The Accidental Family (41 page)

“I know …I know, and that was wrong, but I’ve been stretched
so thin recently. I’ve been trying to do the right thing and ending up getting it wrong all of the time. I should have listened to you about Seth, especially about telling the girls, and I shouldn’t have shut you out of what was happening. But I couldn’t ignore him and Wendy either, could I? You were the one who told me that. You said I had to find out about my son and you were right. You have to see that all the mistakes I’ve made weren’t because I was being a coward and running away. I made them because I wanted to get things right. I want everything right before you and I start our married life together. And anyway,” Louis went on, “so what if we were wrapped up in a bubble of love, that’s what being in love is about, isn’t it? Being happy, experiencing the joy of being with someone who is so perfect and so right for you.” Louis caught Sophie’s wrist as she stood up to button her jeans. He pulled her close to him, entwining the fingers of his other hand in her hair.

“You make me so happy, happier than I’ve ever been,” he told her. “I thought I made you happy too.”

“You did, you do,” Sophie insisted. “Most of the time. I’ve never felt so happy, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of everyone else.”

“What do you mean?” Louis asked her.

“We thought that because we were happy, everyone else was too—but they’re not. The girls aren’t happy; yes, from day to day they’re okay, but deep down they aren’t over losing Carrie or the trauma they went through, of course they’re not. Their mother died. How could we let Carrie down so badly? You saw Bella when she thought you were going to leave her. She still doesn’t feel safe or secure, Louis. She still thinks you might abandon her at any moment. And did you know that if Izzy is frightened or worried, she hides it by laughing and being silly? I didn’t know that, I didn’t know it until Bella told Seth, someone she barely knows, about it
on the cliff top. She told him, not you or me, and now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Little sunny Izzy, always so full of fun even in her darkest hour, but that’s not true. All she was trying to do was keep the shadows at bay. Neither one of us noticed that. Because we didn’t want to. We didn’t want reality crashing in and spoiling things for us.”

Sophie shook herself free from Louis’s grip and went to the door. “And now this, now a baby. What’s that going to do to them? You want me to say that everything’s going to be fine. That I’ll marry you and we’ll have our baby and we’ll all live happily ever after. But I just don’t know if that is possible anymore.”

“What are you saying, you’re saying you’d consider …” Louis went to Sophie and put his hand on her belly.

“No, god no—of course not,” Sophie said.

“Then what?” Louis asked her.

“I’m just not sure that I can marry you,” she said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Okay, so the idea of marriage freaks you out, I get that, I think. And if you really don’t want to do it, we don’t have to. We can live together—you, me, the girls, the baby—like one big happy family.”

“I love you,” Sophie said. “But I don’t know. I don’t know if we are ready to do that yet. It would be easy to say that we are because of the baby, but I don’t want Bella or Izzy or our child to have to go through any more upheaval, any more confusion or loss, because you and I aren’t as strong or as close as we need to be to really make this family work.”

“Are you saying that you’ll stay in the B and B forever with our baby?” Louis asked.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “Maybe I am.”

They were silent on the way home, Sophie staring bleakly out the window as Louis drove her car.

“Well, I’m telling you one thing, you’re not going back to the B and B tonight,” he’d said as they climbed into the car. “I want you with me and the girls where we can keep an eye on you.”

“You heard what the doctor said—I’m fine. My blood pressure is fine, the baby is fine. I don’t need keeping an eye on.”

“Sophie, you are having my baby. Bella and Izzy’s and Seth’s half brother or sister. Whatever you decide about marrying me, we are a family no matter where you live, and I love you. I know you’re upset with me and you’re worried about the girls, but for tonight you are coming home with me and that’s that.”

“I’m coming because I want to see the girls,” Sophie told him. “Not because you said so.”

Carmen opened the door and Sophie found herself engulfed in a mass of hugs.

“You’re alive!” Bella cried, burying her head in Sophie’s stomach.

“I told them you were going to be fine,” Carmen said. “But they got themselves in a right state, especially Izzy.” Carmen nodded toward the front room, where Izzy was sitting on the sofa sucking on the sleeves of her pajamas as she watched
The Little Mermaid
. She didn’t even look up at Sophie standing in the doorway.

