Page 155 of Price of Angels

Her face warmed and she rolled toward him, pressing her nose into his chest. Her stomach filled up the space between them; Mercy stretched so he was curved around her body, echoing the way she cradled the baby.

They’d settled on Remy Jerome, after his grandfather; the father Mercy had so lovingly, brokenly buried with his own hands in a patch of swamp outside New Orleans. Mercy had asked her, in the black of one night, in the hushed chill of early spring, if she thought the name was a curse, and would land him a fate like that of his late grandfather.

Ava had reached through the dark to tangle her hands in his hair. “No,” she’d whispered. “An honor, not a curse.”

There’d never been any real question, though. He’d been Remy before they knew his gender; and then they’d learned it was a boy, and Mercy had snatched her off her feet and spun circles with her in the kitchen. A boy. A son.

A lump rose in her throat when she thought about the kind of father he’d be. The same gentle, patient teacher his own father had been, big rough hands light as thistledown against the breakable limbs of the boy he’d raise into a man.

“What time’s the shower today?” Mercy asked, his voice a low purring against her hair.

“Two.” She sighed, not wanting to draw away from him yet, wanting to delay the rest of the day so she could wallow in soft sheets and the aimless weight of his hands against her.

She was due in just a few short weeks. She was terrified. She was thrilled. She felt young and stupid and blissfully happy all at once. She guessed that’s what it was supposed to feel like.

“Good,” he said. “We’ve got time for me to tell you a story.”

She smiled, though he couldn’t see it, lips curving against his clavicle.

“I don’t think I ever told you the one about Grandpa Louis and the raccoon in the attic, did I? Nah. Anyway, Louis had this old steamer trunk he brought over from Paris…”

**

The Teague house was packed with women, for once. Holly had been to a good many club dinners at this point, and the rooms were inevitably stuffed wall-to-wall with men in cuts. The patio was always clouded with cigarette smoke and the dinner conversation was dominated by Harley discussion, the women chatting between their menfolk as the volume of voices allowed.

Today, though, Ghost and Maggie’s living room was decked with powder blue pennants and balloons, sprays of fresh white roses in glass vases. The cake was three-tiered and there was a little black motorcycle on top. All the old ladies had come: Nell, Mina, even the sometimes-absent Jackie, looking tired but pretty in a floral dress. Stella who co-owned Stella’s Café had been invited, and Ava’s childhood friend Leah, and her friend from school, Samantha.

A pile of gifts in novelty Harley paper stood center stage, and Ava, in a simple black dress and sandals – comfy, casual, and still slender aside from her baby bump – sat behind them in a slipper chair.

“You guys did too much,” she said, eyeing the gifts with something like guilt.

“We did not, so don’t say that again,” Nell ordered, and everyone chuckled.

Maggie had a notepad in her lap. “You have to open everything the right way,” she teased her daughter. “Give us a little show” – she demonstrated showing off the gift – “and ooh and ahh over it.”

Ava nodded. “Got it.” She reached for the first present, the crackling of the paper sounding too loud in Holly’s ears.

Baby stuff everywhere. Rattles and bibs and onesies used as decoration. Hand-lettered banners welcoming the new member of the family:We Love You, Remy!Ava sitting there too pregnant for words. Opening up a tiny pair of toddler-sized jeans while everyone exclaimed over them.

Will they throw me one of these?Holly wondered, dimly thrilled at the idea. She had another month or so before her condition would be too obvious to hide.

She had another week or two before her expanding waistline could no longer be explained to Michael as overindulging. He hadn’t said anything yet, and maybe he hadn’t noticed. But Holly had stood in front of the bathroom mirror that morning and panicked, because to her, it was so obvious now, and she hadn’t worked up the courage yet to tell her new husband that they had less than eight months before they would be welcoming a little bundle of their own.

Holly had never counted on children. In a life plagued by fantasies of listening to music, watching a movie in a theater, walking down the street between strangers and feeling safe for the first time, she’d never had a chance to want kids. A husband and babies and a house of her own had never been attainable, and so she’d given them no thought. She’d wanted to be free; she’d wanted not to die in her own filth tied to a semen-soaked bed.

Now she had Michael, though. Never had she dared to hope for something like him. She felt she’d cheated somehow, stolen something, every time his warm hand fished through the sheets to find her in the middle of the night. The sterling, precious magic of the way he always wanted her, the way he was patiently teaching her that the things she’d always feared were exquisite tortures in the arms of a man who loved her – would a baby shatter that?

By the time Ava finished opening gifts, Maggie recording a list of them, everyone exclaiming over every pacifier and diaper, Holly was in a cold sweat. Her stomach, already in knots, gave a great grab, and she lurched to her feet.

“Excuse me,” she said, as the room swayed around her, “I–”

She bolted, tripping over someone’s feet as she darted down the hallway and to the guest bathroom. She managed, with shaking hands, to get the door shut, and lift the toilet lid, before she lost her hold on the bacon-wrapped melon appetizers she’d choked down before.

When she’d retched her stomach empty and her throat raw, she flushed and sat down heavily on the edge of the bathtub. “Damn,” she whispered, smoothing her hair back from her damp forehead. “I’m the worst shower guest in the world.”

She sat still and breathed raggedly through her mouth for a few minutes, willing her stomach to quiet. She couldn’t hide her condition anymore. She’d have to tell Michael. She had to tell him tonight, even if the prospect made her want to bawl her eyes out. Better to get it over with; better to face his wrath now than worry herself to death for a few more weeks.

She splashed her face with cold water and rinsed her mouth. When she emerged, she found Ava waiting for her in the hallway, folded hands resting on the top of her round belly, her half-smile knowing.

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