Chapter 7
Nantucket Island
It was the first week of June and the first full week of summer vacation.
Now that Rod knew about the baby, Bethany felt more comfortable in her reality, more sure that she would be just as good a mother this time around.
Maybe she’d be better: more patient, more sure.
After all, she was forty-five and softer in her heart and happier with her romantic partner.
Late at night, when Bethany couldn’t sleep, Rod came downstairs with her, put ice in glasses he filled with iced tea, and rubbed her feet till she got comfortable again.
In soft tones, she tried to practice telling the kids about the baby.
But each time, she imagined Phoebe crying, or Maddie storming out, or Tommy giving her that scary look he’d developed—the one that told her she didn’t know a thing about him anymore, not now that he was sixteen.
“Ugh,” Bethany said into the darkness over the sofa. “Ugh, ugh.”
“Why don’t you tell your mom and sisters first?” Rod suggested. “They’ll be thrilled. And you can use that energy to keep going.”
Bethany thought it sounded like a good plan. She kissed Rod’s cheek. “I don’t know what I would do without you.” Which was true, always.
The following day, Bethany invited her mother and sisters out to lunch.
Bethany was off work, and Valerie, Rebecca, and Esme rearranged their schedules to take an extra-long lunch break.
Bethany reached the restaurant before the others, grabbing a table in the corner and panic reading the menu until the words made no sense to her.
Esme arrived first. She wore a flowing linen dress and more makeup than she usually did.
Her perfume was sensational: jasmine and something Bethany couldn’t place.
She hugged her mother close, squeezing her eyes shut.
And then, Esme pulled back, gripped Bethany’s shoulders, squinted at her, and said, “There’s something wrong. ”
Bethany couldn’t believe it. Could her mother read her so clearly? “No! There’s not. Not really.”
But her mother wouldn’t stop giving her that look. “You usually don’t invite us out to lunch during the week,” she said, sitting down. “There’s something up.”
Rebecca and Valerie arrived just then, distracting Bethany from her mother’s gaze, if only momentarily. After she’d hugged them, she sat back down and tried to avoid Esme’s intensity.
“Bethany is hiding something,” Esme told Valerie and Rebecca mischievously.
“Is she?” Valerie frowned over her menu. “Bethany, what’s up?”
Bethany rolled her eyes.
“You’re so right, Mom,” Rebecca said. “Bethany’s got a secret.”
Bethany’s cheeks were inflamed. She could feel them. “I don’t know why I can’t invite my sisters and mother out for lunch in the middle of the week without being interrogated.”
Esme set down her menu, folded her hands, and raised her eyebrows. Rebecca and Valerie did the same, as though they were waiting for Bethany to put on a performance.
Bethany’s heartbeat quickened. Why was she so nervous to share this news?
“All right. All right,” she said, conceding.
“I knew it,” Esme said.
“Remember last week when I told you I was entering menopause?” she asked. “Well, I was wrong about that. Very wrong, it turns out.”
She waited for the words to work through them. Valerie’s jaw dropped.
“No. It happened to you, too?” Valerie whispered.
Rebecca got to her feet. She looked amazed. “You’re pregnant?”
“Shh!” Bethany laughed.
But all chaos broke out after that. Valerie and Esme were on their feet, pulling Bethany into their arms for hugs and kisses.
“I can’t believe it! I’m so happy!” Valerie cried.
Bethany couldn’t stop laughing, although tears spilled from her eyes.
“Oh, honey,” Esme said, squeezing her hand.
“I’m just so worried,” Bethany said, sitting down and wiping her cheeks. “I have a thousand things on my mind. It was an accident, obviously, and I’m not always handling it well.”
“But it’s a beautiful thing,” Rebecca assured her.
“Then again,” Valerie added, “it’s okay not to feel like it’s a blessing all the time.”
“I want to be joyful about it,” Bethany agreed. “But my feelings around it are so complicated. And I don’t know how the kids are going to take it!”
“Kids are adaptable,” Esme said. “They have to be! They’re at the beginning of their lives.”
But Bethany wasn’t so sure about that. When she’d been a teenager, their brother Joel had passed away from cancer, and she’d never fully recovered from it.
Bringing a baby into the family was different from a death—very different, she knew.
But it still had a drama to it that would change the course of everything. It felt like playing with fire.
They ordered a big chicken sandwich for Bethany, fish sandwiches for everyone else, and a big bowl of fries for the table.
Bethany drank iced tea and told her sisters and mother about their trip to New York City.
She heard their stories about the previous week.
Rebecca had a scary incident at the restaurant, where she didn’t recognize a celebrity dining in, who’d expected to be recognized.
“Apparently, it was a big faux pas,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes.
After a full hour and a half with her sisters, Bethany felt calm and—maybe—ready to face her children with the news.
