Epilogue
VIOLET | TWO SUMMERS LATER | HOVLAND, MINNESOTA
“Come on, sweetie. Not even a sip of margarita? The sour might help your stomach.”
Colton’s mom sat in the pool chair next to mine on their deck facing Lake Superior. I sat with the family’s designated lake house puke receptacle in my lap. Every family has their own. For the Joneses, it was a popcorn bowl. The margarita near my face smelled like poison.
I was wearing a lightweight white sweatsuit, trying to avoid both the sun and the heat.
It was my third day in a row of feeling like absolute shit. I was on my first of a two week stint at the lake house in northern Minnesota.
“No thanks, Janice,” I said, eyes and mouth watering with the urge to hurl again. “It’s just a stomach bug. Just has to run its course.”
“Well, at least we got you out in the sun. Bake it out of you.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I grumbled.
Colton and his dad stood by the grill, which Colton had carefully arranged to be downwind from my perch.
They were cooking up their catch from the morning’s fishing expedition, which I skipped in favor of sleeping through some of my sickness.
Colt’s eyes were worried watching me. His dad was still talking to him when he started to walk my way.
When he got to my side, he sat on the edge of my pool lounger.
“How you doing, baby?” He patted my cheek and leaned in to deliver a soft kiss.
“Don’t kiss me. I’ll get you sick.”
Colt kissed my forehead, air puffing from his nose into my hair. “I’m not worried about it.”
“Where’s the closest Wendy’s?” I asked.
Colt’s lips twitched. “Already looked it up. Four hours, forty-two minutes.”
“Dammit,” I moaned. “I’d probably just bring it right back up anyway. Best not to lose the joy of Wendy’s.”
He tucked my hair behind my ear and snorted a laugh. “Probably for the best.”
Saying all that took it out of me, and I rested my head back against my chair, closing my eyes. Colt moved an umbrella to cover me and ducked into the house. He came back out with my favorite of Janice’s knit blankets, tossing it over me. “Thank you,” I croaked.
Colt sat on the edge of my chair and rubbed my arm. He held up my water cup and put the straw to my lips. I took a tiny sip and burrowed down into the blanket.
“Lil’ watermelon?” he asked, pressing a Sour Patch watermelon against my lips.
I opened to accept the candy, the only thing that would give me even a second’s relief from this nausea.
The sourness spread over my tongue as the wind rushed through the pines all around the property, a whisper punctuated by abundant birdsong.
At least if I had to be sick as a dog, I was in a beautiful place.
“Get some rest, doc. Sorry you still feel like crap.”
“Sorry I’m ruining vacation,” I mumbled.
His lips met my forehead again. “You could never.”
“Violet? Baby, can you wake up?”
Worried voices surrounded me as I dozed in and out of consciousness.
“I’ll just drive her. They’ll take forever to get here.”
“At least put on some real pants,” Janice argued. “Get something to eat. You don’t know how long you’ll be there. She won’t dry up if you leave her out here for two minutes.”
I tried to peel my eyes open, but they felt cemented shut.
“I’m going now.”
“You have to wear a shirt, Colton,” came his father’s gruff voice. “Just take mine.”
There was some shuffling and then the comforting smell of Colt’s sunwarmed skin filled my nose. I curled into Colton as he lifted me off my chair, wrapped in the warmth of the squishy knit blanket. “Where are we going?”
“We’re getting a doctor to look at you, doc.”
“Bring my bowl,” I said, then coughed.
“We’ll get you fixed up, baby.” I’d never heard Colton sound so worried, but I was too tired to let it affect me.
“Drive careful!” Janice called as I was placed in the SUV’s passenger seat. “Call us when you get there!”
Colt reclined the seat so I could rest and buckled me in. He climbed in his side, turned on the car, and immediately silenced the country music on the radio with a frazzled “SHUT UP!”
I giggled and watched him through my tired eyes. Colt looked over at me and patted my leg. He released a harried sigh. “You would think this is funny.”
I woke to bright lights and a very tired-looking Colt, wearing swim trunks and his dad’s Margaritaville Hawaiian shirt. “There she is.”
I went to sit up and he rushed to help me. “Careful. Don’t lose your IV.”
“I don’t feel sick anymore,” I said. “Just a little dizzy.”
Colt’s thumb brushed my cheek. “Yeah, they gave you some meds and fluids. But hey, they asked when your last period was. I said I didn’t know.”
“Oh, gosh. I’d have to look at a calendar,” I said.
A face popped between the curtains. “Hey! You’re up.” The nurse entered the room and logged into the computer. “How are you feeling, Violet?”
“Better. Way better.”
“Good. You gave your man quite the scare there.” She winked at me. “I’d keep him if I were you. He’s a sweetheart.”
I gripped Colton’s hand, examining the sparkling diamond on my ring finger. “I was planning on it.”
