The Long and Winding Road (The Seafare Chronicles 4)
I say, “Like, I wouldn’t get high, especially when I’m supposed to be at school with the hoodlums. And I definitely wouldn’t be high while driving to the hospital! But I can’t make any promises about not getting high when I get there, because I—it was a joke. Turn off the cop, Dom, I swear to god! I’m joking!”
Otter says, “You guys are on the pickup list for Izzie. I already told the principal that you’d be there after. Just—Dad. Dad. Stop telling Mom to make a cake. What is wrong with the both of you? I’m going to hang up now, I swear to—oh. He hung up on me.”
I say, “You’re not going to arrest me, are you? Dom, I was joking. I’m not going to smoke meth and then hold my kids for the first time. I’m not that kind of person. Not—wow. He hung up on me.”
“Why are you driving so slow?” Otter says, sounding slightly hysterical. “You are not an eighty-year-old woman!”
“I’m going the speed limit,” I growl at him. “I’m trying not to break the law, especially since my brother’s boyfriend apparently thinks I’m a crack addict because I sound calm.”
“You don’t sound very calm to me!”
“Why thank you. I didn’t—what the hell is that in the back seat?”
“Watch the road!”
“I am. Are those car seats?”
“Yes,” he huffs out. “How the hell else are we supposed to get them home?”
“Right,” I say weakly. “Because they’re going to be coming home with us.”
“Exactly,” Otter says, popping his knuckles repeatedly. “They’re going to be coming home with us, and we’re going to be parents, and it’s going to be fine. I mean, yes, we’re going to be at their beck and call for the next eighteen years and we’ll probably never get a moment of privacy for at least that long, and yes, what if the other one ends up being a girl who wants to date when she turns fifteen, and she brings home boys, and yes, I am going to have to buy a goddamn shotgun and point it at every single dickless wonder who thinks he can touch my little girl with his filthy boy hands, and—”
“Wow,” I say. “That escalated quickly. I feel like we’ve somehow accidentally switched bodies, because you sound exactly like me right now.”
“This is all your fault!” Otter cries at me.
“How’s that now?”
“It was your goddamn super sperm that made two of them.”
“That’s because of my masculine virility. I’ve told you that—”
“Bear!”
“What!”
His eyes are bulging, and he’s panting a little, but somehow, he’s able to say, “It’s too soon. They’re not supposed to be here for another week. What if something’s wrong?”
And that hurts. To hear the worry in his voice. The doubt. Because Otter should never sound like that. Not ever. “You know as well as I do that’s not the case,” I tell him quietly. “Twins come early. The fact that she’s made it this far is sort of remarkable. We’ve been told this, okay? We know this. I need you to hear me on this, okay? Are you listening?”
He nods, head jerking up and down.
“It’s going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine. She’s healthy. The twins are healthy. This is all planned out. She’s done this before, and she knows her body. It’s going to be—”
Otter’s phone rings.
“It’s Marty,” he says, sounding rather breathless.
Fine, right, Bear? it whispers. Everything is going to be fine. Because nothing bad has ever happened to you, isn’t that right? Oh, no. Of course not.
“Answer it,” I tell him, shoving that damnable voice away. “We need to find out what’s going on. Make sure they don’t need anything from us.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before connecting the call. It’s on speakerphone, and it crackles, voices muffled in the background.
“Marty?” Otter asks.
“—you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Marty is saying. “Your skin is glowing, and I know it’s mostly sweat, but damn, baby, you look good. All that life growing in you. I can’t wait till it comes out and I can put my own in—”