Chapter 5
Isit straight up in bed and blink into the darkness. Then I stifle a smile, because without a shadow of a doubt I know Lauren is going to be the best mom. And Rhett, the best dad. However, it wouldn’t be Lauren if she didn’t see change as the end of the world.
“Okay. And how do you feel?”
She cries harder.
“It’s okay to be scared. Trust me it is. But you’re in a really good place. You have Rhett and his whole family there. It’s going to be okay.”
“But I have this book to finish, and the wedding to plan, and now a baby? We weren’t even planning on trying for a couple years but the test, oh my God, Hannah, the test is so dark. What if it’s twins?”
“Then you will have two cute babies. But don’t scare yourself like that yet if you don’t have to. Just breathe. Does Rhett know?”
She sniffles. “Yeah, he’s so happy Hannah. I feel bad. I locked myself in the bathroom and he’s so excited and I’m just so…”
“Scared,” I finish for her. “I know. I’ve been there.”
“Can you come up?” she pleads quietly. “Even just for the weekend?”
I look over at the clock. If I leave now, I will get there just after two in the morning. With Paul and Mom already gone, that means Winnie is coming too.
“We’ll be there in few hours,” I tell her. “And Lauren? This really is going to be okay. Trust me. Unlock the door and let Rhett in. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she relents and hangs up.
I start throwing things into duffle bags. I don’t know how long I will stay, so I throw everything I can find, then tip toe into Winnie's room and pack her little suitcase as quiet as I can. I'm just about done when she stirs.
“Mommy?” she asks into the dark.
I flip on her little pink sheep lamp and sit at her side and brush a curl away from her face. “Do you want to go see Aunt Laurey and Uncle Rhett?”
She blinks her eyes open. “What?”
“Do you want to go get in the car and drive up to see Aunt Laurey and Uncle Rhett?”
“Right now?” She tries to sit up.
“Right now. You can even wear your jammies in the car.”
This gets a real smile out of her. Fifteen minutes later she sits on the bottom step with her blanket and stuffy in hand as she fights sleep.
Her little car bag and plastic purse she has packed for herself sit next to her on the step.
I load everything into the back of the minivan, and text Mom and Paul that I decided to surprise Winnie with a trip to go see Lauren and pray they don’t read too much into us leaving this late.
Just as we are ready to go, Winnie pops up from the step.
“Can we bring all my flowers?”
“Sure.”
She yawns and goes to the car while I gather all of her flowers, plus mine and place them on the seat next to her. However, she insists on holding the ones from Tanner specifically.
She’s asleep before we even make it out of town, and all I can think about is how I am driving straight to Tanner, and it’s sending my stomach into anxious knots.
Four hours later, on the dot, I am pulling down the gravel driveway that splits into two.
One way toward an old white farmhouse and the other toward Lauren and Rhett’s cabin.
Rhett’s family owns the white farmhouse next door, and the cabin was once their rental property.
Lauren’s agent had set her up in it without telling her that Rhett lived next door almost two years ago.
Looks like things worked out considering they’re engaged and she’s pregnant with his baby.
A warm glow comes from the front window and with a single foot out of the car, I hear nothing but nearby crickets and distant frogs croaking.
I’ve come to know this place in the fall but now the magical charm of summer settles over the sun faded cabin.
Through the dark, the string lights around the eaves are twinkling as they sway in the breeze.
The front door swings open and Lauren comes bounding down the steps and throws her arms around me.
“I am so glad you’re here,” she sobs into my shoulder.
“I’m glad you called,” I tell her and just hug her back. Rhett is behind her, leaning in the doorway with a smile on his face and hands shoved deep in his pockets. “You don’t look as upset,” I say up to him.
He smiles. “I mean, I can’t say I’m surprised. We haven’t been exactly careful recently.”
“Good to know.” I shake my head and find Lauren almost blushing.
Rhett jogs down the steps and hugs me too. “Thanks for coming. She really needed you.”
“Of course. If you have some extra manpower in you, I have a dead weight five-year-old in the back seat.”
“You got it.” He salutes and goes behind me to get Winnie.
Lauren and I lug the bags in and leave them by the door before collapsing onto the couch.
The cabin has rich wooden walls and what once felt like a vacation rental, now feels like a home.
There are photos everywhere, piles of books and papers, and cups of red pens sitting on the kitchen table.
The cross breeze from the open windows flows through the warm cabin, doing a poor job of actually cooling it down.
I’ve been on her couch for all of fourteen seconds and I’m already fighting the urge to sneak out to go see Tanner. Or to call him and tell him I am just a handful of miles away, but I need to keep my head on straight while I’m here. I am here for Lauren, not for a damn mustached smirk.
