10. Valentina
VALENTINA
The thing about happiness is that I’ve never fully trusted it.
I’ve known it for a long time, the way you know things about yourself that you’d rather not.
I hold good things at a slight distance, turning them over, looking for the crack, waiting for the part where it stops being good.
My therapist calls it anticipatory grief. I call it being a Santoro, because everyone I grew up around understood that things can be taken and usually are.
The best things are the most fragile, and loving something too openly is basically an invitation for the universe to notice and intervene.
For two weeks after I tell Cillian I’m pregnant, I forget to do that.
For two whole weeks, I stop holding it at a distance. I stop waiting for the crack.
I let myself just have it.
The ginger tea in the mornings and his hand on my stomach at night and the pregnancy book open on his nightstand that he reads whenever he has a chance.
I let myself have the arguments about what to do with the second bedroom and the conversation about names that went nowhere except hilarious.
“Fergus,” he said seriously over breakfast two days after I told him I was pregnant.
I put down my coffee with a dull thunk. “Absolutely—and I cannot stress this enough—not.”
Cillian frowned. “Why not? It’s a good name. It’s traditional.”
I gaped at him before pursing my lips and crossing my arms. “It’s a name for a man who owns seventeen cats and argues about local planning permission. Our child is not going to be a Fergus, Cillian.”
“There have been great Ferguses throughout history—”
“Name one.”
A pause. “Fergus Mac Róich.”
My eyes nearly bulge out of my head. “That is a character from Irish mythology who was known primarily for having a sword that was compensating for something.” I picked my coffee back up before shooting him a sly smile.
“Which, now that I think about it, might actually be appropriate given who the father is—”
He kissed me to shut me up, and the name Fergus was never spoken aloud again.
I let myself have all of it and I stop bracing and I stop performing.
Two weeks. That’s what I get.
I come home early on a Monday.
Lunch with my mother runs short because she has a hair appointment she’d forgotten, which she remembers with twenty minutes’ notice.
She immediately begins gathering her things, a bit harried. My mother has never once in her life been late for anything she didn’t want to be late to.
“You’ll be alright getting home?” she asks, pausing with her coat half on, looking at me critically. It’s the same look she’s been giving me ever since I told her about the baby. It’s a look that’s assessing and warm at once, like she’s running a constant background check on my general okay-ness.
“I’m fine, Mamma,” I tell her. “Go. Your highlights will thank you.”
She raises one eyebrow at me, which lets me know she doesn’t appreciate my tone.
But that doesn’t faze me as she’s been giving me that look since I was a preteen.
She cups my face in both hands and kisses my forehead. I breathe in the scent of her perfume and the general comforting scent of my mother.
“Make sure you eat, Valentina. Something other than crackers and boxed macaroni and cheese.” She wrinkles her nose and I fight a smile.
My mother has always been horrified by my love for white trash foods, and boxed macaroni and cheese—especially the ones with the squeezable, bright yellow cheese—is high on her disgust list.
“I’ll try,” I lie.
Her eyebrows are so high I’m honestly surprised. Mamma must not have gotten Botox recently. “Valentina Isabelle.”
Yikes, the middle name. I raise my hands defensively. “I’ll eat something substantial,” I promise.
She studies my face for a moment longer, as if she’s trying to figure out if I’m telling the truth or not. Mamma sighs before patting my face gently.
“Call me tonight,” she says, already turning toward the door.
“I will.”
She leaves in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. I sit there for a moment in the suddenly quiet restaurant and I feel tired.
Profoundly, unreasonably tired.
The pregnancy app on my phone cheerfully describes this as fatigue in the same breezy tone it uses to describe everything, as if fatigue is a mild inconvenience and not my body staging a full-scale revolt against the concept of consciousness.
I consider the gallery.
I have three things I should deal with this afternoon, two emails I’ve been putting off, and a call with the artist for the monthly installation at four. I consider all of this for about five seconds before I text my driver and tell him to take me home.
The back seat is warm and smells like leather, and I rest my head against the window, watching the city go by in the grey light. I’m fighting to keep my eyes open before we’ve even hit Fifth Avenue.
My body has very clear opinions about what I should be doing and those opinions are lying down immediately, preferably forever.
I’ve been negotiating with it since I found out I’m pregnant and I’m constantly losing.
