“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Except for one little thing. And seriously, you guys, this is such a breach of protocol because this should be coming from the clinic, but you know what? I just tried calling the specialist and got voicemail, so when you hear from her, you totally need to act surprised, okay? I don’t want to end up on some banned surrogate list, because you know they exist. So you have to act surprised.”
“About what?” Otter said. “Are you—” His voice broke as he squeezed my hand.
“I hope you’re ready,” Megan Ridley said. “Because I took a pregnancy test this morning. And then I took a second one. And then, just because I could, I took a third one, and guess what? I’m pregnant. Bear. Otter. You guys are having a baby. It worked.”
Life turns. It turns and turns and turns.
But sometimes, it turns for the better.
PRESENT
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now.
—Sai Baba
6. Where Bear Attends the Most Awkward Homecoming Ever
“SHE’S DEAD,” Isabelle McKenna says. “Mom. She’s dead and I have nowhere else to go and Ty said if I needed help to find him and I need help! I need help so bad.” Her chest hitches, and it’s that, that little action, a little girl on the verge of tears standing in front of me, looking up at me like I’ll have all the answers that causes my knees to buckle.
And for the first time in my life, my little sister launches herself into my arms. The weight of her reminds me so much of Ty that I can barely breathe around the lump in my throat. She sobs bitterly against my chest. The blood roars in my ears.
You and me. That’ll never change, Papa Bear.
But it will, won’t it?
It already is.
“Twins,” Otter says from somewhere behind us. He sounds just stupid with awe, and through the haze, I am barely grasping what he’s saying. “Jesus Christ. We’re having twins?”
WELL.
Okay, then.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck—
THE DOORBELL rings again a couple of hours later and startles the shit out of Otter and me from where we are staring blankly in the kitchen, my little sister sleeping in Tyson’s bed somewhere above us, freshly washed and fed. Her eyes had closed the moment her head hit the pillow, Otter and I standing above her, unsure of what the hell else to do aside from closing the door behind us and walking back down the stairs to the kitchen, where we stood now, both of us uttering a word or two but unable to follow it up with anything coherent. There are things we should be saying, things we should be doing, but for the life of me, I can’t find the words to actually say any of it.
So when the doorbell rings, we both jump, laughing weakly at ourselves, but then almost knock each other over as we run for the door.
Otter wins, only because he accidentally knocks me against the wall near the living room.
He even looks vaguely apologetic as he opens the door.
Megan Ridley stands on the porch of the Green Monstrosity, smiling a little nervously at the sight of us. “Hey, guys,” she says, and I swear her stomach is twice as big as it’d been when we saw her two weeks before.
And we probably don’t help her nerves by standing there, blocking the doorway, staring directly at her belly.
“Did I break you both?” she asks, laughing a little.
“Um,” Otter says. “No.”
“Maybe,” I blurt out. “Just—are you sure?”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, so a little broken. Okay, I can deal with that. Are you going to let me in? The color of your house is hurting my feelings, and it’s hot out. Like, I have boob sweat right now, okay? And I just drove an hour to get here to make sure you two weren’t freaking out, given the sounds you were making on the phone. But seriously, you have lived here how long and you’ve never thought about changing the color? I may have to keep both of the babies.”
We gape at her.