I knew we were getting in over our heads when we asked Sabrina to marry us, when I asked her to marry me, but I was never prepared for this.
For the poisoning, the illness … then thinking she was barren.
And then, even before that could fully settle in as our new reality, suddenly … she’s pregnant.
And not exactly happy about it.
But try as I might to keep the peace, I can’t help but find myself wondering why it is that even I haven’t been able to bring myself to try to convince her of the joy of all this. God knows Lydia’s been trying, but even she’s been going about it differently than I expected.
It’s like no one dares to believe it’s actually true. After the earlier scare, we’re all just …
Just holding our breath. Waiting to see what happens next.
Because there’s always a next.
“Marlowe?”
I keep staring straight ahead, not paying any attention to the soft flickering light playing across the faces turned in my direction. Not that I notice them either, not really.
Not at least until Rory has repeated my name for what must be the sixth or seventh time, his hand waving an inch in front of my face until I suddenly snap out of my daze.
“Earth to Marlowe, hello?”
I start a bit, falling back in my seat and blinking rapidly as I slowly readjust to my actual surroundings. To my left, Kaleb tries to hide his grin as Romulus glares at me from across the table.
We’re in his study, the table strewn with what feels like endless charts and diagrams; everything from battle plans to floor plans to maps of the surrounding forests marked with every possible direction of attack. No matter how much we try to plan for Remus’ inevitable attack, there always seems to be another thing we haven’t yet accounted for. There always seems to be one more blind spot.
And the plans, these evenings spent pouring over maps and endlessly talking and talking and just talking …
Rory lets out an annoyed sigh. “And … there you’re about to go again.” He pushes back up against his chair, causing it to rock back on two legs as he looks determinedly away from me out of annoyance. “I don’t know why I bother trying to get you to focus on this anymore, not when you just zone off every time one of us looks away.”
“But can you really blame me?” I ask, surprising myself even as the words roll off my tongue.
Even Kaleb’s grin wavers slightly.
I look around at each one of them in turn, working my way between Romulus and Kaleb before settling back on Rory.
“What’s the point of any of this anymore?” I ask. I reach into the center of the table and pluck a random sheet of paper up from the middle of the pile, waving it in the air a moment before slapping it back down. “It’s always more charts. Always more maps. But we’re not actually getting anywhere, are we?”
I know I must look wild when I glare around at the three of them. I can feel the color rising in my skin just as surely as the hair has started to prickle as it stands on end on my forearms.
“Well, what else would you have us do?”
Rory’s voice is surprisingly quiet. He doesn’t look at me, but rather at the strewn-out papers on the table. The look on his face … it mirrors how I feel inside.
Overwhelmed. Deflated.
My eyes drop down to the table too, then to my hands fiddling where they’ve settled on top of it.
“I … I don’t know,” I admit. I avoid looking at any of them now, especially Rory and Kaleb. “But what we’re doing now, it doesn’t seem to be helping her.”
Her.
No one needs elaborating on who I mean. The only other woman in any one of our lives is Lydia, and she’s as steadfast and sane as ever.
But Sabrina on the other side.
Just thinking of the anguish she’s been in these la