Chapter 12
chapter
twelve
Oliver
The doctor leaves us with discharge paperwork, a list of iron-rich foods, and strict instructions about eating actual meals that I intend to personally enforce starting tonight.
Cora is still in the wheelchair, working through the paperwork, her hair falling forward over her shoulder as she writes. She looks wrung out and lighter at the same time—the particular exhaustion of someone who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and just put it down.
I stand near the curtain and give her space.
My phone has been buzzing intermittently since I stepped away to answer my mother’s call. I’d silenced it. Now I pull it out.
Seventeen notifications.
Kelsie: Oliver. OLIVER. Payton said you took Cora to the hospital. What happened. Answer your phone.
Payton: Hey, man, just checking in. Everyone here is worried. Mimz is trying to get her keys.
Addison: Oliver James Blankenship. Pick up your phone.
Kelsie: He’s not answering. Something’s wrong.
Payton: Or he’s busy, Kels.
Kelsie: Something is WRONG.
Addison: I swear if he’s left her alone in that hospital—
I type fast before this escalates further.
Me: She’s fine. Low iron, low blood sugar. Doctor says everything is okay. We’re waiting on discharge paperwork.
The response is immediate. All three at once.
Kelsie: EVERYTHING? What does everything mean?
Payton: Glad she’s okay. Tell her we’re thinking about her.
Addison: Low iron can indicate several things. Is she on a supplement? Has she been seen by her regular physician recently?
Me: Addison. Take a breath.
Addison: I’m perfectly calm.
Kelsie: She is the opposite of calm; she’s been pacing since you left.
Addison: Kelsie.
Payton: Mimz told us about the baby. Did you know Cora was pregnant?
I stare at the last message.
Set my phone down.
Pick it back up.
Through the curtain, I can hear Cora asking Dolores a question about the prescription, her voice still soft, still careful. The voice she uses when she’s trying to take up as little space as possible.
I think about keeping this contained. Giving her time. Letting the information exist in this small fluorescent-lit room before it expands into the rest of my life.
Mimz never does anything quietly. Mimz, who told me oh wonderful, you’re both here with a knowing gleam in her eye that I’ve been unsuccessfully pretending not to understand.
I type it before I can change my mind.
Me: I need to tell y’all something and I need you not to lose your minds.
Three dots appear simultaneously.
Kelsie: Oh God.
Payton: Oh, this is going to be good.
Addison: Just say it, Oliver.
Me: Do y’all remember me mentioning a girl from Ace’s a few months back? I only told Henry, but I know there are no actual secrets with you lunatics.
Me: Cora is her.
Silence.
Three full seconds of absolute silence, which in Blankenship sibling communication is the equivalent of a full minute.
Then—
Kelsie:
Kelsie: THE truck girl??
Payton: WAIT
Payton: WAIT WAIT WAIT
Addison: I’m sorry, are you saying that Mimz and Pops’ caretaker is the woman you slept with at Ace’s three months ago?
Me: Yes. But we did not sleep together AT Ace’s. Let’s get that straight, please.
Kelsie: Oliver.
Me: I know.
Kelsie: OLIVER.
Me: I KNOW.
Addison: So that means…
Payton: This is the best thing that has ever happened in this family, and I am including the time Uncle Graham drove the tractor into the creek.
Addison: Payton, this is not funny.
Payton: I’m not laughing!! I’m delighted!! There’s a difference!!
Kelsie: Okay, so she’s at the hospital
Kelsie: And she has low iron
Kelsie: And you said everything is okay
Kelsie: Oliver.
Kelsie: So the baby is okay?
I look at the curtain.
I look at my phone.
The discharge papers rustle on the other side of the curtain. Dolores says something cheerful about prenatal vitamins.
Me: Yes. The baby is doing great. Measuring right, and we got to see the ultrasound and hear the heartbeat.
The chat erupts.
Kelsie: It’s your baby, isn’t it?
Payton: OH MY GOD. I’m going to be an uncle!
Addison: Oliver, you’re going to be a dad!
I’m going to be a dad. I would have expected that news to send panic through my veins. But I feel only a calm sense of contentment.
Me: Yes.
Addison: How long has she known?
Me: Since before I moved in.
Kelsie: Oh, Cora.
That surprises me. I’d expected something else from Kelsie. Something louder, or more—pointed. But that’s all she says. Oh Cora. Like she knows, senses, the burden my girl has been carrying.
