“Constantly,” she says, laughing. Closing her eyes tightly, she sighs. “You shouldn’t.”
“I do.” I see the guilt she carries, the unspoken“I can never love you back”on her tongue.
“I know,” she says instead. When she tries to pull away, I wrap my arm around her and haul her back up to me, pulling her again into my lap. We watch the fire burn together, our breaths synchronizing until hers slows further, asleep and alive with her head on my shoulder.
34
MARY
Three weeks have gonesince the break-in, and Maxim’s hovering has been impressive. He insists that I join him for his work, or that he joins me for mine and I don’t mind his company. In fact, I am strong enough to admit that I’ve grown to quite like the companionable car rides, the touch of his hand on my back as he guides me from one place to the next, the way he listens so intently to whoever is speaking that they feel they ought to say the right words as to not waste his time.
The problem is that I am still so fuckingsick, and though I’m not vomiting more than once per day, the nausea is like a silent sniper waiting at any moment to bowl me over.
He’s worried, and I still can’t get myself to tell him that I’m pregnant. I am just about out of lies to why I am always looking a little pukish, though.
But every time I’m about to tell him, he does something sweet, like kiss up the side of my neck, or make me come with his tongue, or draw me a bath, wash my hair, be an exceptionally good and thoughtful husband at every turn.
It’s not that I think he’ll stop when I tell him. He’ll beworse, I’m sure.Moredoting,morecareful,morelonging stares than I know what to do with.
I don’t know that I will be able to do what I need to do. It’s hard enough now, this resistingfalling in lovewith my damn husband.
The battle is uphill and increasingly fruitless with every whispered Russian endearment, every tiny thing he does to make me feel cared for.
I’m pretty sure he believes that my nerves are frayed from the break-in. I couldn’t care less about what happened, but I still would love to know what those fuckers were after.
I’ve left that for Maxim, Sean, and Ness to worry about as I’ve been otherwise occupied trying to secretly get a grip on what appears to be a fetus growing in my abdomen. I haven’t told my sisters, nor my mom, nor a doctor; only Greta knows and that’s because she follows me everywhere in the house, including into the bathroom where I vomit or pee on more positive pregnancy tests. Elise knows too, I think. She hasn’t said anything, but she’s doubled the green juice recipe and keeps saying things like, “You’ll tell me if you want me to change the menu, right? I want to make sure you have food you like.”
Nice and innocuous enough, but she gives these meaningful looks when she says it, like she wants to make sure there are meals adequate to meet my pregnancy cravings, of which so far there have been none. At least she hasn’t said anything about it to Maxim or Sasha.
I wish I could tell my mom, at least, but I can’t be sure she would keep that secret until I’m ready to share it. It’s not that my family wouldn’t be helpful—probably no one could be more of help than the heavily pregnant Vanessa and recently postpartum Willa, but when I think about telling anyone it all becomes very real, and I’m not ready for that.
I have time.
I need to get a hold of this sickness, but Google is nebulous, each proposed remedy accompanied by five other blog articlesthat explain whythatremedy is actually horrible. The only thing I’ve landed on without issue is using a whole lemon’s worth of wedges every day in my water, which I do think has helped somewhat. Sometimes.
It’s exhausting.
Maxim has been so intensely protective that I can’t be sure that he won’t flip his top the moment I tell him and whisk me away to some cabin in the wilderness for the next thirty to thirty-four weeks.
I am at my wit’s end after not being able to sleep through the nausea of the last two nights. So, this morning, I was supposed to go with Maxim and Sasha to some breakfast with rich Russians, but I claimed a migraine and convinced him that it would be okay if he left the house without me. There’s still extra security downstairs, I’m well guarded.
In determining who to ask for help, my sisters are out of the question. They have loud mouths—my whole family does. None of them can keep a secret to save their lives, at least not from each other, but one of them is easier to bully than the others. I pick up my phone as soon as Maxim’s car drives away and call Nate.
He picks up on the second ring.
“Hello,” he says, but he makes it stupid by saying it like “yellow”.
“Come over,” I say. I’d go to him, but I’m too queasy to drive and Jean would probably text Maxim that I’d just left. “Bring bagels.”
He makes protests on the other side of the phone, but I don’t let him finish. “Come alone,” I say, and then hang up the phone.
He rings back two times in a row, the first one I send to voicemail, but the second I actually miss because I do have to go throw up the meager breakfast I tried to choke down this morning.
He shows up thirty minutes later after Jean calls to ask if I approve one Nate Gilbert to come upstairs.
When the elevator doors slide open, revealing him, I pull him immediately by the arm into the kitchen. He looks around the same way he did the last two times he’s visited, like the place dazzles and surprises him. If I didn’t feel the unbearable weight of a secret about to boil over, I would maybe admit that, yeah, I like the place too.
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” Nate says. I retrieve the toaster from the pantry and a bottle of green juice from the fridge. It’s the only thing I can reliably keep down.