My eyes close somewhere around 65th Street and I jolt awake at 72nd with that lurching panicked feeling of someone who didn’t mean to fall asleep and isn’t sure how much time has passed.
I straighten up, smooth my coat, and look out the window.
I never used to be a person who fell asleep in cars in the middle of the afternoon, but this baby has other plans for me.
The building comes into view and the driver slows to a stop. “We’ve arrived, Mrs. Brennan,” my driver calls.
Mrs. Brennan. I’m still not used to my name change. Will I ever stop thinking of myself as Valentina Santoro? Magic 8 ball says unclear. I thank my driver, gather my things, and wait for him to open my door.
The whole way up to the penthouse, I sag against the wall, fighting the urge to close my eyes.
I can’t wait to crawl into bed and sleep for a few hours.
Growing this baby takes a lot out of me.
No one else told me that the exhaustion would be this bone deep. I’m going to have words with Emma next time I see her.
All I want is to take off these shoes and get horizontal and stay there until tomorrow.
The elevator opens and I drag myself into the foyer. I’m already calculating the number of steps to the bedroom and whether I can justify not taking my makeup off first when I hear Cillian’s voice from behind the study door.
I don’t even register it really, just file it as Cillian, work, fine, and keep moving toward the bedroom.
I hear him come out into the hall as I’m halfway to our room. I turn, already opening my mouth to tell him I’m taking a fat nap, but then I see his face.
He stops in the doorway when he sees me.
His eyes catch on me and hold and brows lift a fraction.
His mouth stills and for a split second his whole face tightens so quickly I almost think I imagined it.
Then it’s gone. His expression smooths out and he leans against the doorframe, easy, like nothing about this surprises him.
But I saw it, and my stomach has already registered it before my brain has caught up.
“You’re home early,” my husband remarks in his normal voice.
“Mamma had an appointment.” I keep my voice easy. “Good call? Everything okay?”
“Work.” He pushes off the doorframe and heads to the kitchen. “It’s nothing important.”
I follow him, watching as he crosses to the fridge and gets a water. He drinks it with his back slightly toward me. He checks his phone, then he sets it face down on the counter.
I look at the phone. Then at him.
He never puts his phone face down.
“How was lunch?” he asks.
“Fine. Short.” I keep watching him. I can’t stop watching him.
“Good.” He opens the fridge again and stands there for a second looking into it before he closes it.
He moves to the cabinet and opens it before closing it a few seconds later.
My mouth dries. He’s been in this kitchen a hundred times and he just opened the fridge and a cabinet and got nothing from either of them. Something is wrong.
“You should rest,” he says, still not quite looking at me. “You look tired.”
I nod, swallowing heavily. “I am. I’m going to take a nap.”
“Good idea.”
I nod and steal another glance at him before I head to the bedroom. But instead of lying down, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the hardwood floors, thinking about the look on Cillian’s face when he saw me.
He wasn’t talking to Connor.
I don’t have a reason for that thought. It’s just—Connor calls have a certain flavor to them.
Whenever Cillian gets off the phone with Connor, his jaw is tight and he’s quieter than usual.
Sometimes he pours himself a drink before he does anything else. That’s Connor. I know that version.
What I saw in that hallway was different.
The quick surprise on his face.
The specific phrasing of nothing important—not just Connor or work stuff but nothing important. “Nothing important” is what you say when you don’t want to divulge information.
I reach into my bag for my phone.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I just need something to do with my hands.
I put it back.
Okay, I need to think about this logically. I came home early and surprised my husband on a work call.
He wasn’t expecting me to be home so early and why would he? Lunches with my mother can last several hours.
Of course he was surprised.
And why would he ever tell me details about work?
I generally don’t want to know and he knows that.
So why am I now cataloguing his facial expressions like I’m looking for something?
I lie back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
There’s a faint water mark just left of the light fixture to stare it.
He has complicated work and I know better than to expect full transparency about any of it.
And the fact that he took a call and didn’t immediately debrief me on it is not—
My stomach roils and I press my hand flat against it, breathing through my nose, waiting to see if the wave is going to peak or pass. It sits there, heavy and insistent, not quite either.
I keep my hand on my stomach, trying to figure out if what I’m feeling is the nausea or something else.
I can’t tell.
They feel the same right now.