Page 138 of My Vows Are Sealed

She smiled. “Good. Then we have some time to find you a dress.”

I couldn’t take this anymore. I didn’t want to spend the next few hours until Brendan got home making awkward small talk with my mom because neither one of us was brave enough to bring up the obvious subject.

I’d been taught abstinence before marriage for my whole life, ever since I could remember. Since before I was old enough to really understand what it meant. And my mom might have been just as much of a victim as I was where my father was concerned, but she still read the same Bible I did. Now, here I was, seventeen, not yet married, and eight weeks pregnant. What did she think of me?

“Mom, are you disappointed in me?” I asked, my voice breaking as tears stung my eyes.

She immediately put down the half-made sandwich in her hand and pulled her chair around the table so she could sit next to me, pulling me into her arms. I blinked back even more tears as I let her hold me and comb her fingers through my hair.

“Oh, Darla,” she whispered. “No, sweetheart. I’m not even a little bit disappointed in you. I have known for a very long time that Brendan’s your forever. You didn’t give yourself to someone you didn’t care about. You gave yourself to someone who’s done nothing but love and protect you for your whole life. Someone you knew you were going to spend the rest of your life with. I couldn’t ask for a better son-in-law, or a better father for my grandchild. I’m scared for you, because I know it’s not going to be easy for you to raise a child while you’re going to college full-time, but I know you can do it. And I can’t wait to meet my granddaughter.”

I chuckled. “That’s three votes for it being a girl. Brendan thinks so too. We don’t get to find out for sure for a few more months, though.”

“A mother knows,” she said with a small smile. “I knew you were a girl from the moment I found out I was pregnant. So, do I get to ask you about him? I know it’s probably a few years too late for boy talk, but we’ve never gotten to talk about him at all.”

And there went the waterworks again. She was right. She knew I was head over heels in love with Brendan, and she knew that I was pregnant with his child and that we were getting married in a few months, but she didn’t know anything at all about my relationship with him. How backward was that?

I nodded and took a deep breath as I wiped my cheeks. “Of course. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about your first kiss,” she said as she stood up and grabbed the sandwich supplies from the other side of the table.

“Do you mean the real first kiss or the practice first kiss?” I giggled. “Because he’d say the first time he kissed me – actually, the first two times he kissed me – were just practice.”

She laughed. “What?”

I chuckled and sniffled at the same time, then told her all about what had happened at the homecoming dance in my freshman year and what happened that Monday in the carpentry room when we officially became a couple. And we just kept talking about everything. Everything she’d missed out on over the past few years. It wasn’t all about Brendan, either. I also told her about how I met Kate and Ashton and what amazing friends they’d been to me, and about how scaredI’dbeen when Ashton was jumped by those kids in our sophomore year and when Kate passed out and we found out she was diabetic.

Before I knew it, I heard a key turning in the lock, and Brendan walked in the door, smiling when he saw my mom and I sitting on the couch.

“Hey, baby,” he said as he walked toward us. “Hi, Miss Gloria.”

“You’re about to be my son-in-law, Brendan. I think we can drop the ‘Miss,’” my mom chuckled.

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckled too.

He bent over to give me a kiss, and I started to return it, but the second I caught a whiff of…er, eau de construction site…my stomach turned. I shot up from the couch, ignoring the screaming protests of my ribs as I rushed to the bathroom and gave up an offering to the porcelain goddess.

I heard Brendan’s chuckling coming from the bedroom as I stood up and flushed the toilet. I grabbed my toothbrush cup and rinsed it out, then filled it with some water and took a drink before walking out. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and his lips were twitching like he was fighting a smile.

“I love you, but you need to get in the shower before you try to come within three feet of me again,” I told him. “You smell like a dirty construction site and the baby doesn’t like it.”

That did it. He fell backward on the bed laughing, and I wished I had a pillow or something to throw at him. He wasn’t the one who had to deal with the random bouts of nausea.

“Yeah, laugh it up,” I grumped.

“Sorry, baby,” he chuckled as he got up, stopping on his way to the bathroom to plant a kiss on my head. “I’m getting in the shower right now. Peter and Marie are going to be here soon anyway.”

* * *

Brendan had just gotten out of the shower when the knock came on the door. He answered it, and when Peter and Marie walked in, the smell of marinara sauce and meatballs wafted through the room, making my stomach growl. I hadn’t eaten much this morning, and I’d only managed to get down about half of my sandwich at lunch. This perpetual nausea thing was for the birds.

“Hi, ladies,” Marie said, flashing my mom and I a smile. “Brendan warned us no pizza, and I figured you probably hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since you got home from the hospital, Darla, so I thought I’d make spaghetti and meatballs.”

“It smells amazing,” I told her. “Thanks. Sorry we all have to huddle around the little table.”

“We’ll make it work,” Peter said. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired and in pain, but okay,” I admitted. “I’m just relieved the OBGYN gave the baby and I both a cleanish bill of health.”

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