Page 59 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

He’s not finished though. He’s too proud and too small for finished, and I’ve known him long enough to know that diminishment doesn’t produce wisdom in men like Hugo. It produces grievance, and grievance in small men produces noise.

Noise I can manage. What I could not have managed is what he was becoming before today—comfortable, emboldened, running his mouth without consequence into a phone at two in the morning. That version of Hugo is no longer available to him.

The version that exists now has a year to think about what he’s done wrong.

23

LUNA

I’min the shop before Cherry and Mike for the second week running, which tells me something I already know and don’t need confirmed. When things are big, I clean.

Cherry’s theory is that I’m trying to bring the exterior into alignment with the interior, and Cherry’s theories about me are always uncomfortably accurate, so.

The shop’s already clean. I cleaned it on Saturday. I deep cleaned it on Sunday. I reorganized the make-your-own supplies Monday, and on Tuesday morning I stand in my spotless shop with the morning light coming through the fixed window—the fixed window, because Ivan paid for the glass without being asked—and a mug of tea I won’t finish and think:this is my life now.

Wax and bergamot and a man who goes to the kitchen first, and a pregnancy I’ve told out loud to six people and a goldfish.

I tap the tank twice, the morning protocol. Hairy drifts up, faithful as the morning itself.

“We’re about to have a visitor,” I tell him. “Technically, I mean in about forty minutes when Cherry arrives, but more relevantly I mean in approximately six months.”

I watch him work his little mouth at me. “That’s the whole report. We’re having a baby. I think we’re keeping it. I’m not afraid.” I pause. “I’m not afraid,” I say again, to see if it stays true the second time.

It does.

That surprises me, the way the not afraid is solid. I’ve been afraid of things my whole life. Star’s moods, the lease, the year the shop nearly folded, Hugo’s face when I finally stopped trying to earn his affection. And this enormous thing sits in my chest, and what it is, mostly, is the hum.

Warm and certain and inconveniently timed and deeply, mine. Not something to fear. Something to cherish.

Until my stomach wages war. I set down the mug and run for the back bathroom, because the first trimester has opinions about tea, apparently, and the hum and the nausea are—per the pregnancy book Ivan left on my pillow one morning with no note attached—completely incompatible conditions.

I’m brushing my teeth when Olga Witte arrives.

I hear the bell from the bathroom, hear Mike’s voice beginning the welcome, and come out still holding the toothbrush to find Olga standing at the worktable with a large notebook and two coffee cups, which she has positioned with the precision of a woman who does not sit down at tables without a plan.

“I brought you a decaf,” she says. “I researched. The brand you prefer was in your last three Instagram stories.” She sits. “Ithought about texting first, but I thought you’d tell me not to come.” A pause. “I’m glad I didn’t ask.”

“What is all this?” I gesture to the laptop bag on her shoulder.

“I’ve been thinking about your branding problem,” she says, opening a notebook to a tabbed page. She has color-coded her own tabs. I feel a kinship with her I was not expecting. “Your Instagram engagement is strong on process content and almost nonexistent on product reveals. The naming conventions are inconsistent—you have three scent families, and the names don’t signal family membership anywhere. And your seasonal drops have no lead-up architecture, so you’re launching into silence instead of into momentum.”

She turns the notebook so I can see the pages. Her handwriting is extremely neat, her annotations color-coded, her sketches in the margins surprisingly good. There is a whole page about target demographic that is more accurate about my customer than anything I have put into words myself.

“You graduated early,” I say.

“Two years early,” she says. “Everyone underestimates me. I’ve been letting them, because it was easier. But marketing is my thing. I’ve been reconsidering a lot of things.” She looks at the notebook, then at me. “I’ve been living life in the easier column a long time. It’s a comfortable column and it is finishing me off. I need to work, Luna. And I need to help. You, specifically.”

“Why me?”

“Because of Hugo.” Those words are quieter. “Because of what he did to you. Please.”

“You’re asking to help me?”

She nods. “I know I can’t make up for what he did. But I want to try anyway.”

I sit with that for a moment. “Well, you’re right. About a lot of things. Especially the part about people underestimating you, because the branding ideas are good.” I flip through her notebook. “The naming convention problem—I’ve known about it for two years and kept putting it off. The demographic breakdown is more accurate about my customer than anything I’ve put into words myself. And the seasonal drop architecture is exactly right.”

She smiles, and it is not the polished social smile of a Witte event photo. It’s small, real, and slightly surprised, the smile of a woman who has been underestimated so long that even accurate praise still arrives as a gift she wasn’t sure she’d receive.