“It was the ambulance that scared her,” Bella said, her voice muffled somewhere in Sophie’s middle.

“The ambulance?” Sophie hugged Bella to her ever so tightly and then released her.

“There was an ambulance after the car accident,” Bella said slowly, entwining her fingers in Sophie’s. She looked up at her father.

“I see you are back,” she told Louis as she made her way into the living room.

“I am. And I’m back for good now, I promise,” Louis told her.
Bella said nothing, following Sophie into the living room to find Izzy, leaving Louis and Carmen standing in the hallway.

“Come in the kitchen,” Sophie heard Carmen say gently to Louis. “Mrs. Alexander is making us all bacon sandwiches. It was the girls’ special request.”

Followed closely by Bella, Sophie walked into the living room where Izzy stared doggedly at the screen, her knees tucked up under her chin, her toes curled in on themselves as if she were hanging on for dear life.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Sophie said softly as she sat down carefully next to her, Bella sitting on her other side. Izzy didn’t waver.

“Are you okay?” Sophie asked her, brushing a curl from her forehead. “You’ve had a very long and busy day, you must be ever so tired.”

Izzy shook her head from side to side once.

“Did you have a nice time with Seth?” Sophie asked. Izzy nodded.

“You must have been worried up on the cliff when silly Sophie fainted. Were you worried, Izzy?”

Izzy kept her eyes on the screen, but she took her thumb out of her mouth. “They took Mummy in an ambulance. I was in the car still when they took her. I was left behind with the other lady, and Mummy went in the ambulance and she didn’t ever come back. I was frightened.”

Sophie nodded.

“I remember. You must have been very scared when I went in the ambulance, but I was fine. I was just a bit silly and forgot to eat and I fainted. They had to take me to the hospital to check me out, but I was okay. Ambulances help people.”

Izzy turned to look at her, her face still and serious, just like Carrie’s in the few precious moments when Carrie was quiet and thoughtful.

“We’ve got a new older brother,” Izzy explained. “His name is Seth. He came to get me from school and I went with him, and I shouldn’t have, but I did. He bought me a giant inflatable dolphin, but I think I left it on the cliff …he’s going to teach me to whistle.”

“Is he?” Sophie asked. “That’s good. It will be fun to get to know him, won’t it? And I expect that once you know him a bit better, you’ll do all sorts of fun things with him.”

“I would probably like to go to a circus with him,” Izzy said thoughtfully. Then without warning she hurled herself at Sophie, wrapping her arms around her neck.

“You must stay now,” Izzy told her. “And not faint again.”

“I promise not to faint again,” Sophie said.

“Or go away in an ambulance.”

“I won’t.”

“At the circus will there be an elephant like Dumbo with huge enormous ears?” Izzy asked her, quite tickled at the thought.

“An elephant that can fly?” Sophie asked. “With huge enormous floppy ears?”

Izzy giggled. “Yes, I’d like to go for a ride on one of those.”

“Well, you never know,” Sophie said.

Sophie sat on the edge of Louis’s bed, fully dressed, and looked around the room. This would be only the third time she had slept a whole night here. The first time she had crept in and taken her clothes off before seducing Louis, the second time she had crashed fully clothed and confused. Now as she sat on the edge of the bed, Louis took off his clothes, set his watch down, and went off to brush his teeth in only his boxers. It was like being part of a couple. A proper grown-up couple, and it felt strange.

Sophie sat perfectly still, fully dressed, looking around the room, the wardrobe that was half empty, the wall devoid of pictures,
only the faint ghost of the last owner’s artwork where the wallpaper had faded in the sun, leaving an impression of the past.

“Are you getting in?” Louis asked her, dropping his boxers in front of her. Inexplicably Sophie blushed and looked away.

“Are you shy?” Louis asked her, smiling a little as he knelt down in front of her. “Are you scared seeing me naked? I mean I know that I have an impressive physique, but it’s probably a little too late to be scared of it now.” He put a hand on either side of her on the bed.

“Sophie,” he said softly. “We are okay, aren’t we? I mean, you’re angry with me and I deserve it, and you’ve been through hell all alone these past few days, but we are okay? Aren’t we? Because if I think I’ve messed this up when it’s all almost so perfect, then I’d never forgive myself. I know you said you didn’t want to marry me and you wanted to live in the B and B with our baby and just visit every now and then, but that was crazy talk, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean it, did you?”

