21. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The ultrasound room smelled like antiseptic and lavender, which was either a deliberate calming strategy or someone’s misguided attempt at ambiance.
I lay on the exam table with my shirt pushed up past the small curve of my belly, watching the technician squeeze gel onto the transducer.
Hunt sat in the chair beside me, his knee bouncing with nervous energy he was trying to hide, his hands clasped between his thighs like he didn’t trust them to behave if he let them loose.
“First anatomy scan?” The technician was young, professional, a person who’d seen a thousand anxious parents and developed a cheerful immunity to their terror.
“Yes.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“All right. Let’s take a look.”
The transducer touched my skin and the screen flickered to life, gray shadows resolving into shapes I was learning to recognize. There was the curve of the skull. The dark chambers of the heart, beating in that rhythm I’d heard once before and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since.
Hunt leaned forward. His knee stopped bouncing.
“Looking good so far,” the technician murmured, clicking and measuring. “Head circumference right on track. Spine looks beautiful. There’s the stomach, the bladder…”
I watched our baby appear piece by piece on the screen, the impossible reality of what was growing inside me rendered in grainy black and white. A hand floated past, fingers spread. A foot kicked at nothing.
“Do you want to know the sex?” The technician paused, transducer hovering. “I can see it clearly if you’d like.”
I looked at Hunt.
He was looking at me, his eyes wide and his jaw tight, and I could see him holding himself back from answering, waiting for me to decide, willing to accept whatever I chose.
“Yes,” I said, at the exact moment he said, “Whatever she wants.”
The technician smiled.
“It’s a girl.”
The room went very still.
A girl. A daughter. A tiny person with her father’s stubborn jaw and possibly my grandmother’s temper, already kicking at the world from inside me like she had opinions about it.
I turned to look at Hunt.
He was crying.
Not sobbing, not making a scene, just sitting there with tears running down his face and his hand pressed over his mouth like he was trying to hold in a sound too big to contain.
His shoulders shook once, twice, and then he tried to stand up, tried to move closer to me, and the wheeled stool he’d been sitting on shot out from under him and skidded across the floor.
He went down hard.
The crash was spectacular. Hunt landed on his back on the linoleum with his legs in the air and the stool rolling across the room, and the sound he made was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh and a word I was fairly sure our daughter shouldn’t hear.
The technician stared at him.
I stared at him.
He lay there on the floor of the ultrasound room, tears still wet on his cheeks, and started laughing. The kind of helpless, uncontrollable laughter that comes when your body doesn’t know what else to do with the feelings it’s been handed.
“A girl,” he managed, from the floor. “We’re having a girl.”
“I can see that the news has landed,” the technician said dryly. “Should I call someone?”
“He’s fine.” I was laughing too, couldn’t help it. “He’s just dramatic.”
Hunt climbed back to his feet, retrieved the stool, and sat down on it more carefully this time. He reached for my hand and I let him take it, and we sat there together watching our daughter move on the screen while the technician finished the measurements.
A girl.
I was going to have a daughter.
The thought sat inside me warm and bright, radiating out to every corner of my body.
Later, in the parking lot, Hunt stood beside my truck and looked at me with a look I couldn’t put a name to. Wonderment, maybe, or terror, or both.
“The county fair opens today,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“We should go.”
“Should we.”
“For the baby’s cultural education.” His mouth twitched. “She should understand her heritage. Livestock judging. Pie contests. The hay-bale toss.”
“You want to take our unborn daughter to a county fair.”
“I want to take my wife to a county fair, if she’ll let me.”
Every reasonable part of me said no, reminded me we weren’t dating and this wasn’t a relationship and he was on probation at best. But he was standing there in the parking lot with red-rimmed eyes and the ghost of wonder still on his face, and I’d just watched him fall off a stool because he was so happy about our daughter that his body forgot how to function.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m driving.”
The fairgrounds were chaos.
Half the county had turned out for opening day, and the smell of funnel cakes and livestock and fresh-cut hay hit me the moment we climbed out of the truck.
Somewhere a band was warming up. Children ran past with cotton candy.
An announcement crackled over the loudspeakers about the pig races starting in fifteen minutes.
June appeared from nowhere, materializing at my elbow like she’d been waiting for us.
“Well, well.” She looked from me to Hunt and back again. “This is interesting.”
