Recap of Previous Chapter: Sookie learns that Eric stopped by the diner while she was in the hospital, and that Amelia "spilled the baby beans" to him. Sookie and Amelia drive to P-town, where Sookie sells her sapphire pin back to Russell. On the ride home, Sookie recalls a trip she and Eric took last summer to see a dead whale, which led her to decide to keep the baby, without discussing it with Eric.

I think there was some confusion in the last chapter about what Sookie decided during that "dead whale watch." To clarify: she realized that if she's pregnant, as she suspected, she planned to keep the baby, and she felt no compunction about making this decision without Eric's input.

Disclaimer: All SVM characters belong to Charlaine Harris. I'm just taking them on a tour of New England.

Chapter 19: The To-Do List

On the way home from P-town, Amelia drove by the bank so I could cash Russell's check. For $5300. It would do little good thinking about how I had gotten that money—how Eric had wooed me down a dark alley…dropping treats along the way…tugging…luring…

"It's merely a gift from me to you," he'd said, but of course I'd wondered.

In place of the pin, the tiny slip of paper I held in my hands showed a heavy balance that would give me some breathing room and tide me over until the next hurdle got thrown in my path. It bought me some time. I pushed my doubts aside and swallowed hard over the tight knot in my throat.

We made it home just as E.J. was starting to make his breathy, staccato "heh-heh-heh" noises, the kind of I-want-to-eat cry that comes immediately before a feed-me-now-dammit wail. Together, we sank down into the Green Monster, E.J.'s soft cuddly weight molding against me.

When I returned to work, I would miss him.

Amelia saved me from tears. "Octavia left a note here for you."

"What's it say?"

"Bill came by at 1:30."

Huh. That was interesting. I hadn't seen L.L. since that night I'd passed out by his front stoop. I hadn't even seen him skulking around in his garden.

Truth was, I'd been avoiding L.L., staying inside whenever I saw his car or sticking to the side of my house facing my other neighbor instead. I wasn't too keen on dredging up any memories of that night, and beyond that, I wasn't sure I should smack him for screwing me over or hug him for saving my life.

Regardless, I'd need to face up to him because—if I was being brutally honest—he probably had some information that would be helpful.

"And it says that he'll try again tomorrow."

I doubted L.L. would be looking to borrow a cup of sugar, though that wasn't without precedence.

Next morning—surprise, surprise—dawned bright and early for E.J. and me. By 9 AM, I'd already had a shower (yay!), a cup of coffee (special treat), and an actual breakfast (frozen waffles count if you toast them, right?) and had put E.J. down for a morning nap. I had two more days—today and tomorrow—before I returned to Merlotte's, and I was raring to go. I got out my list of things to do.

Pump

Groceries

Laundry

Research zoning board

Dust behind TV

Talk to L.L.

Cull baby clothes

I decided to start with the baby clothes.

Tiptoeing upstairs, I skipped over the creaky spots, sneaked into E.J.'s room, eased out the bottom drawer of his dresser, and carried it down to the parlor—all without waking up the little bugger. The drawer was practically overflowing with newborn outfits-many of which I'd received as gifts-that had gotten too snug. In fact, as I sorted, I became dismayed over how much was not going back into the drawer. I tossed a few pieces into the rag bag, saved one or two items for sentimental reasons, and stacked a large pile for donation. He'd barely worn them. On the positive side, with warm weather surely on the way, E.J. could get through the summer with a few simple onesie t-shirts. I'd worry about cooler weather later.

With that chore done, I crossed it off my list, glanced through the other items again, and decided it was a good opportunity to fit in a pumping. I'd just gotten myself settled and was on a roll, so to speak, when a loud knock at the door startled me.

Crap.

L.L..

At least I'd be able to cross another item off my list.

Octavia had gotten up a few minutes ago and was taking a shower. I detached myself from the suction cups—carefully—set the half-full bottles of milk down in their holders, tucked myself into my bra, and started walking toward the door, still shifting my clothes into place. I smoothed some stray hairs behind my ears and made a last-ditch effort to scrape crust off my pants—was that poop?—as I was pulling open the door.

