18
MIKA
At first,living with my parents had seemed more like staying at a bed and breakfast. Mom treated us like guests.
That all changed a week after we moved in. That Friday night, I took over her kitchen, cooking vegetarian basmati rice pilaf and grilled mushroom tofu burgers.
"Where did you learn to cook?" Mom asked me after the first bite of her burger.
"Instructional videos."
"You know how I feel about that bitch?—"
"They're just regular people with cooking vlogs," I hastily interrupted. Mom hated all celebrity chefs. Whenever they appeared on her morning news shows, she cursed them out before changing the channel.
I showed her a few amateur videos, and she was hooked. The next night, she asked me to help with dinner a half-hour before she began meal prep. Then, she progressed to sharing the menu she wanted to prepare for the following day.
I loved every minute I got to spend in the kitchen with my mom. She was very no-nonsense about cooking, which also meant she detested new recipes. Learning them was good for her. It would help her maintain brain function in her old age, orso she said. She was nowhere near old by shifter standards, but stubborn? Fuck yeah.
Unfortunately, Gabe had an adversarial relationship with food once his morning sickness started. The federal court judges allowed him to take a single picture on his cell phone when he needed to run to the court's restrooms, and then they recessed until he was ready to sketch the next witness. Thankfully, that had only happened twice, including the time I'd brought him a change of clothes but ended up taking him home instead.
The worst part of Gabe's morning sickness was that it didn't stick to the morning. I found him sucking down ginger tea and snacking on saltines at all hours of the day. He lost weight in his first trimester, which our family doctor said was normal. Dr. Ostref lived at the compound and had been my doctor since I was born. I trusted him with my unborn child's wellbeing, so when he said to call him if Gabe was still getting sick into his second trimester, I marked it on the calendar and waited.
When Gabe instead began feeling better a week before the deadline, we both breathed a sigh of relief.
"We're fine. Baby's fine," he insisted when we spoke on the phone over lunches. I worried while he was at work, but he insisted on staying until Dr. Ostref's cutoff date, only a few days before he was due.
"It's less stressful now than it was when I had to walk," Gabe said. "Your mom's driver drops me off at the front steps each morning."
"She's not Mom's driver," I said.
"Whatever you say." He still thought my mom was connected to actual organized crime instead of the organized chaos of our meerkat family. Meerkat and Mafia both started with the letter M, and they both focused on family, but that's where the similarities ended.
For his part, Dr. Ostref did little to dissuade Gabe from thinking we were mafia. The elder beta meerkat shifter had an entire bookcase dedicated to mobsters.
"Light reading, eh?" Gabe asked.
"Oh, I'm enamored with organized crime," the doctor said.
"I love me some true crime, don't get me wrong," Gabe said, "but yours have more to do with getting away with crimes than holding people accountable for them."
Dr. Ostref glanced at his books and shrugged. "They do. Huh. I never thought of it that way. You're right. Maybe that's part of the appeal, getting away with it. What do you read?"
Gabe went through his list of true crime books, recommending several mafia-adjacent ones, based on the titles. "Want to do a book exchange on Sunday before dinner?" Gabe asked.
"Let's do it." They shook hands, and the doctor led us to the examination table. "Time for your first ultrasound. Take off your shirt."
Gabe hoisted himself onto the table and lay back. I clasped his clammy hand in both of mine, and he squeezed my fingers until they ached while the doctor rubbed gel into his skin, making him hiss.
When the doctor touched the sounding device to Gabe's abdomen, we heard our baby's heartbeat for the first time.
"There they are," Dr. Ostref said. "Singular they," he corrected. "There's only one heartbeat, one child. Do twins run in your family?"
"Not that I know of," Gabe said. "I'm an only child, and my dads each have one sibling."
"Then probably not," the doctor said with a nod. "There are a few multiples in our family, but not in Talia's line."
"Thank goodness for small miracles," Gabe said. "I'm scared enough with one."