“It’s not interesting. We’re here for the baby’s cultural education.”
June coughed into her fist. It sounded suspiciously like the word date.
“Was that a word?”
“Allergies.” She smiled sweetly. “You two have fun.”
She disappeared back into the crowd before I could respond.
Hunt looked at me. “Was that as suspicious as I think it was?”
“June is always suspicious.”
We made it about fifty feet before someone grabbed Hunt’s arm. Earl Thompson, president of the 4-H leadership council, his face red with exertion.
“Dr. Anderson. Thank God. Jerry’s got food poisoning and we need a replacement judge for the goat show.”
“I’m not qualified to judge goats.”
“You’re a veterinarian.” Earl said it like that settled the entire question.
“I’m a wildlife veterinarian. I specialize in bears and elk.”
“Close enough. It starts in twenty minutes.” Earl was already pulling him toward the livestock barn. “We’ve got seven entries and they’re getting restless.”
I watched my husband get dragged away to judge a goat competition and felt my mouth curve into what was dangerously close to a smile.
Inside the barn, the 4-H kids had lined up their goats with varying degrees of success. Some of the animals stood calmly, well-trained and cooperative. Others pulled at their leads or tried to eat their handlers’ shirts.
And at the end of the row, wearing a tiny numbered vest and a ribbon in his ear that I was fairly sure he’d bitten someone to protest, stood Waffles.
I stopped walking.
June appeared at my side again. “Surprise.”
“You entered my goat in the 4-H competition.”
“I entered your goat in the competition that your husband is now judging.” Her smile said she’d orchestrated every last bit of this chaos and regretted nothing. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You’ll thank me later.”
Hunt had reached the judging table and was conferring with the other two judges, both of whom looked relieved to have a veterinarian on the panel. He hadn’t spotted Waffles yet.
I found a seat in the small grandstand and waited.
The first goat was a beautiful Nubian doe, well-mannered and shiny-coated. Hunt examined her with professional care, checking her teeth and her hooves and the straightness of her spine. The young handler beamed.
The second goat was a Nigerian Dwarf, compact and friendly. Hunt gave him an approving nod.
The third goat was a LaMancha with ears so small they looked like they’d been forgotten entirely. Hunt made notes on his clipboard.
The fourth goat was Waffles.
Hunt looked up from his clipboard. His eyes found the small brown and white body, the distinctive face, the expression of pure malevolence aimed directly at him.
The clipboard slowly lowered.
“Is that,” Hunt said to the other judges, “that goat.”
“Number forty-seven,” one of them confirmed. “Waffles. Owned by Dr. Lenora Smith.”
“Of course he is.”
Waffles screamed.
It was the scream of a goat who had been waiting for this moment, who had somehow known that fate would deliver his nemesis into his domain, who was prepared to make the most of this opportunity. The grandstand erupted in laughter.
Hunt approached Waffles the way a man approaches a bomb.
“Easy,” he said, reaching for the inspection. “I’m just going to check your teeth.”
Waffles bit him.
Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to make a point. The crowd lost it.
“Your goat,” Hunt called across the barn, his eyes finding mine in the grandstand, “is a menace.”
“He has excellent judgment.”
Hunt tried again. Waffles dodged. Hunt feinted left and Waffles feinted right, and what followed was the most undignified veterinary examination I’d ever witnessed, involving at least three near-escapes and one moment where Waffles somehow ended up standing on the judging table.
By the time it was over, the grandstand was in tears and Hunt’s flannel was covered in goat hair.
The judges conferred.
They announced the results.
Third place went to the Nigerian Dwarf. Second place went to the Nubian doe. And Grand Champion, because apparently the universe had a sense of humor, went to a beautiful Alpine doe named Buttercup who had stood perfectly still through her entire examination.
Waffles received an honorable mention ribbon, which he immediately tried to eat.
Hunt caught my eye across the barn. His expression said very clearly: I know you had a hand in this.
I smiled at him and didn’t deny it.
The pie contest was easier.
We walked past the display of entries on our way to the midway, dozens of pies in every variety arranged on red-checkered tablecloths. Apple, cherry, pecan, blueberry. A towering lemon meringue that looked like it belonged in a magazine.
“Are you hungry?” Hunt asked.
“I’m eating for two now.”
“Then we should definitely sample the competition.”