“I guess,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
Isabel hummed. The subject dropped. For another day at least.
On day four of her trip, we made our way into London where she’d booked another hotel for a few nights, and at her insistence, I packed a bag to stay with her, working on my paper while she slept in until late morning. We were just around the corner from Hyde Park, a beautiful tree-lined street in a quiet neighborhood, and when she stopped to take some pictures of an overflowing flower cart on a street corner, she poked me again.
“Have you thought of any names?”
My hand went straight to my belly. I found myself doing that more in the past few weeks. It was an interesting sort of reassurance. Yup, the bump was still there, as if I couldn’t tell from the aching back and ravenous appetite and massive boobs.
“Not really,” I answered.
We waved goodbye to the woman selling the flowers and pulled our hoods up to turn the corner toward Hyde Park.
“Isabel is always a classic choice for a girl,” she said about a block later.
I nudged her with my shoulder, laughing under my breath. “If it’s a girl, there’s no shortage of family names I could use.”
“True.” For a while, I thought she was going to drop that subject too. We crossed the street and entered the park through the black wrought-iron gates. “I thought there’d be snow,” she commented as she crouched to take a picture of one of the first fountains we passed.
“It’s kinda like Seattle.” I tucked my hands into my coat and shivered. “It can get cold enough for snow, but it’s just not common. Lots of rain, lots of clouds, but honestly, I don’t mind it.”
She stood and gazed over the park. Now that her jet lag had dissipated, the dark circles under her eyes were gone. I didn’t know why I studied her as if I’d expected her to change in the months since I’d last seen her. Maybe because
I’d changed so drastically. But she was the same Isabel, tall and striking. Her hair, darker than the rest of ours, was braided down her back, and she had her head covered with a black cap. Even dressed casually, something about her was intimidating and drew the eye when she passed.
“You look good,” I told her when we started walking again.
“So do you.”
“I look pregnant, Isabel. You have to say that.”
“I don’t have to say shit, Lia. If I was worried about how you looked, I’d ask you about whether you were eating healthy or getting enough exercise.” She softened her response with a teasing smile. “Your looks are not one of the things I’m worried about.”
I stopped walking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Iz muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t hear.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“You weren’t supposed to hear me.” She pointed at a restaurant up around a curve in the path. “Need anything?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m okay for now. But if you need to use the toilet, let’s go in and grab some tea or something.”
“Where’s our next stop? I can wait.”
“Kensington Palace,” I told her. “It’s on the other side of the park.”
“Sweet. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of William, and I can tell him about the poster Molly used to have on her wall.”
I snorted. “I forgot about that. I told Jude that if I’d come a couple of years earlier and met Harry when he was single, he would’ve been shit outta luck.”
She smiled but didn’t say anything. She’d asked a few questions about Jude, about his job, and about football overseas in general. But I got the sense that my sister was treading very, very carefully. Which was unlike her.
As we curved around the meandering paths, stopping at bridges for pictures, I waffled on how much I wanted to push Isabel on her comment. When you came from a big family, your relationships with each sibling were unique. Claire and I were twins, so?… that was a gimme for reading minds and feeling all the same feels and doing weird prolonged eye contact when I knew exactly what she wanted to tell me without her saying a word. Molly was the warm, friendly sister. As cheerleaders went, she was the one you wanted in your corner. She was the sister I could count on to listen to me cry without judgment, the one who’d wrap me up in a hug and tell me everything was going to be okay.
Isabel … she was actually a lot like our brother, Logan.
If I burst into tears right now, she’d probably get a panic-stricken look on her face, and I’d get an awkward pat on the back. But on the flip side, she’d dole out pragmatic, no-bullshit advice anytime we needed it. And if anyone, and I mean anyone, threatened the people she loved, she was an absolute savage.
And I knew, as we walked and looked at buildings and fountains and bridges and made small talk, that that was the reason I hadn’t told her about what happened at Jude’s parents’ farm.
She’d hate him for putting me in that position—arguably one of the most awkward I’d ever been in—and I didn’t want Isabel to hate him. I wanted her to like him because if she did, she’d smooth the way for the rest of my family to like him too.
Yes, my time in London was drawing to a close, and Jude knew I was going back to Seattle for the birth, but what about later? What about when I finished with school?
We approached Kensington Palace from the front, and Isabel grinned the entire time she snapped pictures. “It’s so fucking pretty I could puke.”
I shook my head. “Such a way with words. But you curse like a Brit, so you’ll fit in just fine at the match tomorrow.”
“Yeah, about that …” She turned her camera and snapped a quick selfie of us with the palace in the background. “Tell me more about him.”
“What do you want to know?”
We got in line to go into the palace and huddled together when the wind picked up. “I mean, what’s his deal? You get this googly-eyed look on your face when you talk about him, and I know you’d slept there the last time I called, so don’t even pretend you didn’t.”
I ducked my face into the collar of my coat to warm my cheeks. And to avoid figuring out how to answer the question.
“We’re … I don’t know exactly.”
Isabel rolled her eyes but softened it with a teasing grin. “What are we, sixteen? You’re having a baby with him, Lia.”
“I know that.” I exhaled. “There’s something there. And we waited to sleep together again. It’s not like I told him about the baby, and we hopped back in bed. But we get along. We’re getting to know each other, and we like each other. Does there need to be some big label on it?”
She studied me with a careful expression on her beautiful face. “Not necessarily. But you’re also going home soon. You’re done with your paper, right?”
I nodded. “Just making some finishing touches on the end. But … Atwood’s notes on my draft were lighter than I expected, so I think I’ll finish early.”
“Just be careful.” She tucked her arm through mine as the line moved. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt, okay? Being a single parent is hard enough without adding drama with the hot baby daddy footballer.”
I wanted to laugh but didn’t. For the first time in a long time, I thought about our mother. Briefly, at the beginning of my pregnancy, I kept looping around the idea that I might be bad at being a mom simply because I was born to someone bad at being a mom. But the distraction of Jude and our relationship had kept those questions at bay.
“You don’t think being a bad parent is like, in the gene pool, right?” I asked. I tried to say it sarcastically, but instead, my voice sounded reed-thin and wispy, easily carried away by the cold wind. And not like Isabel could know it, but I thought about Jude’s parents too. How hard his mom had been on him. I mean, yeah, stopping by that way wasn’t his best idea, but she could hardly hide her disdain.
My hand went to my belly. Little peach could make facial expressions now, I’d read. How weird, right? Nothing to see, muted voices and jumbled movements, and as Isabel and I stood there, they might be smiling.
“Uhh, no.” She gave me a weird look. “Are you being serious? Lia—“
I held up my hand. “I was kidding. I just meant, you know, sleeping with him when we haven’t even talked about like, custody or any of that.”
I wasn’t actually kidding, but I refused to ruin this day of exploring London with my sister. Impulsively, I leaned in and gave her a tight, bruising squeeze.
“I’m glad it was you who came to visit.”
She pulled back and turned away before I could see her face. She cleared her throat a little, and her eyes were red when she faced me again. “Damn straight. I’m going to be the favorite aunt.”
I laughed. “That’s what Molly said.”
Iz rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve got this one in the bag.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.