Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Amy
Shannon freezes mid-sip, eyes narrowing at the mug in my hand.
"Is that coffee?"
"It's a very small coffee," I say.
"Show me the cup," Carol says from her square. "Hold a quarter next to it."
She's in her kitchen with a plate of Christmas cookies on the counter. I can hear Nat King Cole in the background, softly crooning "The Christmas Song."
"We're not doing evidence exhibits," I reply. I'm in my office, blissfully alone, all my morning meetings done. My next meeting is in four hours, and all I have ahead of me is case reviews and emails.
I'm practically on vacation.
"Declan!" Shannon turns in her chair and hollers. "She's drinking coffee!"
Somewhere off-screen in their Weston renovation headquarters—today's office appears to be a conference room with carpet installed during the Bush administration, and I'm not sure which one—a construction door thunks and a power drill coughs.
Then she swivels back, sleek ponytail perfect, smile sharp.
"You're seven weeks along now. This is the nausea window. The fatigue window. The prelude to 'my ankles are balloons.' You think coffee is your friend, but noooooo. Coffee is about to betray you."
"Seven and a half, technically. I feel fine," I say, because it's true, but instead of reassuring them, it's somehow inflammatory.
"You said 'fine' yesterday," Carol notes, tapping on her phone. "And the day before that. I'm tracking."
"I'm honored to be a data set."
"Just you wait." Shannon leans in.
"I have been waiting. For two and a half weeks. I'm still waiting. What's so bad about coffee?"
Shannon's eyes glint.
"Declan stopped drinking coffee anywhere near me when I was pregnant with Ellie. The smell made me gag so hard, I saw Grandma telling me to go away from the light."
From off-screen, a familiar voice floats in, amused and apologetic.
"I even brushed my teeth between sips," Declan says.
"Tell her," Shannon prompts.
Declan steps into frame wearing a neon safety vest over a dress shirt, a billionaire cosplaying as OSHA. He has moss-green eyes like Hamish's, but Declan's hair is dark with the lightest touch of gray at the temples, in that distinguished, rich-guy way.
"I bought extra toothbrushes and kept one in my pocket at all times," he says solemnly. "I learned to dry brush."
"Dry brushing is for skincare," I point out.
"In an emergency," he says, "anything is a toothbrush. Including, once, an eyeglasses cloth from my sunglasses case."
"So you never once came home with coffee breath?" I ask, and Declan turns grim.
"I'm alive, aren't I?"
"Barely," Shannon mutters.
"Once I bent to kiss her and she started gagging so hard, it set Chuckles off. He threw up a hairball."
"Now I'm going to gag," I say softly.
"See? Coffee is over." Shannon nods, satisfied.
"I am not you," I remind her, sipping defiantly. "I am me. It was only when you mentioned a puking cat that I felt anything bad."
"Any nausea? Food aversions? Smell triggers?" Carol peers over her glasses.
"I got irrationally angry at the sound of someone scraping a chair across the floor at work yesterday," I offer.
"That is not a pregnancy symptom," she says. "That is just you."
"Do you want ice chips? I craved ice chips." Shannon brightens. "Declan bought a countertop nugget ice machine, and I named it."
Declan lifts a finger.
"Nigel."
"At least it wasn't Moonbeam," Carol comments, mouth twitching.
"Mom's mushroom harpist," I say, and all three of us nod as if that's a normal sentence.
Because in our family, it is.
"You're really okay? No puking? No spontaneous weeping over yogurt commercials?" Shannon's gaze returns to my mug, her incredulous tone replaced with something almost like despair. Does she want me to be sick?
"I did tear up when I saw a toddler waving at a garbage truck."
"Who among us has not cried at men who smell like rotten fruit?" Carol muses, tilting her head.
"I just—" I shrug. "I feel normal. Hungrier. Sleepier at ten o'clock. Hamish is in heaven because my boobs are a little bigger. That's it."
The video chat pings. Shannon has typed: JUST YOU WAIT. She sends it five times, then adds a GIF of a small dog bracing against high winds.
Carol sends a meme from The New Girl of a dude gagging.
"You're both very supportive," I say dryly.
"We're thrilled," Carol says, her smile real and soft. "We're also envious, because pregnancy nausea was like a bad roommate. The kind you regret allowing to move in on day one, then they won't leave until they're evicted and then you find bedbugs in the carpet."
"And the fatigue," Shannon says. "And the ankle drama. Your ankles will become method actors."
"My ankles are doing community theater," I reply. "Tight rehearsal schedule. Good reviews."
