Nameless Series Boxed Set (56 page)

“Yes,” Mackenzie
replied, nodding seriously. She stepped over and raised her arms up toward Seth.
“Up.”

Seth pulled her
up onto his lap, so that both she and Erin were nestled against him. Mackenzie
tilted her face up and puckered up her lips. “Kiss!” she demanded.

Seth dutifully
leaned over and gave her a little kiss. Then stroked her fine, messy hair.

Mackenzie
grinned up at her father and patted his cheek, until she got distracted by
something else. “Mommy, kiss,” she insisted, peering up at Erin.

Erin pulled up
the warm little body and gave her daughter a kiss too. “Mommy loves you,
pumpkin. Lots and lots.”

Mackenzie
sighed contentedly and snuggled against Erin’s large belly. “Lots,” she
breathed. After a moment, she turned back to Seth with a wide-eyed, questioning
look.

“I love you
too,” Seth assured her with a half-smile.

Mackenzie
relaxed again, still sitting on Seth’s lap but leaning against Erin. “Lots and
lots,” she mumbled vaguely, closing her eyes with a sigh.

In just a
minute, she’d fallen back to sleep.

With a fond
smile, Erin glanced over at Seth’s face. He was gazing down at Mackenzie, and Erin
caught a fleeting look in his eyes that was so deep, so tender, that it almost
took her breath away.

Shifting
carefully, so she could get herself into a comfortable position without
disturbing Mackenzie, Erin leaned against Seth and asked softly, “Are you
disappointed that we’re not having a boy this time?”

Seth darted a
surprised look over at her. “Of course not. Why would I be?”

Erin shrugged. “I
don’t know, but a lot of men really want to have a son.”

 “I’m happy
with my girls.” Seth glanced back down at Mackenzie and brushed a strand of
red-gold hair off her face.

“Good,” Erin
replied simply, the slight tension easing in her chest. “Me too. Very happy.”

“Are you?” Seth
asked unexpectedly, slanting a quick, observant look over at her face.

Erin just
blinked at him, stunned he could even ask such a thing.

“I mean, with
everything
,”
Seth clarified, his voice sounding a little diffident. “Your...job situation...and
everything.”

And then Erin
understood what he was asking. Was pleased she could relieve his anxiety. “Yes,”
she assured him, meeting his eyes. “I am. I still miss it sometimes, and this
isn’t what I’d expected from my life. But law school is going well so far, and
one day I might actually graduate. This is exactly what I want.”

Seth smiled
faintly. Nodded. Didn’t say anything.

But Erin knew
that she’d answered one of his lingering worries. Was so glad she was able to
do so.

She turned her
head and pressed a kiss onto his chest, which was the only part of him she
could really reach. “And you? Are you happy?”

Seth gave her
an impatient look, as if he couldn’t believe she’d asked such a ridiculous
question, but then he said, “I’d be happier if you would marry me.”

Erin jerked in
surprise. “You act like you’ve asked me before. This is the first I’m hearing
about this.”

“I know that,
from the very beginning, you claimed you never wanted to marry me, and you’ve
never brought up the possibility since, so I just assumed—”

Erin snorted. “Idiot.
A lot has changed since I said that, and if you weren’t such a close-mouthed,
secretive assho—
poopoo-head
, then you would have managed to give me a
few hints that you were even thinking about marriage.”

She glared up
at him, wondering if he’d ever get to the point when he’d be able to easily
tell her what he was thinking.

Seth looked
slightly sheepish, although he’d chuckled at her choice of derogative. After a
minute of her glaring at him, he raised his eyebrows. “Well? Do you have an
answer for me?”

Erin felt a
flood of deep joy rising up in her chest, but she huffed, “Well, you haven’t
really bothered to ask me yet.”

Rolling his
eyes in annoyance, Seth gritted out, “Will you marry me?”

Erin scowled
and stuck out her chin, to prove that she wasn’t happy about his assumptions. “Yes.”

They glared at
each other for a moment until they both broke into soft, affectionate laughter.

She couldn’t
help but laugh at the absurdity, at the delicious irony of it.

The irony of
her whole life.

She'd been so
sure that her surprise pregnancy would never turn into a happy family.

It was stupid,
she decided—stupid and futile—to ever claim that any one thing could never
happen.

Inevitably, it
always would.

Seth adjusted Mackenzie
in his lap, so that the sleeping child wasn’t pressing into Erin’s belly.

Then Erin
grabbed Seth’s left hand. Played with his slim, strong fingers. Imagined a
wedding band on his ring finger and felt a powerful surge of ownership at the
visual.

Seth Thomas
would be her husband. She actually shivered from the possessive thrill of it.

