She left $137.50 in an envelope with my name on it.
The next day, I turned eighteen. Three days after that, I graduated high school.
It’s funny, then, after everything, that when the doorbell rings, I don’t even think of her.
I haven’t thought of her in months.
There are other things now.
Like the man before me, that look of fond exasperation on his face as I spout off about how our kid is going to grow up to be a serial killer with a tail. God, I love him so fucking much. “Did we even test for that?” I ask him, sounding hysterical. “Was that one of the tests? To see if our sperm makes serial killers with tails?”
“No, Bear,” my husband sighs. “I don’t think there was a test for serial killers with tails.”
“Well, there should have been!” I shout at him, even as we stand in the room painted the palest of blues with cartoon elephants and tigers stenciled onto the walls in a field of grass and flowers. There are clouds on the ceiling above and a goddamn crib, a crib where our son is going to be in about three months, because for some reason, Otter fucking Thompson convinced me that we should knock up some woman we didn’t even know, a pretty young thing named Megan who was injected with my spunk and now has a child growing inside her. A fucking baby that no one knows about, and what the hell were we thinking?
I’m pretty sure I’m on my way to a full-scale meltdown.
The doorbell rings.
A phone rings.
Otter looks over his shoulder. “That’s my phone. It’s downstairs. You need to take a deep breath and answer the door. Someone showed up a bit early.”
“No violent video games!” I tell him. “And he eats all his vegetables! I don’t care what he tries to say. Those goddamn brussels sprouts are going down his throat or he can stay at the dinner table all night!”
“All night,” Otter agrees. He drops his big hands on m
y shoulders, squeezing me tightly, grounding me. “Bear. Focus.”
Which, honestly, is probably the wrong thing to say.
“I am focused,” I snap at him. Granted, I was focused on the idea of our son murdering people with his tail and feasting on their insides, but whatever.
“You need to get the door,” he says, steering me toward the stairs. “I need to see who called to make sure everything’s okay.”
His phone cuts off but immediately starts ringing again.
There’s a knock at the door.
We reach the bottom of the stairs, and before I can walk to the door, he spins me around and kisses me hard, mouth working over mine, the barest hints of his tongue on my lips. Pretty much everything short-circuits at that, like it normally does with him, even after all these years. I’m rather breathless when he pulls away and can’t even glare at the smug little twist in his smile.
“Good?” he asks me.
“Blargh,” I tell him.
“Good,” he says, pushing me toward the door. He turns to the living room, where his phone has started ringing again, and whoever it is better have a good goddamn reason for blowing up his phone like that.
The doorbell rings again.
“Huh,” I hear Otter say. “It’s Megan.”
Which, honestly, given that she just had another OB appointment (it’s like she’s going daily), is not making me feel any better. I don’t know how parents of serial killers ever show their faces in public again. I mean, what the hell would the neighbors think?
The phone rings again.
There’s a pounding on the door.
I open it just as I hear Otter say, “Is everything okay, Megan?”