Chapter 27
Elena
The clinic smells like lemon antiseptic and worn leather chairs.
I try to breathe through it, slow and even, but my entire body feels too rigid, too tight.
I smooth my hand over the curve of my belly, just slightly bigger now, rounder — a full four and a half months.
Halfway. The baby kicks sometimes, tiny flutters that feel like secrets, and I cherish every single one.
Harry left two nights ago. No kiss goodbye, no phone call, just a vague message passed through Matthew about an emergency in Switzerland regarding the construction delays, and he was gone. It felt sudden. Too sudden.
Like maybe he was running.
Like maybe George said something to him on that fucking fishing trip I’d tried to talk him out of.
“Sweetheart, you alright?”
A voice breaks through my incoming spiral, warm and gentle like maple syrup. I blink and look up, finding Mary, the midwife I’m finally getting to meet.
She’s standing in the doorway of the exam room in scrubs the color of the evergreen trees outside, her graying curls piled in a loose bun on top of her head.
Laugh lines crease her cheeks, and her eyes — pale blue, sharp, but kind — scan my face like what I’d imagine a good mother would do if she were checking on her kid.
Already, she’s nothing like Dr. Frasier.
Where Frasier is clipped and clinical, all scalpels and suspicion, Mary is soft-voiced and slow-moving, but not in a way that feels old. She just feels safe. She crosses the room and reaches for my hand, her skin cool and dry against mine.
“You’re shaking,” she says, her frown tugging the sides of her mouth down.
The sound that comes from me is almost a laugh. “Just a little nervous.”
I’d be more surprised if you weren’t,” she grins.
“Big day, this one.” She helps me up onto the table, positioning the pillow just right behind my back.
She leans over and flicks the monitor on for the ultrasound.
“We’re looking at organs, growth, spine, limbs — the whole lot. Making sure everything’s in its place.”
I swallow. “And the, uh — the sex?” I ask, fidgeting with the hem of my top.
“If baby’s in the mood to cooperate, yes,” she chirps. “We’ll take a peek.” She dims the lights and turns the screen toward me, booting everything up properly, then warns me quickly about the chill from the jelly before settling the probe against my skin.
The screen flickers with static. A blob appears on the monitor, and she moves the probe, adjusting it until the blob turns into multiple blobs and then turns into things that resemble tiny hands, a head, a body. A fluttering heartbeat thumps alongside my own through the speaker.
My throat closes. It’s such a clear image.
Mary smiles softly as she looks over at me. “Beautiful, isn’t it? These machines are fantastic.”
I nod, too choked up to speak. On the screen, the baby stretches a little, and I can feel every bit of movement inside of me.
“Baby looks good.” Mary presses a button, capturing a photo, before measuring something else. “Really good. Fluid levels look normal, measuring right where they should. Strong heartbeat too.”
The tension in my shoulders eases, just slightly.
But this still doesn’t feel right. I wasn’t supposed to be here alone.
I pull my phone out from my pocket and open the camera, aiming it at the screen.
The photo shoots off to Harry a moment later.
“He was supposed to be here,” I murmur, my voice a little broken, a hint of anger creeping in through the rest of the emotions.
“Harry?” she asks, her mouth flattening into a thin line.
I nod. There’s no point in explaining, no point in bitching about the man who signs her checks, no point in wondering out loud to her why he pulled away. Instead, I say nothing, watching instead on the monitor as Mary orbits around the baby’s head.
“Looks like him,” I rasp.
“Mmm, but you too.”
The scan moves on. More measurements, checking organs, a close-up on tiny, twitching fingers. It’s a miracle, watching it all unfold — seeing who is growing inside of me, knowing that I made half of them, knowing that they’re more real than they’ve ever been.
“Want to know what you’re having?” Mary grins, her face lighting up the second I nod. She tilts the probe, just a little, zooming in — and clicks once. “A girl.”
The words hit me like a gentle explosion.
A girl. A daughter. We’re having a girl.
The air in the room feels warmer, the fear draining a little. We have a sex, we have a pronoun to use, we have everything—
“A girl,” I echo, my voice trembling. “Oh my god.”
Mary chuckles and takes a few more photos, showing me as much as she can, before she puts the probe away and grabs a handful of paper towels.
She gently wipes my belly clean. “You want me to print off some of those photos for Harry?” she asks, her voice calm even though it feels like she’s poking her nose into a potential war zone.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “If you can.”
“Of course, sweetheart,” she grins, turning back to the machine.
She scrolls through the images she captured, hits print on a few of them.
“Now, I’ve not got anything else to do today and you seem a bit like an emotional wreck.
