Page 10 of Salty Pickle

I rest my head on her fuzzy belly. She smells good, like natural soap and fresh milk.

I’ll just take a minute to gather my thoughts…

BAM BAM BAM.

I startle awake at a pounding on the bathroom door.

“Lucy? LUCY? Are you okay?”

Court sounds worried. Or frustrated. Maybe mad. I don’t know.

I sit up. I really was tired.

“Hold on,” I say.

It feels way too hard to haul myself up, so I crawl to the door, unlatch it, and swing it open.

He bends down in front of me. “My God, did you fall? Are you injured?”

I push my sweaty hair out of my face. “No. I fell asleep.”

Court glances around the bathroom. “Is that milk by my sink?”

Of course it is. Why must he keep pointing out the obvious? “Would you like it? I have no way to store it currently.” I feel more awake and grab the doorframe to heave myself up.

“Jesus Christ,” Court says, reaching for my waist. “Let me help.”

I’m glad he does, because the big movement of standing after sleeping causes the lightning cramps to flash through my midsection. I bend over, breathing through the pain.

“Is it time?” Court asks.

I hold up a finger. “No.” I let out a long, slow breath. “It’s the strain on the round ligaments around my belly. It’s why I had to quit yoga. Why I came here.”

He still has an arm around me, strong and tight. The fabric of his suit is soft and scented like clean linen. I feel protected for a moment. It’s been a long time since I didn’t have to stand solely on my own two feet.

Court and I didn’t have much time together, but I remember it clearly. Impassioned. Furtive. Intense. I thought about it in the nights afterward, wondering if we should have stayed in touch.

But then I recalled his gruffness. The ease with which he took off from the room. There hadn’t been any laughter or fun between us. Court was all business. Good business. He made sure all the deeds were checked off, like a task list. But it was still business.

When I found out I was pregnant, April took to her phone, searching up Court and the Pickle family and New York based on the scant details we had.

She determined he was a scoundrel based on the pictures of him with other women. And he never smiled. “No good for our baby,” she said then. “We don’t need him.” Summer agreed.

We had a plan. We would trade night shifts. Hand sew clothes. Make pottery and take walks in the woods. Homeschool, for sure. Teach the baby to garden and to love all living things.

But their lives moved on. I don’t hear from them. I probably would. We’ve been friends since high school. But I don’t have a phone or a computer or even an address.

My yurt is situated in the woods on the property of one of my yoga students, a middle-aged woman with a lot of land. I pay her in goat cheese. Sometimes I babysit her chickens. She lets me have eggs, too.

That feels far away in New York. Court’s arm is gentle, possibly kinder than our first encounter. Surely there’s more to him than what I saw then, or what we could glean online.

I realize I made a mistake thinking I should do this without him. The baby is his, too.

“Should I call an ambulance?” Devin asks. He’s shorter and less built than Court, but he’s smartly dressed in a shiny blue suit. His round glasses make him seem friendlier, but I’m not sure yet. He wants to lie about Matilda.

“I’m okay,” I say. “It’s a big baby in a small space.”

Court leads me to a sofa. “Let’s sit you down.”

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