Declan coughs politely.
"I once drove to New Hampshire at midnight to buy a specific pickle for Shannon."
"He did." Shannon nods, pleased at the memory.
"Three jars, from a man named Burt who runs his business out of a shed. Grows his own dill. He only takes Bitcoin as payment, and he made me leave my phone in a Faraday box on the edge of his property."
My phone chirps with a calendar alert.
"I need to go," I tell them. "First official OB visit."
Shannon claps. Carol beams. Declan kisses two fingers and taps the camera, then exits, shouting to someone named Jimmy about cyclone fencing.
"Text us everything," Shannon says. "Not the graphic stuff, save that for Mom. But I can't wait until you hear the heartbeat."
"I'll text you the color of the waiting room chairs," I promise.
"Love you," Shannon puts in. "Drink water. Put your feet up. And if you feel even a whisper of nausea..."
"...tell us so we can stop hating you," Carol finishes, but she blows me a kiss.
"Just you wait," I finish for her, grinning. "I know, I know."
We hang up. I set the mug down and let the room come into focus.
My desk is a sleek rectangle of walnut with a laptop, a legal pad, and three pens I buy in a specific shade of green so I can retrieve them when people accidentally make off with them.
Two framed photos sit to the side: one of me with Shannon and Carol on a bench in the Public Garden, laughing so hard, we look like a PSA for core strength; and one of Hamish kissing me on a swan boat on Boston Common.
Bookshelves hold a mix of crisis-communication tomes, art books, and too many Seth Godin books.
There's a tiny plant I haven't killed. My gym bag with clean workout clothes and a towel. I have five of them, assembled on Sundays to reduce morning friction.
What's my routine going to be nine months from now?
Will the gym bags be covered with dust? Am I going to be one of those mothers who drops the baby off at the daycare room and then pretends to work out but cries softly in the shower, washing dried puke off her neck?
I've seen two of those in the women's locker room this month alone.
Both reminded me of my sisters.
I feel a tightness in my gut and I put my hand on my belly. Flat. Being pregnant is a secret, still, here at work. I'm not ready to handle the conversations about life changes that are already coming fast and furious.
Right now, I'm doing one thing: going to the OB for the first time. I'm almost eight weeks along. Time to hear the heartbeat. Make sure I'm healthy and the baby is fine. Get educated on what we need to know as the weeks turn into months and my boobs turn into sculptures Hamish will worship.
Not that he doesn't already.
Am I really going to feed a baby with them? Biology makes sense when it happens to someone else's body. Sure, I've watched Carol and Shannon breastfeed, but that's as an observer, detached and objective.
Babies can bite. Nothing objective about that.
A text from Hamish breaks through my shiver: Heading over.
I change out of my heels and into boots, grab my purse and coat, and leave the office, closing the door softly.
The OB practice Shannon recommended sits on a tree-lined street where bricks older than the Constitution watch passersby.
The lobby smells like clean wool and citrus, and the chairs are sea-glass green.
A modern chandelier shaped like Champagne bubbles hovers above a reception desk where two women move with competent serenity.
Hamish stands near a table of curated magazines, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders a shade smaller than normal, as if he's compressing himself so the pregnant women in the room don't feel crowded.
His face lifts, our eyes meet, and something in my chest does that stupid expanding thing it always does when I see him after even a few hours apart. He beams at me, green eyes aglow.
"There ye are," he says, meeting me halfway. "I signed in fer us, then undid it, because I wasna sure if that's what ye wanted?"
"That's very unsure of you," I say, kissing his cheek. "We can sign in together."
We are two steps from the desk when a teenager sidles into our path with his father behind him, a hand on his shoulder as a reminder not to sprint.
The boy's hair is a study in product and the laws of physics, looking like blonde broccoli.
His eyes do the 'cool-but-also-shaking' thing all teen boys do when encountering someone who lives in their phone in pictures and six-second video clips.
All their attention is on Hamish.
"Mr. McCormick," the father says, polite, Boston vowels ironed flat. "Sorry to bother. Would you mind..." A pen materializes in his hand.
Really? An autograph?
At my first OB appointment.
Behind the dad and boy I see a hugely pregnant woman, smiling shyly, close to the hallway.
Hamish looks at me. It's a question. He's asking permission, which is part of why I love him so much. The look says, This is entirely your call.
I nod.
"Of course," he says. "What's your name, lad?"
"Evan," the boy says, voice half an octave higher than I imagine it normally is.