15. Duncan #2
She nodded. "Yeah. I…I guess I never really considered any other option." She looked at me. "Do you…do you have any thoughts on that, Duncan?"
"I mean, I feel like I don't really get an opinion, Rune. It's not my body, it's yours. I support any decision you make."
"I appreciate that, but what's your personal opinion?"
"That is my personal opinion. Men shouldn't have any say in what women do with their bodies, legally or otherwise.
" I shrugged. "I believe life is precious, but so is bodily autonomy.
And while there are circumstances where there just may not be any other choice but to terminate, this doesn't seem like that kind of a situation to me.
But, it's not my life, not my future, and not my body. "
She nodded. "Your mother raised you well," she said.
"And my dad. He raised Dane and I to respect women." I laughed. "Plus, my sister is kinda scary."
Rune sighed. "I'm keeping it. Like I said, I've never really considered anything else."
“That's settled, then. I just…I guess I felt like I had to get that question out of the way so I know we're on the same page."
"How does this work, Duncan?" she asked, looking at me. "You and me." She touched her belly. "This."
I shook my head and shrugged. "I don't know."
“Well, in a perfect world, what would it look like for you?" she asked.
"Rune, I…"
She drew her legs up to sit cross-legged, turning to face me. "Answer the question, Duncan. And be honest."
"Thinking selfishly, you mean?" I asked.
“Yes," she said.
"In my selfish, perfect world, you'd live in Ketchikan with me. We'd come back here as often as possible. It's a five-and-a-half-hour flight. Not nothing, but not crazy, either. Doable for a long weekend, easily." I shrugged. "That's my honest, selfish answer."
"I'm an LA girl, Duncan," she said. "I'm worried Alaskan winters would kill me."
I laughed. "Rune, I think you're falling victim to a common misconception about Ketchikan.
We're actually located in a temperate rainforest region.
Our winters are actually more like Seattle's.
People from the Lower Forty-Eight think of Alaska and they think every city in Alaska gets forty-six feet of snow and is dark year-round.
The reality in Ketchikan, though, is that most winters we get more rain than snow, and it tends to stay above freezing for the most part.
Yeah, thirty-eight will be cold as hell to a SoCal girl, but it's not the Arctic Circle.
It's not Gnome. When you think ‘Alaskan winter,’ that's what you're envisioning—the sun setting in November and not rising until January, temperatures in the teens, and tons of snow. It's not like that where I live."
She frowned thoughtfully. “Really? You're not making that up to trick me into moving there?"
I snorted. “That would be a pretty stupid trick, Rune. You'd make it to Christmas and find out I'd lied to you. And then what?"
She laughed. “True. I still don't know if I believe you."
“Fine," I said. "Pick anyone from my family. I'll call them right now, and you can ask."
"Your mom," she said immediately.
I got out my phone and FaceTimed Mom. It burbled a few times and then Mom appeared on screen, her hair in a high, messy bun, dirt smudging her cheeks. She was holding a gardening glove in her hand as she swept a wrist over her upper lip. "Hey, baby boy. How's LA?"
I pivoted the screen and leaned closer to Rune. "Say hi to Rune, Mom."
Mom squealed. "Duncan Badd! Give me a warning before you spring your girlfriend on me! I'm all dirty from gardening."
Rune laughed. "It's totally fine, Mrs. Badd. It's good to meet you, sort of." She frowned. "I, um…about the first time we spoke. I…that's not how I'd have wanted that to go."
Mom didn't answer right away—the screen showed blue sky shifting and rocking as she walked somewhere, and the back of the house hove into view as she took a seat in one of the chairs around the firepit in the backyard.
"It happens," Mom said. "And believe me, I get it. It's okay."
"You've raised a wonderful son, Mrs. Badd. I don't know what's going to happen with Duncan and me, but I can say that Duncan has made me realize that maybe not all men are cheating assholes. Which is how I felt when I met him."
Mom cackled. "Oh, honey, that's a hell of a compliment. I do know that feeling, trust me. I found a good man, and we've done our best to raise good men."
"You have," Rune said. "I mean, I only met Dane briefly, and while he might be a bit of a lunatic, if he's anything like Duncan, he can't be too bad."
Mom laughed even harder. "Dane is definitely a bit of a lunatic, but we love him for it."
"Most of the time," I muttered.
"Oh, hush, you," Mom said. "The women are talking."
"Oh, well ex- cuuuuu- se me," I said, chuckling. "Carry on."
"So," Mom said, in between sips of water from a big pink insulated tumbler, "to what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected call?"
