Thanks for the reviews. This one only has a few chapters left so I want to try to get done in the next few weeks... ;)
Chapter 13.
"I thought you were gonna take it easy today?" Jack said when he found Kate in the nursery, making up the crib.
The sheets that they'd ordered were a neutral white, but now that she was seeing them on the tiny mattress, she was beginning to regret making such a practical choice. They reminded her of a hospital bed or the lining of a coffin. "I was," she assured him, stepping back to survey her work. Maybe it would look less sterile if she added some toys or a mobile. Babies needed stimulation. "But then Amy brought over these boxes…"
"And you just couldn't help yourself, could you?" he finished with a grin.
"I just wanna make sure everything is ready for when she arrives," she told him. There was still so much they needed to organise and they were running out of time. In less than a month, she would enter her third trimester, and then according to Juliet, they might have to induce her. If the baby was going to spend the first weeks of her life in some hospital in Ann Arbour, the least Kate could do was make sure that she had somewhere nice to come home to. "I was so unprepared before, with Aaron – I didn't have a crib or diapers…" She turned away from him under the pretence of smoothing out an invisible crease so that he wouldn't notice how close she was to tears, but a moment later, she felt him come up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist.
"It's gonna be okay, Kate," he said, his voice muffled as he kissed the side of her neck, resting his chin against her collarbone.
"How can you be sure?" she asked, settling back into his embrace.
"Because for once in my life, I have faith," he told her. "This baby – this is our destiny. At least, she's the only one that matters now."
She wished he would stop talking like that when it was anything but. "Me getting pregnant wasn't 'destiny', Jack," she argued, even though she couldn't bring herself to tell him how she knew this. "It's what happens when you don't use birth control."
But he wasn't going to be deterred. "When did you become such a cynic?" he asked.
"When did you become such an optimist?" She never would have imagined that he could be so Zen about the possibility of something going wrong with her pregnancy, but it seemed as if in his mind, at least, there was no doubt that it would all work itself out.
Of course that didn't stop him from treating her like a porcelain doll. It had taken almost a week for her to convince him that it was still okay for them to have sex, and even then, it was only when she initiated it.
"I think it must have been around the time that I got everything I ever wanted," he agreed, kissing her shoulder.
"You always wanted to be a janitor?" she teased him.
"Head janitor, actually," he corrected her, looking sheepish when she turned to see if he was joking. "Horace came by the schoolroom today and offered me a promotion."
"Jack! That's wonderful!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck, even though she could tell that he was trying to downplay it.
He held her for a moment then let go. "I don't even know if I'm gonna take it," he confessed.
"Why wouldn't you?" she insisted, taken aback by his obvious lack of enthusiasm. He was one of the most ambitious people that she knew; she couldn't understand why, after being there for over than five months, he wasn't happier that his hard work and attention to detail was being recognised. "He obviously thinks you deserve it."
"Because I'm not a leader, Kate," he said, without even a hint of false modesty. "I tried that once before and look what happened." Rather than meet her eyes, he kept his trained on her belly, caressing it with his thumb. "Besides, I need to be here for you and the baby."
He was always selling himself short; why couldn't he trust himself, the way everyone else did, especially her? "I know what you're doing, Jack, and I'm not gonna let you use us as an excuse," she complained. He'd already proven to her that he could juggle a successful career with being a father and husband when he spent all day in the OR, repairing people's spines, and still made it home in time to tuck Aaron in. Surely he could manage the same thing here, where the work was much less demanding? It wasn't like people would die if he got to the floors a little late. "We'll be fine, but you… Do you really wanna clean toilets for the rest of your life?" She could tell by his expression that he didn't, but he wasn't ready to admit it to himself either, so he was trying to convince himself that the thought of being a glorified cleaner didn't bother him. "Promise me that you'll at least think about it before you turn it down?"
"Okay," he agreed, rewarding her with the beginnings of a smile. "If you promise to relax."
It wasn't much compared to what he'd achieved back home – especially when his main competition was the town drunk – but still, she couldn't help being thrilled that he was finally moving up in the world. She didn't want him to worry about their child being ashamed of him because he wasn't someone more important. She launched herself at him again. "I'm so proud of you."
Now that she had seemingly endless free time and very little to do, Kate had begun to take afternoon naps for the first time since Aaron was a baby; it was during one of these naps that she was roused by a knock at the front door.
"Juliet? What're you doing here?" she asked when she opened it to find the fertility doctor turned mechanic standing out on the porch with a non-descript satchel slung over one shoulder.
"I came by to see how you were feeling," she explained, giving it a pointed pat, and it occurred to Kate that she must have found a way to smuggle supplies out of the clinic so that she could continue conducting her examinations of her in secret.
