19. Chance #3
A part of me wanted to tell Rena to stop acting crazy.
That if she wasn’t in a hospital, she should at least deliver our child in the medical room where the doctor had access to any tools he might need.
But a bigger part of me, the part that knew my mate better than I knew myself, knew that her need to control the situation wasn’t trivial.
Rena was in pain, terrified, and tired. She wanted to go home.
And I’d made her a promise that I would never coerce her into doing something she didn’t want to do.
“How fast could we make it back here if something went wrong?” I asked Ambrose. “Best guess.”
“Five minutes,” he replied, smiling sympathetically.
“You want to go home?” I asked Rena.
“Please, baby,” she whispered, holding my gaze.
I nodded in agreement.
“We’ll walk,” my mom announced, rising to her feet. “The fresh air will do you good, and it’ll be better than pacing the floors of this room.”
I watched as Rena gripped my mom’s hand gratefully and let her lead the way out the back door of the room.
“You’re telling Doc,” I told Reese, following my mate. “Let him know we’ll call when we want him to come up to the house.”
“You’re such a dick,” Reese said, flipping me off.
We hadn’t even made it halfway down our gravel driveway before my sisters-in-law and Aunt Helen caught up with us.
I held back as they surrounded my mate, my throat growing tight as they bolstered her.
Between teasing, jokes, and doing impressions of my mate, they had her laughing by the time they reached the porch steps.
I followed them through the house and into our large bedroom. Rena had spent the last month putting everything exactly where she wanted it and had managed to create an oasis where we spent most of our time, even though we had an entire home to ourselves now.
“Better?” Reese asked.
Rena nodded. “Could you take off my slippers?”
My mate’s best friend knelt and carefully pulled the slippers off as my aunt came to me.
“I don’t think it will be long now,” she said with a serene smile. “You’re doing well.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I countered sheepishly.
“Your uncle paced the house, pulling his hair while I labored with Matthias,” she said, a small smile playing at her lips. “His hair was this big before your cousin arrived.” She gestured in a halo around her head.
“Who delivered the boys?” I asked curiously.
“I did,” she replied easily. “There was no midwife for miles.”
“Gods,” I whispered, looking back at Rena. No wonder Uncle Mordecai had panicked.
Aunt Alice had delivered Danny and Ezekiel, and from what I remembered, we’d missed the entire thing. Our father had brought us to the barn to help him with something, and when we’d come back inside, there they were.
“This looks so good,” Rosemary said, running her hand along the crib rail. “You did an awesome job in here.”
“Thanks,” Rena said, glancing over at her. “I made the blanket—” She stopped to pant. “It’s the same pattern as the one my mom made me.” Her head swung to the side to look at me. “Where’s my blanket?”
“Inside your pillowcase, where it always is?” I crossed the room and tugged the little crocheted blanket out. “Safe and sound.”
“Can I have it?”
I carried it over and watched as she pressed her face into the soft yarn, inhaling the scent of home deep into her lungs.
I don’t know what Aunt Helen considered soon, but it was hours before anything changed. My brothers and father came over and hung out quietly in the garage. Rosemary and Lucy made everyone dinner that Rena was too nauseous to eat, and I couldn’t choke down.
I helped Rena into a warm bath, and then back out again when it didn’t give her the relief she’d been hoping for. She paced. Slept in five-minute increments. Knelt on the bed with pillows beneath her while I rubbed the ache in her back.
And when I finally began to wonder if it was time to call the doctor, she stood from the bed, and amniotic fluid splashed all over the floor.
“Excellent,” Aunt Helen said. “Reese, go grab us some towels, yes?”
“That’s okay, right?” Rena asked anxiously. “That’s supposed to happen?”
“Of course it is,” my mom assured her, reaching over to rub her back. “Chance, call the doctor.”
“I don’t want him in here,” Rena cut in. “I just want us.”
“I’ll go wash,” Aunt Helen said.
“What?” I looked around at the women, trying to find a single one who looked as freaked out as I was.
Fear made my gut clench.
Everything seemed to move quickly after that.
I held Rena as she knelt in the center of our bed and groaned low in her throat, pushing the baby out while her belly contorted gruesomely.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, as the baby’s eyes opened and seemed to blink right at me.