"Duncan is trying to tell me that the winters there aren't that bad," Rune said. "I said I wasn’t sure I believed him."
"Oh, well, he's not wrong. I mean, I grew up in Seattle, and it's not that different. It gets cold. There's snow once in a while, and blizzards rarely. Gets dark early. It'd be an adjustment for someone who grew up in the perpetual summer of LA, for sure, but it's not Antarctica."
Rune sighed. "Great."
I frowned at her. "Why do you say it like that?"
"Because you're making a pretty decent case and I'm not sure how I feel about that," Rune said. "Winters aren't the only hold-up, though."
Mom dragged the heel of her palm over her forehead, mixing sweat with dirt in a long brown smear.
"Rune, honey, there'll always be hangups and holdups and worries and fears.
You don't ever know if you're making the right decision.
All you can do is make the best choice you can with the information you have, and then make the best of it.
I know my son is a good man. I know that no matter what you decide about you and him, he'll be there for you—and not just because he knows his father and I will kick his ass if he isn't."
"Mom!" I protested. "Unnecessary."
Mom ignored me. "Follow your heart. But listen to your head, as well."
"What if they're telling me different things?" Rune asked.
"What can you live with? What can't you live with?
You're pregnant. You're gonna need support.
But support can look like a lot of different things.
Just speaking from a purely selfish standpoint, here, we'd love to have you in our lives.
" She grinned. "And not just because snuggling grandbabies is one of my favorite things in the world. "
Rune sighed. "The more people I talk to, the more confused I get."
"In the end, no one can decide what's best for you but you, Rune. Not me, not Duncan, not your parents or your best friend. Only you."
"Thank you for talking to me, Mrs. Badd," Rune said.
"Please, call me Dru. And please don't take this as me trying to sway your decision one way or another, but I really do hope we get to meet in person sooner rather than later.
" Mom looked off-screen for a moment. "Bast is calling for me, so I have to go, but Rune, whether you end up with my son or not, you're having my grandchild.
If you ever need anything , I'm here for you, no matter what. "
Rune's eyes misted. "Thank you, Dru. That means more to me than I can express."
“Okay, gotta run. Love you, Dunc."
"Love you too, Mom. Talk to you later."
“Bye!" Mom waved at the screen, and then the call ended.
Rune slumped back against the wall with a heavy sigh. "Your mom seems amazing."
"I mean, I think she's pretty cool," I said. "But then, your parents are pretty cool, too."
She smiled at me, then went back to staring at the ceiling, which still featured a constellation of greenish-white glow-in-the-dark stars and crescent moons. "I don't know how to make this decision, Duncan," she whispered.
"Well, what's the decision?" I asked.
She glanced at me. "You, and me? Where I'm going to live?"
"Oh."
She frowned at me. "Oh? That's all you have to say?"
I laughed. "Rune, what am I supposed to say to that?
I'm in love with you. I want to be with you.
I've told you what I want—I want you. I want us.
I want to be a couple and raise this kid together.
And yeah, selfishly, I don't want to leave Ketchikan.
I love it there. I love seeing my giant, crazy, weird family all the time.
Get-togethers are wild, and we have them all the time. "
She glanced at me, at this. "You do?"
I nodded. "Oh yeah. Not just holidays. If any of the family who lives out of state comes into town, we all get together, all seventy or eighty of us."
Rune shook her head. " Eighty of you? Jesus ."
"I told you how many cousins I have. I'm telling you, babe, Badd Clan shindigs are a fucking hoot."
"I see Dad's brother and his wife maybe once a year at Christmas, and they never had kids," Rune said. "Mom's sister and her husband come over for Thanksgiving, and we go there for Christmas Eve."
"Do they have kids?" I asked.
Rune nodded. "Yeah, but I don't get along with them."
"No?"
"Nope. They're rude people. Mom's whole family is just…
weird and rude. Aunt Kathy is cool, but her husband is a dick, and their kids were fucking half feral, growing up.
They'd come over for Thanksgiving and trash everything.
When I was seven, I had a big Barbie dollhouse that I loved.
I'd just gotten it for my birthday a couple months before.
My cousins totally fucking destroyed it the first day they were at our house and Aunt Kathy did nothing about it. "
"Fuck that," I said. "If we ever broke anything that belonged to another cousin, we were expected to replace it. I broke Jax's Nerf gun once, and I spent a month doing extra chores to pay Mom and Dad back for having to replace it."
"Jax is…?" Rune asked.