“I’m run down, exhausted all the time,” I stuck my tongue out as prompted by the nurse. I decided to stop at a clinic on the way home from work. I know Mom would have called a doctor to come to the house for me, but I didn’t want her to worry.
“Any fevers?”
“None,” I said as the nurse practitioner felt my neck for swollen glands. “I’m sure this is all from the stress at work. But I’m throwing up practically every day. I was wondering if maybe it’s my gallbladder?”
“How’s your pain?” She began pressing against my abdomen after I mentioned my gallbladder.
“Nothing specific, the odd headache,” I answered.
I shook my head when she asked if I had specific twinges or pinching in my side.
I was convinced it was a combination of nerves from the impending launch at work and my date with Chase. He was finally going to meet Amelia. But I had never been so nervous to be throwing up.
“Let’s have you pee in a cup so we can rule pregnancy out. If that’s negative, then we’ll run some blood work. I don’t think it’s your gallbladder.”
I nodded. I took the offered plastic cup and went to the restroom to fill it.
I clapped the sides of my feet together as I waited for the nurse to return with my results.
“Ms. Lafayette?” Someone knocked on the exam room door as they opened it.
A different nurse walked in with a stack of pamphlets. I knew what all of that meant.
“But we used protection,” I whined.
“And sometimes that fails,” she responded. She hadn’t even told me my pregnancy test was positive yet. “Do you have an obstetrician?”
I shook my head. “I guess it’s time to find one.”
I had a date with Chase in two days. I had a marketing campaign to launch on social media. I had a toddler who didn’t talk. I did not have time for this, for another baby.
I made it through the next few days in a complete fog. Now that I knew I was pregnant, suddenly my clothes didn’t fit comfortably, and the wrong smells made my tummy lurch.
I did not see Chase before our date at the museum. I don’t know how I would have handled things. I was terrified I would just blurt it out, “You got me pregnant, again.” And then I would have to explain everything, including Amelia.
I was already stressed enough, freaking out over this pregnancy was not something I could handle now. I needed to figure out what my next step was. Should I just pack up and leave? Go back to Switzerland for another three years? If I did that, by the time Mom found out she had a second grandchild, Amelia would be older. And any chance I had with Chase would have been long gone.
No, I needed to let Chase know. It was more imperative now than ever before. I still didn’t know how to do that. I was still stuck on how to tell him I already had one of his children, and now I was going to have another one. He didn’t even know who I really was. How could he? I told him my name was Gem Lafayette, I was pretending to be someone else and not John Peters’ little sister.
For a moment I thought that maybe this was the true litmus test. If Chase could not figure out that Gem Lafayette was previously known to him as Gemma Lafayette-Peters, did I want him around?
I stopped that train of thought. I couldn’t put this on him. I was not being honest with who I was. And if he didn’t know, that was on me, not on him.
He freaked out so badly when I told him about Amelia. How was he going to take this news? How would he deal with the news that I was John’s sister?
I wasn’t exactly lying about who I was. But I wasn’t being completely truthful in the same way John wasn’t being truthful about who he was. His name was Jonathan Lafayette-Peters. He chose to go by John Peters. How was that different from what I was doing? I convinced myself they were the same thing.
The morning of our date I was up before my alarm clock. I checked the weather and decided I would need to dress warm, and I would need to make sure that Amelia was dressed in layers.
After I got myself dressed, I opened the door to Amelia’s room, and I watched her sleep. Her hair was a curly mess. Her face was perfect with her little nose and her round cheeks. I didn’t want to wake her up. She looked so peaceful.
“Amelia baby, it’s time to get up.”
She ground her tiny fists into her eyes.
“Uhm mum mum.” While her muttering wasn’t quite a ‘mama,’ or a ‘mommy,’ it was her talking and saying ‘mommy.”
“Yes, baby. It’s mommy.” I picked her up and held her close. She was warm and sleepy, snuggly. “We’re gonna have a big day today. You’re going to meet one of mommy’s friends. And we’re going to look at dinosaurs.”
She snuggled against me. Dinosaurs didn’t seem to draw her that much as they did to me. I decided not to tell her we were meeting her father in case, by some miracle, she decided today was the day to start talking.
I changed her before we headed downstairs for breakfast. Mom wasn’t up but Yana was.
“Good morning, Yana.”
“Good morning,” she said. “You’re up early.”
“Amelia and I are going out for the day,” I said.
“Do you want me to make you breakfast?” she asked.
“Let me,” I said. “I like to cook.”
After we ate and finished getting ready, we walked to the museum to meet Chase. It was cold. But I think that air helped wake me up.
He was waiting for us at the top of the stairs, hugging himself against the cold weather.
“Ready to go in?” he asked as soon as we arrived.
I nodded. Once inside we removed our coats, and I removed the extra blanket covering Amelia. I knelt next to the stroller and picked up her hand.
“This is my friend Chase. Can you say hi?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to talk.
“Chase, this is my daughter Amelia.”
He looked down at her and didn’t say anything for a long time. I held my breath as he cut his gaze away from her and looked at me and then looked back at her.
