Page 61 of Expecting an Argument
I grabbed a small box of tissues from my bedroom before crossing the hall. Olivia had so very little that she could control anymore, she would probably burst into tears when I told her the nursery had slipped out of her control too.
Slowly, I entered her room. Olivia was lying on her side in the bed. Though her breathing was slow, it wasn’t in her usual sleeping rhythm. The TV wasn’t even on.
I cleared my throat to make sure she knew I was there. “Hey…Mom bought everything off the registry and it all got delivered today. I’m sorry, I know you wanted to manage that yourself.”
Olivia let out a low hum of acknowledgement and didn’t move.
I passed the box of tissues from one hand to the other. “She also, um, started setting up the nursery down the hall. I didn’t tell her to, she just…wanted to help, I guess. She put up the silver wallpaper you liked.”
“Is that what all that noise was last week?” she asked dully.
I let out a silent sigh—Olivia was having another low day. With the third trimester just around the corner, her movements have gotten slower, she was in bed more often, and she was somehow even quieter. The only time I had seen her spark back to life was when we went to Miss Kaye’s. I never knew someone could be so ecstatic over paint and paper on walls in an old house. Had Mom not ruined half the manor with her…eccentricstyle, maybe Olivia would have been just as excited aboutthisold house.
Well, Olivia had a history degree. Maybe she spent time with her smutty books and murder shows because she craved a good story.
I carefully put the tissue box on the nightstand next to her mom’s ashes and then held out my hands. “Come on, Adams. We’re going on an adventure.”
She groaned. “I don’t want to move.”
“It’ll be short, I promise.” I placed my hand on her shoulder and gave it a little rub.“Andit involves me info-dumping about historic home design for at least twenty minutes.”
Her hands wrapped around her belly and she slowly rolled over to face me. I gently slid her glasses onto her face and helped her out of bed. She wore a little green lounge set meant for nursing, so the underside of her belly peeked out from her blousy top. Even though her hair was a fluffy mess and she wore those clunky, yet practical, anti-slip shoes, she still looked quite cute.
And if I could get her to smile, she’d be damn adorable.
Olivia didn’t even bat an eye at the delivery men wheeling the stacks of boxes into the nursery as I led her into the hallway. We stopped on the second story landing in front of a small portrait of a man with a snowy white beard sitting with his bright-eyed wife.
I gestured at the portrait. “This is Jacques and Adelaide Fontaine, my great-great-grandparents. As one of Elren’s founding families, they were the first to buy up the land around the city and they struck oil. Thanks to that bit of luck, they went from being moderately well-off to unmanageably wealthy almost overnight.”
Olivia admired the portrait. “Adelaide had a fantastic sense of fashion. If I had oil money, I’d sparkle like that too.”
My eyes wandered from the jeweled hairband that held back my great-great-grandmother’s dark pin curls to her draping pearl necklaces and the shining rings on her slender hands. “Not all of it came from oil money.”
I pointed to the ring on Adelaide’s left hand. “Jacques fell in love with Adelaide when they were children, so he spent ten years saving every penny he earned until he had enough to buy her a proper wedding ring.”
Olivia took a closer look at the photo. “He must have saved a lot of pennies. That diamond is huge, especially for the time.”
“Love is worth waiting for, I guess.” I turned over my shoulder to look at the foyer below. “After the black gold flooded their bank account, Jacques and Adelaide built Fontaine Manor. The manor was a spectacle back then mainly because of its massive size. The idea was to have lots of kids and have everyone live together…but turns out the Fontaines aren’t all that fertile.”
Olivia cut me a sly look. “Until you.”
I bit my tongue to hold down a smirk. “What can I say? I’m the oddball of the family.” I turned her attention to another portrait. “Jacques and Adelaide did have an heir to the family fortune, though—my great-grandpa Louis.”
She turned to Louis’s black-and-white framed portrait. He gave her a cheeky smile beneath his pencil-thin mustache.
“He looks like a trouble-maker,” she remarked.
I held down another smile. “We’ll get to him in a minute.” I pointed to another portrait. “In complete contrast, here’s a man you actually know—the first Beau.”
Despite being a young man in his portrait, Grandpa was just as buttoned-up as I had remembered as a kid. His cold blue stare even kept the yellow tint of the mid-century photograph from looking too warm. Grandma stood next to him in the portrait with her hair teased a foot high and her pink lipsstretched into a smile.
I just hoped I wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse for why Dad wasn’t on the portrait wall.
Olivia pointed to a smaller framed photo. “And who is this? Do you have a female cousin?”
I swallowed as my eyes found the photo of a squinting baby being devoured by an ivory monster of lace and ribbons. “No…that’s me.”
She bit her lower lip. “What an outfit.”