Rena gave one more push as she sobbed with relief, and our daughter slid into the world into her mother’s hands.
I stared in disbelief.
“A girl,” Rena wept. “She’s a girl.”
I wasn’t sure why we’d assumed she would be a boy. I guess I’d just always known I would have boys and hadn’t been able to imagine anything else.
But she wasn’t. She was a girl with dark hair that was stuck wetly to her little cone-shaped head and long fingers and toes that reminded me of Rena’s.
“A girl,” my mother said in wonder, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, how wonderful.”
I waited, my hand on our daughter’s back as Aunt Helen delivered the placenta and cut the umbilical cord—I didn’t want anything to do with separating our daughter from her mother. The baby made little whimpering noises as Rena crooned to her, kissing her gross little head.
A while later, I walked drunkenly to the garage, my heart still pounding.
My father rose to his feet when he saw me, and everyone froze.
“I have a daughter,” I announced hoarsely.
“A girl?” Danny asked, jumping to his feet.
I nodded.
“Well,” my dad said, clearing his throat. “A granddaughter. Wonderful.”
“Zeke would’ve been so excited,” Charlie said, smiling widely at me from across the room.
I put my face in my hands and wept.
Everyone stayed late into the night except the doctor.
Once he’d checked Rena over, he got the hell out of there.
He knew when he wasn’t welcome. My parents told stories about when we were babies, everyone took turns holding the baby, debating what they thought her name should be, and the sounds of their voices lulled Rena to sleep in the center of our freshly made bed.
“Your father and I will sleep in the guest room,” my mother said quietly, handing me the baby after she’d shooed everyone from the room. “Just call if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” I whispered back, cradling the tiny body against my chest. They’d wrapped her tightly in a thin blanket, and she squirmed against it, reminding me of what it had felt like that morning when I’d felt her in Rena’s belly.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, cupping my cheek in her hand.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“But you will.”
Once she and my father had gone, I gingerly climbed into bed with Rena and sat with my back against the headboard.
“I thought,” Rena said, surprising me. “I thought if we had a boy, then maybe we wouldn’t know.”
“If he was a Vampire or not?” I asked carefully.
She nodded, reaching up to rub the baby’s back. “But there’s no pretending, huh?”
“We don’t need to pretend anything,” I replied, laying the baby on my thighs. “Look at her. She’s perfect.”
“Yeah.” Rena pushed herself up, grimacing, until she was sitting beside me.
“Sore?”
“You have no idea.”
I smiled and kissed her gently.
“So Joseph isn’t going to work,” I said with a short laugh, pulling off the baby’s hat. “What do you think? Josephine?”
“No.” Rena lay her head on my shoulder with a sigh. “She looks like an Alice to me.”
My throat instantly tightened with grief. “Yeah,” I agreed.
“Alice Caterina Matilda Boucher. What do you think?”
“Your mother’s name?”
“And yours.”
“It’s kind of a mouthful.”
Rena elbowed me in the side.
“Yeah, it’s perfect.” I conceded, leaning down to kiss the baby’s forehead. “It’s perfect, isn’t it, Doodlebug?”
The baby opened her eyes and looked around, her eyes unfocused.
Then they seemed to flicker.
“We should probably register her birth, right?” Rena said. “I need to ask your mom how to?—”
“Did you see that?” I asked, cutting her off.
“See what?”
“Her eyes.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
Alice’s eyes squeezed shut, and she began to wail.
“Nothing,” I said, handing her to her mother.
“Don’t scare me like that,” Rena ordered, putting the baby to her breast.
I sat there in shock as the baby made smacking noises and Rena praised her.
I’d only ever seen two other sets of eyes that flickered like that when they were angry.
My father’s and my brother Danny’s.
My heart pounded.
“What’s wrong?” Rena asked, looking up at me in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Nothing,” I assured her. “Everything is right.”
“I love you,” she whispered, her eyes shining.
“Love you too, gorgeous.”
Everything was going to be okay. After fighting my entire life, losing my baby brother, searching for answers, finding my mate, and nearly dying, everything finally was exactly as it should be.
I only wished Zeke was here to see it.
A month later, a set of small, hand-carved birch animals and a notebook with pressed wildflowers between the pages arrived. There was no signature or return address, but the animals had been labeled with a small S carved into the feet.