Snuggling
against him, she knew that he was just as excited and pleased about the
marriage as she was, although he hadn’t said anything and his face was passive,
only his eyes reflecting his joy.

“So when should
we get married?” Seth asked, attempting to hide his own excitement by acting
business-like and practical.

“Next weekend?
Do you think we could get the license and everything so quickly?” Erin felt the
overpowering need for an outlet for her love and exhilaration, and wondered if Mackenzie
would keep sleeping long enough for Erin and Seth to spend a little time alone
in their bedroom.

Seth smiled. A
rare, warm, full smile that always made her belly clench.

That smile was Erin's
answer.

She knew that
she and Seth were going to get married next weekend. The next step in a future
that wasn’t perfect, a future that was completely unexpected, but was actually
the one they both wanted.

The final,
fitting irony of Erin's life.

And she
knew—she
knew
—that the shape of their love, their family, their futures,
their lives had somehow grown beyond the limits of expression.

But that it
wasn’t nameless anymore.

I’ve never had a child or been
pregnant, so I would never have been able to write this book without the help
of women who have. A number of women offered me invaluable help by sharing
their pregnancy and labor experiences—particular thanks to Laura and Amy and to
the hundreds of women whose birth stories I read online. If anything here feels
authentic, it’s thanks to these women, and if anything seems off, it’s entirely
my own fault.

Also, many thanks to Rahab for
her generosity and careful eye.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Erin waited five minutes longer
than she should have, hoping the phone might still ring.

It didn’t. As
the minutes passed, the weight in her gut that had been there all day—that had
been there for weeks, although she’d tried to ignore it—got tighter until it
actually hurt.

Finally, when
she heard Mackenzie’s loud request for “Mommy!” echo through the apartment, Erin
stopped staring at the phone and got up to kiss her daughters goodnight.

She glanced
into Anna’s room first, but saw that it was empty, with the violet
color-scheme, delicate white furniture, and large collection of stuffed puppies
(lined up lovingly by order of size) remaining in semi-neat quiet. Having
expected Anna’s absence, Erin simply moved on to the next bedroom.

There were twin
beds in Mackenzie’s room. Mackenzie was in one, and Anna in the other.

“Are you going
to sleep in here again tonight?” Erin asked as she entered the room and moved
toward her younger daughter, who was curled up under the gold and green
coverlet.

Anna nodded and
stared up at Erin with the wide eyes. Anna was blond, like Erin, and she’d
recently had her fourth birthday. “Yes. I wanna sleep with Mac.”

She spoke
pretty well most of the time, but when she was tired she would often swallow
over her words.

Erin sank down
to the edge of the twin bed. “Did Mackenzie say it was all right?” She glanced
over at her other daughter, whose delicate features looked rather grumpy.

At her mother’s
questioning look, however, Mackenzie nodded in a silent affirmation.

“Yes. I asked
her like you told me.” Anna snuggled under the covers of the small bed. “I
sleep with Mac tonight.”

“Okay.” She stroked
Anna’s messy shoulder-length hair back from her rosy face. “As long as
Mackenzie doesn’t mind, then you can sleep in here with her. But it’s her
bedroom, so you have to sleep in your room if she wants to be alone.”

Anna nodded
solemnly, her eyes wider than ever. Then she raised her arms up toward Erin,
requesting her goodnight kiss.

Erin smiled at
her, secretly pleased that one of their daughters looked like her. Mackenzie,
of course, was exactly like Seth in almost every way, but Anna was more like Erin,
particularly when she smiled.

Giving Anna a
hug and a kiss on the cheek, Erin murmured, “Mommy and Daddy love you, sweetie.
Lots and lots.”

Anna giggled
happily and hugged Erin in return, but her mouth turned down into a frown as
she pulled away.

“What is it?”
Erin asked.

The girl’s
forehead wrinkled in deep thought. “I can’t remember what Daddy looks like.”

The weight in
Erin’s gut clenched sickeningly, but she managed to smile and shake her head.
“It’s only been a few weeks, Anna. I don’t think you’ve really forgotten so
soon, have you?”

Seth had been
out of town since last month, on a work trip that was only supposed to have
taken two weeks.

“She hasn’t
forgotten,” Mackenzie said from the other bed. Her voice sounded impatient and
a little bossy. “She looks at his picture all the time.”

“I have
forgot,” Anna insisted, offended by this slur to her credibility and
four-year-old dignity. “What color is Daddy’s eyes?”

“You know what
color his eyes are.” Erin knew that twenty-five days was a really long time for
their father to be absent. She knew they needed to talk about him, to remind
themselves he was important to them. She smiled and reached down to tickle Anna
lightly on the side. “What color are your eyes?”

