Chapter 20
Ellary
Weeks pass.
I buy a teddy bear.
Small. Purple. Velvety soft.
I open the door to the spare bedroom, take in a room filled with the clutter that never made it down to the garage, and I gulp at all the work I have ahead of me getting it cleared, the walls painted, and furniture built before the baby comes.
I’m about five months pregnant now, so I have time, but I am not looking forward to dragging everything from this room and finding space for it in an already overstuffed garage.
I don’t walk inside, but I leave the door open, carry the teddy bear downstairs, and place it on a side table beside the framed ultrasound scan.
A memory.
When a knock sounds at the door, I smooth down the front of my skirt, tell myself to stop being nervous, and go answer it.
I was expecting this visit on a Thursday afternoon, soon after I got home from work at the coffee shop. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t secretly dreading it.
I open the door and take in Jackson’s parents.
They beam at me, his dad clutching a bouquet of bright yellow sunflowers and his mom a small wrapped gift.
Both their eyes settle on my bump, and I press my palm against it, a comforting habit I’ve fallen into. “Hi. Do you want to come in?”
“Just for a moment,” Jackson’s dad says.
They step into the entryway, and I shut the door behind them.
“You should be resting from being on your feet at work,” his mom says, handing me the small turquoise-wrapped gift. “This is for you. It’s not for the baby. Just something to treat yourself.”
I feel bad about accepting the gift. “You shouldn’t have.
Really. I asked you over to apologize for…
” I gesture to my bump pressing against my white tank top.
“This. Not telling you I was pregnant. I know how much you were looking forward to Jackson and me having a baby. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. ”
I should have had this conversation with them weeks—no, months—ago.
In fact, I should have called them the day after I gave Jackson a copy of the ultrasound scan.
But I felt so guilty. The longer I didn’t do it, the harder it was to pick up the phone or send a text.
They would have been as excited at the thought of being grandparents as my parents were when I told them about my positive pregnancy test.
Jackson’s dad offers me the flowers and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “We know our son hurt you badly, and when he brought home the baby scan, we decided not to intrude on your life to avoid causing you more pain.”
His mom smiles and nods. “We want you to know that we’re here to help if you ever need it, and to not feel the least bit guilty.” Her smile fades. “You needed to prioritize your mental health, and that has to come first even now; cooing over a scan and spoiling the baby can come later.”
I smile gratefully at their thoughtfulness. “That’s really sweet of you to say, thanks.”
His dad says with a glance at the front door, “We have a casserole for you in the car. Janet was determined to bring something. It’s okay if you don’t want it.”
My smile widens. “I’ll have to make room in my refrigerator. Everyone keeps bringing me casseroles, but I would very much appreciate it.”
As Leonard goes to the car to get the casserole, I show Janet the state of my overstuffed refrigerator, making her laugh.
My friends have been stopping by with food for me, and while it was strange at first for them to come over since our usual get-togethers involved Jackson, I’ve been getting used to my new reality without him.
Leonard and Janet leave me with a meat and potato casserole and a warm hug, and I relax on the couch after placing my flowers in a vase and making myself a cup of chamomile tea.
Then I open the present from Janet, a small gift set with a face mask, bubble bath, and candies, smiling as I set it aside to enjoy before bed.
As we creep closer to fall, the evenings are getting darker earlier.
It’s too cold to be out in bare feet now, and over the last two months, I’ve been wearing more and more layers when I talk with Jackson out on the swing in the backyard.
We go to all the prenatal appointments together now.
And when I had my twenty-week scan, and we saw how much the baby had grown, there was no stopping tears from filling my eyes and Jackson from taking my hand and squeezing it as we both grinned at each other, marveling at this baby we made.
“He kicked for the first time last night.”
Jackson snaps his head toward me. “Yeah?” His eyes widen. “He?”
He came over straight after work, so he’s in his work pants, smart shoes, and a button-down shirt, though he’s removed his tie and left the top two buttons undone. His dark-blond hair is messy, with short strands sticking up every which way, as if he had raked his hand through it.
I rest a hand on my belly. Before, I’d barely notice it growing. Over the last month, though, it’s like I’ve blown up like a balloon. “He feels like a boy.”
Jackson’s gaze lingers hungrily on my palm, a need in his eyes suggesting he wants to touch. “Then we’ll start preparing for a boy. What was it like? The kick.”
“An attack,” I say, and his brow lifts in curiosity. “Something woke me in the middle of the night. I thought someone punched me and I started to panic, but then I realized it was my baby beating me up.”
He grins. “How many times?”
“Twice,” I say, smiling back. “Once to wake me up, scaring the shit out of me. And again, as I was drifting back to sleep.”
I’d stayed up for hours, my hand on my belly, waiting, hoping he would do it again. I was nearly an hour late for work because I slept through my alarm clock, but I couldn’t stop smiling all day.
After that, I started buying things for the baby. Just as Jackson suggested, I started small.
A teddy bear.
