Chapter 4
Molly
Seven years ago, on our wedding day at Topa Ridge, the sweet peas are everywhere.
Grandma June spent three months building that arch, training the vines over chicken wire and praying they'd bloom in time. She was convinced they wouldn't. Too cold, too dry, wrong phase of the moon. But here they are, a riot of pink and purple and white, and the whole ranch smells like honey.
I'm standing at the end of the makeshift aisle in my mother's wedding dress, altered within an inch of its life because Mom was built like a willow and I'm built like someone who actually eats.
Maggie is beside me, small and dark-eyed and fierce in her Florentine silk, fussing with my veil, which keeps catching on a sequin.
"Hold this edge for me," Maggie says. "Who decided to put sequins next to netting? A woman with a personal grievance, that's who."
"We could cut it off," I offer.
Maggie narrows her eyes at me through the netting. "The veil or your head? Give me a minute before we narrow the options."
"Your son might notice if I arrive headless," I point out.
"Knowing where he'll be looking," she says dryly, "we'd have until the vows."
I snort-laugh, which makes the veil slip again, and Maggie groans in theatrical despair. Behind us, someone starts playing an acoustic guitar, one of Taz's ranch hands, I think, though I couldn't tell you his name to save my life.
"Ready?" Maggie asks.
I look down the aisle. The chairs are mismatched, borrowed from five different neighbors.
The guests are a weird collision of my college friends and his valley people, artists next to cattle ranchers, my college roommate trying to make conversation with a man who's definitely never seen a Rothko in his life.
And at the end, under Grandma June's arch, there's Taz.
He's wearing a suit that actually fits, which required divine intervention and a tailor who drove in from Ventura.
His hair is doing that thing it does, the dark waves falling into his eyes no matter how much product he uses.
He looks nervous, genuinely, visibly nervous, and when he sees me looking at him, he raises one hand to wave, then seems to think better of it and shoves it in his pocket instead.
"Ready," I say.
The walk down the aisle takes approximately seven thousand years.
Every step feels significant in a way that makes me want to laugh or cry or both.
My heels keep catching in the grass. Someone's baby starts crying and immediately gets shushed.
Maggie squeezes my arm so hard I'm pretty sure I'll have bruises.
And then I'm there, standing in front of him, close enough to see the ink on his forearm where his sleeve is rolled up.
He was supposed to write his vows, practice them, memorize them.
Instead, I can see the blue-black scrawl of ballpoint pen covering his skin from wrist to elbow, smeared and smudged and mostly illegible.
"You wrote them on your arm," I whisper.
"I panicked." His voice cracks. "I woke up at four a.m. and forgot every word, and I didn't want to let you down, so I—"
"Taz," I say, squeezing his fingers.
He barrels on, red to the ears. "And then I sweated through my shirt during the photos, and now I can't read any of it, and I'm pretty sure the third line says 'turkey sandwich' because my handwriting is garbage and—"
"Taz," I say again, softer.
He stops. Swallows hard. His eyes are very green in the afternoon light, glassy with what might be tears.
"Just say it," I tell him. "Whatever you remember. Just say it."
He takes both my hands in his. Behind us, I can hear Grandma June quietly sniffling. The guitarist plays a soft melody that doesn't go anywhere.
"I'm going to learn you," Taz says, and his voice shakes on every word.
"Like new country. Every part of you. The parts you show people and the parts you hide and the parts you don't even know about yet.
I'm going to learn all of it, and I'm going to love all of it, and I'm never—" His voice breaks.
He clears his throat, tries again. "I'm never going to let you be alone in a room you don't want to be alone in. "
My face is wet. I didn't even feel myself start crying.
"Never?" I manage.
"Not while I'm breathing." He squeezes my hands. "That's the whole vow. That's—that's everything I've got. I love you, and I'm gonna learn you, and you're never going to be alone unless you want to be. That's it. That's me."
I kiss him before the officiant tells me I can. Who cares. I kiss him under the sweet pea arch with the whole valley watching, and he makes this surprised little sound against my mouth before he kisses me back, deep and certain.
Grandma June wolf-whistles. Someone, probably Maggie, shouts "get it, girl!" The guitarist launches into a song that might be meant to be romantic but sounds weirdly like a beer commercial jingle.
