by Sierra Rose
I blinked. In every hypothetical variation of this conversation I’d ever had, I’d never imagined it playing out like this. Then my eyes fell on the DVDs of When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail sitting next to her television across the room.
“That explains it,” I murmured jokingly, bringing my hand up to my chest. “I caught you at a good time.”
“What?” She followed my gaze to the movies and smacked my shoulder. “Damn right you did. Good thing you didn’t tell me last week. I was on a Michael Bay binge.”
“You just would have blown me up?”
She chuckled. “Probably.”
We sat in comfortable silence for a while. My mother, thoughtfully digesting the absurd amount of information I’d just dumped on her; and me, caught up between the exquisite relief of having come clean to my mother, and the mind-numbing panic at the prospect of becoming one.
“I never wanted to have kids,” I finally whispered, still staring into the fire.
“I know, honey.” She squeezed my hand. “I know.” We sat for a while longer before she asked, “What does Marcus think?”
I sighed. “I left him at the doctor’s office and came right here.”
She shot me a look somewhere between amusement and exasperation. “Bex—”
“I also ran out into the lobby still wearing that ridiculous doctor’s office gown.” The tears, which had abated somewhat upon my confession, came flooding back in full force, and I brought my knees up to my chest. “It’s just been a really awful day.”
“Oh, honey!”
She gathered me up against her, wrapping her arms around me and holding me to her chest as she rocked me slowly back and forth. The fire crackled and broke apart, sending up a million sparks as she held me there, smoothing back my hair and sporadically kissing my forehead until I was able to calm down.
“It could have been worse, you know,” she said once I finally pulled away. “I found out I was pregnant with Max at your Grandma Christina’s house and threw up on her Pomeranian.”
Chapter 5
When I woke up the next morning, I thought my mom was going to grill me with some hard-hitting questions about my future. I thought she was going to ask about what I wanted to do with the baby, or whether Marcus and I were really going to end up getting married. She did none of those things. In fact, the second I found her brewing coffee in the kitchen, all she did was hand me a pair of gloves and point me toward the garden.
“The dandelions came back,” she said simply. “Let’s get to work.”
One day turned into another. Each as unburdened and intentionally relaxed as the last. I had no immediate plans to return to Los Angeles, and although Amanda volunteered to come up during what had to be our sixth Skype session since I’d left, I was actually rather enjoying this little childhood regression.
I felt like a little exercise, so I pulled my mom’s bicycle out of the garage and took a scenic tour of my old stomping grounds, stopping at all my favorite cafés and boutiques along the way. The cashier at an old movie theater Amanda and I used to frequent still remembered me and asked if I’d scored any roles now that I was a “big movie star” down south.
I couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm as I walked out of the theater, munching on cold popcorn and thoroughly enjoying the long-forgotten concept of rain. Just the word “Hollywood” seemed to have an inescapable grip on anyone who was presently dissatisfied with life. It was the embodiment of that mythical horizon. The tangible magical Oz. Finally within their grasp. I knew I felt that way when I moved there. Like at any moment, I might walk outside and something magical could happen. Something that would sweep me away from the humdrum drudgery and take me someplace new. Someplace anything could happen.
I froze in the middle of the sidewalk as I passed by the window of a local drugstore. Behind the chips and candy bars were stacked rows upon rows of magazines. Anything you wanted—from fishing to smut. And there, nestled amongst the crosswords, a familiar face stared back at me. Stared back at me four times over. It was Marcus on the cover.
Without stopping to think, I marched straight inside and bought a copy, settling down on the dampened park bench outside to read. It occurred to me that I had never actually inquired about the article in Time. I had been too caught up with the women and yacht on the front cover, and Marcus had been too upset about his stereotype to talk about what else was inside.
I ended up sitting there for the better part of an hour. It was a fascinating read. I’d had no idea some of the things he’d done—some of the markets he dabbled in and some of the countries where he’d actually moved in order to start a business from the ground up. Unlike most other Fortune 500 CEOs, there was no financial scandal following him. No claims of unfair wages, bulldozing unions, or whispers of tax evasion. Aside from “parties too much because he’s too damn young,” he was squeaky clean. Clean and a little too perfect—I thought as I turned back to the front cover. No wonder people were trying to pigeonhole him. There had to be something the man couldn’t do.
I rolled up the soggy pages and slipped them carefully into my bag. Why? I honestly couldn’t tell you. But I locked and even tested the latch on my purse as if it contained something precious. By the time I got home, the rain had stopped, and my mom was sitting in the middle of the family room floor. A solitary island in a sea of pictures.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously as I waded in next to her and settled down.
“This,” she blew her bangs off her face, “is supposed to be my big project for the spring. A New Year’s resolution, if you will. You have any of those?”
“Oh, same as every year,” I wiped rain from my hair and sighed. “Not to get pregnant.”
“A fail!” she declared, throwing up her hands like a judge.
I shook my head along with her. “A fail.”
