Page 7 of The Gravity of Us (Elements 4)

Damn.

“We still need to find a nanny,” she said. “The firm gave me a few weeks off for maternity leave, but I won’t need all of the time if we find a decent nanny. I’d love a little old Mexican lady, preferably one with a green card.”

My eyebrows furrowed, disturbed. “You do know saying that is not only disgusting and racist, but also saying it to your half-Mexican husband is pretty distasteful, right?”

“You’re hardly Mexican, Graham. You don’t even speak a lick of Spanish.”

“Which makes me non-Mexican—duly noted, thank you,” I said coldly. At times my wife was the person I hated the most. While we agreed on many things, sometimes the words that left her mouth made me rethink every flow chart we’d ever made.

How could someone so beautiful be so ugly at times?

Kick.

Kick.

My chest tightened, my hands still resting around Jane’s stomach.

Those kicks terrified me. If there was anything I knew for certain, it was that I was not father material. My family history led me to believe anything that came from my line of ancestry couldn’t be good.

I just prayed to God that the baby wouldn’t inherit any of my traits—or worse, my father’s.

Jane lea

ned against my desk, shifting my perfectly neat paperwork as my fingers lay still against her stomach. “It’s time to hop in the shower and get dressed. I hung your suit in the bathroom.”

“I told you, I cannot make this engagement. I have a deadline to meet.”

“While you have a deadline to meet, your father has already met his deadline, and now it’s time to send off his manuscript.”

“His manuscript being his casket?”

Jane’s brows furrowed. “No. Don’t be silly. His body is the manuscript; his casket is the book cover.”

“A freaking expensive book cover, too. I can’t believe he picked one that is lined with gold.” I paused and bit my lip. “On second thought, I easily believe that. You know my father.”

“So many people will be there today. His readers, his colleagues.”

Hundreds would show up to celebrate the life of Kent Russell. “It’s going to be a circus,” I groaned. “They’ll mourn for him, in complete and utter sadness, and they’ll sit in disbelief. They’ll start pouring in with their stories, with their pain. ‘Not Kent, it can’t be. He’s the reason I even gave this writing thing a chance. Five years sober because of that man. I cannot believe he’s gone. Kent Theodore Russell, a man, a father, a hero. Nobel Prize winner. Dead.’ The world will mourn.”

“And you?” Jane asked. “What will you do?”

“Me?” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “I’ll finish my manuscript.”

“Are you sad he’s gone?” Jane asked, rubbing her stomach.

Her question swam in my mind for a beat before I answered. “No.”

I wanted to miss him.

I wanted to love him.

I wanted to hate him.

I wanted to forget him.

But instead, I felt nothing. It had taken me years to teach myself to feel nothing toward my father, to erase all the pain he’d inflicted on me, on the ones I loved the most. The only way I knew how to shut off the hurt was to lock it away and forget everything he’d ever done to me, to forget everything I’d ever wished him to be.

Once I locked the hurt away, I almost forgot how to feel completely.