She got my vitals, then gave me a long, hard look. “Know when your last period was?”
Colton handed me his phone with the calendar app open, and I examined it. “I guess I had some light bleeding three or four weeks ago.”
The nurse bobbed her head. “I’ll send the doctor in to see you. She’ll just be a minute or two.”
I gave Colton a worried look after she left us alone. “What do you think that’s about?”
His eyes combed over me. “You don’t think . . . I mean, it’s not impossible, right?”
“A baby?” I asked.
We weren’t trying by any means, but we weren’t not trying.
I stopped taking my birth control during the playoff season, and we decided we’d just do what we normally did and see what happened.
I’d had a little spotting a few weeks earlier and didn’t think much of it.
Periods are weird when you’ve been on birth control for a long time.
Colt’s eyes went misty and he got a soft smile.
“What if something’s wrong?” I asked.
“We’re about to find out. Whatever it is, we’ve got each other. Right?”
I nodded, suddenly super emotional over something that hadn’t even been confirmed yet.
The doctor opened the curtain seconds later and introduced herself, then stood at the computer, looking over my chart. “So, your nurse told me you might not be aware . . .”
Colton and I both leaned closer, waiting for the rest of her sentence.
“That you are pregnant.”
I turned my head to look at Colton but he was already on his feet, wrapping me into a hug. “Vi,” he breathed. “Oh my god.”
“I’m . . . pregnant,” I said slowly.
Colton said my name over and over, coughing out shocked laughs between every few repetitions. He pulled back, grabbed both of my cheeks, and pulled me into a forceful kiss.
The doctor gave us time to react, but she didn’t seem nearly as excited as we were. When I looked over at her again, a machine had been wheeled into my curtained room.
“We need to do an ultrasound to make sure the baby’s okay. Normally, we’d just tell you to follow up with your OB, but some of your numbers are higher than they’d be if your light bleeding was an implantation bleed. The ultrasound will tell us how far along you are and how healthy the baby is.”
The emotional whiplash was jarring. We were having a baby! But maybe something was wrong. I looked to Colton for some reassurance, but he looked as shocked as I felt.
“Oh. Okay,” I mumbled. “Um.” I lifted the bottom of the hospital gown, and the doctor gave me a sympathetic glance.
“The scan is actually intra-vaginal. We wouldn’t see enough this early through your stomach.”
“Oh. Right.” I should have known all those things. I was, at one time, pre-med. I’d gotten the blow by blow of Maya’s pregnancies. I knew what happened here. I was just too stunned to wrap my head around it.
I was pregnant. Colton and I were expecting a child.
Going to be parents.
Assuming this scan showed good things.
I let the doctor position me, and Colton moved so he could sit on the bed next to me and hold my hand.
“We got this,” he whispered.
The doctor covered the ultrasound wand in a latex sheath, then squirted it with lube.
“Is that a condom?” Colt asked. “Haven’t used one of those in a while.”
I shook my head. “Oh my god, Colt.”
“What? That’s kinda why we’re here. You wouldn’t be this sick if . . . you know.”
The doctor held back a laugh, but went quiet as she inserted the wand into me, eyes focused on the screen that only she could see. My heart pounded and Colt tightened his grip on my hand. The silence between the three of us was palpable, a monster filling every molecule of air in the space.
Her eyes were warm when she finally turned to us again. “Everything looks healthy. You’re about seven weeks along, almost eight.”
“Vi.” Colton gasped and looked the happiest I’d ever seen him in my life. Happier than when I told him I loved him for the first time for real, happier than when my dad gave him his blessing to marry me, happier than when I said I’d marry him.
“Ready to see them?” the doctor asked, mischief in her eyes.
My heart must have stopped. “Them? Because we don’t know the sex?”
Colton’s eyes went impossibly wide. “No way. It can’t be.”
The doctor beamed as she clicked and typed. “Now we know why you’re so sick.”
She wheeled the screen so we could see it.
My eyes passed over the image, the two dark circles with two bright spots inside ricocheting off the inside of my head, impressing themselves on me, a part of me forever. A part of us. “Colt,” I choked out. “That’s—”
His cheeks were wet staring at the ultrasound screen. “No fucking way.”
The labels were unmistakable. Baby A. Baby B.
I couldn’t control my tears. “Our babies.”
“That’s them,” he breathed.
Colton bent to kiss my stomach, once, twice, and we were so wrapped up in each other that we jumped when the doctor turned up the sound on the machine.
A cacophony of thumps hit my ears as two new hearts beat, two hearts that we made from our own.
All the jokes, all the time we lost because we both had to grow, all the heartache and the love that made the homecoming so sweet, that made the rest of our lives so promising, reached a new high.
“Just so I’m clear, that’s two, not four, right?” Colton asked.
“Just two,” the doctor laughed. “Congratulations, Mom and Dad. You’re having twins.”