“I messed up cleaning this antique suit of armor he’s got. I’m embarrassed.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?”
I shrug. “Maybe not. It’s—it’s complicated, Mom.”
“Is he …” She glances around her transformed room, like she’s feeling guilty for all these fancy things Erik has supplied. “Is he a good man?”
“Yes,” I say at once, not having to think about it. I touch Mom’s hand. “How about this? You get some rest and then later on I’ll make us some meatball pasta. I’ll send Jackie for the ingredients and we’ll do the sauce from scratch, just the way you like it.”
She smiles. “I’d like that.”
After sending Jackie to the grocery store, I sit in the living room, half watching the TV and half watching the door. Erik could come barreling in any second. Then what? The way he snatched my phone returns to me. I could have misjudged him, it’s true, yet my instincts tell me otherwise.
But I’m all too aware that I could just want that to be true.
I leap out of the chair when the door swings open.
“What’s up, sis?” Rob drawls, missing the stool by the counter three times, then four. He finally settles for sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor. He smiles up at me, his pupils like saucers. “You catch the game? That fella with the mohawk’s got one hell of a right hand, I’ll tell ya. Won big, yup. Won real big …”
I take an unfamiliar blanket from the arm of the couch—the blanket thick fur, the couch genuine brown leather—and drape it over his shoulders.
I blink, and for a weird, delusional moment, I see him as the little boy with his roller skates on, grinding his teeth as he tried to kick them off with sweat dripping down his red-cheeked face.
“Thanks, sis,” he slurs, head bobbing as sleep takes him. “Gonna get help soon. Yeah, got the leaflet right here.” He lifts his arm as though to point, but then drops it when it’s too much effort. “Just one last blowout, y’know? Can’t blame a man for wanting one last party. Even Jesus had the fucking Last Supper.”
I sigh as his smile spreads Joker-like across his face. Back when he was a kid, before he was so far gone, he had the most handsome, boyish smile.
“Leave your poor sister alone!” Mom calls from her new wheelchair.
It’s like something out of a science fiction novel, controlled electronically with a device that tracks her eye movements. I Googled it and the cost almost sent me collapsing to the kitchen floor. Erik really has spared no expense.
Rob ignores her, leaning over my shoulder.
“That’s some piss-poor cutting technique, sis,” he says, a little more sober now. Or amped-up on another drug that counteracts the effects of whatever he was on before. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case.
“You could always help.” I jab him in the belly. “Or get the hell out of the kitchen. Your choice.”
“I’m the supervisor!” He grins proudly. “A vital part of the organization.”
“Yeah, yeah …”
The three of us laugh just like old times: those rare afternoons where any tension melted away and Rob became the person he was, back before the gambling and the drinking and the drugs.
“Ow!” Rob yells when Mom wheels into the back of his legs.
“I warned you!” she snaps, though she’s smiling like a goon.
“Alrighty then, that’s done,” I say a while later, turning the sauce down to a simmer.
I lean against the kitchen counter, hand straying to my belly. I’m constantly fighting with myself to believe that there’s a child in there, my baby. I wonder if other women have these moments of disbelief, or if it’s all sunshine-and-rainbows happiness from the moment of conception.
“That’s the fifth time you’ve done that,” Mom points out.
I flinch. I thought she and Rob had both gone into the living room.
“You’re counting?” I challenge.
“Yes,” she says calmly. She looks livelier after some sleep and her medication. “I know that look, Camille. I’ve had that look—twice.”
“Mom, it’s—”
She wheels right up to me and whispers: “You can tell me, Camille.”
I try to hold it back—really, I do—but Mom and I are friends as well as family. Plus I know she won’t quit. When she gets her teeth into something, she doesn’t stop. I used to jokingly call her the Rottweiler before her diagnosis.
“I’m pregnant.”
She wheels back, thudding into the kitchen counter.
“Mom!” I jump forward and right her in the chair.
“But how? And out of wedlock? Who? Who? Oh no, it’s him, isn’t it? It’s that man, that Erik. Oh Jesus, Camille. Did he—he forced himself on you, didn’t he? It all makes sense. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re so scared. Don’t lie to me! You can’t lie to me! That sick man forced himself on you. You were cleaning that big house of his and he saw you and he just decided to take what he wanted. That’s what rich men are like. My own mother warned me about that! I never should’ve let you work there!”
She’s babbling as tears stream down her cheeks.
Jackie pokes her head around the door. “Is everything okay?”
“No!” Mom cries. “My daughter has been r—”
“Mom, I fucking love him!” I scream, because I can’t let her say that word, not about Erik.
I reel back after spitting out these words.
I didn’t plan on saying them, but once they’re out there, floating like little promises, I feel the truth of them. I feel it in my belly, where our baby is slowly growing. I feel it throughout my body as my mind flits across all the things that make Erik who he is: his calm, his patience, the kindness he’s shown my mother and to some extent, even my brother, and the fact that lately, when I think about my life, it’s hard to see a future without him in it.
“I love him.” I lean down and look Mom right in the eyes. “You can always tell when I’m
