Page 76 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“Can we talk about something?” he says. “Tell me no if you’re not up to it.”
“I think I am. It’s eating and moving that sets it off.”
He hunkers down to adjust the cups over the flame. Then he says, “I’m not certain how to…” He scratches his cheek. “This isn’t what I imagined, and I’m having a bit of trouble.”
“What you expected…?”
“Having a baby.”
I swallow and try to sound upbeat. “It’s a surprise. I know. And whatever you said yesterday, you have the right to change your mind, now that you’ve thought about it.”
“Stop.” He meets my eyes. “Please, Casey. Stop.”
My hands clench on my lap.
He lowers himself onto the log with me, takes my hand, and draws my attention to him. “Please stop interpreting everything I say about this as a complaint. If there is a problem, that’s it. I don’t know what to say because I’m afraid it’ll make things worse.”
“Worse than they already are, you mean.” I hear myself and close my eyes. “I’m sorry. That’s what you mean. I need to stop doing that.”
He presses his lips to mine in a kiss that has me opening my eyes.
“I said this isn’t how I imagined it,” he says. “Because I imagined it—however it came about—as nothing but joy. Being excited. Picking out names. Making plans. Which does not mean I’m complaining because this is different. I’m just trying to figure out how to approach it, if we don’t have answers yet on whether you can carry to term. Is it okay to be excited? To talk about it? Or is that going to make things worse, if we don’t get the answers we want? I honestly don’t know, and…” He shrugs. “I’m in a weird kind of limbo, and I need some direction. Can we act like this is real, like there’s a baby coming? Or should we ignore it until we get answers?”
He’s articulating something I’ve been feeling since I got the news. I have moments where my mind starts throwing open doors to a new future, wanting to plan and dream. Then it slams those doors fast because this isn’t a guarantee. Except … is it ever a guarantee?
That thought hits me, and I take a moment to process it before I say, “I think, if we wait to be sure it’s going to happen, we’ll be waiting until we’re holding a baby in our arms. It’s the same for anyone. I read somewhere that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The gynecologist could say everything’s fine, and I could still miscarry. I could be on permanent bed rest and still miscarry. Nature decides that, not us. Or something could go wrong, and we’d need to make that decision.”
“We might need to make it anyway, if your health is in danger.”
“Will that be harder if we have names picked out, and we’ve started planning where to put a nursery? Absolutely. But I made you a promise. If there’s a significant danger to my health, then this doesn’t happen, and no amount of broken dreams changes that. Whether we dream together or separately, we’ll still dream. We can’t help it. And if things go wrong, then we’ll grieve for what can’t be. But that’s…” I look at him. “That’s the chance we take with everything, isn’t it? It’s the chance we took when we got together. It’s the chance we took when we built this town. We start to craft a dream for the future, knowing if something goes wrong, it’ll hurt so damn much, but…”
I shrug. “What’s the alternative? To not dream? If our relationship didn’t work out, would I have regretted meeting you? Never. If Haven’s Rock fails, will I regret building it? Never. We don’t get to decide whether this”—I put my hands to my stomach—“is real. It is real, whether it lasts or not. So I say we let it be real for as long as it lasts.”
I look up at him. “Is that okay?”
He catches me up in a tight squeeze. Then he lowers his lips to my ear and whispers, ever-so-gently, “I like the name Eric. Boy or girl.”
I laugh. “Eric or Erica?”
“Nope, Eric either way. Eric Junior.”
I laugh, pulling away and swatting him. “Make my tea, Eric Senior. We have work to do.”
* * *
We’re heading to pick up Max’s trail again when we catch the sound of people in the forest. The noise comes from a few hundred feet away, likely over the border to the mining company’s territory.
It’s at least two sets of footfalls. They seem too heavy for one set to be Max’s, but we still stop to listen.
Someone bellows “Sandy!” and we both look at each other.
“Nah,” Dalton says. “I appreciate them helping us with baby names, but Sandy doesn’t do it for me.”
I roll my eyes. “Wanna bet Sandy is the name of the dead guy we found last night?”
“Nope. Because that is a bet I’d lose.”
“Time to get ourselves in on this missing-miner investigation?” I say.