She turned back to her pictures. “At least you’re consistent.” I smacked her shoulder and she chuckled. “I’ve had all of these stuck and mixed together in those little cardboard envelopes and it’s time I sorted them and put them into books.”
I picked up a picture of Max and me with huge grins. “Oh my gosh—we’re so little!”
He was maybe six, and I was three, but I actually remembered the day. We’d gone to visit my mother’s sister in Charlotte, North Carolina. While she didn’t have any children of her own, she was incredibly excited about the visit and had raced to the local toy store and picked up a miniature rocking horse for us to play with. Trouble is, she’d gotten only one.
In the picture, I was gloating atop the horse, having obviously just been placed there by a regretful Aunt Lucy, while Max wailed on the ground, turning toward the camera with red, tear-stained cheeks.
“And a lifetime’s worth of favoritism begins,” I murmured triumphantly.
“Give me that.” She snatched the picture out of my hand and slipped it inside a scrapbook she’d labeled, ‘Greatest Memories and Greatest Regrets.’
“Oh, Mom.” My face crumpled with a frown. “You should just paste it right there under the title—it summarizes it perfectly.”
“You are such a little joker!” She pinched me a little harder than usual.
“Ha!” She cackled as she slipped in another picture of baby Max. “That’s what you think now. Just wait. Wait until it’s two o’clock in the morning, and you haven’t slept in five weeks, and you accidently put the baby formula in your hair because you thought it was dry shampoo.”
I stared at her in horror. “Please tell me that never happened.”
“Twice.”
Laughing, I ran my fingers through my hair. “Honestly, Mom, I’ve really enjoyed this ‘let’s not talk about Becca’s impending disaster’ time. But seriously—what am I going to do? I’ve known him three months.”
She set down her tape and turned to me thoughtfully. “But you love him, don’t you?”
I sighed and threw up my hands. “I don’t know—maybe. I mean…yes. I thought I did
. But then this happened and—”
“What does this happening have to do with you being in love with him?”
“Well…” I tried to take a step back and consider it. “I don’t want to be pushed into a corner. I don’t want to have to love him just because I got pregnant. That’s so teen movie, and it’s never how I wanted to live my life, and—”
“Okay, turbo.” She held up her hands. “Hold on. First of all, you just said that you loved him. And judging by how fast you took off after you got the news, I’m guessing you came to that decision well before you found out you were pregnant, right?”
“…I guess so.”
“So they’re really not related,” she said practically. “You love him. And, you happen to be pregnant with his child.”
“But it’s more complicated than that…” I said helplessly.
“Okay.” She gave me a thoughtful frown. “Explain it to me.”
My mind scrambled as I tried to come up with some sort of tangible response to the rush of emotions I’d been feeling since I left.
“We perpetuated…this lie. We did it to the media and Marcus’s business associates, and we did it to our family and friends. This whole thing started out so wrong.”
She tilted back on her heels and stared up at the ceiling. “When I met your father, I was engaged to another man, living on food stamps, and seriously considering becoming a Wiccan.”
My jaw fell open. “…Really?”
“Not the point.” She shook her head. “Point is, good things start in strange places.”
“But you divorced Dad after he walked out on us,” I ventured.
She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “And that, my dear, is the other marital life lesson I wish to impart.”
I shook my head and smiled. “What’s that?”
“Marry the guy. If it doesn’t work out—you can always divorce.”
We laughed uproariously until we had no breath left to speak. Laughed until we’d made a serious, flailing dent in her perfect arch of photographs. I leaned down to start gathering them back up, but she reached out and caught my hand, examining the gigantic ring.
“And honestly…I should have known something was up. I’m your mother.” She sighed a little before turning back to the photographs. “I just thought—this is one of those teenage rebellions I’d read so much about in the parenting books. Those flash decisions that leave everyone else in the dust. She’s just having it a few years late.”
I smiled wistfully. “If only it were so.”
“But I knew that you’d never get engaged to a guy I knew nothing about. I should have put two and two together,” she chided herself. “I was just so happy that you’d found someone!”
My lips curled up in a mischievous smile. “If it’s any consolation, you raised a daughter who makes keen business decisions. Think of this as, I’m finally taking control of my finances.”
“Keen business decisions—ha!” She shook her head in despair. “The man’s worth almost fourteen billion dollars. You settle for twenty thousand? Please.”
My heart palpated, and I felt like I had a minor stroke. “Fourteen billion?” I repeated in disbelief. “No way is he worth that much.”
“Honestly, Bex, don’t you read?” My mother held up a picture of me sticking my face into a plate of pasta. “This should have been my first clue.”
“Actually, I’ll have you know that I read a lot of things.” I jutted up my chin importantly. “For example, did you know that Marcus Taylor started an adult education program from the ground up in Singapore?”
She crossed her arms and stared at me skeptically. “You saw the Time article in Doug Wentworth’s drug store, didn’t you?”
I thought of the soggy copy molding in my bag and flushed defensively.
She laughed again and stuck a copy of the pasta picture into the book. “One way or another, I’m glad you found him. I’ve never seen you light up that way around a man. And the way he looks at you? Please. The man’s crazy about you.”