And suddenly found myself eye-to-eye with Eric.

Well, at least we were at the same eye level height, with me up here on the step, and him down there on the sidewalk. His face was as inscrutable as ever.

Eric apparently hadn't been crawling around any old houses recently. He'd pulled his hair back tidily and wore that same leather jacket, slung open over a tee, worn, but neat and clean. His boots had been polished and buffed recently. I recognized his jeans, too.

But no belt.

I felt a wave of disappointment over that missing belt.

Maybe I should have been feeling more at that moment, aside from missing a damn belt, but nope. I felt numb. Nothing was coming to me. Or maybe everything was coming at once and jamming up the works. As I was busy trying to figure all of this out, I realized I should probably speak.

"You came." Yeah—brilliant—I know.

He raised his eyebrows and waited. "What am I doing here?" he seemed to be saying to me. A similar thought had crossed my mind too. Of course he wasn't going to make it easy for me. Just when I thought I was going to have to say something else to Mr. Conversationalist, he said, "I checked at the diner first, and Sam told me you were at home."

"Yes, that's right." Well, duh. To save myself, I added, "I have today and tomorrow off."

I was still standing in front of my wide-open door, smack dab in the middle of the Milk Barn and Consignment Shop East, which wasn't where I wanted to have this conversation. (It might be like rubbing salt in the wound.) Figuring Gran would forgive me just this once for not inviting him in, I closed the door behind me and motioned toward the front step. He opted for the patch of crab grass beside the walkway. Jason and I used to call it crabby grass for its spiky harshness, though I'd since come to appreciate that it could grow anywhere, even in this salty, sandy place in the middle of a dry summer.

For all of those weeks I'd spent looking for Eric, I hadn't planned exactly what to say to him. Well, I'd tried, of course, but I'd hit a stumbling block in my head each and every time. Unfortunately, with a living, breathing Eric in front of me, all that was coming to me was, "So, Eric…about the baby…I accidentally skipped a few pills last summer—it really was a mistake—and decided to keep him without you."

That was the truth, but no, that probably wouldn't make things any easier between us. I could go with a short enticement, such as, "Congratulations, it's a boy," but that too didn't seem to be the best choice, either. Sheez, even Gran wouldn't be able to help me out much here. What would Miss Manners advise?

Maybe we needed a warm-up, some casual chit-chat to work our way into the meatier stuff. That sounded pretty good. And—good heavens—I should probably offer him a drink. I started to get up. "Can I get you some lemonade? Ice water?" Shot of vodka.

He held his hands up in a halting position as if to say 'no.'

Alrighty, then. "So…You must have gotten my message from Russell."

Pluck. He'd started absently pulling at the grass. "I got two messages." Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.

"Yeah, I went to Pam first." I didn't like the way he was denuding my lawn. In fact, I felt downright pissed off about it. "Actually, I went to Leclerq first."

He paused and looked up with his steady face. "A lot of things have changed for both of us." Pluck.

It was a dodge-reproach kind of answer. I held my irritation in check—barely—and stepped back to reconsider. My first—and possibly my only responsibility—was telling Eric about E.J.. Anything else was off the main point. I forged ahead. "Amelia told me she talked to you." I was about as close as possible to acknowledging the 'b' word without actually saying it.

"I tried to visit you at the hospital, but they turned me away so…" He shrugged and then started plucking again.

So he had come to see me at the hospital. In the maternity ward. He too was hovering dangerously close to the 'b' word. The two of us were circling, quietly poking and prodding at one another. I wondered when the first really hard shove would come.

"I didn't know you came, and Amelia didn't give me the message from the diner until two days ago."

Pluck.

The sound of each blade of grass being snapped off tweaked my already frayed nerves. Jay and I used to stretch those coarse strands of grass between our thumbs to make a really obnoxious whistle. It was time to go for it. "So obviously you know about the baby."

