Chapter 27 Rowan
ROWAN
The afternoon sun pours through the blinds in tired slats, striping the bedroom with gold and shadow. Charleston heat does this thing where it sits on the windows and watches you breathe, then decides to climb inside. Nothing like Ireland with its easy, crisp-aired summers.
Willow is propped into a geometry of pillows that would impress an engineer—two behind her back, one under each elbow, one long one under her knees, another shaped like a comma that supports the side of her belly.
Third trimester with triplets looks like a small miracle and a big math problem. She’s beautiful and pale and uncomfortable and stubborn about all three.
“I feel like a beached mermaid,” she mumbles, tugging her sleep shirt down to cover the wedge of skin where one of the babies keeps trying to practice martial arts.
“A beached mermaid would have scales,” I say, adjusting the long pillow so it doesn’t cut into the curve of her calves. “You have freckles and opinions.”
She snorts, which makes her wince, which makes me feel like a monster. “Don’t make me laugh,” she begs, half smiling. “Everything shakes when I laugh.”
“Duly noted. Humor embargo.” I ease the long pillow again until she nods. “Better?”
“Better,” she says, then wiggles—careful, slow—to coax a heel out of her rib cage. When the heel relents, she exhales and lets herself sink.
Beside the nightstand, Declan checks her blood pressure with the same soft focus he uses on anxious patients who pretend they’re not anxious. The cuff gives a slow sigh. He writes the number on a sticky note and sticks it to the lamp base like we’re building a tiny hospital out of furniture.
Sean leans in the doorway, eating a Granny Smith apple. “You know,” he says around a bite, “there’s a pizza place that does a discount for every kid you’re carrying. Triplets is basically a whole pie.”
Willow and I both turn to give him a look that makes him retreat instantly.
“She’s not dizzy,” Declan says, voice low like he’s speaking to the weather. “Headache’s down from this morning. Swelling is minimal.” His eyes find mine. We’re good for now. The sticky note gleams fluorescent yellow like it agrees.
“What I am,” Willow says, “is hot.”
“Cool washcloth incoming,” I say, and go to the bathroom to resoak and wring out the washcloth.
When I lay it across her forehead, she closes her eyes and lets her body trust me with the small thing.
I can do small things. They’ve let me be useful fetching things here and there.
It’s easier than trying to find a niche.
Declan taps his watch. “Fifteen minutes and we turn Willow like she’s a rotisserie chicken,” he announces. “We’re not growing bed sores in my presence.” Willow gives him a weak middle finger. He kisses it. “Love you too.”
I could do this every day. The quiet competence, the half jokes, the way the room breathes with us. It feels like a lesson I wasn’t given as a kid and am now getting as extra credit. Family as a verb.
Willow’s phone trills on the dresser. She glances at the screen and reaches for it. I snap it up for her and put it in her hand. She puts it on speakerphone. “Hey, Chey! The guys are here with me!”
“Okay.” Cheyenne’s voice fills the room, and it’s obvious instantly that something is wrong.
“What? What’s wrong?” Willow’s voice is panicky, like she’s already imagined it.
“Your mom called me.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you? I’m just not ready. I know I have to eventually, but—”
“She’s on her way to your house with Camille. Now.”
Silence becomes a living creature in the room.
The air pivots on a hinge. I press the washcloth harder against her forehead as she goes white.
“Oh…oh no,” she says. “How long do I have?” It’s the kind of question you ask a doctor who’s given you a diagnosis, not the kind of question you ask about your family coming to visit.
She chews on her bottom lip, and it starts to bleed.
“Thirty minutes, tops.”
“Thirty—”
“I told her that she should call you first, but, Willow, she was just hell-bent on surprising you.” Willow doesn’t say anything, her eyes fixed on a wall.
I look up at Declan and Sean, who have gone mute, watching her like a car crash.
“I’m coming now. I’ll be there for you when she finds out, okay? ”
“Okay,” Willow answers softly, too softly. “Thanks.” She hangs up and takes the washcloth off her head, letting it drop to the mattress beside her.
Sean starts first. “They don’t know about the—” He gestures in the general direction of Willow’s planet of a belly, like a man trying to refer to the moon without spooking it.
“No,” Willow says, breath shallow. “They don’t.”
“And they don’t know about…us,” Declan adds, choosing the us like a scalpel cut—clean, precise.
“No,” Willow says again.
I hold the washcloth in midair, suddenly unsure what part of the ritual is still useful when an asteroid is headed for our living room. “Okay,” I say. It comes out strangled. I clear my throat. “Okay,” I repeat. “We can do this.”
“Can we?” Willow whispers. Her eyes have forgotten how to blink. The babies shift as if they’re trying to read the room too.
I kneel by the bed, take her hand, and do the thing I learned the hard way—name the scary animal. “Your mom and sister are coming,” I say. “They don’t know you’re pregnant with triplets. They don’t know about us. That is…a lot of oxygen for one fire. But we can regulate the burn.”
“Are you doing a metaphor right now?” she asks, blinking at me.
“I was,” I say. “And now I’m done with it.”
She nods briskly. “Good metaphor. Ten out of ten. Okay, division of labor.” She starts pointing like an air-traffic controller.
“Declan, you’re on medical. You are Dr. Soothing.
Show them charts if they get amped. Show them breathing if they get judge-y.
