“Yeah, Bird, I can. What’s wrong, honey?” I looked over at Jack and watched him struggle with the same emotions I was feeling: disappointment that it wasn’t Winnie, but an alertness to whatever might be wrong with Birdie.
“I heard Mommy and Uncle Gabe talking. He yelled at her and she’s crying.” Birdie sniffed. “He’s mad at Mommy.”
Gabe, as good of a friend as he’s been, was dead meat. “I’m sorry, Birdie. Sometimes adults fight, and it stinks.”
“He’s mad because she’s having a baby.” Birdie didn’t notice that I’d frozen. “Me and Olive have a plan. You’re all going to be my dad, and now you’ll have to take care of the new baby, too. You can just come take us when she’s finished putting everything in boxes. You’re bigger than her. I can help.”
Jack grabbed the phone from me when I remained quiet. He instructed her to repeat what she’d said, and I watched as his mouth dropped open. He flapped his lips open and closed for a bit before clearing his throat. “What you’re describing is kidnapping, Bird. As much as we want you and your mom with us, we can’t kidnap her.”
I wracked my brain, trying to sort out if Birdie had heard them right. Could Winnie be pregnant? I wanted to say no, because she wouldn’t keep something like that from us. Then I remembered the day in my office, when she’d seen Dr. Waits. She’d blown out of there in a rush. Dr. Waits had given me a strange look afterward, but I hadn’t thought twice about it.
Jack’s phone rang, and he handed it to me after checking the screen and seeing it was Beck. He was still comforting Birdie. “I know, sweetheart. We miss you, too. Be nice to your mom, though.”
I answered Beck’s call quietly. “Yeah?”
If my answering Jack’s phone threw Beck off, he didn’t show it. “I just got a fucking hysterical call from Olive. Seems Bird called her and told her that Win is fucking pregnant.”
“Bird’s on my phone with Jack right now.”
“Is it true? Is she pregnant?”
I rubbed my mouth and stared out at the stretch of highway in front of us. We’d just driven an hour to the apartment Winnie was renting. We’d been checking to make sure she would be safe. And she was possibly planning to have our baby in it. “I don’t know.”
Jack hung up with Birdie and looked over at me. “Tell him we’ll meet him at Winnie’s.”
Beck swore. “Fuck. I’m not taking no for an answer this time. She’s opening the fucking door.”
“She’ll open it or I’ll kick it down.” Jack slung gravel as he stepped on the gas and sped towards Stand.
“I heard him.” Beck growled. “Give me forty-five.”
I hung up and sat forward. “She wouldn’t.”
Jack overtook a truck and shook his head. “I didn’t think she’d manage to stay away from us for so long, either. It seems there’s more to Winnie than we know.”
“And if sheispregnant?”
Jack cut his eyes at me. “We get with Bird’s plan and kidnap her ass.”
I shrugged. “I’m not going to be the voice of reason this time.”
It seemed like there wasn’t going to be a voice of reason when we met Beck in Winnie’s driveway half an hour later. I could see the same crazy energy in their eyes that I felt in me. When Jack walked right up to the door and opened it, he growled.
“Not even fucking locked.”
We shut the door behind us and spread out, searching for the woman who’d managed to make us the happiest we’d ever been and also the most miserable. Jack took the stairs up to the bedrooms while Beck went towards the living room. I cut back to the kitchen and stopped in my tracks when I saw her.
As she stretched to grab something from a higher cabinet, Winnie’s shirt was pulled just tightly enough for me to see the roundness of her belly that hadn’t been there before. She was pregnant. Judging by the size of her bump, at least three months.
“You found out the day in my office, didn’t you?”
Winnie screamed and dropped a glass platter from over her head. The glass shattered all around her bare feet, but she didn’t seem to notice as she took a few unsteady steps backwards. “Sawyer…”
I ground my teeth and hardened myself against the sound of my name on her lips. I was angry, angrier than I’d ever imagined I could be at Winnie. Stomping across the kitchen, I picked her up and carried her out of the glass. There was already blood dripping on the floor from where she’d stepped on some. I sat her down on the kitchen table and knelt down to look at her feet. “That means you got pregnant the first night we were together. You’ve been pregnant this whole time. You’ve known for so much of it.”
Jack and Beck appeared behind me like two dark shadows. Beck’s growl of frustration was only bested by the sound of Jack swearing.
“What doctor have you been going to? How far along? Do you know the sex?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking questions, but when I looked up at Winnie and saw her face, I had to stop and squeeze my eyes shut so I wouldn’t crack. “What doctor, Winnie?”