Epilogue 4
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— Handful —
Afew weeks later
I came into the clubhouse kitchen looking for a cold beer and found Holden with his head in the fridge, throwing food into a trash bag.
Eggs. Butter. Milk. Leftovers from breakfast.
“The hell are you doing?”
“Bea’s got food poisoning.” He didn’t stop. A jar of pickles went in the bag, glass and all. “Sick as a dog since last night. This is the last place we ate.”
I leaned on the counter and watched him clear an entire shelf. “You ate the same food.”
“So?”
“You ate the same food she did.” I cracked the beer I’d come in for. “You sick?”
He stopped, finally, a block of cheese in his fist. “No.”
“Huh.” I took a pull. And then it landed on me sideways, the way these things do. “Austen’s been throwing up too. All week. Couldn’t keep her coffee down yesterday, which—you know Austen and her coffee. We even had to miss the monthly Sunday at Mark’s. Said it was a headache.”
Holden looked at me over the open fridge door.
“Is anyone else sick?” Glitch didn’t even look up from his laptop when he asked.
“Indira,” Dutch said from the doorway, where he’d appeared the way he does, a beer already in his hand. “Said it must have been something she’d eaten.”
And that’s when Colt started laughing behind Dutch. “Your old ladies,” he managed, as he pointed at us one at a time, “do not have food poisoning.”
Nobody said anything.
“They’re pregnant, you absolute idiots.” He had to sit down to finish it. “All of them. At the same damn time. Food poisoning. Holden’s throwing out the butter.”
Dutch grinned. “Hell, yes.”
Holden sat down on the kitchen floor. Just sat, right there, cheese still in his fist, his back against the cabinets. “Pregnant?” he said, to no one. “A baby? Bea’s having a baby?”
And me—I whooped. Couldn’t help it. Loud enough that Holden flinched on the floor.
“What are the odds,” I said, to the room. “All of the old ladies. At once.” I screwed my face up and worked it backward. “Hang on. Did we all knock them up the same night?”
Nobody answered.
“Right.” I put the beer down. I had purpose now. “I’m setting up a pool. Due dates. Sex. Birth weight. Names—first and middle. And a column for what night we did it.” I pointed around the lot of them. “Twenty a square. Winner takes the pot.”
“Oh,” Colt said, like it was nothing, like he hadn’t been sitting on it for weeks. “Lilac’s pregnant. Further along than your old ladies—we’ve known a while.”
That stopped me. “You sat on it? You?”
“Had to.” He tried to shrug and couldn’t quite pull it off; he was lit up underneath. “We weren’t telling a soul until the scan told us how many we were dealing with this round.
“One,” he said, before anyone could ask. And then his whole face changed. “And the scan’s far enough along to tell. It’s a girl.”
The room came apart—Dutch grabbing him, somebody hollering for the rest of the club. And in the middle of it Colt went quiet.
Dutch noticed it too. “What?”
Colt looked up at him, and I swear the man had gone pale.
“A girl, Dutch.” His voice did something strange. “A girl.”
“Congratulations!”
“You don’t—no.” He dragged a hand down his face.
“A boy I know what to do with. I got four of them. A boy I can—but a girl. A little version of Lilac, with Lilac’s face.
” He looked genuinely ill. “How do I protect a girl? There are boys out there, Dutch. There’s —” He could barely get it out.
“There’s sex.” He said it the way you’d name a disease.
“No. She’s staying in. That’s the plan. Locked in her room till she’s twenty.
No outside contact. No phone. No talking to boys. Not one. Ever.”
Across the kitchen, Dutch had gone quiet too. I watched the man who’s faced down rooms full of armed men lose the color out of his face as it caught up to him: he’d been living Colt’s nightmare for a while now and just hadn’t said it out loud.
“Huh,” he said, faint, and set his beer down.
Glitch hadn’t looked up from his laptop through any of it. “She has four older brothers,” he said. “And every kid has a whole club of uncles standing behind him or her. Relax.” He tapped a key. “Nobody alive is dumb enough to mess with Venom—brother, old lady or kid.”