Sean, you’re hospitality. Food, drinks, distracting jokes, zero flirting with older relatives no matter how much they flirt with you back. ”
Sean puts a hand to his chest. “I am offended and yet seen.”
“And Rowan,” she starts.
“I’m you,” I tell her.
“What?”
“You’re going to need someone to stand with you and hold your boundaries firm. You’re in a little bit of a compromised position,” I point out.
Declan furrows his brow. “That’s a good idea. Don’t let her get up. Rotate her every fifteen minutes.”
“Stop talking about rotating me!” Willow hisses.
Declan nods at her placatingly but then says quietly to just me, “If she gets dizzy or says anything about sparkles, call 911.”
“You’re bossy,” Willow snaps.
“I’m efficient,” Declan defends himself.
“If you’re so efficient, how have you missed that someone should put away the evidence, for God’s sakes?” Willow whispers fervently. She points. The living room. The couch. The envelope tucked into the crack like a secret you can feel if you sit the wrong way.
Declan nods once. “I’ll handle it.” He sweeps into the living room, a man on a mission to hide the government. Sean disappears into the kitchen and starts a storm of clinks. I take Willow’s hand and feel the tremor there, tiny but relentless.
“Breathe with me?” I ask.
She nods, and I lead her through the pattern I use when panic would like to put its mouth over my mouth.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Again. Again. The babies shift under my palm where it rests on the high drum of her belly.
They are so here. I would stand between them and any force on Earth if I could do it with my body.
She calms some. Not all the way. That’s fine. Terror has a right to a seat; it just doesn’t get to drive.
“What do we say?” she asks, after a minute.
“What do you want to say?” I counter.
She looks at the ceiling as if the right answer might be stenciled up there. “That I’m pregnant,” she says, shy and proud and scared all at once. “That I’m doing my best. That I am loved. That I chose this.” Her eyes slide to me and don’t quite make it without breaking. “That I am not alone.”
“I can say that,” I tell her. It feels like being given someone’s most expensive glass and told to drink and not drop it.
Sean reappears with a tray like a sitcom but better—little bowls of cut fruit, the crackers Cheyenne says are the best crackers, tea, lemon honey warm in a mug, and something sugary he must have conjured from the back of a cabinet.
He’s changed shirts in the thirty seconds he was gone.
’Tis possible Sean can teleport; we’ll investigate later.
“Welcome committee menu,” he announces, setting it on the nightstand.
“Tea, because moms love tea. Honey, because voices get loud and honey makes them quiet. Fruit, because everyone pretends to want fruit when they’re nervous.
And these little cookies I found that are probably stale but look great. ”
Declan returns, tucking his phone into his back pocket, envelope vanished.
“Secured,” he says. He’s also straightened the living room at a level that borders on spiritual cleansing.
“I put away the extra toothbrushes. We’ll follow your lead, Willow.
I’ll speak if it turns to health and they need facts. ”
“They will,” Willow says, half-grim. “Mom loves a fact when she can use it for feelings.”
Sean grins. “What a family trait.” She tosses a cracker at him and it crumbles on the ground. “I guess I’ll find out if violence is hereditary too.”
Fifteen minutes disappear in the frantic version of domesticity.
Sean fusses with the guest room as if her mother and sister could sleep there—fresh sheets, a candle he swears is “not too sexy.” Declan checks the bathroom like a hotel manager.
I help Willow to her side, a small, careful shift, the kind of delicate move you practice on a doll before you try it on a person you love.
She clutches my shoulder and exhales. I breathe with her until the world stops seesawing.
We dress the room in a way that will send the message we want—soft light, no chaos. We move like we were born to adjust the environment for a safe landing. I wish I could show past versions of me this exact moment and say, See? It happens. You make a unit. You keep each other alive.
“Clothes,” Willow mutters suddenly, peering down at her oversized sleep shirt. “I look like a laundry basket.”
“You look like the ocean,” I say, and then want to eat my own tongue for coming on too poetic at a time like this.
She smiles anyway. “Find me the blue robe? The one with the white flowers.”
It hangs on her closet door, right where I guessed it would be.
I help ease her arms, tie the sash gentle over the highest curve so she looks less like a shipwreck and more like a queen at anchor.
Her hair is an argument with humidity; I lose and then I win by giving it a loose braid over one shoulder, leaving wisps where wisps want to live.
When I lay my palms briefly over her belly to say hi, the babies push back.
I push back once, lightly, and hope they understand that’s a kind of promise.
“You’re good at this,” she says, voice quiet enough that Sean and Declan won’t hear and make it a joke.
“I want to be,” I say honestly, the easiest response I can come up with.
She watches me a beat longer, seeing something I’m not brave enough to say out loud, and then the doorbell rings. We all freeze like cartoon burglars. Sean recovers first, slapping his hands against his thighs. “Right,” he says to no one. “Showtime.”
“Let them knock again,” Willow says, squeezing my fingers hard enough to hurt in a way I welcome. “I need one second.”
We stand in the quiet. Her breathing evens. The babies shift. Her eyes find mine; I nod. She nods back, captain to first mate. “Okay,” she says. “Let them in.”
From the bed, I watch the tiny slice of front hall I can see through the bedroom door. The bell goes again. Declan opens to voices that fill the house in a wave—bright, familiar, carrying the smell of outside and box bakery.
“Hello,” Declan says, warm. “Come in.”
“Who are you?” the sister asks immediately.