Page 28 of Pregnant By the Playboy

“Don’t be sorry. You’re a good mother.”

I pull her into my arms and hug her tight. I never want my mother to feel like she wasn’t enough, but I do want my child to grow up with some of the things I didn’t have.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asks. “Do you have morning sickness?”

“Yes, unfortunately. It just started.”

“For the first trimester, it was like all-day sickness for me. I hope you will not have it quite so bad. But then in the second trimester, I was...” She winks at me. “Horny all the time, is that how you say it?”

“Mom!”

My mother never says things like that.

She laughs at my response.

My heart squeezes. I’m so glad she has a comfortable life now, a nice retirement where she gets to go on holidays. A partner to keep her company. No fear behind her laughs.

“I love you.” I pull her into my arms. “But don’t ever say stuff like that again.”

“I love you, too. I am not disappointed, don’t worry. Just surprised. You understand?”

I nod.

“Your father would be proud of you. He would brag about his daughter the engineer. He would be very excited about being a grandpa, I know.”

When I was little, I begged my mother for stories about my father all the time, after she’d come home from working long hours at the dry cleaners to make ends meet. He was a hero I could not meet, but he was my dad.

I’m giving my baby something better. A real father.

I brush the back of my hand over my eyes to stem the tears. I’m blaming it on pregnancy hormones. Plus, my mother and I rarely talk about this stuff anymore. But being pregnant...it brings up lots of memories.

And the absence of certain memories.

“I would like to meet the father of my grandbaby,” Mom says. “You will bring him over for dinner one day, okay?”

I am so not ready for this. “Not yet. But sometime before the baby comes.”

“I will make sure that it actually happens and you do not keep putting it off. Perhaps you will change your mind about him. He did offer to marry you, yes? And having a baby can make people change their ways.”

I think of the enormous pregnancy book that Vince brought to my appointment, the way he trusted me to make my own decisions about my health but wanted to be there to support me.

The doorbell rings.

“It must be the sushi,” Mom says. “I think you can eat the tempura, gyoza, and cucumber rolls. Next time, I will cook, and I will make only foods you can eat.”

We head into the hall, where Larry is taking the bags of sushi from the delivery man. When Larry puts everything down in the kitchen, he gives me a hug, and the rest of the family joins him—his son, his daughter, her wife, and their six-year-old daughter.

Yes, it’s all going to be okay.

Chapter 11

Vince

“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask Evie.

She’s sitting beside me on the couch. I take her gurgle as a yes.

“You’re getting another cousin near the end of the year. You’re going to be a Big Cousin and show her—or him—how to do all sorts of tricks, won’t you?”