Page 41 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

Ivan, as much as I adore that man, is a control freak. So before Ivan, before anyone official, I’m going where I’ve always gone when the ground moves.

Marty’s house hasn’t changed since I was small, a brick bungalow with a garden that eats more of the yard every year, tomatoes annexing the roses, the roses not minding. I let myself in the side door the way I have for thirty years, and the kitchen stops me cold on the threshold.

Marty at the stove in his terrible apron, the one that saysHERB YOUR ENTHUSIASM,stirring something that smells of their own tomatoes.

Gerty at the counter in a silk housecoat and full eyeliner at two in the afternoon, slicing zucchini with the knife skills of a woman who has done everything once and most things twice.

Fred at the table, reading glasses down his nose, doing the crossword in pen and arguing with it out loud, losing.

Garden light through the window over the sink. A radio playing something from well before I was born. Basil on every surface that will hold a pot.

I breathe in every detail and come close to a nervous breakdown. The sheer ordinary warmth of it reaches into my chest and twists, and my eyes sting before I’ve said a word, because this, exactly this, the three of them cooking vegetables they grew, is the most stable, wonderful thing I have ever known.

“There’s my girl,” Marty says, turning. He reads my face in the doorway in the half-second it takes me to arrange it, because he half-raised me and the arrangement has never once worked on him, not once. He sets down the spoon. “Sit. Gerty, she’s going to want the good tea.”

“I’m already on it,” Gerty says, not looking up from the zucchini, because she read my face from the side.

I sit, and Fred puts down his pen. The radio plays as he asks, “Hey, kiddo. What’s going on?”

It bubbles out of me between sips of tea. I tell them everything, all of it, the wedding I crashed and the man I crashed it for, the pakhan and the broken foot and the club and the borscht summit, the two pink lines in the shop bathroom and the secret I’ve been keeping from a goldfish.

They let me say all of it without once interrupting, which is the rarest gift this family gives and the one it gives best. Marty stirs. Gerty slices. Fred listens.

When I finish, the kitchen is quiet except for the pot, burbling away on the stove.

Marty is quiet for exactly one moment, one, I watch him take it, and then he says the only thing that was ever going to come first from him. “Are you safe?”

Not a single word about the broken foot or the empire or the optics. Are you safe? The whole of his fathering in three syllables, and my throat closes, and I have to work to get the word out.

“Yes. He’s the safest I’ve ever felt. I know exactly how that sounds, but it’s still true. Ivan would never ever hurt me.” Not in a non-consensual way. But I leave that part out.

Marty looks at me a moment longer, weighing the answer against the years of knowing my face, and then he nods, once, and picks the spoon back up, and that’s the vetting concluded. “Then it sounds like you have another question in front of you. Just as important.”

“I know, but I don’t have an answer for that one.”

“Then,” Gerty says, smiling, “we eat.” Then they feed me, and while they feed me, they help.

Eventually, Fred says, “Okay, kiddo. The big one. Do you want it?”

“I honestly don’t know. I never gave much thought to whether I wanted to be a mom. I mean, it’s always been in the background, I guess, but not something I thought about now. And definitely never thought about with someone like Ivan.” Saying those words aloud feels a little like betrayal. “I don’t mean to speak badly of him—I don’t even mean it that way. I mean it more like, what does fatherhood mean in his world? I don’t have a clue.”

“That’s allowed. That’s a real answer, don’t let anybody rush you off it.” Gerty wraps both hands around her own cup. “You know, we never had any. Everybody assumed it was sad, some tragedy we were brave about. It wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t?”

“I never wanted them. Not once, not a flicker, and I spent about a decade apologizing for that before I figured out I didn’t owe anyone the apology.”

“You never—” I’ve known her my whole life and never known this. “Not ever?”

“Not ever. We had scares, back when scares were scarier, and every time I felt the same thing, which was please no. Every time I was relieved, and the relief was information.” She taps my hand. “Some women feel a yes they can’t explain. Some feel a no the same way. Both are whole lives, Luna. Both are full ones.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiles, the old showgirl smile, undimmed. “I’ve had a marvelous time in this life. I regret nothing, including the not.”

“And if it’s a yes I can’t explain?” My voice does something I don’t authorize. “Because there’s this small thing, when I’m quiet, that—hums. That’s the only word I’ve got for it. It hums. Like it’s already a part of my life.”

Marty, from the stove, without turning around, “Then you listen to the hum. Sometimes our bodies know things before we know them.”