by L. D. Davis
A transvaginal ultrasound is an ultrasound performed by inserting a probe attached to a wand inside the vagina. For pregnancy, the imaging test is best done on a woman with a full bladder, hence the thirty-two ounces of water I’d been forced to drink.
On one hand, I was cranky from having an uncomfortably full bladder, my usual nausea, and having to sit beside the man who had recently shredded my heart. On the other hand, my excitement was growing with every passing minute, knowing that we would get the first real glimpse of our baby. The pregnancy couldn’t have come at a worst time, and I hadn’t even been sure I wanted more kids, but I’d had unprotected sex. Multiple times. I was there because I was an irresponsible dumbass, and there was no reason to take that out on a child in any way. None of my other kids had been planned, either. The circumstances then had not been great, but I’d loved them immediately, and I loved this little troublemaker, too.
“Ms. Mills.”
I blinked out of my thoughts and saw the nurse standing in the open doorway that led to the examination rooms.
“You and Mr. Mangini can come back now.”
I took a breath and stood up. Again, Marco tried to take my hand, but I avoided it without making a scene and followed the woman.
The room was dark, like it would be for a normal ultrasound. The tech had me undress from the waist down and lay on a table. Marco sat beside me, leaning forward, staring at the monitor even though we hadn’t started yet, and his palms rubbed together nervously. It took several minutes before we began the awkward process, but after some adjustments and a few more minutes, the tech grinned.
No matter how many of these things I’d had over the years, it was always hard for me to discern what was what on the screen until the techs pointed everything out. This time was no different.
“What are we looking at?” Marco questioned, leaning forward even more, his eyes wide. “Where is the baby? Can you tell if it’s a boy or girl yet?”
The tech chuckled. “I can’t tell the sex yet, not like this, but I’ll answer your other questions. Give me a minute.”
It was quiet in the room except for her tapping on the keys. It made me nervous. They usually pointed to the baby right away and then did the calculations. After another few minutes, she removed the wand. When she said she wanted to get Dr. Gray before she finished, I started to freak out a little bit.
“Is there something wrong?” Marco asked me after she walked out. “Or is this normal?”
“It’s not normal.”
I stared at the ceiling, trying to control my breathing. A tear trickled out the side of my eye and started to slide down my face. This time, when Marco took my hand, I let him.
“What’s wrong with our baby?” I asked in a whisper.
He squeezed my hand, but the tech returned with the Doctor before he tried to soothe me. Immediately, he demanded answers. “What is happening? What is wrong?”
“Oh, nothing is wrong, per se,” Dr. Gray said as the tech put on a new cover for the wand. “Under certain circumstances I like to be here to confirm what the technician sees on the screen.”
Marco’s voice came out cool, like he was about to go into some aggressive negotiations at work. “Which is what, exactly? She just got up and left without an explanation. What are we supposed to think?”
“I apologize,” the technician said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I promise there is no reason for concern.”
“I am unconvinced.”
“Give us a moment more, and I will explain, Mr. Mangini.” Dr. Gray was seemingly unfazed by his scary alpha side.
The tech reinserted the wand, and we waited another quiet minute before the doctor nodded at the other woman and smiled. “Well, it looks like you’re about ten weeks along.”
My eyes narrowed. “That’s it? I mean, I didn’t really think I was much more than that, judging by the last time I had a period, but I’m already starting to show. I didn’t start to show for another few weeks with my other pregnancies.”
“Do you see that little peanut there?” She pointed to what really did look like a peanut shaped body on the screen and circled it. “That is your baby.”
“Wow,” Marco breathed. His big grin made everyone forget he was about to get mean a few minutes ago. “Wow. That’s our baby?”
“Yes. And…do you see this here?” When she circled another peanut, my mouth dropped open.
“I…wait…what is…” he stammered as he gaped at the screen.
“That is your other baby. Congratulations, Mom and Dad. You’re having twins.”
Marco murmured some prayers in Italian and wiped at his eyes. He looked really happy, and also really scared, and he hadn’t let go of my hand. He brought it to his lips and just held it there for a few seconds as Dr. Gray continued to point out different features on the babies.
Babies. More than one. Two. Two babies. At the same time. Twins. I was having twins, and I was so confused, and shocked…and confused.
“Let’s see if we can hear their heartbeats,” the tech murmured.
It took a moment, but then we heard them, two little fast heartbeats, overlapping each other. “They sound perfect,” Marco whispered in awe. Even in the dark room, I saw the sheen in his eyes, giving away his deep emotional state.
“How is this possible?” I blurted. “I don’t understand. Marco’s mother is a twin. He has twin siblings, but genetically speaking, his sperm can’t make me conceive twins, right?”
Patiently, the doctor nodded. “You are correct. Marco may carry a gene for twins, but his sperm cannot make you release two eggs at once, which is what happened here. Nor can his sperm force your eggs to split. He can, however, pass that gene down to any female children he may have, and they might conceive twins. It’s not so unusual for a woman to get pregnant with twins without a family history, and who knows, maybe the genetics are there and you didn’t know about them. You said during your intake that you didn’t have a relationship with your father. Perhaps he passed the gene to you.”