"Come in," she told her, stepping back to let her inside.
"Have you had any more headaches since your last appointment?" she asked, getting straight down to business, unpacking a series of medical instruments and laying them out across the surface of the kitchen counter.
At least one of they should stay positive. "Promise you won't tell Jack?" Kate checked, even she had a feeling that she would anyway if she thought they were serious enough.
"I won't unless you want me to," Juliet assured her.
"Then yeah," she agreed. It was more like one long continuous one. "I can't seem to shake it."
"Why don't you let me take a look?" Juliet suggested.
Kate showed her to her and Jack's bedroom so that she could lay comfortably while Juliet measured her belly and took her vitals, including her heart rate and blood pressure.
"Well, the good news is that the baby is only measuring slightly smaller than normal this week," she announced after repeating the process to ensure that her measurements were accurate.
After Kate had spent the better part of the last week preparing herself for the worst, the idea that it might still be okay was almost too good to be true. "So she's growing?"
"She's growing," Juliet agreed, breaking into a grin to match Kate's.
She checked her enthusiasm when she realised that there was more. "But…?"
"But," Juliet continued, "even though it looks like she's doing better, she's still at risk as long as your blood pressure remains this high." She folded the measuring tape and set it on the bed next to the cuff. "Kate, the other week at the clinic, it seemed like you wanted to tell me something. Something you didn't want Jack to hear?" she prompted.
When Kate didn't answer right away, she added, "It's okay if you don't, I just thought it might help to talk about whatever's been bothering you."
As well intentioned at the offer was, Kate wasn't sure she was comfortable spilling her secrets to a woman that she had only just begun to consider a friend.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Juliet tried again. "Are you sure that Jack is the baby's father? Because we can run a paternity test if you're not."
Kate was so shocked that she almost burst out laughing. "Who else do you think would it be?" The smile slid from her face when she saw how serious Juliet was. "Wait, you're not suggesting…?" No wonder she'd taken such an interest in her pregnancy: she wanted to make sure that it wasn't a threat. "Juliet," she breathed, at a loss as to how she'd come to reach such a baseless conclusion. She and Sawyer were rarely, if ever, alone. Then she remembered how heatedly she'd argued with him that night after dinner. What if Juliet had seen them? "I would never do that to you or him. I see how happy he is with you and I would never do anything to ruin that."
"But if he and I weren't together…?" she pressed. "You must have thought about it."
Kate shook her head. Whatever happened between them in the past, it had been over for a long time. She didn't want to go back there: not when she had a husband and a child and a life that she loved. "I don't regret choosing Jack," she told her without looking away and Juliet relaxed visibly.
"Thank God," she said. "I knew it was crazy."
In the back of her mind, Kate couldn't help thinking that even though she didn't regret choosing Jack, he was going to regret choosing her. It wouldn't matter to him that she'd proven her love by marrying him; he would still be hurt when he found out.
"Is it the baby?" Juliet guessed, her sympathetic tone returning now that her own fears had been allayed. "You don't want it? Because that's okay too. A lot of women have doubts after falling pregnant. That doesn't make you a bad mother."
Kate felt something inside of her break then. "I wanted this baby more than anything," she corrected her before she wrongly assumed that she was suffering from some kind of pregnancy-related depression, dissolving into tears that had nothing to do with her hormones. She couldn't bring herself to look at her as the words tumbled out. "Becoming a mom was the best thing that ever happened to me, then Jack started going on about how we had to come back and I knew how dangerous it would be for us if I got pregnant here, so I went to his apartment and I got him to sleep with me."
"Did he know what you were doing?"
She could have lied and said yes, but she was tired of lying. "I think he thought it meant I wanted to get back together with him," she confessed. She was so ashamed of herself afterwards that rather than admit that all she wanted from him was sex by sneaking out in the middle of the night, she stayed and let him hold her like he had every other time they were together like that. As far as she was aware, he'd never suspected her of having an ulterior motive beyond seeking comfort from him, even after she broke the news of her pregnancy; he'd even felt guilty himself, for not doing anything to prevent it. "He loves me and I used him and now the baby's sick…"
"This isn't your fault, Kate," Juliet tried to assure her. "It would've happened no matter how or why the baby was conceived. But you can't keep doing this to yourself – it's not healthy for either of you. You need to tell him what happened. It's the only way the two of you are going to be able to move past this."
"It's funny," Kate mused, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand once she'd managed to compose herself. "Sawyer said the exact opposite. He told me he was okay with living a lie."
To her surprise, Juliet smiled. "That's because we both know the truth…"
Next chapter: Jack finds what he thinks is the perfect name and Kate finally decides to come clean... ;)