Chapter 19 Wyatt #2
Mr. Follett looks up from the till. He has put two pancakes and a side of bacon down in front of Matthew and a coffee in front of Caleb.
“Sit, hon,” he says to Julian. “Coffee’s at the counter when you want it.”
“Thank you, but I’ll join here.”
He slides into the booth on Caleb’s side and takes the seat opposite mine, next to Matthew.
Matthew puts a forkful in his mouth and chews it slowly while looking at Julian. Julian looks at the table. The tips of his ears have gone red.
The drive to Eastfield is an hour and ten minutes on the back highway.
Julian’s car smells of new plastic and rental-lot cleaner and underneath both of those, faint, of him.
He drives. I sit in the passenger seat. The boys are in the back.
Caleb has his hood back up. I watch him in the side mirror once and then I leave him alone.
Julian breathes in through his nose, slow. He is doing it on purpose. I can see the rise of his chest. He is breathing me, the way I am breathing him, and neither of us is saying so, and the cab of the car is small enough that the air has nowhere else to be.
Biscuit is in the footwell behind Caleb’s seat with her chin on his boot.
We’d dropped her at Donna’s on the way through last week, when the heat came on, and Matthew had made me promise twice she could come home with us after.
She had. She wasn’t leaving Matthew’s side again if she could help it.
We drop the boys in the parking lot of the strip mall on the east side of Eastfield.
It is the kind of mall a city alpha would not call a mall.
There is a discount shoe store and a pet supply place and a multiplex that shows three movies.
Caleb takes cash. He counts it in his pocket without looking. He says, “Two hours.”
“Two and a bit. I’ll send you a message when we leave the clinic.”
Caleb turns. He puts a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. Matthew waves at us with his small free hand and lets Caleb walk him toward the multiplex doors. The automatic doors open and they go in, then they are gone.
Julian breathes out.
The clinic is a low building set back from the road behind a parking lot with two trees in it.
There is a sign in the window that says family planning, prenatal, women’s health, men’s health, walk-ins welcome.
The receptionist takes my name and my date of birth and the booking reference from the appointment letter. She looks at Julian.
“Is this the partner?”
I say nothing for a half-second. Julian says, smooth as the day I met him, “Yes.”
“Just need the date of birth.”
He gives it. She types. She prints a wristband with my name on it and snaps it round my wrist. The plastic is cold on my skin.
“Take a seat. The sonographer will call you through.”
We sit. There are six chairs against the wall and nobody else in them.
There is a low table with a stack of leaflets.
One of the leaflets is about the importance of folic acid.
Another is about whooping cough vaccinations.
A third has a picture of a young couple holding a baby and looking at each other, the kind of stock photograph that could be selling anything.
Julian is looking at the leaflet. The door at the end of the room opens. A woman in her forties with her hair pulled back puts her head out.
“Mr. Briggs?”
I stand up.
“Through here. You can bring your partner.”
We follow her through.
The room is small and dim. There is a bed with a paper sheet on it and a machine beside the bed and a screen on the wall above the machine. The sonographer washes her hands. She talks while she is washing.
“How are we today, Mr. Briggs? Any concerns since the last scan?”
“No.”
“Wonderful. Pop yourself up onto the bed for me. Shirt up to here. The gel will be cold but I’ll warm my hands. Partner, you can sit on that stool there. Whichever side you’d like.”
Julian sits on the stool to the left of the bed.
The sonographer puts the gel on me and I shiver.
“Just going to put a little pressure on. There. There we are.”
She moves the wand. The screen goes black, then grey. There is the sound of the machine, a soft electronic hum and then a thicker sound like rushing water.
“There’s the heartbeat,” she says. “Lovely strong one.”
I cannot speak.
“Have a listen.”
She turns a dial. The room fills with it. It is fast, too fast for an adult heart, fast and even and clean and it is the sound of my child.
Julian makes a noise.
It is not a word. It is a small sound at the back of his throat, and then he puts his hand on the rail of the bed beside my hand without touching my hand, and his fingers close on the rail.
“And here,” the sonographer is saying. “Here’s the head, here’s the spine, this is a foot, this is — yes, there we are, here is the other foot. Good positioning. Good size. Have a look, Dad.”
She angles the screen.
The picture comes clear.
The baby is curled. It is on its side with its knees tucked up. I can see the white curve of its head and the dark of its eye-socket, and the hand, clear as anything.
Julian’s hand is on the rail.
“Would you like to know the sex?” the sonographer says, kindly. “Sometimes I can see at this stage and sometimes I can’t, but I can tell you if you’d like.”
Julian looks at me.
“Yes,” I say, to the screen because if I look at Julian I am going to start crying. “Yes. Tell us.”
“It’s a little girl.”
Julian makes the sound again.
His hand comes off the rail. It comes onto mine. His fingers slide between mine and they hold.
I do not pull my hand away.
The sonographer is talking in the background, gentle and professional, about measurements and percentiles and the next appointment.
I am not listening. Julian is not listening.
Julian is looking at the screen and the screen is showing our daughter and his hand is on my hand, and I find that I am crying, quietly, without sound.
The small curled shape of her on the wall does not know any of us yet.
She moves.
It is the same flutter I felt on the trough by the barn, only this time I see her do it. Her small foot kicks once against the inside of me, and on the screen, in the black-and-white shape of her, I watch her do it, and I feel her do it, at the same time.
Julian’s hand tightens on mine.
He is the one who speaks first.
He says, very low, “Hi.”
He is talking to her.
.