2. Ryan #4
“You don’t have to know how to be a father yet.” My throat closes. His hand tightens once at the back of my neck. “You just have to keep choosing them. Every day. That’s the whole job at the start.”
“I am,” I manage.
“I know you are.” He pulls back but keeps a hand on my shoulder. “You happy?”
“Yeah. Scared as hell, but yeah.”
“So was I. Still am, most days.” He glances past me to where Ally’s sitting beside Mom, looking at whatever’s on the phone, crying and laughing at the same time. “You love her.”
Not a question. “Yeah.”
“I knew you liked her. I did not know you were sleeping with her.”
“Can we please never say that sentence again as long as we both live?”
“Probably not,” he says, mouth twitching. “You’re having a baby. The evidence is fairly compelling.”
I take Ally’s hand. “There's also… Fuck. Tremblay expects her to be a virgin.”
“What?” Mom says.
Ally’s cheeks go pink, and I hate it — hate that she’s the one whose face does that, like she’s the one who ought to be embarrassed by any inch of this. “Roman told me,” she says quietly. “It’s part of the arrangement. He expects me to be... pure.”
Mom stands. Just stands. Walks three steps toward the sink, turns around. “No.”
Dad’s jaw is locked.
“Walter,” Mom says.
“I heard her.”
“She is eighteen years old.”
“I know.”
“And he is how old?”
“Fifty-four,” I say.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not.” I blink — Mom doesn’t swear much.
Dad looks like he’s doing arithmetic on how to make a man disappear. “I did not know that was part of it,” he says.
“Neither did I,” Mom snaps. “Does Arthur?”
“Not yet.”
“Call him.” Mom starts pacing. “Call Saoirse. Call every mother we know.” There she is. Then she catches the look on Ally’s face and stops, comes straight back, crouches in front of her. “Not because of you. None of this — none of this anger is yours. You hear me?”
Ally nods, eyes filling. “Okay.”
“None of it.” Mom takes both her hands. “You being with Ryan is not something you did wrong. Loving him is not something you did wrong. Having sex with the boy you love is not something you did wrong—“
“Mom!”
Ally laughs wetly, and Mom ignores me completely. “And this baby is certainly not something you did wrong.”
Dad comes over and sits on Ally’s other side. “I didn’t know Tremblay’s expectations either,” he says, and his voice is calm — too calm, the calm that means somebody’s going to have a very bad year. “And when the others hear it, they’re going to be angry, Ally.”
Ally looks between them. “At me?”
Dad’s expression breaks, just a fraction. “No, kiddo.” He reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. “Never at you.”
“On your behalf,” Mom says. Ally looks down at her stomach, and Mom’s hand covers hers. “Point blank, this baby is loved,” Mom says.
“And wanted,” Dad adds.
“Very wanted,” Mom says.
I look at her. “You’ve known for six minutes.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Iz: CAN I RELEASE THE PARENTS NOW
I show Ally, and she bursts out laughing.
Release them
Iz: THE PARENTS HAVE BEEN RELEASED.
Dad drags a hand down his face. “That boy is going to be a federal prosecutor’s ulcer.”
“Already is.”
Arthur and Darla arrive first, of course, with Iz trailing in behind them like he personally summoned the cavalry. “I have released the parents,” he announces.
Arthur hands him his coat. “You sent a group text.”
“With urgency.”
“You used six siren emojis.”
“Urgency, Dad.”
Darla ignores both of them and goes straight to Ally. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“Hi.”
“Iz told us the headline. Only the headline,” Darla adds, with a look.
Iz holds up both hands. “I disclosed the pregnancy and nothing else, because I have a deep and abiding respect for HIPAA.”
Darla stares at him. “That is not remotely how HIPAA works.”
“See? This is exactly why I bring professionals.”
Darla turns back to Ally, all business softened at the edges. “Can I ask you a few boring doctor questions before this house fills up with people?” Ally nods. “Seen anyone yet?”
“No.”
“Prenatal vitamin?”
“Yes.”
“Nausea, vomiting?”
“Both. The vomiting’s not constant.”
“Keeping fluids down?”
“Yeah.”
“Any bleeding, any cramping?”
“No. Neither.”
Darla nods, unhurried. “Okay.”
I’m already leaning in. “Okay good, or okay you’re-not-telling-me-something?”
She turns her head slowly toward me. “Ryan. I have been inside this house for forty-five seconds.”
“That’s plenty of time to answer a yes or no question.”
Ally groans. “He’s been like this for a solid month.”
“I assumed,” Darla says dryly.
“I’m sitting right here.”
“Wonderful. Then you’ll hear me clearly when I say Ally isn’t describing a single thing that makes me think she needs emergency care tonight, and that we will arrange real prenatal care somewhere Roman can’t get near it. The details we’ll discuss privately.”
“How privately?”
She looks at me. “Privately.”
Iz pats my shoulder. “You’ve been outplayed. Accept it with dignity.”
“I’ll kill you.”