“She looks exactly like you,” he said.
“I’ve been told,” I giggled. I couldn’t help it, complements from Chase made me giddy.
“I brought these for lunch,” he said, handing a box to me.
“Oh, what is it?” I asked. I started to open the box, but Chase stopped me, resting his hand on mine.
“Wait for lunch. I thought you could put them in the stroller, so I don’t have to carry them around.”
I nodded and placed the box, along with our coats in the basket under the stroller seat.
We walked through the exhibits and found our way to an interactive exhibit where I could let Amelia out of her stroller, and she could touch and bang things that made noise. She giggled and had a good time. “She’s not what I expected,” Chase said, as he watched her.
Amelia sat on my lap. We found a button that made noises and lights show up on a screen every time she hit it.
“What were you expecting?”
He shrugged. “I was thinking, you know, a baby.” He mimicked holding motions with his arm.
“But you saw her pictures, right?” I asked.
“I did. After that I expected her to be a little more self-reliant and talkative. She doesn’t talk much. Is that normal?”
I shrugged. What was normal? What was developmentally behind? I wouldn’t know until she was looked at. Amelia communicated in a way that was normal for her.
Amelia started making angry sounds as she pushed the button and hit the button harder.
“Is it not making the sounds you want, baby?”
She made her angry growling sound.
“I think maybe we need to not play with this game any longer.” When I tried to lift her away from the game, she fought me and started whining.
I heard Chase let out a breath. I didn’t need for him to add his frustration to hers. He agreed to go out with me and a toddler. And he should know that toddlers get cranky.
“Hey, Amelia,” he said, kneeling. He reached his hands out to her as if he wanted to pick her up.
She held her arms out to him for him to take her. Butterflies fluttered in my insides, or maybe that was the new baby giving me that excited nervous tummy feeling.
I wasn’t sure which surprised me more, Chase’s action, or Amelia’s reaction to him. She didn’t go to other people that easily.
He lifted her and he started speaking with small cooing sounds. “I think it’s lunchtime. I’m kind of hungry. Are you hungry?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes on him the entire time.
He turned to me and said, “I know the best place to get lunch after the museum. Why don’t we go do that? Maybe a little food and Amelia here will feel better.”
I blinked up at him. “Yes, of course.” They looked so natural together. I know people said she looked like me, but I couldn’t help but see how much she looked like her father as he held her.
He hadn’t gotten angry with her or complained at all. He knew exactly what she needed. He knew exactly what we all needed. It was lunchtime. He helped Amelia with her coat. And then I held her while he got his coat on. He insisted on carrying her once again. After I got my coat on, we went to the hot dog stands that were parked right in front of the museum.
Chase had been right. He knew the best place for lunch after a day at the museum. We sat on the steps as we ate our hot dogs. I helped Amelia by breaking her hot dog into small bites. We were about halfway through our lunch when Chase nodded to the stroller.
“You can open the box now,” Chase said.
I handed him our hot dogs. He easily balanced them in one of his large hands. I lifted the box from where I was storing it. I opened it with a gasp.
“Chocolate covered strawberries,” I exclaimed. “My favorite.”
“There’s one for each of us. Pick your favorite,” Chase said with a grin.
They were all my favorites. I couldn’t decide between the dark chocolate or the marbled chocolate. I showed Amelia the box.
“Which one should we eat first?” I asked.
She reached for the one closest to her. Milk chocolate with dark chocolate sprinkles.
“Okay,” I said, picking that one up.
I blushed when I made eye contact with Chase. I closed my eyes and took a bite. Perfection. When I opened my eyes again Chase was positively smoldering at me. The heat in his eyes made all my nerves dance.
It took concentration to break off a piece of the chocolate and strawberry and feed it to Amelia. Once she had a taste of the desert, she was no longer interested in her hot dog.
“Can I finish this for you?” Chase asked.
Amelia nodded and tried to grab at the strawberry for more. By the time we finished the treat, she was rubbing her eyes and ready for a nap. Next thing I knew she was lying back on her own and fast asleep.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s exactly what she needed. Food in, and out cold. Those strawberries are amazing. Where did you find them this time of year?”
“I was thinking that I needed food, so why wouldn’t she be hungry too? The strawberries are my little secret. You’ll have to keep seeing me if you want more,” he smirked.
“You drive a hard bargain, Chase. I’d like that. To see you more. But I think we’re done for today,” I said pointing at my sleeping child.
“Let me call a car to take you home.”
I shook my head. “The fresh air will keep her asleep longer. I don’t mind the walk.”
The truth was I didn’t want Chase to know where I lived. I was sure that over the years he had to have been to the townhouse before. Would he remember who that townhouse belonged to?
“I can accept that,” he said and then he kissed me. “I look forward to doing this again, with both of you.”
I was in the clouds the entire walk home. I kept seeing his smile as he asked to see us again. I kept thinking about how Amelia looked in his arms. They were a pair, they belonged together.
I needed to tell Chase who she was but I didn’t want to scare him off.
