Page 107 of Creeping Beautiful

And what we all did on her twentieth birthday was the trigger. That was the day when Nathan came home from school and saw us. All of us. Together. Right over there. On that swing I made Indie when she was just a little girl.

That act of passion shattered our lives into tiny little pieces.

And after that day was over… we knew there was no way to ever put it back together.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - INDIE

Maggie was the most perfect baby alive. So small and sweet. And she smelled like… like a spring rain on a sunny day.

The pregnancy was hard. I’m not gonna lie. After the whole truth was out and I moved in with Nathan, everything seemed OK. Like this was all gonna work out just fine. Living over at Nate’s wasn’t much different as far as I could tell. Only my view now was of Old Home and not the brown-brick house. His grandfather had passed a few weeks earlier, but his grandfather had been sick for as long as I could remember. So that wasn’t much different, either.

To be honest, the real difference was McKay. Because he wasn’t there to make dinner for me. Which sounds ridiculous, but I did not know how to cook. And Nathan kinda expected to be fed.

Which was also weird, because Nate was the one who did all the cooking too.

I don’t know. Something changed between us after I moved in. I didn’t read a lot of romance books, just that one about the boy next door. But I figured it couldn’t hurt to find a few more to study. I just needed some pointers about this romance thing, that was all.

But all the romance novels for sale in the river town were old and out of date. People were still using telephones in them, for fuck’s sake. So I’m not sure I did myself any favors by reading those for tips.

Nathan liked to go into New Orleans for dinner or shopping. But this was weird for me. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been all over the fuckin’ world. I’m no stranger to cities. But always on a job, never really just for fun.

When I was younger McKay took me to the zoo once. It was fine. But it reminded me of the island where Adam bought me. And that made me think of snakes and there were enough snakes in my backyard, thank you. I didn’t need the zoo to remind me of that.

And he took me to the Space Center in Huntsville once. We stayed for a few days. I liked that more than the zoo. At least there were no cages.

And then we did have plans to go to Disney World for my twelfth birthday, but something came up and we didn’t go. Then the next year, when McKay brought it up again, I said I felt too old to see Disney World for the first time. He tried to change my mind. Said it was for all ages. He even sweetened the pot and said he would make Donovan and Adam come with us, but I still said no.

But other than that, we didn’t get out much. I enjoyed the river trips Nathan and I took up to the river town. And the ice cream, of course. But I didn’t like the town where he went to school very much. I always felt like people looked at me weird.

And of course, all of Nathan’s friends lived there and he played football for his school. So those first few months we were living together as a couple, he always wanted to go there and meet up with his friends on the weekends. So I ended up just staying home with McKay and Adam when he did that.

We weren’t having sex, either. Not that I cared. Our relationship wasn’t about sex. But we used to kiss a lot. And hold hands. We didn’t do that anymore after I moved in, either.

And then, by the time Maggie was born, I was ready to go home to my own bed in my own room. The little brown-brick house was fine, I guess. But it was small, and old, and to be honest, it smelled a little bit like Nate’s dead grandfather.

I don’t know. I could not get that smell out of my nose. McKay told me that smells get funny when you’re pregnant. But it was the same after Maggie was born.

So I just moved home.

A few weeks later Nathan broke up with me.

Or maybe that’s not quite the right word. Was he really my boyfriend? No. We were friends. Friends who used to like to kiss and hold hands and who had sex exactly one time, but other than that… even my old raggedy romance books told me that was not a boyfriend.

And that hurt. And it hurt even more when he said he didn’t want the baby and me to go to college with him. Because he said, “You don’t fit in, Indie. You live in another world from the rest of us.”

Which I could not exactly argue about. Because I did live in another world. But it wasn’t my fault that I was Company. Even though, by this time, there was no Company. That made very little sense to me. There was no more Company, but I was still Company. There was no way to not be Company.

It hardly seemed fair.

But back to Magnolia. Maggie. Mags. She was my new world. And she was not Company. She would never be Company. That gave me hope. And being with her—and seeing McKay and Adam dote all over her, and Donovan would come, and then he would dote on her too—that made things a little better.

For a little while.

The holidays were fun that year. Very fun. McKay always went out of his way to make sure we had nice holidays. He cooked Thanksgiving dinner and Adam and I would bake frozen pies. We tried to make them from scratch one year, but everyone agreed that the frozen ones came out better. So that’s what we did from then on.

And most years it was nice enough to eat Thanksgiving dinner outside under the pavilion. Adam would make a fire in the fireplace and watch football, and Donovan was usually there. He and I would play cards. And McKay would make us all clean up the dishes afterward because he was the cook. But he helped anyway. So all four of us would be in the kitchen washing and drying dishes and putting things away.

And then the house would go dark and we’d all hang out on the couch and watch TV. Usually an old horror film.