A pair of booties.
Green called out to me, and over the last couple of weeks, I have spent a truly shocking amount of time scrolling through Pinterest for ideas.
“What do you think about green for the nursery?” I ask, swinging.
He hums. “Dark green or light?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Definitely light. Maybe a mint green.”
He nods. “Do you want me to swing by the hardware store and grab some samples for you to pick out the color?”
I hesitate.
Jackson immediately notices my reluctance. “Or you can go. Either way is fine with me.”
The last two months have come with growing pains. My belly, my back, my ankles, and, for some inexplicable reason, my wrists. I asked Dr. Jaegar about the tingling in my fingers and my wrist pain, and he said it was likely carpal tunnel, but it should go away after my pregnancy.
“It’s one of the not-so-nice parts of pregnancy,” he said, which made me smile because I don’t care about those not-so-nice parts. I’m having the baby I always wanted, so if it comes with wrist pain for the entire length of my pregnancy, I won’t ever complain about it.
I still work part time at the coffee shop, and while I love working with the girls, I recognize that being on my feet for hours means it’s not a job I can continue throughout my entire pregnancy.
The second I’m off my feet, I’m wiped out, and I’ve started looking at stairs with dread.
If I feel this way now, I’m going to need someone to walk behind me and push me up them when I’m nine months pregnant.
Jackson hasn’t missed an appointment. He’s there early, waiting for me in the parking lot. We always park in the same area and walk to the appointment together.
And we talk in the backyard. It began with just fifteen or twenty minutes. We’d have long, painful silences, a series of awkward gaps that neither of us knew how to fill. Then the time increased.
We talk about the baby, the birth plan, and the birth classes at the local community center, where Jackson is going to come with me once a week on a Saturday afternoon. And we talk about therapy.
He doesn’t tell me everything about his therapy sessions, just small, surprising things he learned about himself.
Slowly, I’m seeing a change in my husband.
He was always present, happily the center of attention. The star hockey player. Jackson is more thoughtful now. He doesn’t blurt out the first thing that comes to his mind. He takes his time to figure out what he wants to say.
And the divorce is done. All the paperwork that is. In one month, or just after, depending on when my attorney can get before a judge, we’ll be standing in a courtroom, and he’ll be deciding whether to grant us a judgment of divorce and make it final or have us wait until the baby is born.
“I’ve been thinking…” I glance at Jackson. He has his body half-turned toward me, his full focus on me the way it always is. “About the nursery. There’s stuff in there that I know needs to go into the garage, and it needs painting.”
“I can have Wade, Dennis, or my dad come move it for you if you’re not comfortable with me doing it,” he immediately suggests, frowning.
“You shouldn’t do it yourself. And not just because you’re pregnant.
I can’t remember everything we have in there, but some of that old furniture is heavy. You’ll hurt yourself moving it alone.”
I hesitate, nearly asking him to come with me to the hardware store to pick out a paint color for the nursery.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
Getting up from the swing, I wince at a sharp jab; my hand moves instinctively to the source of the pain, my belly.
Jackson is up immediately, eyes filled with concern. “Are you in pain? Should I take you to the hospital?”
“He kicked.”
There’s a world of longing in Jackson’s face. His eyes are filled with need as his gaze shifts from mine to my belly, wanting to touch but unsure if I want him to.
Another jab comes again; this one is wince-inducing.
I grasp Jackson’s wrist, bring his hand closer, and press his palm against the lower right side of my belly. “There.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off mine as he flattens his palm on my bump.
For three seconds, nothing happens.
Kick.
I wince.
He sucks in a breath, eyes wide, and a slow, wide smile stretches across his lips. “Shit. He’s a kicker.”
I can’t help but grin back. “Yeah.”
His smile fades, and he suddenly looks worried. “Wait. He’s not kicking anything important, is he?”
I shake my head. “Not yet, but I guess I can learn to live with it if he decides to.”
His laughter prompts my own.
As we stare at each other, our amusement fades away. With his palm against my belly, a decade of memories and feelings floods my mind and body.
Suddenly, I’m aware of how close he is, of his eyes drifting to my mouth, of how it felt when he kissed me and how much I loved the way he would wrap his arms around me and tuck me closer to his chest.
But that life is over. Jackson ruined it and I can never forget that.
I edge back a step, and his palm falls away from my stomach. “I, uh, should go inside.”
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Bye, Ellie.”
I feel him watching me hurry back to the house, slip through the back door, and close it.
Only once I’m inside do I realize I didn’t say bye.
I just bolted as if some evil thing were chasing me.
I stand with my spine pressed up against the door, my eyes closed.
But they burn. With pain, with longing, with needs I should not let myself have.
The house feels so different without him, and so do I. I find myself aching for him…. reaching for him in the night… missing him. And I shouldn’t. He hurt me so badly, and I can’t invite that kind of pain back into my life again.
I won’t.
But those feelings, those aches, those desires exist in me anyway, and day by day, they are getting stronger.