Anna giggled
and tried to scoot away from Erin’s tickling fingers. “Blue!”

Erin’s smile
widened at the girl’s characteristically quicksilver shift in emotion. She
tickled Anna a little more. “And what color are Mackenzie’s eyes?”

“Blue,” Anna
burst out, trying to slap Erin’s hand away.

“And what color
are Daddy’s eyes?”

“Blue!”

“That’s right.
Daddy has blue eyes, just like you and Mackenzie.”

Anna reached
her arms up for another hug, and Erin pulled her daughter close to her again.
Snuggled with her a little longer than normal. Felt that same weight in her
gut. It hadn’t gone away, even though she’d made her daughter happy again.

“Mommy’s eyes
isn’t blue,” Anna informed her, when she finally pulled away.

“Aren’t blue.
That’s right. I’m the only one without blue eyes.”

The girl patted
Erin’s arms consolingly and let out a dramatic yawn. “That’s all right. Mommy
has pretty eyes too.”

Giving her one
last kiss, Erin stood up and moved over to Mackenzie’s bed. Now that she looked
closely, she could see that her older daughter was definitely not happy at all.

Her little chin
was sticking out, an obvious sign that she was angry. A characteristic
expression that Seth insisted she’d inherited from her mother, although Erin
strenuously objected to this assessment.

Mackenzie’s
blue-gray eyes were exactly like Seth’s. Exactly like Anna’s. And they were
clearly stormy at the moment.

“What’s wrong,
pumpkin?” Erin asked, smoothing her daughter’s long red-gold hair—hair that
Seth refused to have cut any more than the slightest trim.

“Daddy didn’t
call tonight?”

Erin’s chest
suddenly hurt so much that she wasn’t sure she could even breathe, but she
managed to keep her face composed as she shook her head. “No. I guess he wasn’t
able to tonight.”

Mackenzie’s
chin stuck out even farther, and Erin could tell it was an attempt to hide the
way her bottom lip was trembling. Mackenzie had always—like Seth—instinctively
tried to hide whatever strong emotion she felt.

“He didn’t want
to say goodnight to us?” The wavering words were somewhere in between a
statement and a question.

It hurt so
much, that her daughters were both so troubled—in different ways—by Seth’s long
absence. There wasn’t anything Erin could do to alter the reality, though. He
had been gone for a really long time.

She took a deep
breath and managed to swallow over the constriction in her throat. “You know
better than that, Mackenzie. He was probably in meetings and couldn’t get away.
You know he calls whenever he can.”

“Daddy calls
last night,” Anna informed them from the other bed. “I told him about the big
slide in the park.”

Mackenzie
ignored this piece of information. “He’s always in meetings. I hate meetings.”

“I hate
meetings too,” Anna agreed, more likely in echo of her big sister’s declaration
than out of any real resentment.

Erin stroked
the curve of Mackenzie’s cheek with her thumb. Tried to figure out the best way
to deal with this. “I know, pumpkin, but Daddy has to go to meetings for his
work.”

“I hate Daddy’s
work.”

“I know.” Erin
silently agreed with the sentiment, even though she was supposed to be the
adult. “But Daddy has to work. That’s how we have money to live on.”

Mackenzie
pushed down the covers with bad-tempered jerks of her arms. “Other daddies
work, but they aren’t gone all the time.”

This was
undeniably true, and it did feel like Seth had been gone forever.

“Mackenzie. You
know Daddy isn’t gone all the time. He’s just on a long trip right now. He’ll
be back tomorrow.”

“He said he’d
be back today.”

“Yeah,” Anna
added enthusiastically. “Today!”

Erin sighed and
closed her eyes briefly. Prayed she was handling this the right way. She’d been
a mother for more than six years now, but she still felt like she was barely
muddling through most of the time.

“I already
explained. Something came up. Now he’ll be back tomorrow instead.”

Mackenzie’s
face was working urgently as she tried to contain her feelings. “Something
always comes up. He won’t come home tomorrow either.”

Anna’s blond
head popped up from her pillow. “He won’t?”

“Daddy promised
he’d be home tomorrow,” Erin assured them, feeling like she was on the verge of
tears of helpless frustration.

“He always
promises.” Mackenzie rolled over to her side and curled up in an angry ball. “I
hate Daddy.”

The jab in her
chest was so sharp that it actually made her feel physically ill. Swallowing
hard, she put a firm hand on Mackenzie’s shoulder and turned her back over.
“Mackenzie. You never say that about Daddy, or about anyone else, especially
when you don’t mean it.”

“I do mean it.”

Erin wouldn’t
let her daughter roll back over. “Tell the truth. Do you really hate him? Or
are you just mad at him right now?”