I was curious about my father’s genetics and what he may have passed to me and what I may have passed to my children, but not curious enough to go knock on his door and find out. I didn’t remember the man, and it wasn’t like he’d searched me out, either. Besides, if I were curious enough, I could have genetic testing done on my own. It was something I could think about in the future, but presently, I was just trying to let it sink in that I was carrying two babies. Two mini Manginis.
When the ultrasound was over, we were given two printouts, our babies’ first pictures. I was finally permitted to relieve myself. Marco couldn’t stop marveling at his copy as we went into another room to receive further instructions from the doctor. As she wrote up the order for bloodwork, I knew what I was about to say was going to put a sour note on the day, especially for Marco, but I felt like I needed to say it anyway.
“How do we go about doing an early DNA test?”
Marco’s head snapped to me. “Lydia!”
Dr. Gray glanced between us, unsure if she should respond.
“We do not need a DNA test,” he told her.
She was hesitant before responding. “If you have some concerns, I can order it.”
I pushed my hair off my face and tried not to look like the bitch I knew I was being. “I’m not the one with the concerns.”
Marco’s voice hardened. He sounded like he could choke me. “I don’t have concerns, either. That testing will not be necessary, Dr. Gray.”
I looked at him for a long moment. “According to your bestie, that question was in your head, and you treated me like shit because of it. So, why don’t we just get it done and over with?”
Through gritted teeth, he said, “I don’t have questions, and we are not discussing this now.”
The doctor cleared her throat. “You know what? I will let you two think about that one for a while. In the meantime, you can check out up front. They’ll give you your orders for bloodwork as well as your sum
mary for today’s visit.”
We thanked her and allowed her to escape the room. I thought Marco would lay into me then, but he didn’t. He didn’t even speak to me again until we were outside and in the car.
“Once again, you decided it was okay to kill what little happiness I had,” he snapped as we left the parking lot.
“You’re pretty good at that yourself,” I muttered.
“Why did you do that? I never asked for a DNA test, and I never told you I had doubts.”
I gripped the seatbelt across my chest and stared at him. “Tell me you didn’t have any. Tell me you honestly never had a single doubt that you are the father of this—these—babies.”
He opened his mouth. A few small sounds came out as if he were trying to speak, but in the end, he closed it. His knuckles turned white as he squeezed the steering wheel and his jaw clenched.
My snort of laughter was derisive as I shook my head. “You can’t say it because it isn’t true. In all the ways that you’ve misplaced your trust, that is the biggest. That one hurts the most. When that bitch first said that to me, I didn’t believe it, but the more I thought about the way you treated me, the more it hurts to know that you were behaving that way because of those doubts.”
He glanced at me, his eyes pained. “I don’t doubt you now, and it was not something I meant to do. She put that in my head and—”
“And you let it fester,” I said bitterly. “Because you didn’t trust me. I didn’t ask for you to come into my life, Marco. That happened the other way around. You wanted to come into my life. I didn’t ask to love you, either. I asked nothing of you, while you demanded everything from me. If you would have stopped even for a moment to consider any of that, you would’ve never second-guessed me.”
His voice cracked, and his eyes were imploring. “Lydia, I am sorry.”
I stared at him for a few seconds before turning away. The sorrow in my heart was bigger than the happiness of finding out about the twins.
“I know you’re sorry,” I whispered. “I just don’t care.”
Silence reigned between us for the rest of the ride back.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lydia
Packing up almost ten years of belongings was a big job. I didn’t even know where to start, and for the first week, there was no rhyme or reason to my packing. Once again, however, Sofia came to my rescue. We sat down one evening in the apartment Marco rented for us, and she helped me get organized. I felt stupid for not being able to figure it out on my own, but she told me I had a lot on my mind, a lot of things to worry about, and that’s why it hadn’t come so easily. She’d not been wrong about that.
So much had happened since the day we came back to Columbus and discovered the disaster in my living room. Fortunately, the insurance covered most of the repairs. The ceiling was fixed, and the house was inspected and deemed safe to live in again, but we never moved back. It was going to be easier to empty the house if we weren’t in it.
Cliff and Shawna’s house sold, but they were staying in a nearby condo until the kids and I moved so they could help. They didn’t want to be all the way in Florida, worried about us. I was still sad they were going, because even though I was moving away, too, there was going to be a lot of miles between us.
When Mom and Wes returned from their vacation, they came back engaged. I complained that I was sick and tired of flying around on airplanes, and that they needed to either marry before I moved, get married close to the cabin, or don’t count on seeing me. I didn’t really mean that last part. The truth was, and Mom knew this, I was happy for them, especially for her. She’d spent so many of her years caring for others. She deserved to have something for herself, and Wes was a good man. He treated her like she was precious, and I appreciated him for that.
