Page 75 of 5+Us Makes Seven

I was going to have five children.

And I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face.

Twenty-four

Natasha

The past six months had been very good to me. My vitamin levels had been a concern throughout the entire pregnancy, but my prenatals were stabilizing them. I was a bit anemic, which concerned Dr. Bernhardt, so I tacked on an iron supplement on top of everything else. I was on required bedrest still, even though my two babies were growing big and strong. One of the babies still had a slower heart rate than the other, and Dr. Bernhardt wasn’t willing to take any chances.

And I couldn't blame him, because I wasn’t either.

My stomach was massive. Bigger than I ever thought it could get. I was propped up in bed eating ice cream straight from the container and the thing rested easily on top of my stomach. I had been craving cheesecake ice cream. I salivated over it whenever Carter came home with a container. I would dream about it at night and wake up wanting some. So much so that I would wake him up so he could go get me some from the freezer.

Which was how we ended up with a mini-freezer by my bed in our bedroom.

The kids had taken the news well. As well as could be expected, anyway. Nathaniel was very excited to have more siblings and Joshua was happy to no longer be the middle child. He kept saying he wanted to have a little brother like his big brother did that he could protect.

But Clara was a different story.

She didn’t take the news as well as we thought she would.

In fact, she had burst into tears and ran away from the table.

Carter had gone after her to try and calm her down, but she had been in hysterics. Crying about how she wasn’t going to be Daddy’s little girl anymore. It broke my heart to see her so distraught over it. Clara and my relationship was never the same after that night.

“She’ll come around, honey. I promise.”

Those were the words Carter kept telling me every time Clara went out of her way to avoid me. She wouldn't let me dress her or put her down for bed. I couldn't make her plate for dinner or pour her drinks. I had to sit away from her in the SUV, which ended up devolving into driving a separate car altogether when we went to go do things.

She was now pushing for me to not go at all, and it broke my heart.

I rubbed my stomach as the spoon hung from my mouth. Carter was having a late night at work so the nanny was downstairs trying to wrangle the kids for dinner. I knew she needed help. I could hear the exasperation in her voice. But I knew everyone would be upset with me if I went downstairs and tried to intervene.

Including Clara.

I distracted myself with the television Carter had mounted to the wall just for me. There were movies loaded onto it and thousands of channels worth of cable for me to flick through. I had binge-watched every police procedural, medical drama, and court television show since the nineties. I had lines of movies memorized that played over and over again on certain channels. I had a massive journal of recipes I had written down from the cooking channel. Hell, I was ready to start smashing walls in the house and redecorating after days of watching the Home & Garden Channel!

But a small pair of footsteps coming down the hallway caught my attention.

“Hello?” I asked. “That you, Joshua?”

The door to the room slowly slid open and revealed Clara standing at the doorway. I was shocked she was there, but my heart reached out for her. Was she okay? Was something wrong with the nanny? Had something happened to one of the boys?

“Come in?” Clara asked.

“Of course you can, sweetheart. Come here,” I said.

I held my arms out for her and she got a running start. She jumped up onto the bed and crawled quickly towards me. She threw herself at me and straddled my stomach and I wrapped my arms around her tightly.

I could feel her crying into my neck as I choked my own tears back.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I asked.

But all she did was continue to cry.

I held her as close as I could get her. I pressed kiss after kiss into the mess of hair on her head. The nanny poked her head in and held her arms out, but I shook my head and shooed her away.

I hadn’t held Clara in my arms for months. And if

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