Mackenzie tried
to hold out. She’d always been as obstinate and determined as her father. When
faced with Erin’s unassailable gaze, however, she couldn’t help but cave. “I’m
mad at him.” She took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”

Erin was so
relieved that Mackenzie hadn’t put up a fight that she was just as shaky as her
daughter. With a throaty sound she couldn’t control, she reached down and
pulled Mackenzie up into a hug. Burying her face in the long, red hair that
Seth so adored, Erin murmured hoarsely, “Daddy loves you so much, pumpkin. You
have no idea how much he loves both of you. And Mommy loves you too. Lots and
lots.”

Mackenzie
started shaking against her, making muffled, strangled sounds.

“Pumpkin? What
is it?”

The girl’s face
was red and contorted when she pulled it back. “I miss him.” The words sounded
like they were forced out of her, as if they resisted ever being spoken.

Exactly like
Seth, when he was forced to admit something too deep, too private.

“I know, baby.
I miss him too.” She pulled her back into a hug.

Mackenzie was
sobbing for real now, shaking and gasping against Erin’s shoulder.

Anna, who’d
been listening and watching, sat up fully in her bed, the neckline of her
cotton nightgown slightly askew. “Mac is crying?” she asked, her bottom lip
starting to wobble dangerously.

“It’s okay.
She’s sad, but she’ll be okay.” Erin was fighting tears herself and suffering
from waves of helplessness as she held her weeping daughter, powerless to comfort
her.

Anna had always
been more openly emotional than Mackenzie. Had always been quicker to anger,
quicker to tears, quicker to laughter. Had always been more like Erin.

It didn’t take
long until Anna was crying as well and stumbling over to the other bed so that
Erin could hug her too.

So Erin held
both of them. Murmured all the soothing words she could think of. Thought she
was going to suffocate on the agonizing lump in her throat. Exerted all the
control she could muster to keep from crying herself.

She missed her
husband as much as her daughters missed their father, and her grief was
compounded by so many more complexities. And by a reluctant awareness that had
been lurking in her gut for days—one she wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge.

The storm
didn’t last as long as she’d feared. Anna’s little sobs soon faded into
occasional hiccups, and by then Mackenzie had nearly cried herself out as well.

Erin murmured
comfortingly until both of them were under control again. Then she stood up and
said, “I know we miss him, but Daddy will come home soon. I promise. It won’t
be long until tomorrow.”

Anna seemed
basically content as she crawled back under the covers of her bed, although her
cheeks were streaked with the remnants of tears. “Tomorrow,” she sighed in satisfaction.

Erin gave the
little girl’s hair one last loving stroke. “Tomorrow. Good night, baby.”

“Night night,
Mommy,” Anna mumbled.

Mackenzie was
quiet now too, but she didn’t seem to have resolved her feelings as quickly as
Anna had. Erin knew that Mackenzie tended to bottle things away, brooding on
them silently and not letting them go.

“Good night,
pumpkin. I love you.”

“G’night,”
Mackenzie mumbled hoarsely, her eyes focused unwaveringly on Erin’s face. “Love
you too.”

After another
minute, Erin walked toward the door and turned off the light. Paused before she
cracked the door behind her as she left.

Wondered how it
was even possible for a human to love anyone as much as she loved these two
little girls. Wished she could always keep them perfectly safe and happy.

After a moment,
she went to wash her face and pull herself together a little. Then she walked
back down the hall to listen at the cracked door of her daughters’ room.

She didn’t hear
anything. Sometimes they talked before they fell asleep, Anna asking earnest
questions and Mackenzie answering them with grave, six-year-old wisdom. But not
tonight.

She hoped they
both had gone to sleep. Thought they probably had.

She glanced at
the clock and thought with another pang that Seth still hadn’t called. It was
too late for him to say goodnight to the girls.

But surely he
would at least want to talk to Erin.

With a shaky
sigh, she trudged back to her bedroom. Looked around in vague uncertainty,
trying to figure out what to do with herself.

She didn’t feel
like reading or watching TV, which was usually what she ended up doing once the
girls went to bed. Liz was out of town on a story, or else she would have
called to chat with her sister and revel in an actual adult conversation.

She still
didn’t have a job, although she’d finished law school, passed the bar, and was
legally licensed to practice law in the state of Georgia. Early on, she’d made
some attempts to find a position, but the job market was incredibly difficult
for lawyers, and she wasn’t a very marketable candidate—over thirty, with two
kids and no experience except several years as a judicial assistant.

She hadn’t even
attempted a job-search for more than two years, but she tried not to think
about it. It made her feel like a huge, lazy slob, who didn’t work, had a
domestic staff, and yet still couldn’t manage to follow through with the career
she’d always wanted.