She decided to prepare food. She’d cook their favorite things: lasagna, grilled fish, maybe a cake or some cookies.
She’d make it known that she’d always be there for them, that more love via a brand-new baby was never a bad thing. She’d explain that change was good.
“Good luck, honey,” Esme said just before she left. “Your kids love you more than anything, you know. They’re going to understand. They have to.”
That night, Bethany gathered her children on the veranda, poured them sodas, piled their plates high with their favorite foods, raised a glass of sparkling water, and said she had something to tell them. Rod held her other hand under the table.
“Don’t tell us you’re pregnant,” Maddie joked.
Bethany gritted her teeth. She wanted to snap at Maddie for destroying the moment. Maddie wore a smirk, as though she thought she’d said something really funny. But the air over the table shifted, intensified, until Maddie’s smile fell, and she cried, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Phoebe’s eyes were enormous. Tommy was giving her the exact look Bethany had assumed he would—the one that chilled her blood.
“I’m pregnant,” Bethany said, offering a smile first to them, then to Rod.
Her children were quieter than she’d ever experienced. All she could hear was the sweep of the waves behind her. She told herself that she couldn’t cry, that she had to maintain an easy disposition in front of the kids—despite the hormonal hurricane in her body right now.
“Why didn’t you tell us you wanted more kids?” Phoebe asked, sounding both curious and irritated.
Bethany squeezed Rod’s hand harder. “When Rod and I got married, we didn’t really think it was in the cards for us. We hardly talked about it ourselves.”
“So it was a mistake?” Maddie asked.
Bethany grimaced. “No,” she lied. “We want this baby. Our family needs this baby.”
Tommy’s cheeks were red, the way Bethany’s always were when she was nervous. He kicked his foot under the table, making a thwack sound.
“You can ask anything you want to ask,” Bethany tried to assure them.
Tommy and Maddie exchanged glances. Bethany sensed their “twin” connection. They were reading each other’s minds—and telling one another how little they liked this.
“I don’t know. I mean, isn’t it dangerous?” Tommy asked finally, his eyes flashing.
“You’re kind of too old to be pregnant?” Maddie added.
Bethany maintained a smile that felt false. “I appreciate your concern for me. But I’m a doctor, remember? I wouldn’t do something that hurts the baby. I wouldn’t put our family at risk.”
Maddie didn’t look like she believed her. She crossed her arms over her chest, her scowl deepening.
“Your lives will hardly change,” Bethany tried.
“What?” Phoebe demanded. “What do you mean?”
“I just mean, we won't ask you to babysit or anything like that,” Bethany said, talking faster than she wanted to. “Raising this baby won’t fall on you. It’s your job to go to school and prepare for college.”
“Don’t you think three kids are enough?” Maddie asked.
Bethany was taken aback. Again, she turned to Rod, praying that he’d know what to say.
“Enough for what, Maddie?” Rod asked gently.
Maddie scoffed. “I mean, what about population control?”
Bethany gestured toward the massive house they’d purchased, the one they shared, the one that had far too many rooms for the five of them. “We have space.”
“But the world doesn’t have space?” Maddie tried.
Tommy looked uncomfortable, but Phoebe nodded along with Maddie, offering support.
“Listen, gang. This is happening,” Bethany said, raising her shoulders. “I know you’re worried. I know you don’t know what to expect. But we’re in this together, as a family. I need you on my side, here.”
Maddie bowed her head. Phoebe dragged her fork over her lasagna, looking contemplative. Tommy took a big bite of grilled fish, chewing in a way that suggested he wouldn’t be able to talk for a while.
For twenty minutes, the family sat in silence and ate. It was the first time that had ever happened in the history of their family. Bethany wondered if any family had managed to be so quiet in the history of all families, in the history of humankind.
That night, Bethany listened as Rod slept soundly beside her. She stared into the darkness over her bed and prayed that her children would wake up in the morning believing that having a new baby sibling was the best possible thing that could happen to them. The looks on their faces haunted her.
And the following morning, bright and early, Maddie and Tommy grabbed breakfast before Bethany had the chance to come downstairs. They sped off to their new jobs at the beach, leaving Bethany alone with her thoughts. Was she going to lose them both?
But it seemed Phoebe was too busy with preparations for Alana Copperfield’s theater camp to think about Bethany’s pregnancy.
She was late to breakfast, but only because she was in her bedroom, rehearsing her lines.
After a brief yet awful bout of morning sickness, Bethany paused outside Phoebe’s bedroom to listen to her “perform.” She was doing a soliloquy from Shakespeare.
It sounded like one about torment and being wronged.
Bethany marveled at how talented she was.
She told herself not to miss out on the beautiful details of her teenagers’ lives, even if only because she was overwhelmed with her baby. She reminded herself that every stage of a child’s life was precious—all the way to the end.