Page 59 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

Lev asks nothing for ten blocks. The city slides past, indifferent. Eventually, his patience wears thin. “Well?”

“He is a Sokolov now.”

His face falls as he drives. “I hate this.”

“No more than I do.”

He sighs. “Next steps?”

“I go home, and I’ll think about it in the morning.”

“Understood.”

But he doesn’t. Lev has had romances, but never long-term. Never children. He cannot understand what it means to me to hold Thea. That I want to hear her voice before the next shoe falls.

23

THEA

The bump arrives without warning. I catch it in the full-sized mirror after my shower. A distinct, small curve where I used to be plain soft.

So, it begins.

Twelve weeks, Dr. Rappaport says. The size of a lime, according to the internet. Last night Maxim talked to it for a full ten minutes in Russian, something about the sea and a boat and a name I didn’t catch. I pretended to sleep while I listened in. I was tempted to tell him I know a little, but I realize that’s not a fight I’m up for.

Today has something else in mind for me. It starts with the litter box.

I’m halfway to the mudroom with the scoop when Galina materializes. I don’t know how she does it, but she always knows where I am.

“No,” she says in that tone that brooks no argument. “Not you. Toxoplasma. Bad for the baby. I will do the box now. You do not need to think about the box. The box is finished for you.”

“Galina, I will be fine⁠—”

But she’s already walking away with my scoop, my box, my last unsupervised chore, and Potato happily trots after her like a little defector.

It’s not about the box anymore. Now, I have to resist taking the stairs two at a time. The coffee was switched to decaf without even a chat. Soft cheeses disappeared from the kitchen overnight, as if they’d been deported. The whole house seems to have shifted around the lime, and I’m the last to be asked about my own midsection. I might feel resentful if it weren’t also kind of comforting—to know it’s the thing I spent twenty-seven years not quite getting.

They’re taking care of me. Of the lime. And parts of that are annoying, but it’s also kind of nice.

Then there’s the garden. With Pasha.

For weeks, he quietly observed my walks from a respectful distance, pretending to be interested in the tree line while really taking in everything about me. This week, he’s no longer hiding it. Now, he joins me at the terrace doors, walking beside me along the gravel paths at a gentle pace—like someone carefully guiding something precious and fragile, which, according to the doctor, I might very well be.

I tell him, on the third lap, that he doesn’t need to do this every day. “I’m walking in a circle inside a fenced area with dogs, cameras, and you. The cardio isn’t risky. If you can even call this cardio.”

“I enjoy the fresh air,” Pasha replies, gazing at the distance, and I notice his ears turn a distinct shade of red I’ve grown familiar with.

“It’s November. The air’s trying to kill us both.”

“The cold, you mean? This is nothing compared to Russia.”

Pasha is good company, to be fair. He tells me about the dogs by name and temperament, which one is a coward, which one would die for you and which would only pretend to. Then we usually talk about chess for a while, and he uses all the real terms, while not rolling his eyes when I still call the rook “castle” and knights “horsey guys.”

But I can’t be alone with my own head if I’m never alone, and my head has things it wants to work on.

And when I really think about it, Pasha worries me. A man does not volunteer for daily walks with a pregnant woman at a pace this careful unless something in him has tipped in a direction it shouldn’t.

His eyes never stay on mine longer than a second. He blushes for no reason around me. Maxim says he asked for the night rotation—notoriously, the worst rotation, according to him—and at this point, I’m wondering when the man sleeps.