The door opens again. Kaiden comes in first, Cat behind him, then Callum and Saoirse with Thomas right on their heels, arriving exactly the way they arrive everywhere now, one weird sprawling household moving as a single unit.
Mom appears in the kitchen doorway. “You.”
Cat stops dead. “What did I do?”
Mom holds up her phone. “I need you later.”
“For what?”
“Spreadsheet.”
Cat’s entire face lights up like Christmas. “Oh.”
I point at her. “No.”
Mom just smiles. “Baby shower?”
Cat crosses the room like she’s answering a calling. “I’m in. Fully. Deploy me.”
Kaiden looks at me with something like pity. “You thought she wouldn’t find an accomplice inside three minutes?”
“I had hope.”
“That was your first mistake.”
Gideon and Alice come next with Penny and Xander, then Clifford and Louise with Danny and Becca, and finally Theodore and Katya.
Becca sees them, and her whole face softens for Katya, who opens her arms without a word. Becca goes into them. “My little butterfly,” Katya murmurs against her hair. Theodore hangs back a step, not intruding.
Becca finally pulls away she looks at him. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, princess.”
By seven-thirty, my parents’ living room looks like somebody accidentally scheduled a summit for Edgewood’s most overqualified adults.
Arthur and Darla. Callum and Saoirse. Thomas.
Gideon and Alice. Clifford and Louise. Theodore and Katya.
My parents. The five of us. Cat, Penny, Becca.
And Ally, at the center of all of it — not literally, Mom makes sure of that, and so do the other women.
Ally starts on the couch beside me, and that lasts about thirty seconds before Saoirse settles on her other side, Mom takes the chair directly across from her, Darla perches on the arm, Alice and Louise claim the other couch with Cat and Penny and Becca, and Katya comes in from the kitchen with tea and takes the last open chair near Ally’s knee. The dads are mostly left standing.
Iz surveys the arrangement. “Wow.”
“What?” Xander asks.
“The women have formed a defensive perimeter.”
Arthur sits down. “Does everyone know why we’re here?”
Thomas looks at me. “I was told there was a significant development.”
Mom glances at Ally, Ally glances at me, and I take her hand. Here we go again. “Ally’s pregnant.”
Saoirse’s head whips toward her. Alice’s hand flies to her mouth.
Louise’s eyes fill instantly. Katya whispers something in Russian.
Clifford blinks, Gideon’s eyebrows shoot up, Thomas looks between Ally and me, and Theodore goes completely still.
Nobody says anything for three whole seconds — and then Louise starts crying, because of course she does. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Ally’s eyes fill again, and Becca immediately grabs one of her hands and Cat takes the other and Penny sets a hand on her knee. Wagons circled.
“Are you happy?” Saoirse asks her.
Ally nods. “Yes.”
Saoirse smiles. “Then congratulations.”
“Congratulations,” Alice echoes, crying now too.
“Yes — absolutely — congratulations,” Louise says, nodding furiously.
Katya gets up, crosses to Ally, and asks, “May I?” Ally nods, and Katya bends and hugs her. “Baby is blessing,” she says quietly, and when she pulls back she touches Ally’s cheek. “You are not afraid of us, yes?”
Ally’s mouth trembles. “I’m trying not to be.”
Nobody asks what they plan to do about the baby. Nobody asks whether they’re keeping it. Nobody looks disappointed. Nobody looks at Ally like she detonated her own life.
Darla eventually lifts a hand. “Before we accidentally spend the next hour planning a nursery — Alison is stable, and I’ll handle her prenatal care privately, so we can all take a breath on that front.”
Louise sags with relief, and Alice asks, “How far along?”
“About ten weeks,” Ally says.
Arthur clears his throat, and the mood shifts. “The pregnancy matters for another reason.” Saoirse’s hand settles over Ally’s. Arthur looks at Ally first. “Do you want Ryan to explain, or will you?”
“Ryan.”
I nod. “Tremblay expects her to be a virgin.”
Every mother around Ally goes rigid. The fathers look murderous.
Arthur just looks at me. “Explain.”
“Roman told Ally it’s a term of the arrangement. Tremblay expects her delivered untouched. Pure — that’s the word they use.”
“Pure,” Saoirse repeats, and there is something in the way she says it that stands every hair on my arms straight up.
Ally looks down, and Saoirse turns to her instantly.
“No. You don’t get to carry that word like it belongs to you.
” Ally looks up. “There is nothing impure about you,” Saoirse says, her voice quiet and controlled — the voice of a woman who has sat across from hundreds of women and heard hundreds of versions of a man turning a body into a contract. “Nothing. Not one thing.”
Ally’s eyes fill, and Saoirse squeezes her hand.
Louise leans forward. “And there is nothing shameful about loving someone.”
“Or about sleeping with a person you love,” Alice adds.
Thomas rubs his jaw. “So Roman believes the original agreement is intact. And Tremblay believes Roman is delivering exactly what was promised.”
I hate the sentence with my whole body. “Yeah.”