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“Finally!” I welcome her, before planting a kiss on her perfect lips. “You look amazing.”
“Thanks,” she breathes, and a timid smile appears on her face. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared.
“Everything okay?” I ask. “Is something wrong?”
Now that she’s standing so close to me I realize that something is bothering her. Her face is pale, her eyes wide and apathetic and her shoulders a little too high up to her ears.
“It’s nothing,” she dismisses.
“What did they say? We’re not in trouble with the financing again, are we?” I probe.
But Madison hastily shakes her head. “No, the… no it’s fine. Really. I’m just exhausted because I had to hurry, so I wouldn’t be late.”
I can’t shake the gnawing feeling that she’s lying to me.
“Really, nothing is wrong,” she insists, when she notices my eyes on her. “The… the call went fine, we just had to clear up a few things, and it took longer than I had planned. It was a bit stressful.”
She smiles at me, and it looks a little more believable this time.
“I don’t understand why you had to talk to them today anyway,” I say. “We’re on vacation. I didn’t even bring my laptop.”
“Well, you’re not quite the workaholic I am,” she says, placing a gentle kiss on my cheek.
“I never thought I’d ever hear that sentence from anyone,” I respond, laughing. “Usually I’m the one who doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Well, I guess you found your match,” Madison says, and my heart does one of those silly hiccups when she winks at me.
For a moment, worry clutches at me. Does she know? No, she can’t. I hid it too well. It’s impossible for her to find. I’m just waiting for the right moment to give it to her.
Soon.
She has no idea how true her words ring. Because she really is the match I never thought I could find.
And soon, the whole world will know that she belongs to me, forever.
Epilog 2
Madison
I have to tell him. And I have to do it sooner rather than later.
But how can I tell him about this? I’ve been telling myself that I’m just waiting for the right time, but how do I know what the right time is?
All I knew was that I couldn’t tell him why we were still traveling. I had to wait until we were back in California, because I need the comfort of our home, a bit of stability and calm within the storm that’s been raging inside of me for the past few days.
We’ve only been living together for a few months, but I’ve made myself quite at home at his place. I was sad to give up my apartment downtown, I loved it, but this is so much better.
I’m sitting out on the patio, a peach ice tea next to me, and the neighbor’s cat curled up on another lawn chair on our porch. I was told her name is Pica, and she lives down the street with an elderly woman. She took Pica in after finding her out on the street, together with her four kittens. They were babies still, just a couple of weeks old, and Pica was doing her best to take care of them, despite barely finding enough food for herself. She was weak and skinny, and her fur full of lice eating away at her skin when she was found.
I don’t even know the name of the woman who took her in, but I know all that there is to know about Pica. Pica, the selfless mother cat, who put her babies before herself and almost died in the process. Her babies have all been homed with families, and Pica stayed with her rescuer.
Do I have this in me? Could I ever be selfless enough to be a mother?
My hand rests on my belly, acutely aware of what’s growing inside it. A new life. A life that I didn’t expect.
A life that we didn’t expect.
All my life I’ve been so focused on my career, on becoming a worthy successor to my Dad, that I never thought about motherhood. I never asked myself if this is what I wanted. Or maybe, I just thought it would happen one day.
