banana and breathe through my nose as I sit at the kitchen table.
“Maybe we can get you something for the nausea,” Joseph suggests. I've discovered that when Joseph is stressed, he likes to problem-solve. I haven’t let my pregnancy impact my workload. True to its name, my morning sickness dissipates by the early afternoon, and I guess that means I'm one of the lucky ones.
“That’d be ideal,” I mumble. My stomach growls, and Joseph hands me a pumpkin muffin. Iphigenia decorated them with little paper bats.
I take a bite as the doorbell rings, and the classic iron gong reverberates throughout the house, shaking the windows.
“All these contractors and that’s the one thing you didn’t modernize?” I tease.
“My mother wanted to keep it,” Joseph grumbles. He stalks to the front door and wrenches it open.
“Don’t expect any candy here tomorrow night. Scram!” he yells.
“Chill, man, it’s Devil’s Night.”
“Not at 10 a.m.! Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“We skipped first period.”
“Well, get back there, you fucking delinquents!”
Joseph returns, red-faced and fuming.
“Did you just pull a ‘get off my lawn’?” I ask.
“I had to!”
I shake my head. “God, you’re already such a dad,” I say.
“In this case, that’s a good thing. Did you know tonight’s Devil’s Night?”
“You do that here?!”
“Yes, just because we’re on an island doesn’t mean we’re completely isolated from society. Did you ever do anything for it?”
I shrug and peel back the wrapper of a second muffin, “I mean, I may have smashed a couple of pumpkins in my day, but nothing major.”
“Eleanor! You’re the one who loves Halloween. How could you destroy a Jack O Lantern?!”
“I had a crush on this stoner in my math class in high school, and he invited me to go along. I couldn’t chicken out!”
Joseph laughs. “So I guess I’ll be the one to lecture our kid on the dangers of peer pressure.”