Sophie looked up into Louis’s eyes.

“I love you,” she told him. “I want to marry you. I just don’t know if I can. Bella and Izzy are so afraid that something bad is going to happen again. And Seth, he barely knows who he is or who you are, and just as you’re getting to know him, then a baby comes along.”

“Listen,” Louis said, sitting back on his heels. “If Bella and Izzy are afraid that something bad is going to happen, then we have to make them see that a baby is one of the best things that can happen. And the very best thing we can possibly do for them is to give them the stability they need. Get married and live all together here as a family and prove to them that nothing bad is going to happen. And as for Seth, well …I’ll find a path with him. Maybe now is the perfect time for him to join the family, because he won’t be the newest one for very long. Soon there will be this one.” Louis nodded at her belly. “Our baby, yours and mine.”

As he looked at her, his eyes lit up and Sophie felt her heart quicken.

“You really are pleased about the baby, aren’t you?” she asked him.

“Pleased? Sophie, I’m over the moon. You’re having my baby. You, the love of my life.”

He leaned toward her and kissed her.

“Now listen, you’ve had a very long and difficult day and you need to rest.” He lifted the hem of her T-shirt, pulling it over her head, pushing her gently back onto the bed. Sophie did not resist. “You just lie there and I’ll put you to bed,” Louis whispered, unbuttoning her jeans and pulling them off her hips and legs. Gently he lifted her legs onto the bed, running his hand lightly over her belly and the tops of her thighs as he looked at her.

“You are incredibly beautiful, you know,” he told her, rolling her onto her side so that he could unhook her bra. Gently he slid the straps off her shoulders, the tips of his fingers running over her breasts as he removed the garment.

“The most perfect being I have ever seen,” he said, kissing her stomach as he eased her underwear off.

Naked in his arms, Sophie looked into his eyes. “I love that you see me that way,” she whispered.

“Well of course I do,” he whispered back. “It’s the way you are.”

Twenty-two

Aunty Sophie, Aunty Sophie, quickly, wake up, it’s an emergency!”

Sophie prized open her eyes to find Bella staring at her, her big brown eyes shining in the half-light, brimming with tears. “Come quickly,” Bella half-whispered, half-sobbed.

“What’s happened?” Sophie sat bolt upright. “What is it? Is it Izzy?”

“No,” Bella said, dragging Sophie out of bed where Louis was still asleep. “It’s Artemis, I think Artemis is dying.”

Sophie grabbed a dressing gown from the back of the door and wrapped it hastily around herself as she followed Bella into her bedroom.

“Dying? Bella, what do you mean—where is she?” Sophie asked her, the last dregs of sleep trickling slowly away.

“She’s under my bed.” Bella knelt on her carpet and pointed underneath her bed, her face stricken with fear. “I knew it was
strange because she doesn’t usually come in at night, she’s usually out killing things. I was just going off to sleep when I heard her coming in, but she didn’t say hello, she just went right under my bed. I heard her scrabbling about in my spare blanket, she must have dragged it under there, and then she went quiet and I must have gone to sleep but I shouldn’t have because …because I woke up and she was crying …I looked under the bed with my Barbie flashlight and I thought I could see blood. So I tried to fetch her out and see where she was hurt but she scratched me.” Bella offered Sophie the back of her hand where four long and painful-looking red welts were forming. “I think she must be dying because she’s never ever hurt me before.” Bella let out a sob. “She can’t die, Aunty Sophie, please don’t let her die. I need her.”

Sophie put her hand over her mouth and took a breath to compose herself. In her head she had visions of Artemis hit by a car or a truck, crawling in and up the stairs in the night to find a safe place to lick her wounds. Just as fearful as Bella of how badly hurt her precious cat might be, she braced herself and, taking Bella’s flashlight, knelt down on the carpet and peered under the bed. Artemis was breathing heavily, lying on her side, her head toward Sophie, so Sophie could not see the bulk of her body.

“Hello, girl,” Sophie said. “You’re not looking too good there, are you? I’m just going to see if I can get you out and we can have a look …” But the second Sophie’s hand approached Artemis, the cat lashed out, her panting and distress apparently increasing.