“We had a plan, you know?” Lauren sighs, her arms lifting and dropping. “Like, get this book done, get married this summer, then think about a baby in like two years at the soonest.”
“Okay. I get that.” I turn to face her tear-stained cheeks. “But I promise you. It’s not the end of the world. You wanted kids eventually, right? And you think Rhett will be a good dad?”
“Oh God, yes.” She sits straight. “He will be the best dad. I want nothing more than to make him one, trust me. But it’s just such bad timing.”
“If we waited to be ready, then we would never do anything,” I echo mom’s advice that seemed terrible at the time. “Listen. It’s okay to be upset. But look at Winnie. My life only got better because of her. Harder? Yes. Better? Completely made life worth living.”
She dabs at the corner of her eyes with her sleeve that she has pulled up over her thumb.
“You know how we found out?” She lets out a pathetic laugh.
“Rhett joked the whole way to see you guys that I was pregnant. He said that I have been emotional and it couldn’t just be the stress of the book and wedding.
So, on our way home, we stopped at a gas station to get ginger ale because his mother swore it was a cure all for any sickness.
And as a joke, he threw a pregnancy test on the checkout counter. ”
“You took it in a gas station bathroom?”
“No. I threw it at him and walked out without it. He bought it and held onto it until tonight. I only took it just to get him to stop talking about it, but it was so positive, so fast. I didn’t even have time to set a timer.
Rhett was so happy, and I just couldn’t stop crying.
I locked him out of the bathroom and I called you.
” She talks in a single-winded sentence like she is recounting the final mile of a marathon.
“What if I'm going to be a mom like Mom was?”
On the surface growing up, Mom was cold, detached, apathetic at best. I know she loved us.
I never doubted that, but I wasn’t sure how much she cared.
She was so preoccupied with my father and their fighting, or the men she snuck around with, that I wondered if we ever even crossed her mind in the midst of it all.
Lauren and I’s childhood was spent hiding in the wings while our mom and dad fought it out.
Yelling. Screaming. Carrying on. It was filled with watching our mom put up with his shit for years before she would kick him out.
Then let him come back again. And again. The cycle only stopped because he died.
He drove into oncoming traffic, making someone else a murderer which I think makes me maddest of all.
An older man now carries that burden, even despite the letters I’ve written to him imploring that it isn’t his fault, that there is no death on his hands.
He never writes back. I send him Christmas cards anyway.
However, it wasn’t until Mom met Paul, that she took the time to unravel all of it.
Time in therapy. Time with a man who loved her genuinely.
Time loving herself genuinely. Only in the delayed aftermath of my father did we see the full impact he had on our family.
Then I saw it again with my own husband and our family.
My father poisoned the well, and damn is it hard to crawl back out of it.
I take Lauren’s hand in mine. “Mom was the way she was because of Dad. Rhett isn’t like Dad. You’re also nothing like Mom, in case you haven’t noticed.”
She laughs at this and nods in agreement. Oil and water, my mother and sister are.
“Listen. If you don’t want to be like mom, then you are already halfway there.”
She burst into tears again. “I wanted to get married this summer.”
“Who said we aren’t getting married?” Rhett asks, rejoining us with a playful tilt to his voice.
“I can’t get married pregnant!” Lauren almost yells.
“Of course you can.” Rhett leans over the back of the couch and rests his hands on her shoulders. “There is nothing I would like to do more than marry you while you’re showing off a bump I caused.”
She looks up at him and then back to me, a laugh rising in her voice. “I might need you longer than a weekend.”
“We have a wedding to plan,” I tell her, knowing immediately that I’m agreeing to a week. At least.
“I think it’s going to be a girl.” Rhett kisses Lauren’s temple. “A little red headed Laur running around.”
“No. It’s going to be a little boy with a red pen, critiquing everything.”
“It’s time for you to go to bed.” Rhett flips out the lights. “And Hannah, it’s time for you to go to bed too. I still can’t believe you just drove the whole way here. I thought we would expect you tomorrow.”
“I would have walked here if needed.”
“I believe it.” Rhett helps us both up off the couch. “Now. Let’s get you Dorada girls to bed before I have to carry both of you.”
We reach the top of the stairs and Lauren turns toward her bedroom with her fiancé, and I turn toward the spare room where Winnie is sound asleep. Her cheek buried into the pillow and blonde curls splayed out every which way.
Six hours ago, I wouldn’t have believed you if you were to tell me I would end my night in Michigan. But I would have believed you if you told me I would be lying in bed, counting the miles between Tanner and me, like I usually do. This time, it’s just a hell of a lot less.