Pluck. Pluck. Pluck. If he fucking kept that up, I wouldn't need to mow.

"Obviously."

I breathed out hard, realizing how tightly I'd been holding myself. Still, there was no release of tension at that moment—no letting go—or any sense of moving forward. Eric, too, seemed unchanged, with no show of emotion on his face. No anger. No joy. No sadness. But, of course, he'd had time to take the news. Whatever feeling he'd had when he'd initially heard it was wiped clean. All evidence destroyed.

I took a deep breath in, feeling the taut strain again in my chest. "I'm sorry I wasn't the one to tell you." That was the honest truth.

He stopped the damn plucking and leaned on his hands. "What do you want, Sookie?"

"Want? That's not what this is about!"

"I know you're in trouble. Russell told me he paid you for the pin. A lot of money, by the way."

What? And he thought I was grubbing for money?

Eric knew exactly what he was doing, aiming straight to wound my pride. Some pent-up words tumbled out. "About half of my troubles would go away if I didn't have a developer named Lorena Ball buying up all this property," I spread my arms out to point to everything around me. "And the other half would go away if an architecture firm wasn't designing the plans to help her."

"It seems to me William should have bailed you out of that one." Eric stood up, moving in a jerky, agitated way. I'd been surprised that he'd stayed sitting that long. "But I can see he's no longer part of the picture." He grimaced.

What exactly had motivated Eric to respond to my messages? Surely he hadn't come to fess up to any wrongdoing he'd committed through Leclerq. It wasn't like he was feeling any warm fuzzies about being a father, or any desire kiss and make up. No, this was Eric, scorned and passed over for another man. Maybe he'd come to see me hang and twist, alone, assuming I'd been dumped once L.L. had learned the baby wasn't his. Maybe Eric would viciously enjoy seeing me abandoned by the very man he thought I'd left him for. Could he be that mean?

Through the front door, I heard E.J. starting to cry. For once I didn't feel like joining him.

I stood up too. I didn't know whether what I was about to say would make matters better or worse, but it needed to be said. "I lied about L.L.."

He stilled.

"What do you mean?"

"L.L. was never back in the picture. I thought it would be best for both of us if I told you that, so we could break things off cleanly, as we agreed from the beginning. I made a mistake and felt responsible, and I didn't want to be your obligation. I didn't want us to feel obligated to each other."

"Obligated?"

"You know…how we agreed. It was just for the summer. And when I found out I was pregnant, I…" I stopped.

The truth was, it had been about more than not wanting to be Eric's obligation last summer. I couldn't face him then, beyond our summer fling. He would have been too much for me. I guessed E.J. and I would have been too much for him too. We would have crashed and burned. But getting into all of this with him just then, well…I wasn't sure whether we ever would, whether he'd ever know the truly intimate parts of me. Maybe he'd never fully understand why I'd done what I'd done. I supposed only time would tell.

Eric's eyes had become wild and jumping, saccadic. I watched the muscles and tendons in his jaw flex and flicker. He took a few steps away, and then paced back. "You had a baby."

"Well…yes." Obviously. We'd covered that ground already.

"My baby?"

And that's when it dawned on me.

Shit. Shit. Shit. I'd been stupid to assume he knew. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. We weren't on the same effing paternity page. I'd assumed Amelia had told him. "Oh…Eric…" Panic flooded over me. My stomach sank. Plummeted. Dropped to the very bottom of a bottomless pit. Turned inside out and twisted into a big knot before doing a flip-flop and a loop-the-loop.

"Not William's," he reiterated.

"Not William's," I confirmed. "He's yours. Ours." I said it as clearly as I could. He looked straight at me. I looked him straight back. "I named him after you. Eric Jason. I call him E.J. for short..." My words trailed off. He was probably still thinking over the idea that he was a father.

And starting to feel a surge of anger.

