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Then, to my surprise, Geneva sighs. She reaches out to pat my hand where it’s lying lifelessly in my lap.
“Are you okay, Juju?” she asks. I look down at her fingers stroking my knuckles. A few beads from my dress are missing. Lost in the rush out of Mexico, I assume. It makes me unreasonably sad. Things this pretty shouldn’t be ruined by events this ugly.
I nod. “I think so. Tonight was… a lot.”
“The baby…?”
“Is fine, I think,” I say, placing my palm over my belly. “I don’t feel like anything’s wrong.”
“Good,” Geneva says with relief. She squeezes my hand again. “This baby’s going to be fine, hon. You’re not going to lose this one.”
I give her a shaky smile. “I’m still scared. But I’ll be fine once I see Sara. Once she confirms that—”
“Can you trust this doctor?” Geneva asks abruptly. That snaky gleam is back in her eyes. “I mean, Kolya is the one who hired her, right?”
I breathe through my panic. I’m not sure how the instinct to defend Kolya got so strong, but it feels like a betrayal to sit here and listen to Geneva accuse him of things that I don’t believe he’s guilty of.
You’re a little naive on that front, though, aren’t ya, sweetheart?
I cringe at Adrian’s voice.You’re a little biased.
And you’re a little fickle. I haven’t even been dead that long. Barely cold and you’re already moving on.
I jerk upright and pace away from Geneva. My head is pounding with unease. I’m too confused to think straight.
“Honey, you should lie down,” she suggests.
“I don’t want to,” I say, trying to breathe through the weight in my chest. “I-I need to get out of this dress.”
I unzip myself on the way to the bathroom and shut the door before Geneva can follow me in here. I turn the shower on, but after I strip off the dress, I stand in front of the sink and stare at my reflection in the mirror.
It’s subtle, but there’s a new curve in my belly that wasn’t there before. Like the beads on my dress, that makes me sad, too.
Because I’ve been down this road before. I carried my last baby for almost five months. We knew what we were going to have—a baby boy. He had fingers and toes and hair and a smile. I felt him quickening inside of me.Life.Vibrant and hopeful.
I close my eyes and the tears spill free.
Adrian was holding my hand tightly as the doctor told us the sex. When he walked out to give us a moment of privacy, Adrian had kissed my forehead and tap-danced his hand over my exposed belly, still slick with the petroleum jelly from the scan.
“You’re going to be a great mother, June Cole.”
“How do you know?” I asked, more fearful than I expected to be.
He shrugged as though it were the most obvious answer in the world. “You take care of me.”
I open my eyes and focus on my reflection in the mirror once more. My eyes are drawn and gray with weariness. There’s no other indication of what I’ve been through in the last day, the last month, the last year. Kolya wiped away all traces of blood.
Maybe that’s another reason I decided to trust him.
He’s the first person who’s ever shown any interest in taking care of me.
36
KOLYA
“I don’t trust the sister,” Milana says, blowing out a plume of smoke.
I grimace. “I don’t, either. But we couldn’t just leave her there.”