Payton: Is she okay? Like, actually okay? Not just medically.
I look at the curtain again.
Me: She will be.
Payton: Good. Good, good, good.
Addison: I can’t wait to give her a hug.
Kelsie: To welcome her to the family, but also to thank her.
Payton: That slideshow was epic.
Addison: So beautiful.
Kelsie: I’m hugging her first.
Addison: Why do you always have to be first?
Me: Do NOT come to this hospital.
Kelsie: Too late, we’re pulling into the parking lot right now
Payton: Mom and Dad are already here. With Mimz and Pops.
Fuck. They’re going to overwhelm her.
Me: She doesn’t need an audience right now. She’s exhausted.
Kelsie: She doesn’t need to be alone in a hospital either. And you can’t carry everything by yourself, Oliver. You never could.
Addison: She needs to know that her family has her back.
I stare at the message. Her family. My family.
Then I hear footsteps on the other side of the curtain and pocket my phone.
Cora is standing when I come back through. Discharge paperwork folded in her hand, a small prescription bag from the hospital pharmacy, her green dress slightly crumpled from the wheelchair. Her mascara has been dabbed at— not perfectly, but enough. Her chin is up.
She looks like herself.
She looks like someone who just had the most terrifying night of her life and is already organizing how to carry it forward.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Ready.” She looks at me. Really looks. “Your family is coming, aren’t they? They all know everything?”
I blow out a breath, then finally give in to my urge to touch her and pull her into an embrace. She practically melts into my arms. “They’re already here. Darlin’, they’re a lot. I know they’re a lot. I could try to tell them to leave, but they don’t listen to me.”
“It’s okay.” She leans back a little and looks up at me. “I hope they’re not disappointed.”
“Disappointed? In what?”
“Me? First grandchild and I’m a stranger, and we’re not together.”
I cup her face. “We’re going to remedy that right now. Mishief, we are together, provided you’ll take me.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “I know you’re an honorable man, Oliver Blankenship, but I will not be a duty or responsibility. I am strong enough to raise a child on my own.”
“I have no doubt you are. But my wanting you has nothing to do with our child. My heart chose you that night at Ace’s, and it’s been choosing you every day since. I just didn’t know where you were.”
She searches my face. “What are you saying?”
“That I’m all-in. You and me.” I thumb away a tear as it slides down her cheek. “I want us. You willing to put up with my crazy family?”
“I think you might be worth it,” she says.
I kiss her then. Soft, gentle, an unhurried promise of what’s to come.
“Are they all here?” she asks.
“Everyone but Henry and Gracie. They’re conspicuously missing.”
“I saw them on the dance floor. I don’t think it’s too much of a mystery as to where they are and what they’re doing.”
That makes me laugh. I grab her hand to pull her out to the lobby, where chaos waits.
She blows out a breath. “It was always going to come out. They were always going to find out. I just thought I’d have pants on when it did.”
I look down at her dress.
“For the record,” I say, “you’re fully dressed.”
“I’m in a green sundress and hospital-issued socks.” She looks down at her feet. Dolores had confiscated the strappy sandals during the exam. “My mascara is nothing but sad black streaks at this point, and my hair is wilted. This is not how I wanted to meet your siblings for real.”
“You’ve met them.”
“As the caretaker. Not as the woman who—” She stops. Chooses her words. “Not in this context.”
I kiss her forehead. “The context,” I say, “is that you’re the woman who scanned two hundred photographs for my grandparents and made everyone cry.
You’re the woman who leaves pot roast in the fridge and then says it’s probably not poisoned.
You’re the woman who is carrying my child. ” I pause. “The rest is just details.”
Her throat moves. “Oliver.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop being nice to me. I’m already over my crying limit for the evening.”
I almost smile. “I’m never going to stop being nice to you.”
She straightens the discharge papers in her hands, like having something to do with her fingers helps. “Okay. Tell me their names again. In order because I feel like I’m forgetting stuff.”
“Henry’s not coming. He’s the oldest. Then me. Then Kelsie—she’s married to Ethan, who is a former Navy SEAL. Then Addison, she’s married to a British guy named Thorne who writes romance novels and is a lawyer on the side.”
“And Payton’s the youngest,” she says.
“He’s going to be—” I pause, looking for the right word, “—enthusiastic.”