Epilogue
“Itold you. You can come along to the Festival on one condition: you take breaks to sit. But I haven’t seen you sit once,” Adam said as he gently ushered me into a folding chair. I scooted around my big pregnant belly trying to get comfortable, but it was impossible. I hadn’t been comfortable in months.
“Fine, I’ll sit down,” I said with a big sigh. When we found out my due date was the day after the Summer Festival, Adam had turned to me there in the doctor’s office, knowing there was no way to keep me from attending, and made me promise I would take it easy.
Everyone in the family had assumed that we had secretly planned for my due date to happen this way, but we hadn’t. I get their thinking, since only a couple of years ago, Adam had dropped to one knee at this very festival, a diamond ring nestled into a bouquet of daisies and asked me to marry him.
Met because of the summer festival, proposed to at the festival, decided to get married at the festival, have your first baby at the festival. Except, this baby’s due date had not been planned. Just like falling in love with Adam hadn’t been part of the plan.
“Do you need anything?” my mom asked, anxiously touching my forehead.
“I’m fine, Mom. Uncomfortable, but fine.” I knew that even if I started contractions here, I had time. I wouldn’t just pop out the baby during the school choir’s performance of Summer Lovin.
Adam’s brother, Dylan, and his wife had flown out with their newborn baby, my tiny pink niece, so they could be here when our little girl was born. They were pushing the stroller around the festival while Adam propped my feet up on a folding chair in front of me, since all the parent-to-be books talked about the benefits of “putting your feet up.”
The weekend after our first prenatal appointment, Adam came home with a towering stack of parent-to-be and newborn care books. He studied and highlighted. I would peruse his notes sometimes.
I’ve learned as I started to realize back in our bickering days, that was just how Adam loves. That studious way of his. When we first started dating, Adam started learning about painting. He was known as Mr. Lucy by my students and was always the first one there when it was time for me to start setting up my classroom. He was the most enthusiastic member of the Rhodes family group chat. And don’t get me started on how this man figured out the perfect way to kiss me.
Adam’s coworkers also called Adam Mr. Lucy since I got off work before him and often waited for him on the city steps. They said they’d see him glancing at the clock and starting to get giddy when his workday was wrapping up, knowing I was waiting for him outside. The clock struck five and they said he’d practically run out the door to me.
I waited for him on the City Hall steps like that the day I found out I was pregnant.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he called as the doors closed behind him. “Whatcha got there?” He pointed toward the freshly painted canvas sitting at my feet.
“I’ve made two new Lucy Rhodes originals,” I said. My voice was shaky with nerves.
“I get to be the first to see them? I’m honored.” He grinned, playing along. Though I could tell he was a little confused because I didn’t often carry paintings around like this.
I flipped around the canvas painted with thick brush strokes of acrylic; a silhouette of a family of three walking in downtown Sweet River at twilight. A dad, a mom, and a little child skipping between them.
Adam took it in, his eyes searching. “I love it,” he said, his words a compliment, his tone a question.
I swallowed, remembering years ago painting First Kiss in my extra room. “I’ll call this one First Baby.”
He nodded, his eyes registering the news. Then he glanced around the concrete steps. “You said there were two pieces?” His voice hopeful.
I stood up and pointed to my stomach. “You helped with the second. So, it’s a Lucy and Adam original, really.”
Tears rolled down his face. He breathed out, “We’re having a baby?”
“We’re having a baby,” I squealed. He picked me up and spun me around. My heart snapped a photo in that moment. That was the real picture of First Baby.
I closed my eyes to the blazing July sun, remembering that moment. Festival chatter roared around me, my mom and Adam discussed my health, and the smell of peach ice cream and buttery popcorn hung in the air. Maybe I fell asleep for a moment and it was a strange pregnancy dream, but it felt like Grandma was sitting in a chair beside me, shaking an icy glass of lemonade as she said in that knowing way of hers, “You’re welcome.”
Because Grandma Rhodes left so much more to me than I realized when she left the summer festival to me.
Tight, fiery pain woke me from my summer slumber. I knocked the chair under my feet down as I crouched over, trying to breathe through the pain. Adam and my mom snapped their attention to me.
“Adam,” I said, looking up at him, half laughing and half crying. “I think Clara is coming early.”