Page 41 of Peacocks

“I like him just the way he is,” I assured him.

Amos shrugged. “Eh, suit yourself,” he said before wandering off, asking Grandma what kind of discount he should expect on the friends and family plan at the clinic and whether or not his “new grandson” Doc Lane would do a bulk deal on bovine house calls.

Lane lost the battle he’d been waging and laughed out loud. The pure joy of the sound made me feel even giddier than I already was.

Still, I couldn’t help asking, “You sure you’re ready for this, Lane?”

As the noise of the festival wrapped around us again, Lane leaned in, his forehead resting against mine. “You’re stuck with me now,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around my neck.

And despite growing up in Licking Thicket, despite loving every single thing about the place and never doubting for an instant that this was where I belonged… with Lane’s arms around me, for the first time, I truly felt like I’d found my home.

Epilogue

Jay

I putthe finishing touches on the mural and stood back to admire the finished product. Bright, jewel-toned colors spread out in a fan across the far wall of the nursery. Lane was going to lose his mind when I finally revealed it to him.

Even though we’d only been married for eight months, we’d been together for two and a half years. It felt like longer in some ways, and in others, it felt like we’d only just met.

The way my stomach still clenched when he walked in a room, the look in his eyes when he noticed me staring at him in the morning—because watching the man sleep never got old—and the fact I still learned something new about him every day made it feel like we were still new together. But then there was the deep, long-term knowing that sometimes made me wonder if we’d been together so long it had spanned multiple lifetimes.

“You ever coming out?” Lane called through the closed door. “Because I just got a mysterious text from SaraCate.”

I quickly wrapped my wet paintbrush in plastic wrap and silently promised it I’d be back to properly clean it later. “Coming! Get away from the door, and no peeking!”

His muttered grumbles faded as he walked away. I took one last look at the giant pair of peacocks standing protectively overtheir tiny peahen before turning out the light and sneaking out of the room. All I had left was to put the furniture in place and accessorize before I could show Lane what I’d been working on.

“What’d she say?” I asked as I walked into our bedroom, yanking off my painting shirt. “She need a foot rub? Takeout?” I hesitated. “More pork rinds? Because if that’s the case, we’re going to have to say something. All that salt and fat cannot be good for?—”

I looked up and noticed my husband staring at his phone. He’d gone deathly pale. “She’s… she’s at the hospital.”

“Fuck, what happened? Is she hurt? Was she in an accident?”

Lane glanced up at me. “Babe. She’s having the baby! Our baby! She’s at the hospitalhaving our baby.”

I stared at him. “But… it’s not time! We’re not due for two more weeks.”

He huffed out a laugh and started moving. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since moving to the Thicket, it’s that things happen in theirowntime, whether it’s peacocks mating, or us falling in love, or Memsy Blake finally taking down her holiday lights in July. It’s not SaraCate’s first kid. Maybe her body decided it was done, and it’s evicting our daughter. Maybe it’s a full moon. Who knows? But…” He spun toward me, eyes wide. “Jay, it’s happening. We’re having a baby!”

Poor Lane had been squawking and flapping his arms, running around in a circle between the dresser, the closet, and the nightstand but not actually packing anything. He reminded me of Disco Dave when we threw a handful of blueberries in his habitat.

“We already have a bag packed,” I reminded him, pointing to the backpack in the corner. “Grab that while I put on clean clothes.”

“How are you so calm? You’ve been panicking this entire time, and now that I finally need you to panic with me, you’re… chill? Babe, what the fuck?”

I wasn’t chill. Not one bit. Inside, I was worse than Disco Dave. I was a collection of drunken kittens, stumbling around but still happy as shit. But if my steady husband was panicking, the world didn’t have room for anyone else to panic too.

After yanking a clean shirt on and stepping into my running shoes, I pulled out my phone and texted SaraCate back on the group chat.

Me:On our way. What do you need?

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and reached for Lane’s hand. “C’mon. We gotta go.”

His hand was clammy with nerves. “We should have never done this,” he said breathily. “We… we’re not ready. We… we don’t know what we’re doing. They’re never going to let us take her home. We don’t qualify.”

I tried not to laugh. “Nobody qualifies, honey. And now might be a good time to remind you that you actually have a medical degree, which puts you a fair way ahead of the rest of us.”

“I know how to castrate a pig, Jay! I do not know how to keep a newborn’s head from falling off. And I sure as hell don’t know how to tell a girl what to do when she gets her period. What the fuck are we going to say? I am familiar with hemostatic dressings, not t-tampons.”

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