A warm glow bubbled away in my stomach. “Yeah, Marcus is…well, Marcus. He’s the perfect guy, right?”
“No, sweetie,” she said suddenly, surprising me. “But he’s your perfect guy. That’s all I care about.”
The words couldn’t have come at a better time, and without any warning or explanation, I seized her in a huge hug. She laughed in surprise, but held me tight, kissing the side of my head, smiling.
“I’m so happy for you, honey. This is the real thing. I can tell.”
I beamed back, but as suddenly as the warm elation had come, it left just as fast—leaving me chilled and lonely in its wake.
“But what about the baby?” I asked softly.
Her face sobered as well. “Rebecca, I know you never planned on a baby. But let me ask you this—do you think you’ll love this baby?”
“That’s never been the problem,” I admitted. “Of course I’ll love this child, but I’ll love this baby too much. I’ll love it at the expense and exclusion of everything else—including me.” I stared hard at the ground, trying to think of the best way to say it. “I’m still firmly stuck in the developmental part of my life. I don’t want to push all that aside before it can even begin and give way to the next generation.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I felt the exact same way when I was pregnant with Max.”
“Yeah—but Mom, you didn’t have plans to be an actress.”
She laughed aloud and swatted me across the back. “I’m serious, Bex. The exact same thoughts were running through my mind. But my mother said to me the same thing I’m going to say to you right now: you’re underestimating yourself.”
My face grew puzzled. “I…I don’t think I am.”
“I mean, you’re underestimating your heart. Sweetie,” she said patiently, “you say that you fell in love with Marcus. That implies a certain opening. A willingness to let someone else take a prime place in your life. Do you feel like it’s lessened you in any way?”
I thought about it, hard, but I honestly didn’t.
“It’s exactly the opposite,” I said softly. “He makes me better. He just…enhances what’s already there.”
“That’s exactly the same way it is with a baby. You think your heart will be overwhelmed, and it will take everything you have—but I’m telling you, you’re wrong. Your heart will just grow bigger.”
My eyes welled up with automatic tears, and she threw up her hands.
“Oh no! I’m not watching you cry for another twenty-four hours straight. Truth be told, I was about ready to call a doctor.” I wiped my eyes, and we chuckled together as she picked up another photograph of baby Max. This time, he was sucking on someone’s hairbrush. “Max has a girlfriend, by the way,” she said as she stared at his picture appraisingly.
“What—he does?” I asked in surprise. “He didn’t tell me that.”
There was a knock on the door, and she grinned, getting slowly to her feet. “Well, he’s not pregnant or getting either fake or genuinely married to a billionaire on the cover of Forbes, so I guess it’s not front page news.”
I rolled my eyes, but she was still chuckling at her joke as she went to the foyer to see who was calling. There was a muted exchange, and the next second, she was back in the living room, a restrained smile dancing around her lips.
“Rebecca, there’s someone here to see you.”
Chapter 6
It was a surreal collision of two worlds to see Marcus standing in my mother’s Washington living room. Fidgeting nervously in what I know he took to be ‘woodsy casual.’ My eyes trailed up from his designer sneakers to his three hundred dollar jeans, to his custom fitted Dior jacket. All of which he’d paired with the smaller of his two Rolexes. A small smile flitted across my lips as I finally forced myself to look him in the face.
This was the man on whom I’d dropped the ultimate bombshell, then ditched in a free clinic in the middle of Van Nuys. The same man who I’d dismissed for not
being “family,” then taken off on a plane for the middle of the Pacific Northwest Rain Forest.
And he didn’t look remotely angry.
Quite the contrary, he looked terrified.
“I’m staying in a hotel,” was the first thing he said, raising his hands defensively.
“A hotel?” I repeated slowly.
He faltered for a second, then continued earnestly. “I know you said you need space, and I didn’t want to crowd you—I just…” He turned a little hesitantly to my mother, standing three feet away with her arms crossed. “Sharon, do you think we could have a moment?”
“Oh no, sugar.” She straightened up and cocked her hips. “You lost all illusions to privacy when you helped convince my daughter to perpetuate an international lie, one which you two had the thoughtful inclination to apply to family as well. Whatever you say to Bex now, you can say in front of me.”
His cheeks paled, and he glanced back at me. “You told her.” It wasn’t said as a question, more as a shocked affirmation. She shifted impatiently in his periphery, and he was quick to recover himself. “I’m glad you did,” he said quickly. “It was time.”
In a single predatory movement, she slipped on her glasses and stared him down. “Oh, now it’s time? Now that she’s pregnant?”
He took a small step back; apparently, the power of the glasses wasn’t just contained to me. His eyes lowered respectfully, but when he spoke his voice was quiet but steady. “It never should have happened this way, I understand that. And I apologize.” He gazed up at her. “Apologize with all my heart—I really do. I never meant for this to get so out of hand. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was come between Becca and her family.”
Her mouth twitched, and I stifled a small smile. Apparently, the power of his eyes wasn’t just contained to me either.