"I want to see him." Make no mistake: he was no father willing to move heaven and earth to get to his son. No, he was looking for proof.

Proof that he was really the father.

My revelation had had plenty of time to sink in. His arms and shoulders strained visibly under a volatile load, like he was struggling to contain a storm cloud full of lightning. I didn't think he would hurt E.J. or me—at least not physically—but there would be no talking him into waiting for another occasion when things had calmed.

Without another word, I opened the door. I watched his boots stride right overtop of the script lettering of the "welcome" mat, bordered by a pretty row of scallop shells and sea stars, and straight across the threshold. That mat did little to keep the sand out anyway. I'd only left it there because the front door had seemed so bare and empty without it.

A waft of air drew in, gasping, and then steadied.

I closed the door to face him. E.J.'s wails had become more insistent. Strangely enough, Eric seemed smaller here, standing inside my house. When I took in a deep breath, all things old poked quietly, but insistently at me. I knew he smelled and felt it too. And then his face hardened again as he looked up at the ceiling, as though he could see E.J. from here. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but I imagined his reaching up with his hands and placing his palms flat on the ceiling; he'd at least be tall enough to do it.

"Do you want to go up with me?"

He gestured for me to go ahead of him.

I walked up the stairs to the nursery. Octavia was there holding E.J. over her shoulder, shushing in his ear and bouncing. She looked at me apologetically. There was little space for conversation above the din of his wails. "I do think he's hungry."

"It's okay. Octavia, this is Eric…" I stopped short of calling him E.J.'s father or my friend or my former lover. She nodded and smiled uncertainly as she passed the screaming bundle over to me. Eric barely gave Octavia a stony greeting in return.

Octavia seemed hesitant about what to do next.

"Thanks. I'll feed him now." As she stepped out of the room, I noticed Eric's clinical scrutiny of E.J.. I think if he could have pulled out a paternity test right then and there, he would have done it.

E.J. had grown and filled out over the past six weeks, but he still had a certain newborn appearance that made him look like any other baby. His blonde, spiky hair could have easily come from me. His eyes, clamped shut by his persistent bawl, were his most persuasive feature. That's what Eric was waiting to see.

Awkwardly, I turned away from Eric. Tara had given me the nickname "Quick Draw" for my ability to whip out a boob and get E.J. latched on in nothing flat, without even a flash of nipple, but doing it in front of an angry Eric was another matter.

E.J. was a pro himself. He tensed for a moment as he latched on, gave a few short draws, and then paused for that pay-off of the big let-down of milk. I took a deep breath to try to relax, felt the warm rush, and watched E.J.'s eyes pop open as he worked hard on taking in those first full gulps of milk. Soon enough, when he was sated and starting to tire, his body would relax and his eyes would droop; the moment had come for Eric to see. I turned to walk toward the rocking chair, next to the window. Eric followed me with his eyes and stepped closer before finally angling himself so he was looking directly into E.J.'s eyes.

"They're a match," I wanted to say to him. "They're utterly and wholly convincing."

But Eric's hard expression had barely changed; he might as well have been studying the features of a map. I wondered how long he'd stand there and at what point this moment would turn from very awkward to completely awkward. It wouldn't take long, and E.J. could go at this for even longer.

He wasn't ready for the chit chat. Maybe one day I would say to him, "He was ten-pounds, 2 ounces at birth," or, "He's growing so fast he's in his three-to-six-month clothes," or "I can get him to make a crooked little smile if I lean over him and coo."

Instead, I pointed toward the footstool, offering him a seat. "This may take a while."

He shook his head.

Glancing around the room for whatever else I could offer, I decided very quickly the nursery was not the best place for hosting a guest. Blankets, diapers, rattles, and the like were really only appealing to a very small crowd.

"Eric, I know this is a lot to lay on you at once."

"I don't understand how you could have done this."

Get pregnant? Have the baby? Not tell you? I'd start with the easy answer.

"It didn't happen on purpose. I messed up on my pill, but it was a complete accident…"

"You knew that night in the shack, didn't you?"

