Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [94]
“But . . .”
“It only takes once.”
I look at her, incredulous.
“Accident. We took precautions.”
“The night . . .”
“September twenty-seventh,” she says.
I know that date. She’d circled it on the calendar in her office.
“But you already know it’s a boy?”
It’s not medically possible to know that so soon.
“I just know,” she says.
I smile.
Part of me must have suspected. Maybe it explains my garrulous confessions to Grandma the last few days about my feelings for Polly.
I start to say something.
“Don’t,” she says. “I’m going to have him. We’d love you to be part of our lives in some capacity, but I can handle this. I’ve handled lots more.”
I put my arms around her.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispers. “Sleep on it. You’ll need a few nights. I did.”
We walk to the bed, and climb under the covers. I put my arms around her, and I collapse into sleep.
In my dream, I am attending a funeral. I look at the program and am surprised to learn I am supposed to deliver the eulogy. I don’t even know who has died. The name of the deceased is not on the program. I am standing in line to view the open casket. I approach, feeling sick.
When I get to the casket, I see that it is me lying inside. I turn around and see my grandmother waiting in line behind me to view my body.
“They’ve got a string quartet outside,” she says. “They’re wonderful.”
“I’m dead?”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” She smiles. “You’ve already died a thousand times and you’ve never taken it this hard before.”
Chapter 53
I wake up to discover I’m having sex. I am so groggy that I don’t realize when it began, only that Polly has made her intentions eminently clear, and nature takes its course.
“Pregnancy has left me with a craving for sex and pork ribs,” she says after we finish.
I laugh, and wince. Even smiling is causing pain to ripple through a corpus that for two days has been through a menu of near misses by fire, bullet, and knife, chloroform, scarf, and flashlight.
“Nat, I’m not asking for anything and I’m not negotiating.”
“I know.”
“But I have to tell you the truth.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not a great blogger.”
“And a good morning to you too.”
She laughs.
“What I mean is that you’re a great long-form journalist. You dig into stories and pursue them. You’re not meant for this medium.”
“I can post more often.”
“I’m not negotiating our future,” she reiterates. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“Polly . . .”
“Stop. Let’s start telling each other the truth, about everything.” She raises her eyebrows, like, Okay? She continues: “What were you talking about last night, about the crusade and Chuck and your paranoia? Were you just being you, or is it something real?”
I nod.
“Let’s hear it. Please. I need to talk about that right now.”
“Over breakfast.”
“You shower. I’ll make coffee.”
I peel my body away from hers and slide from under the sheets. With early-morning sun soaking in through the blinds, I watch Polly plop her feet onto the plush area rug that covers her polished wood floor. She walks to the bathroom. When will pregnancy change her body? Can I get used to this?
Over cantaloupe and Frosted Flakes, I tell Polly the tale of the last few days. She is curious, concerned, nearly incredulous.
She comes around to me and surrounds me with a prolonged hug.
“You and Lane are safe.”
I let myself relish the feeling of her slender arms around my neck.
“This is nice,” I finally say. “But I’m going to have to break away at some point this morning to get some answers and mete out some vengeance.”
She withdraws. She sits next to me and studies me.
“Chuck was involved,” I say.
“Speaking of Chuck, he backed out,” she says. “An investor no more.”
“He did? But he’d already committed.”
“He had a due-diligence clause that let him escape. He said he couldn’t make the numbers work. He said he wanted to go back to focusing on his primary interest.”
“Which is what, being