Sofia gave me all the news from Italy. Massimo’s divorce became public knowledge soon after I left. Naturally, people assumed Massimo had cheated on her with Tessa, and that he dumped her and moved in with his mistress. I wanted so badly for it also to be public knowledge that he wasn’t the wrongdoer in that relationship, but to protect the twins, the couple remained silent about it.
Massimo’s condition was unchanged, which was both good and bad. His doctors apparently weren’t as optimistic as they’d been previously, but he was living the best life he could with Tessa, their son, and his kids. He said he was happy for the first time in two decades, and if things go south, at least he would’ve experienced that happiness for a little while. On a happier note, Roberto and Andrea were proud new parents of a baby boy.
A few days after I was back from Italy, Lily called. The conversation was short and awkward.
“I heard about your house. I’m sorry,” she’d said, and it sounded genuine.
“Thanks.”
“You’re really going to sell it?”
I laughed to keep from crying. That was how I got through everything in those first couple weeks. “I hated that house when we first bought it. It was horrible. Granted, we put a lot of work into it, and it’s…home, but I’m ready to let it go.”
“As long as you’re really ready to go. You know we would do anything to help.”
That had made me want to cry, but again, I’d made myself laugh instead, just a small laugh. “It’s fine. I appreciate that, but I’m ready.”
There’d been a few seconds of silence before she carefully and amusedly broached the next topic. “I suppose you’re ready to leave there and move because you’re knocked up.”
My eyes had rolled. “That has something to do with it. Trust me, though. I’m not too thrilled about being dependent on someone else. Again.”
“You know he would turn the world upside down for you.”
I just barely stopped myself from snorting. “Except where his ex-girlfriend is concerned.”
“Yeah…” She drew the word out. “I’ll need that whole story sometime.”
I hesitated. “So…you want to talk again?”
I heard her heavy sigh through the phone. “Lydia, you pissed me off, but I was a bitch, too. That probably won’t be our last fight, and we have so much we need to discuss. You’ve kept so much back from me and then criticized me for not being aware of things. After you’re all moved in, we will have a real talk and hold nothing back. You’re my sister, and you get on my fucking nerves, but I love you, and I want you in my life. I want you in Amara’s life, and I want to be a part of yours.”
I cleared my throat to keep my voice from breaking. “Fine, but you have to stop making assumptions, Lily. I know you were hurt, but you have to stop with your little comments and your grandiose ideas of how things were with me and Gavin.”
“I will try. I really will.”
I felt better after that phone call. She and I still had a lot to resolve, but at least she was willing to try, and so was I.
“Lydia? What is this?” Sofia’s voice jarred me from my ruminations. We were in the house, packing, as what had become our recent norm.
I looked at the two wrapped gifts from Marco. I’d never opened the Christmas presents he’d given me, and I didn’t want to. I shrugged. “Pack them in that.” I pointed to a box across the room labeled “Junk.”
Her gaze moved from the gifts to my face and back to the gifts. “But these are from Marco.”
“Exactly. Junk.”
“But…the junk box goes to Good Deeds.”
“Goodwill,” I corrected distractedly.
There was a moment of silence before Sofia spoke again. “I put them with your things. You might want later.”
“Or not,” I muttered, but allowed her to move the presents to the keep pile.
While Sofia and the kids spoke to Marco all the time, I only talked to him when it was necessary. He tried hard to get more out of me, but honestly, I just didn’t have it. What he did back in Lecco sucked away all my energy to give a fuck. Eventually, we would have to find common ground and be civil, but I wasn’t willing to try yet.
The
front door opened. We both looked up to see Cliff walking in with a box in his arms.
“Is Mandy in there?” I joked as he set it down on the dining room table. Mandy was with my mom for a few days so that Sofia and I could really put a dent in the packing while the other kids were in school during the day. Their rooms were pretty empty already, much of their stuff already shipped off to New Jersey where the cabin was.
Cliff looked uncomfortable, and reluctant, like he might pick the package up and run back out the door with it. I tried to diffuse the weird tension his behavior created as I went to join him at the table.
“You know we are trying to move stuff out of the house, not in, right?”
“Lydia,” he started slowly. I noticed that he kept his hand on top of the closed box, like he didn’t want me to open it yet.
“What? What is it?”
He took a breath. “This…this is one of many containers of Gavin’s things that Shawna and I have had in storage since he died. We will gladly take it all with us to Florida, but we wanted you to be able to decide for yourself if you were ready to…to look.”
Honestly, I had wondered what they’d done with Gavin’s belongings, but I’d been afraid to ask. I hadn’t wanted to see any of it for so long, but it wasn’t until this moment that I realized how scared I was that they’d gotten rid of it all.
With a glance and nod to Cliff, he silently removed his hand and stepped away to give me access. I took a very deep breath to fortify myself, and then opened it.
I was wholly unprepared for the smell that wafted out. Partly that storage smell from things that have been sitting away and collecting dust, but…there was a faint scent that reminded me of my deceased husband. It instantly brought tears to my eyes, and this wasn’t something I could just laugh off.