If I’m being entirely honest, I think what would be best for both of us is a massive stack of pancakes at Betty’s Diner. ”
————
Betty’s diner is the exact opposite of what my life has looked like lately.
It’s bright, plastic booths, black and white tiling, cheap coffee, and a view of the leaf-slicked sidewalk through booth-to-ceiling windows. It’s cheap, and it’s cozy, and the waitress smells of cigarettes and sounds like she’s got a frog stuck in her throat.
It’s fantastic.
Mary orders me pancakes with chocolate and strawberries before I can even get a word in.
“Carbs are your friend,” she says, sipping at her coffee. “Harry said you can be a bit funny with food.”
I pause with the creamer hovering over my cup of coffee.
He said that? He noticed? “I—uh, yeah, sometimes,” I admit, blinking through the awkwardness as I set down the cream.
She’s a medical professional — I probably shouldn’t hide it, even if this feels like I’m being treated to some kind of friendly outing and not speaking to my midwife.
“My mom was always really hard on me with food. Never really felt comfortable in my own skin because of it. I’m trying not to let it continue, especially not with her on the way, but it comes out more when I’m stressed. ”
She watches me for a long moment, then reaches across the table, her softly wrinkled hand wrapping around my palm.
Her grip is light, but it’s firm. “Look. I’ve known Harry a long time,” she says, turning my hand over onto the table.
“I knew Geraldine, too. I worked at that practice when she started coming in for migraines. That’s how I met the family. ”
She sighs and traces the length of my middle finger up to the tip.
“Harry’s not perfect,” she says. “He’s a lot of things. He’s guarded, he’s too serious, he’s stubborn as a goddamn mule. And I don’t mean this as an insult to you — but he loved that woman. More than himself, I think.”
I swallow. “Every time she’s brought up, people are either angry at him or he loses it,” I murmur. “What… happened?”
She takes a deep breath, mulling over her words.
“Geraldine had terminal cancer. Ovarian, to be exact. It was really aggressive, and by the time the doctors found it, it had metastasized. Her liver, her lungs, her intestines — it even got to her skin, believe it or not. It was too late to do anything other than brutally fight it for such a slim chance, or accept it and go into palliative care.”
My throat closes, my stomach turning. “I had no idea.”
Mary shrugs. “Most people don’t. Ger kept it really quiet,” she says. “She refused chemo. Said she didn’t want to fight when the odds were so low and she’d end up spending the last few weeks of her life miserable. I can’t blame her for that. That woman hated being pitied.”
I open my mouth, trying to work out the best way to ask the question that’s dancing on the tip of my tongue without throwing my husband under a bus. “I don’t understand,” I start, blinking down at my coffee. “Why do people blame him? If she had cancer.”
Mary shakes her head. “Because people are idiots,” she says. “Geraldine went on her own terms. She didn’t let the cancer take her out; she went out with pills in the middle of the night. It wasn’t exactly peaceful like you see in the movies. Harry’s the one who found her.”
Harry’s the one who found her. Jesus. “That doesn’t answer—”
“She did it before she’d told anyone other than Harry, if I remember correctly.
I knew, obviously. Frasier knew, but Frasier’s an arrogant prick who thinks every man with power is guilty of something, so I’m not surprised that he’s still of that mindset,” she says.
“But as far as I’m aware, most people weren’t informed about her cancer because she didn’t want it known. So to them…”
“…it looked like she was so depressed she killed herself,” I finish for her, sitting back in my seat. “Shit.”
Mary shrugs. “It was Harry’s decision to hide it. I assume Geraldine made it clear to him that she didn’t want it going around, but I have no idea. I don’t even think George knows what happened.”
The waitress sets down the stack of pancakes in front of me, and as good as it looks, my stomach is already in knots.
“Most people just assume Harry either killed her himself or made her so miserable that she took matters into her own hands,” Mary clarifies. “Frasier, I believe, thinks it's the latter. But he never liked Harry anyway, thought he was cold and controlling.”
“Do you agree with that?”
“He’s private,” she says, as if she’s correcting Frasier. “Not cold. He grieves in silence, always has. But he would’ve thrown himself off the roof before hurting her.”
I think I believe her. At least, mostly — but a sliver of doubt was planted when he disappeared and ignored me when he was meant to be coming back in time for today's appointment. But part of me knows that I won’t get anywhere with any of it if I don’t speak to him about all of it.
From the disappearance to the confusion surrounding Geraldine.
And god knows I have no idea how to even confront him about that without it seeming like an attack he’s likely received a million times over.