Page 42 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

There’s the thing I drove forty minutes to be given. Not a decision. Permission to embrace whatever this could be.

Gerty squeezes my hand and tells me about the scares in detail, the exact years, the way she and Fred decided and re-decided, two people building a life off-script and never once apologizing to the script. Fred adds the parts she skips, gruff, precise, the two of them narrating a thirty-one-year marriage as evidence that you are allowed to want what you want, in any number, in any shape.

I’m trying to listen. Really, I am. But all I can think of is that I need to talk to Ivan. Right now.

“…whatever you decide,” Fred says, folding his glasses, “you tell us, and then it’s just true, and we go from there. That’s the whole machine. You choose, we love it. You choose something else, we help. That’s what we’re here for, kiddo.”

I stay until the light goes gold and then orange. I eat two helpings of the garden ratatouille and let Fred win the argument with the crossword by feeding him the one word he was missing. Gerty sends me home with a jar of it, a bag of tomatoes, and a kiss that leaves a print she licks her thumb to fix, the way she hasfixed lipstick on my face since I was seven. Marty walks me to the car, and holds the door, the way he always does, and before he closes it, he leans down to the window.

“The man,” he says. “When you’re ready. I’d like to meet him.”

“To approve him?”

“You’re past needing my approval, Luna. You’ve been past it since you signed your first lease. I’d just like to meet the person who makes my girl feel safe. There aren’t many who can manage that.”

“I think he’d like that.” I can picture it, Ivan folded into a kitchen chair too small for him, being read by these three, surviving it, maybe even thriving, Fred handing him the crossword pen as a test.

The drive home is the pensive one. The jar of ratatouille still warm on the passenger seat. I can’t ask Ivan to be understanding about my decision when I haven’t made one yet. But I think I have. I’m just… coming to terms with it.

I stop at a light on Cermak and put my hand flat on my stomach for the first time, on purpose, in the dark, in the car, where it’s still only mine. Not a decision. Just a hello, provisional, no obligations attached. The small thing hums back, the way it’s been doing.

Figure out what you want, Luna. Then you’ll know what to tell him. In that order, always that order, the one the women in my family never got to use because someone always decided for them first.

The light goes green all of a sudden, and it makes me remember the club. His stoplight system for safe words.

This whole thing feels green.

16

IVAN

The cuffsof my shirt roll to the elbow, one fold at a time. I do it without looking at Armin or anyone else.

I’m silently counting.

Not the folds. Not the years of his service. The specifics. Three drops to Witte’s courier over eight weeks make a pattern too clean to be accidental, too careful to be anything but deliberate. Jaba has been selling me in installments.

And he had the balls to sit across from me at my own table while he did it.

I flex my hand once and walk into the warehouse. Armin follows me in. My captains form a loose ring, all of them, their faces arranged into careful neutrality. Armin now stands at the back wall with his hands clasped.

In the center, under a single hanging bulb that turns everything the color of old teeth, Jaba sits in a chair with his wrists tied behind him and a rag tied in his mouth. His shirt is dark with sweat at the collar. His eyes find mine the moment I enter. He isa big man, and that’s a part of his problem. He has mistaken his size for authority.

I cross the room at a walk and stop in front of him. “Cut him loose.”

The man behind Jaba hesitates. I don’t look at him. Only Jaba, who meets my eyes for a moment before his gaze drifts to my feet.

The zip tie comes off. Jaba rolls his wrists. He reaches up and pulls the rag from his own mouth and drops it on the floor between us. He works his jaw. His gaze shoots to the ring of captains once—a bid, perhaps, for the room’s sympathy.

I do not have to look at them to guarantee their loyalty or keep them in line. They are not here to be swayed. They are here to see what happens.

To hear what I say.

“Tell me what you sold to Witte.”

His eyes flick with thoughts, remembering the biggest mistakes he’s ever made. There’s no shame on his face. A twinge of pride, instead.

He has to clear his throat to speak. “Enough to be a problem.”