And I think: this is it. This is the rest of my life. This is the person I get to keep.
Seven years later, eight weeks pregnant, I eat a dill pickle dipped in sage honey and try not to think about the irony.
The sage honey is from Sagebloom, from my own hives, or what used to be my own hives, before I moved to LA and left them to Miguel.
It's the last jar of last year's harvest, and I've been rationing it for months, and now I'm eating it on a pickle at nine in the morning because it's the only thing that doesn't make me want to die.
The kitchen is quiet. Taz left early, some meeting he couldn't reschedule, but he swore he'd be back by one-thirty. The dating ultrasound is at two. He programmed it into his phone with three separate alarms. He showed me.
"I'll be there," he said this morning, kissing my forehead on his way out the door. "I promise."
From the guest room, I can hear Kendall humming. Classical, maybe, or one of those songs from her pageant days. It floats through the walls, soft and relentless, a constant reminder that she's still here.
It's been a week since the bleeding scare. A week since Taz carried me barefoot to the truck and prayed badly and cried against my knuckles in the ER. A week since he promised me Sundays and Wednesdays, sacred and untouchable.
He kept the first Sunday. We spent the whole day in bed, watching terrible movies on his laptop and arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
(It is. I will die on this hill.) He brought me soup and crackers and held my hair back when the crackers came back up, and for those twelve hours it felt like before. Like us.
My phone buzzes at 1:40. I grab it so fast I nearly knock my pickle off the counter.
Taz: Held up, so sorry. Go ahead without me. I'll meet you there if I can.
I keep the message open, waiting for a correction that doesn't come.
Go ahead without me.
My first scheduled ultrasound. Our first routine appointment after the emergency scan. The appointment we've had scheduled for weeks. And he wants me to go ahead without him.
I text back: Is everything okay?
Three dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.
Taz: Just work stuff. Nothing serious. I'm trying to wrap up. Save the picture for me?
Work stuff on a Wednesday. On my Wednesday.
I don't respond. I put the phone in my purse and grab my keys, and I don't let myself cry until I'm in the car with the doors locked and the engine running.
At the Women's Medical Center, the waiting room is full of pregnant women in various stages of showing.
There's a woman across from me who looks ready to pop any second, her belly so enormous it seems anatomically impossible.
Next to her, a younger woman with a tiny bump scrolls through her phone while her partner rubs her shoulders.
Alone at the desk, alone in the chair. When they call my name, I will walk back alone.
I'm never going to let you be alone in a room you don't want to be alone in.
I pull out my phone and stare at our text exchange.
Still no response from me. He probably thinks I'm fine.
He probably thinks I understand. He doesn't know that I'm sitting here cataloging every couple in this waiting room, every hand-holding pair, every supportive partner with their encouraging smiles and their stupid attentiveness.
"Molly Edward?" a voice calls from the doorway.
I look up. The medical assistant is young, wearing scrubs covered in cartoon bears. She smiles expectantly.
"That's me," I say, and gather my purse.
I follow her down a hallway covered in photos of newborns. Testimonials from grateful patients. A poster explaining the importance of prenatal vitamins. She leads me into a dim room with an exam table and an ultrasound machine, and gestures for me to have a seat.
She pats the paper on the exam table. "The tech will be right in. Is Dad joining us today?"
The question is so casual. So normal. Just a standard thing they ask every pregnant woman, probably fifty times a day.
"He's stuck at work," I hear myself say. "He couldn't make it."
"Oh, that's too bad." She makes a sympathetic face. "Well, we'll print you some pictures to take home to him. First scheduled ultrasound, right? It's exciting."
"Yeah." I manage a smile. "Exciting."
She leaves. I lie back on the exam table and stare at the ceiling tiles, counting the holes in the acoustic panels because counting isn't crying.
He promised.
The door opens, and the ultrasound tech comes in wearing reading glasses on a chain. She introduces herself, checks my details, and pulls her stool closer.
"I see you were in the ER last week," she says, scrolling through my chart. "How have you been since then?"
"No more bleeding," I tell her. "Still checking every time I go to the bathroom, because apparently that's my personality now."
She nods like that's the most normal thing in the world. "A scare like that can stay with you. We'll take a look, and the clinician will review how things are progressing. Any new pain?"
"No," I say. "Nausea. Mostly nerves today."