I reached for the small trash can we kept on her side of the bed. I put it in front of her mouth, and she heaved into it, spewing what I assumed was her breakfast. She sobbed and heaved. Sobbed and heaved. Her body was in an uncontrollable state, and the tears were still pouring down her face.
My heart shattered into a million pieces as she continued to vomit in the trash can.
I listened as she breathed heavily, my hands trying to hold her hair back. I blew on her sweating forehead as she groaned. Then I set the trash can off to the side. I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her pregnant stomach as she took deep breaths. Her tears were finally drying up, and her shaking body was finally settling.
Then, I put my lips to her ear.
“Do you have your imperfections? Yes,” I said. “But so do I. I’m stubborn, I’m hard-headed, and I’m determined. Even about things I shouldn’t be determined about. But the point is we work through it as a team. Together, as a couple. Have we been through some serious trials? Yes, we have. More than most. But we eventually tackled them together, and we’re better for it. I am happy with you, Hailey. And we will be happy together. I found a life partner in you. I found a lover in you. I found a kindred spirit in you, and we’re about to bring a child into this world. And if our families don’t want to be around that child, then it’s their loss. We have plenty of other people in our lives who love us, and they will love this child no matter what.”
I placed a kiss into the crook of her neck as she sighed, releasing the rest of the tension in her body.
“As for my mother, fuck her.”
“Bryan!”
“I’m serious. She’s got some serious stuff going on right now, and that’s on her. I’m not going to allow her to bring down this family any longer. And my father? He’s a big boy. If he can’t stand up to his own wife to come have a conversation with you, then fuck him, too.”
Hailey turned her head toward mine, and I tried not to grimace at her breath.
“I’m sorry for being so emotional,” she said. “I promise, as soon as this baby’s out of me, things will level out.”
“Babe, you’re carrying around four more pints of blood than usual. Your body is sloshing around twice the amount of hormones. Your hips are widening to prepare for childbirth, your breasts are probably aching with growing tissue, and there’s a good chance you can no longer see your toes. Just like it took you time to get here, it’ll take you time to even out. And I’ll be there for you no matter what kind of toll your hormones take on you.”
“I see you’ve been reading the books I’ve been giving you,” she said.
“Every. Single. One.”
I kissed the nape of her neck and listened to her beautiful giggle fall from her lips. I spread my hands out around her stomach, feeling it move and undulate with the shifting of our child. It always amazed me how her body was harboring a person. This little human being that would come into the world was seated inside her magnificent body.
“Do you feel him?” Hailey asked.
“I feel her,” I said, grinning.
“I’m telling you, I’ve had enough of the wonders of pregnancy.”
“Not one of those women who love being pregnant?” I asked.
“Fuck. No,” she said.
We laughed as we fell onto the bed, but there was still a trickle of worry behind Hailey’s eyes. Her laughter was genuine, and her smile was real, but so was that speck of worry. It had been there for a couple of weeks now, and it was beginning to give me nightmares. Was her cancer back? Was Hailey sick again?
If it was back, I knew she wouldn’t seek treatment until she gave birth. That was the kind of woman Hailey was. She had been protective of this child ever since we discovered we were pregnant in Europe. But if she was sick again, I needed to know. I needed to know what our options were and what we could do to save her and the baby if the worst happened while she was in labor.
I drew in a breath to ask her, but then I stopped.
I’d been to all the obstetrician appointments. I’d been there for all the bloodwork and the testing for gestational diabetes. I had been to all the emergency room visits when there were pains and splotches of blood in her underwear that weren’t a normally-occurring thing in a pregnancy.
I was there for all of it. And I knew she wasn’t keeping this from her doctor. I was there when she gave the obstetrician the rundown of her cancer and how quickly we had gotten pregnant afterward. I was there on the other end of the line as we received Hailey’s monthly blood work results over the phone from her oncologist.
That couldn’t be what she was hiding.
So what the hell was it?
Chapter 16
Hailey
I had interviewed the three individuals I had discussed with Bryan, but none of them were as impressive in person. The person who had worked at The Louvre t hardly had any knowledge of the paintings they had worked alongside and guarded. It was astounding to me, her lack of enthusiasm. And the other interviewees couldn’t give me straight answers on anything like why they wanted to work here and what drew them to art in the first place. It was like they chose art just to get a degree in something.
They were airheads, and I was angry that I had wasted my time on them.
Now, I was waiting on the last interview of the day. I was ready to close down the gallery and go home because my ankles were throbbing. My hip pain was getting worse by the day, I was beginning to sweat through my clothes because of San Diego’s lovely seventy-degree weather, and I had run out of water a half an hour ago during a rush of people who came in to purchase things and place orders.
She was late. The girl that both Bryan and I liked on paper was ten minutes late for her interview. The sun was beating down through the windows of the gallery, and at any other point in time, I would’ve loved the view. I would have loved the way the warm glow illuminated the onyx flooring of the gallery Bryan had so painstakingly put together and the way the warm hue cast an orange along the cream-colored walls and accented John’s dual paintings perfectly.
It was a sight I used to love.
But now, it was almost tainted by threats from John’s past, by my constant worry that someone would come in and hurt me, by Ben’s disgusting smell and rotting teeth and switchblade that seemed too eager to cut into the canvas of my paintings. Every time the bell rang out into the gallery, I jumped. My heart would race, and my palms would sweat. In a matter of seconds, I would debate on whether to waddle out the back door and try to get away. Only to see it was a customer coming in to purchase something.
That Ben guy had ruined this gallery for me, and it ached my heart.
This place had been my solace, my safe place from the world. It had held my dreams and ambitions in the corners of its walls and watched me succeed. It had held a painting Bryan and I had made, our bodies becoming brushes as our love painted the scene. It had been the place of John’s showcase, where his artwork had been shipped off to the corners of the planet to forever be enjoyed and talked about.
This place had brought so much into the lives of so many, and it had only taken one individual two appearances to destroy it all.
The bell above the door rang out, and my heart jumped into my throat. This was it. He was here to collect early, and I didn’t have the money. My hands started to tremble, and I reached down for my taser, ready to defend my unborn child with my own life.
“It is such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McBride.”
The feminine voice ripped me from my trance, and I let go of my taser. There was a woman standing in front of me with thick-framed glasses on her face. Her raven-black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was wearing torn-up jeans and a tank top with a mesh cardigan around her shoulders.
Was this supposed to be my thirty-one-year-old applicant?
“Kelly Connelly?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m so sorry I’m late. I was volunteering on the other side of town and got stuck in traffic,” Kelly said.
“What type of volunteer work do you do?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not really official volunteer work, but I go down to the homeless shelter and draw the kids.”
“Draw the kids,” I said.
“Yeah. I mean, they sit there, and I sketch them, and then I give them the picture. They love it, and it puts smiles on their faces,” she said.
“That sounds ... nice,” I said, grinning.
“It is,” she said. “So, again. Sorry I’m late.”
“It says here you worked at The Metropolitan Art Museum as a ticket-taker,” I said.
“I did. That place is really awesome if you want a history lesson on art. But it isn’t really tailored to those who want to view it and accept it for what it is,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all the exhibits are arranged by date. And if the date houses enough artifacts or whatever, then they divide them up by the place they were found or their origin story. Really obscure things that only someone with a degree in art history would know. It’s not really for the public, though it’s open to the public. That make sense?”
“I suppose. Would you do it any differently?” I asked.
“Oh, of course,” she said. “I would start by taking down the names of the pieces.”