by Amira Rain
Again, Carla shrugged. “He might think that it’ll be easier to control you if the two of you are together. Or, maybe he was worried about you leaving the farm, taking the baby with you in your stomach, if he didn’t claim to be falling in love with you.”
With my mind reeling, I suddenly raked my hands over my face. “Carla, this is all just wild. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t feel like it makes any sense. See, I know in my heart that Hayden really loves me.”
Carla practically tripped over her words to assure me that she thought the same. “Oh, no, I know. I totally know that. I’m sure he does really love you. I’m sure he does.”
“Well, then, why are you saying all this?”
She sighed. “Look. I guess it’s just like this. After what I went through, I’m a little paranoid about all men, because I’m so determined to stop any other girl from being hurt if I can. And then today, I just got to thinking about how…well, absent Hayden has been from your life lately, and then I just got to thinking, like, ‘Gosh…I hope he doesn’t have some bad plans for Sydney or something. I hope he’s not using her for the baby, and is staying away from her because he’s tired of having to live a lie, but can’t give it up yet.”
Letting my breath out in a rush, I actually fought an eye roll. “That is not what’s happening.”
“No, I know. I know it’s not.”
“Look. What happened to you was terrible, and I can totally understand why it left you a little paranoid about men and their motives. I completely, completely get that. I also get how you want to protect me. That’s actually very sweet of you. I’m the same way with my friends, always wanting to stop people from getting hurt, especially if I feel like I can see things with a lot more clarity than they can. Please believe me, though, Carla, you do not need to worry about me with Hayden. He’s not planning anything ‘bad’ for me. He truly loves me.”
Getting up from the table, Carla gave me a little smile. “No, I know. I know he does. I wanted to have a little talk with you, just to make sure.”
Just then, a knock sounded on a service door near Carla and me, and we soon heard a muffled female voice, asking if anyone was inside.
“Your sign says you don’t close for five more minutes!”
After calling out for her to come back up front by the window, I headed up there myself, opened the metal gate, and waited on the customer, who bought the day’s remaining four apple pies to take to a church gathering later that evening.
A few minutes later, locking up the creamery by myself, I told myself that Carla had simply been having some paranoid, faulty thinking, because of what she’d personally experienced in the past. I know Hayden really loves me, I told myself. He would never use me and then throw me away like trash once the baby is born.
I really believed this, which was why, several hours later, I couldn’t figure out why some of the things Carla had said to me were still rattling around in my head.
CHAPTER 23
For a week or so, I kind of managed to forget everything that Carla had said to me. I was at least able to push it to the back of my mind. I was helped in doing this by the fact that Jen and I were part of a team tasked with decorating for a “haunted hayride” that would be offered right up until Halloween.
Every day, the two of us, along with Karissa, another girl named Brandy, and sometimes Trevor, would meet in the barn and spend hours constructing plaster “monsters” that would be positioned different places along the route of the “haunted hayride,” which would not only traverse the entire farm, but some of the spookier woodland areas just beyond.
Brandy had gone to art school and had studied sculpting, “way back in another life,” as she said, which wasn’t really an exaggeration at all, since she’d gone to art school in her early twenties of her “regular human life,” in the nineteen-seventies.
Still, though, she remembered enough about sculpting that with her guidance, our plaster zombies and monsters looked unbelievably real, or whatever “real” meant when it came to zombies and monsters. At any rate, we were pretty convinced that the people who saw our creations while on the haunted hayride were going to be genuinely spooked.
Jen’s creations, however, were kind of a different story. Insisting that zombies weren’t even scary anymore since people had seen so many TV shows and movies about them, she instead had chosen to make two plaster unicorns, with one of them being a “boy unicorn,” and one of them being a “girl unicorn.”
Because Jen had constructed such large metal wire frames for the “skeleton” of each of them, they were enormous, or, “just the exact same size as unicorns in real life,” as Jen said. I wasn’t so sure about that statement, but her unicorns were at least the size of horses in real life. They were definitely “fancier” than real horses, though, as Jen said.
She’d painted her girl unicorn a very pale lavender that would reflect moonlight, and then had affixed glow-in-the-dark stars and moons all over its body. A mane and a tail made out of blonde hair extensions, and eyes made of giant marbles painted with glow-in-the-dark paint, added to the otherworldly look. A plaster unicorn horn painted silver would complete it.
Jen’s boy unicorn wasn’t quite as fancy, with a plain silver body, black hair extensions, large black marbles for eyes, and a gold unicorn horn. He had kind of a fancy name, though; Jen had started referring to him as Cornelius. The girl unicorn was Roberta Jane.
After we’d all been working out in the barn for a week, Karissa and Brandy came over to Jen’s “work station,” where she and I were affixing extra-long false eyelashes to Roberta Jane’s eyes, using the same glue that we’d used to affix tiny little turquoise rhinestones to her hooves.
Smiling a little while gluing on eyelashes, Jen glanced over at Karissa and Brandy. “Gorgeous, isn’t she?”
Looking a little dubious, Karissa and Brandy continued surveying Roberta Jane for a few moments until Brandy finally spoke.
