“It was one time, Edie. One frickin’ time,” I stormed out.
Edie laughed. “You’ve all had sex way more than one time. Remember that time when I came home and—”
“Don’t even,” I cut her off, but I was smiling. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant there was one time we didn’t use something…and he was still careful.”
Edie covered her ears. “Really, I don’t want to know anything about my brother’s sex life or anything he might have done with his…”
She shivered and stuck her tongue out, making a gagging noise, and it made me laugh again, the tight clenching around my throat and heart loosening just a tad.
We sat for a minute, me continuing to pick at the cookie and Edie eating hers. “When you found out about your baby,” I said, barely able to speak, “did you automatically know you were going to keep it? Did you ever consider…” I trailed off.
How was I going to actually go through with it if I couldn’t even say the words?
“Honestly,” Edie said, “we were too far along before I realized.” There was no judgment in her tone. “I guess we still could have, but it didn’t seem right when it had toes and fingers and…”
“It has a heartbeat,” I said, tears escaping. Edie dug in her purse and handed me a pack of tissues. When I was done blowing my nose, she squeezed my hand.
I said, “You’re already so prepared. I don’t even have a purse with me. Just my phone and my license and an ATM card. You have a bag full of motherly goodness.”
Edie laughed. “I grew up with Wynn as a mom. I’m perpetually prepared. That has nothing to do with whether I’m prepared to actually be a mother.”
“You’ve already been a mom. To all of us. You helped take care of us all the time.”
“Being stuck babysitting, again, doesn’t make me mom material.”
“Are you nervous?” I asked her.
She looked out the window and nodded. “I’m nervous about a lot of the same things you’re nervous about. Unsure if I’m going to be able to do this.”
“You didn’t want kids, right?”
Edie shook her head. “Neither Garrett nor I did. We were happy with it being the two of us.”
“Doesn’t Garrett want to keep the distillery in the family?” I asked.
“There are some cousins who work for the family business who would be more than happy to inherit it. His only concern is passing it down to someone who will love it as much as he does. Having a child doesn’t necessarily mean that child will love it the same way.”
That was true, because neither Mayson nor I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer or run the horse ranch that was in our families. And my cousins Ty and Eliza didn’t want anything to do with the family car dealership, even if their sister, Ginny, had always shown an interest in it.
“Stephen’s mad because you’re thinking about aborting it,” Edie said.
Aborting sounded so much nicer than killing. Stephen had said killing it. Killing the baby. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I did do it. Which was why I’d wanted it to be a choice we made together, so we could help each other out whenever the guilt was too much for one of us to bear. I certainly hadn’t wanted it to be the choice that tore us apart.
I nodded at her.
“Seeing me all bloated and huge isn’t helping either,” Edie said.
“It’s not that. You’re beautiful. You look like a glitter cloud. Like you could be your own constellation.”
Edie laughed so hard I thought she’d fall off her chair. “I’m glad you think that. It certainly isn’t how I feel. I feel tired and exhausted. My boobs hurt constantly, and the baby is, right this minute, pushing a foot up inside my ribcage in a way that makes me want to hurl the cookie I just ate.”
I started crying again. More stupid tears.
Edie moved into the chair next to mine, wrapping me in her arms like Stephen usually did, which only made me cry a little harder. I wanted him to be there, making this decision with me.
“’Ley. You need to make the choice that is right for you, and your life, and your future. If you want Stephen to be a part of that future, you probably need to include him. But…” Edie drew a shaky breath. “Even coming to an answer together doesn’t mean one or both of you might not regret it later. All you can do is make the one that seems the best, for both of you, right now.”
“I just. I just want to have the future we saw. Traveling to see the stars. Staying out late to watch them. I won’t be able to do any of that with a baby.”
“Who says?”
I looked up at her. “Oh, come on, take a baby with us to Bali?”
“Why not?” When I rolled my eyes at her, she shrugged. “Okay, maybe when it’s a tiny baby you might not want to expose it to all that travel, but you know either of our moms would be thrilled to watch it while you two took a trip.”
“What? Just leave my baby for weeks at a time?” And as I said it, with indignation in my voice, I realized just what it meant. If the thought of leaving my baby for a few weeks with my mama was enough to get my feathers ruffled, how could I really think about ending its life before it even began?
Edie smiled at my indignation, and my thoughts must have reflected in my face because she asked, “Do you want to hear some of the good things?”
“Good?” The doubt was clear in my voice.
“You get to feel flutters, like butterfly wings inside you. And your heart expands a gazillion times because of the little critter growing inside you. Seeing the expression on Stephen’s face when he feels those flutters with you…it’s priceless. You get to see a life you created out of love grow and blossom into its own being. And you’ll get to watch it smile and laugh and find joy.”
I just sat there, taking in all her words and seeing in my head the glorious smile that would take over Stephen’s face at all of those things. Feeling the baby move. Holding our baby. Watching it grow and smile and laugh.
Edie squeezed my hand. “The grandparents are going to be over-the-moon excited. And our little ones will be less than a year apart. They’ll grow up like the rest of us did. With cousins who were there when we needed them to have our backs.”
“My daddy is going to kill Stephen,” I said with a snort.
Edie smiled. “I bet our dad will have some choice words for him as well. He might even hold him down while Blake roughs him up for defiling his baby girl.”
I leaned my head on Edie’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Edie hugged me. “And the very best part? We really are going to be sisters now.”
“Don’t even start on me about getting married. One huge life event at a time,” I retorted , but there was a smile on my face because I was pretty sure Stephen wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. He’d always planned to propose, and I had a feeling the baby was just going to push him into doing it earlier. Marrying Stephen had never felt like a maybe to me. Being married to him didn’t scare me the way having a baby did. Maybe because marrying him wouldn’t be any different from the way we’d lived our lives up until now. We’d always been forever at each other’s side.