"That's when I first suspected." Actually, you kind of pointed it out.

"We could have taken care of it then."

"Taken care of it?" I felt the blood drain from my face. What he was suggesting—what had indeed been an option then—was appalling to consider with E.J. bundled in my arms, suckling from my breast. I pulled him in tighter, understanding that fierce protectiveness that a parent feels. I was sickened he'd mentioned it.

"Oh, please. Don't act like you didn't consider having an abortion."

"I'm glad we didn't." It was all I could choke out without crying.

"You didn't."

I almost snapped, "That's right, I didn't," but stopped myself. Eric's spite seemed to be less about having a baby per se and more about his lack of control and power over the situation. I decided to take a big gamble and call his bluff.

"How would you have handled it?"

His eyes flickered across E.J. and out the window toward the pond. "I wouldn't have lied to you."

I had to admit that stung—the suggestion that my moral character was less than honorable. I'd wondered it myself over the past few weeks—whether lying to him had been the right thing to do, even if my intentions were well meaning. Things could have turned out quite differently if I had told him the truth last summer, and not necessarily better.

"Maybe not, but you'd keep a secret from me."

"What do you want to know?" His eyes bore straight into mine without wavering once.

His tell.

So he did have something to hide.

He was calling my bluff—daring me—giving me broad open space for asking him about Leclerq—all the while sure that I wouldn't. I knew enough about Eric to know he'd never lay himself exposed and vulnerable. Not like this, anyway.

It made me want to give him a hard grilling just to show him that I could.

And I could. Last summer I couldn't have done it, but now…

No. We'd already shared enough that day. It wasn't the right time. Eric would need to give me answers if there was going to be an "us," but I wasn't about to tear him down to get them.

Eric's posture was tense and stiff, waiting for my response and geared up for the blow of battle. Just watching him standing there, in ready position, made me feel drained—weary to the bone—as though he were sapping energy straight out of the room.

There had to be another way.

"I'm tired, Eric," I acknowledged outright.

Tired of being lonely. Tired of not being known by someone who would matter most. Tired of not knowing someone who would matter most.

"And I wondered whether I missed something with you."

Eric was still looking out the window. He said nothing. Had he been anybody else, I would have been uncertain about whether he'd heard me. Minutes passed. Gradually, the quiet clicking sounds of E.J.'s gulps grew to fill the silence, swallowing us up, room and all.

Suddenly, Eric's body jerked away from the window. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, started to pace, and then froze.

"Eric?"

"I have to go."

"Now?"

"Yes." He rubbed his smooth, clean-shaven chin, pulled out his cell phone, paused, and then stuffed it back in his pocket.

"I have to go," he said again, striding for the door. He was there in two steps, before I could scramble out of the chair. When I finally managed to get up and follow behind him, E.J.'s blanket trailed between my legs.

"I'll call you," he said as he bounded down the stairs. I could hear from the clomps of his feet that he took at least several steps at once.

He was out of the house before I reached the top of the staircase.

Hearing the noise, Octavia came back up to take E.J. from me, leaving me with empty arms and a sudden sense of having nothing to do. Thinking back on the long, twisty path that had brought me to that moment, it was a strange feeling, for sure, to realize I'd suddenly accomplished my goal of finding Eric.

What would I do next?

I dug deep into my pocket to pull out the folded to-do list I'd stashed there earlier in the day and glanced at the items again. "Tell Eric he's a father," I added. But thinking about that a little more, I changed it to, "Tell Eric he's E.J.'s father," before crossing it off.

And then I wondered again what I'd do next.

A/N: So there you have him...Live Eric, not of the flashback variety. I'm really curious to hear what you think of him.

Also, I posted the first chapter of another story, Bird in Hand, which is about about vampires coming to Amish country in Pennsylvania. I hope you'll check it out!

~Thanks for reading!~

And thanks, as always, to makesmyheadspin and peppermintyrose. ;)