The cupcake meant something else now.
Something different than it had before.
“That’s awful.”
“Is it so different from you? Is it so different from what your father did to you?”
“My father taught me to be hard. He taught me to win at all costs. But I had toys. He... He did treat me with some affection. It was not entirely void of those things.”
“My father thought that beatings would teach me to be hard.”
“Gunnar...”
“You see, Olive, I was as wrong about my father as I could’ve been about anyone. There was no way I could possibly have misjudged him more. We fell out finally when I was eighteen. There was a woman staying in the house, she could not have been much older than I. My father raised a hand to her. I would have none of it. I beat the hell out of him. And I regret nothing. I called the police, but she was unwilling to speak to them. I tried to help her, tried to get her to leave whatever situation she was in, but she... She was afraid. She ran before I could get her name, and I... I regret that bitterly. I have endeavored to do better than him because I have seen the destruction that a man with unchecked power can have on the world. I’ve seen the scars. I bear them.”
Her throat was tight, with anger, sadness, all for him. But also...fear. For her child. For her future. “Let me ask you, truly. Why is it that you want to be a father to this child?”
“To protect them. It seems absurd, and yet... If they have you, and they have me... There is accountability.”
“You won’t let me hurt them, and I won’t let you?”
“Yes. There is the possibility of course the both of us could be toxic.”
“We won’t be. We can make a different choice. For the baby. For us. We can make better choices.”
“No child of mine will grow up without his father. And when I say that...”
“Why not? What do you care?”
“I’m not leaving it up to you,” he said.
“That’s offensive,” she said.
“No. I will have my child, and I will have you. He will have a family that is together. That is married. I will not have...”
“Why?” She raised her hands in exasperation. “Neither of us had mothers, Gunnar. Neither of us had nuclear families. I am willing to give up Ambient. I’m willing to give it up.” Her voice fractured, as she realized how true all of this was. “Because I can’t have a child raised in boardrooms. Because I can’t have a child be raised simply to be an afterthought. Simply to be an instrument for which to continue to carry out our bidding. It needs to be something else. We need to be something else.”
“Then you may do that. If you choose. No one is forcing you to continue on as head of Ambient. But we will do this together.”
“Well, make me understand what you’re thinking then, because I’m the person that’s having your baby, after all, and I think I ought to know what you’re thinking. I think I ought to know why I have to be subject to your whim simply because you...” But the expression on his face stopped her short. There was something raw there, something ragged. Even in his anger at her he had managed to affect a sort of smoothness. An I’m not mad I’m disappointed kind of countenance, even though she had a feeling he was volcanic.
But this was different. This was a locked door. There was more to what had happened with his father, and he wasn’t sharing it.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“It does no good to speak of. All you need to know is what you are expected to do. I expect that you will give me what I ask for. I expect that you will marry me. Because if you do not, it is not only the company I will take.”
“Gunnar...”
“Then what will you suggest, if we don’t marry? Will I take the child for six months, and you another six? Will you surrender him to me completely? How do you suppose we make this work, if not the way I’ve commanded.”
“I’m going to carry this child. I’m going to feel it move. I’m going to... How I feel now has nothing to do with how I’ll feel in a few months, and already I... When I think of the baby, I can’t help but...” She felt so raw and fragile, like she was cracking apart. In her desperation she had offered up the thing that mattered most to her. The thing that she defined herself by. Mostly because she was desperate to make sure that she did not raise a child in a world where that was all that mattered. When it was the only way that they mattered. Because it just felt... Wrong. It felt wrong, and she couldn’t do it.
She didn’t know what that would make her. The idea of not having Ambient made her feel rootless. Adrift.
But the idea of raising a child who would feel like she did about their life, about the world, that did not seem acceptable.
Her life hadn’t been happy.