Page 34 of The Beast's Baby
He froze, opening his eyes to stare at the wall. Had he heard her right?
“What?” he asked, pulling back to look down at her.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated.
He realized the reason she wasn’t crying as the expression in her eyes was one of complete numbness. She was in shock. He placed his hands on either side of her face, making her look at him. She shook her head a little, and he realized that she was pulling away again. Did she blame him?
“How is that possible?” he asked.
“The fucking wolf, what do you think?” she replied. “It’s fucking magic, isn’t it? All of this? And they think this is how they tame nature? They’re fucking insane!” She yelled the last at the top of her lungs, looking about ready to wolf out on him.
“Hey,” he said gently. “I’m in agreement here.”
She calmed somewhat. At least the shock seemed to have lifted. There was mostly defeat there now, which wasn’t that much better. “I don’t know what this means,” she said. “I don’t know if the wolf gene is passed down automatically or if it’s different because you’re human. You know? I don’t even know what the pregnancy will look like. And I don’t… I’m sorry.” She paused, eyes pleading. “I’m just not ready to be a mother.”
“I’m not ready to be a dad,” he said. “But… would you want to give it up?”
She stared at him, a train of thought apparently careening through her mind, then she said, “No. I want to keep it. Them. Whoever they are.”
He smiled then. He couldn’t help it. It was all too surreal. She mirrored it, shaking her head. It wasn’t happiness, per se. It was a lightening of the shock they’d both experienced, the fact that they’d been separated but brought back together again, the fact that they had said they should try to stick together and now it seemed that they were inadvertently joint for life as parents.
“Fuck,” he said.
She nodded. “You could say that again,” she agreed. “Are they ever going to let us out of here?”
They both turned around when the door to the room opened behind them. In stepped an older woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, wearing a fur that looked like it had taken fifty minks to make. She wore dark red lipstick, her hair in a braided do, and she positively oozed class.
The woman looked from one of them to the other, then offered them a blinding smile.
“Dears,” she greeted. “I’m here to congratulate you both. You’re the first true success this trial has seen. Bravo.” She clapped her gloved hands together in a theatrical way that grated on Jay’s nerves. This wasn’t a show. This was their fucking life.
“And who are you?” Isobel asked.
The woman smiled a wolfish smile, then said, “What I am, my lovely, is your birth mother.”
***
Eva Maynard poured hot water from a kettle into the provided cup, a teabag already dropped into it. She put the kettle on the coffee table, picked the cup up, blowing on it as she sat back. Isobel watched every movement with growing skepticism.
Jay felt as though he could tell what Isobel must be thinking. There had been a glimmer of recognition when the revelation was offered, as though some piece had fallen into place, but now Isobel mostly looked to be questioning if this was truly the gene pool from which she stemmed.
Eva smiled at them.
“I’m so happy to finally meet you,” Eva said.
“Lady, this is all levels of fucked up,” Isobel replied. “My mother lives in Wisconsin with her husband. She’s my aunt and she raised me. She taught me everything I know and—”
“Yes, I know,” Eva interrupted. “She’s my sister.”
Isobel stared at her, then said simply, “I don’t believe you.”
Eva nodded. “I thought you might say that.” She stuck her hand in her purse, bringing out a small photo album. “Oh, I’m old, my lovely,” she said off the look she got. “We printed all of our photos back then. Have a look.”
Isobel clearly didn’t want to. Jay could only imagine what she must be going through. Eva was all wrong. They’d thought they’d be enticing her father to show himself and here instead was the mother. But her curiosity got the better of her.
He had an idea of why. Didn’t every orphan mind cling to the fantasy that the lost parents had faked their deaths because in reality they were spies, or they’d been kidnapped by aliens, or they’d suffered amnesia and one day they would remember or they would escape or they would find some way to return and claim their darling child as their own again? She must be dying to learn more, to understand why they ever gave her up at all. To have answers to questions she must have carried around with her everywhere she’d ever gone.
Isobel flipped through the photos, Jay shifting next to her on the couch. She looked about ready to show him the album, ask him to join in the looking, but then she chose not to. Perhaps it would have felt too stilted. Too much like happy-family-time when they had just found out life altering information within the span of a few minutes. And they didn’t really know each other.