“You know, I don’t know if she’s exactly ‘gorgeous,’ but there’s definitely something very artistic about this horse.”
Nostrils flaring, Jen glanced at her again. “She’s a unicorn. Look at the horn.”
Brandy said okay. “There’s definitely something very artistic about this horse, then. There’s something even…honestly, something even kind of spooky about it.”
Just then, Trevor came into the barn, came over to where we were all standing, and surveyed the two unicorns with something like a little shudder. “These are some damn freaky-looking horses.”
Jen narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you ever seen a unicorn before? They’re clearly different from horses because of their two-foot-long horns.”
Trevor shuffled backward a foot or two, wincing slightly, as if Jen had dealt him a physical blow. “I didn’t realize. Please accept my sincerest apologies for my absolute stupidity, Jen.”
With her green eyes twinkling, she fought a smile. “I accept your apologies. I guess. But please don’t make the same mistake again.”
Trevor promised that he wouldn’t, then walked around both unicorns to inspect them further. “You know…I didn’t think unicorns would be so menacing-looking, but somehow, I think these two are much spookier than any of the zombies we made.”
I agreed, and so did Brandy and Karissa.
Brandy said she was becoming convinced that the unicorns would even be the main attraction of the haunted hayride. “I mean…think about it. You’re on a hayride and you see painted plaster zombies within a darkened copse of trees. You’re expecting that, right? It might not be that scary. But if you see a black-eyed unicorn within a darkened copse of trees…well, that might honestly be frightening.”
Jen nodded with a satisfied sort of look on her face. “Yup. See, I knew what I was doing. All you guys with your monsters and zombies…I knew that all that is so played out. Ghostly woodland unicorns, though…there’s no TV show about them yet. They still only exist in real life.”
Trevor told Jen that he hated to
break it to her, but that that actually wasn’t true. “I’m afraid that ‘ghostly woodland unicorns’ simply don’t exist.”
Jen scoffed. “Says who? Real, actual vampires exist. You are one.”
Trevor conceded that he couldn’t really argue with that.
Soon, everyone but Jen and me left the barn, and the two of us got to work putting the finishing touch on Roberta Jane by glazing her eyeballs with another layer of glow-in-the-dark paint.
Once we were finished, I experienced a feeling of wishing that we weren’t. In addition to being too busy to do much thinking about what Carla had said about Hayden, one thing I’d liked about the previous week was that I hadn’t had to have much contact with Carla herself, because with the haunted hayride preparations taking up all my time, I hadn’t been able to work my usual shifts at the creamery.
Now that the haunted hayride project was coming to a close, the truth was that although I felt ambivalent about it, I kind of wanted to continue avoiding Carla. At the same time, this made me feel guilty, because after all, I considered her a good friend by this point. I just didn’t want to hear anything else in regard to her sudden fit of paranoia about Hayden, because I was convinced that that’s all it had been.
Whatever it had been, when I finally returned to work at the creamery, Carla didn’t say a word about it. She was back to her usual friendly, non-paranoid, good-humored self. To my relief, she didn’t even mention Hayden’s name all day.
This made me struggle to understand why, after I’d gotten home that evening, I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation we’d had a week earlier. Frustrated and kind of mad at myself, I ate dinner with Carol and Jen, asking them to tell me all about their days in hopes of tricking my brain into distraction. However, after dinner, despite having heard about the new book Carol was writing, and the spooky new unicorn Jen was constructing completely on her own, I found that thoughts of Hayden betraying me were still rattling around in my head.
Deciding to just face things head-on and put my mind at ease, I went up to my room and called him, surprised when the call immediately got sent to voicemail. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me, I thought. Because maybe Carla’s paranoia wasn’t just paranoia.
Pocketing my phone without leaving a message, I gave my head a quick shake, as if to literally shake the weird thoughts I was having right out of my brain. “Stop it.”
Talking out loud when there was no one else in the room was also weird for me.
I’d just taken a shower and changed into pajamas a while later when Hayden called me back, saying that he’d been in a very important private meeting with someone and had shut his phone off just briefly. Feeling relieved and comforted just to hear the sound of his deep voice, I said that was okay, and he asked me how I was doing.
I responded by saying that I was just fine and had had a pretty average sort of day, and he then asked me how “our baby” was doing. No matter how many times he said it, I didn’t think I could ever get sick of the sound of “our baby.”
I told him that “our baby” was doing just fine. “He or she is still kicking up a storm, and getting strong enough to actually hurt my ribs a little sometimes. Nora told me at my appointment this morning that that’s perfectly normal, and that once the baby gets a bit bigger, it won’t even have much room to kick so hard anymore. Nora also told me that based on the size of the baby right now, I’m still on track for a November fifteenth due date.”
“Good. And you’re still sure that you want to have the baby right on the farm, in Nora’s clinic, instead of at the hospital in Sweetwater?”
I said yes, that I was still sure. “Nora’s convinced me that as long as my pregnancy continues to progress normally, and the baby isn’t breech or anything, having the baby in her clinic will be perfectly safe. I’m really starting to like the idea of it, too. As much as I’m there for checkups these days, the clinic is starting to feel like home.”
