Page 11 of The Devil Gets His Due

And I got it, but I have no idea now if it will last.

“We’ve been putting everyone off until you arrived,” Trinny says, wincing. “So, it’ll be a lot.”

“I just came out of four years of residency,” I reply. “As long as I get to drink free Voss and am not doing overnights, I’m sure it will be fine.”

She smiles but she does not look convinced, and an hour later, I see why. Already, my patients are double-booked and every one of them is irritated; they can’t believe they had to wait this long, and they can’t believe they’re being forced to see someone new. They wanted Dr. Fox or Dr. Joliet and got me instead.

“First, Dr. Brown and Dr. Fryer leave and then it’s Dr. Lee, and now they’re telling meyou’remy doctor?” demands a testy woman with rosacea. “How long will it last before they’re pushing me off onto someone else?”

My smile flickers with uncertainty.Isit weird that so many doctors have left? I figured it was simply junior associates getting their feet wet and going off to greener pastures, but I guess it’s a little strange thatno onehas stayed.

Not everyone has a kid arriving in mere months, however. So no matter what I’m in for here, I won’t be going anywhere.

“I’m staying,” I assure her.

She snorts. “Yeah, we’ll see.”

Gemmaand I meet at Louboutin in West Hollywood at the end of my first week for “celebratory shopping”, in theory over my new job. I do my best to appear cheerful, though if the past few days were any indication, there isn’t much to celebrate.

“These are you,” Gemma says, wielding a sky-high purple suede stiletto at me.

I feel that old, familiar hunger I get when I want something. I reach…and then stop myself. They’re probably eight hundred dollars atleast, and now I have to buy…Jesus, I don’t even know what I need: a crib, a changing table, a car seat? Given how much people bitch about the cost of raising children, I doubt it ends there.

She glances inside the shoe. “Try it on. You’re a seven, right?”

I mean to say“okay.”

“I’m pregnant,” is what I tell her instead.

She pales. “What?”

I drop into the plush chair behind me. “I’m pregnant. Due in October.” I feel a little calmer as I say it aloud. That’s two seasons away.In two seasons you can figure out anything. I’ve got loads of time.

She doesn’t seem as reassured by that as I am. “Who…? What—” she mumbles, dropping into the seat beside me. It’s the first time during our long friendship that I’ve ever seen Gemma speechless. “Do you know who the father is?”

I tense. This is where it gets tricky. I probably need to tell Graham now that it’s official. What stops me, mostly, is that I don’twantto tell Graham.

My parents split when I was two and I spent most of my childhood as the epicenter of their bickering. Over who was responsible for taking me to the dentist, over how weeks would be divided and whether my clothing was returning to the parent who bought it. My father stepped in to ruin every plan my mother tried to make, and he even threw the socks she bought me in the garbage when I arrived at his house with them in hand.“She isn’t going to tell me what socks you can wear,”he’d said.

I don’t want to do that to a kid, and I don’t want to do that tome, spending the next eighteen years fighting Graham through lawyers because he disagrees with me about school, or braces, or deodorant.

And if Gemma tells Ben and Ben tells Graham, I’ll be forced to.

“I’ve got some idea,” I reply. “I haven’t decided if I want him involved.”

“Keeley,” she says with that warning note in her voice, the same one she gets when I suggest I might not pay my taxes, “you shouldn’t have to do this alone. And you sure as hell shouldn’t have topayfor a kid alone.”

God, I don’t even know what Graham does for a living. Given how cheap he is, it can’t pay well. After all the millionaires I’ve dated, trustmeto get knocked up by a thousandaire instead.

“I have my own money,” I reply, at which she raises a brow, because I spend like it’s my last day on Earth, every single day. “Iwillhave money, once I start saving it,” I amend.

“It also isn’t fair to this guy, whose name you still haven’t told me.”

I exhale. “Gemma, your parents had an ugly custody battle. You know how this shit goes. I don’t want that for my kid, and it would all be so much easier if I just…avoided it.”

“Ben and I are not going to let anyone take the baby from you,” she says. “You know that.”

Except I don’t know that, not once they learn who the father is. Because Ben will definitely take his brother’s side, and Gemma will be divided, and the way I see it, that means seventy-five percent of the vote has already gone to Graham, no matter how little interest he has.

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