Nora’s clinic actually was a home, or had used to be. However, when there had been a “baby boom” in the community a year or so earlier, she and her husband had moved into a new house and had converted the old one to a state-of-the-art midwifery clinic, complete with a three-dimensional ultrasound machine, an enormous birthing tub, and all the standard equipment that one might find in a delivery room at a hospital.
Hayden said that he was starting to like the idea of me giving birth at the clinic, too, since he’d be able to help me through my labor without doctors and nurses constantly coming in and out of the room, like might happen at the hospital.
“So, does that mean that you’ll definitely, definitely be home by November fifteenth?” I asked him.
Hayden said yes. “Without a doubt. Just today, I ‘hired’ a man named Daniel Weston to be the new leader of this Indiana Watcher community, and if he does as good of a job as I think he’s going to do, I’ll probably be coming home even a few weeks before your due date…probably around Halloween. That will give us time to have a few Lamaze training sessions with Nora before you deliver.”
“Good. I’m so glad about that.”
“I am, too.”
Wanting to change the subject and ask him something else I was thinking about, I hesitated, because I just didn’t exactly know how to phrase things. However, after a moment or two spent silently screwing up my courage, I just went for it and blurted out my question.
“Hayden? After the baby’s born…you won’t break up with me, will you? Or…or even have me killed or anything, right?”
One moment went by, then two, then three. And all I heard was dead silence on the other end of the line.
THE FINAL CHAPTER
“Hayden? Are you still there?”
He’d been silent for what seemed like at least three agonizingly long seconds, but now, he finally spoke.
“Have you completely lost your mind, Sydney? I have no plans to break up with you after the baby is born. None. And as for killing you, why on earth—”
“Then why did you wait so long to answer my question?”
It really had felt like a spectacularly long, agonizing three seconds, and now this length of time was making me feel suspicious, no matter what Hayden was telling me verbally.
He sighed, and I could almost just picture him raking a hand through his thick dark hair.
“If it took me a few seconds to answer your question, it was just because I was so completely stunned. I still am. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked such a crazy, out-of-left-field question in my entire life.”
“Oh. Wow. So now I’m ‘crazy?’ I guess I can add that to the list of things I am, along with ‘incredibly naïve.’”
“Oh, you’re still upset about that? Even after I apologized? And as for ‘crazy,’ I didn’t call you that; I said that your question was crazy.”
“Same difference.”
“No. It’s not.”
“I guess maybe we can add ‘clueless’ to the list of things I am now, too, because apparently, I don’t understand subtle differences in things.”
Hayden heaved a sigh. “What’s this really all about? Why would you think that I might be planning to break up with you or kill you?”
Even though he couldn’t see me, I shrugged reflexively. “Someone told me that a lot of vampires just use human women to have children, and then afterward, they just discard the women like trash.”
“Look. Whatever crazy thing Jen told you about vampires—”
“It wasn’t Jen.”
“Well, whoever it was…well, they’re not entirely wrong in some cases. But in this case, when it comes to me and you, they’re dead wrong. I love you, Sydney. I don’t intend to break up with you. And I’m definitely not going to kill you. I couldn’t force myself to harm a hair on your head, even if my own life depended on it. Okay?”
Suddenly, I really did feel crazy. Not to mention embarrassed. I’d somehow let a single conversation with Carla a week earlier get into my head or something. I’d all
owed it to poison my mind. I could see it now. I could also see that my conversation with Carla, along with my hormonal mood swings, had combined to make up a recipe for disaster.
In response to what Hayden had said, I said okay. “Look. I’m sorry I flipped out on you just now. I’m just hormonal and crabby, and the bigger the baby gets, the more I’m just completely wiped out by the end of the day…and I guess it just made me snap.”
Hayden said that he thought it might be a good idea if I stopped working at the creamery at this point in my pregnancy. “Especially since you don’t have to work there anyway. I have plenty of money to support you and the baby with.”
I said that I knew that, but that I just liked working at the creamery. “I like making a little money of my own, and besides, most days, it’s just kind of fun. How about just one more day, anyway? There’s a really sweet older lady who comes in every Friday afternoon in September and October, like clockwork, to buy doughnuts and cookies for the members of a social club she hosts at the nursing home she volunteers at. I just want to work one more day so that I can tell her that I’m ‘retiring’ and say goodbye for now, until next autumn.”
Hayden said all right. “But please make it a short shift tomorrow, and then go home and put your feet up.”
I said that I would, and was even about to do that in a minute. “You should see my ankles right now. This is the first day in my pregnancy that they’ve become more like ‘cankles.’ It’s very attractive.”
Hayden said that he’d still find them beautiful anyway. “I just wish I were home right now. I’d put you on my lap with pillows under your feet and just hold you for hours.”
I said that sounded heavenly. “I wish you were home now, too.”
“Soon…I promise I will be.”
After a few more minutes of conversation, during which I apologized again for my little flip out, we said I love you to each other and ended the call. Not long after, I went to bed feeling more than all right about our relationship and our future together. Which was why I couldn’t understand why some funny preoccupation with the three-second delay before Hayden had answered my question made me toss and turn for hours.
