The Right Reason To Marry

“As a matter of fact,” Karin said to her daughter, “I’ve been meaning to talk to both you and Ben about Liam.”

“I like Liam!” Coco speared a green bean and stuck it in her mouth.

Dear God. Where to even start? “I like Liam, too,” Karin said, trying to sound relaxed and natural and feeling anything but. “And several months ago, I...went out with him.”

Ben’s forehead scrunched up the way it always did when some complex math problem didn’t compute. “You were dating Liam?”

Not dating, exactly. “Uh, yes. I was. We’re not, um, dating anymore, though. But we are friends. And that’s a good thing. Because, as it turns out...” Was she blowing this? Most likely. She forged on anyway. “We will all probably be seeing a lot more of Liam because he is the new baby’s father.”

Ben said nothing.

Coco was incredulous. She set down her fork. “Our baby’s father?”

“Yes.” It was official. She was a terrible mother who needed lessons in how to share awkward, confusing information with her own children. “Liam is our baby’s dad.”

Coco frowned. “Is he going to come and live in our house?”

“No, honey.”

“But doesn’t he want to be with the baby?”

“Yes. Yes, he does. And he will be here often to see the baby. And when the baby gets older, the baby will probably stay with Liam some of the time.”

“Oh,” said Coco, and picked up her fork again. “Okay.” She stabbed herself another big bite of mac and cheese.

Karin glanced across at her dad again. He gave her a shrug and a reassuring smile.

Ben, who understood the mechanics of reproduction, asked the question she’d been dreading. “How come you didn’t say who the baby’s dad was when I asked you before?” He’d asked several months ago, not long after she’d made the announcement that he and Coco would have a new brother or sister.

Because I’m a lily-livered scaredy-cat, she thought. She said, “Well, sweetheart, as I said then, I wanted to talk to the baby’s dad first.”

“You took a long time to talk to him.”

Ouch. “Yes, I did. I’m sorry about that, I really am.”

Ben tipped his head to the side, pondering. “Why? Were you nervous, to tell him?”

Understatement of the decade. “I was, yes.”

“But now he knows and he’s happy that he’ll be a dad?”

“I haven’t asked him that question. But he seems very determined to be a good dad.”

Ben was still looking kind of troubled over the whole situation.

But Coco wasn’t. “Our baby will like having Liam for a dad,” she declared. “Liam’s nice—and I finished my dinner. What’s for dessert?”

Otto chuckled. “I think there might be a full carton of chocolate ice cream in the freezer.”

Karin brushed Ben’s arm. “Want to go talk about this in the other room, just the two of us?”

Ben shook his head. “Thanks, Mom. I’d rather just have some dessert.”

On Sunday, Karin went in to work at Larson Boatworks, the boat-building and refitting company her dad had started thirty-five years before. Karin ran the office.

That day, her dad kept an eye on the kids at home so she could spend several hours tying up loose ends on the job before the baby came. When she got back to the Cove late that afternoon, her dad reported that Liam had dropped by.

“Should I call him?” she asked.

“He didn’t say to ask you to.”

“Did he mention what he needed to talk to me about?”

Her dad gave her a look, indulgent and full of wry humor. “I’m not sure he knows what he needs to talk to you about.”

For the rest of that day and into the evening, she kept thinking that she probably ought to call Liam, check in, ask him if he had any questions or anything. Somehow, though, she never quite got around to picking up the phone.

Monday, her leave from work began. Her dad dropped the kids at the bus stop and then went on to work.

It was nice, having the house to herself. She took a half hour just deciding what to wear and ended up settling on a giant purple T-shirt dress with an asymmetrical hem.

Really, she didn’t want jeans or leggings wrapped around her balloon of a belly today, so she settled on thigh-high socks in royal blue with her oldest, comfiest pair of Doc Martens boots on her feet.

Once she was dressed, she felt suddenly energized, so she vacuumed and dusted and rechecked the baby’s room for the umpteenth time, making sure everything was ready. Around eleven, just as she finished assembling two large baking dishes of lasagna and sticking them in the freezer to reheat when needed, she heard the doorbell ring.

It was Liam. He had a pink teddy bear in one hand and a blue bear in the other.

“I forgot to ask. What are we having?” He smiled that killer smile of his, and she felt way too glad to see him.

She laughed. “It’s a boy.”

And just like that, he threw the pink bear over his shoulder and handed her the blue one.

The man was too charming by half. “Thank you—and I think we should save the pink one, too.”

“Is there something you aren’t telling me?” He pretended to look alarmed. “We’re having twins, aren’t we?”

“Oh, God, no. I just meant it seems wrong to leave it lying there on the front step.”

He went and got the pink bear. “Fine. The baby gets two bears.”

It seemed only right to offer, “Would you like to see his ultrasound pictures?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She ushered him in. As he brushed past her, she got a hint of his cologne, a scent of leather and sandalwood that caused a sudden, stunning remembrance of the two of them all those months ago, naked on tangled sheets.

He paused in the arch to the living area and glanced back at her. “Something wrong?”

“Not a thing.” She shut the door and followed him into the first-floor living area.

In the kitchen, she put the blue bear down on the counter. He set the pink one beside it as she went to the double-doored fridge, which was covered with family pictures and artwork created by both Ben and Coco. “Here we are.” She took the two ultrasound shots from under a strawberry magnet and handed them over. “These were at eighteen weeks.”

He studied them. “Wait. Is that...?” He slanted her a grin.

“What sharp eyes you have, Liam Bravo. Yep. A bona fide penis—and I have a video of that same procedure. Want to see it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She stuck the pictures back on the fridge and led him to the table where she’d left her laptop. He laughed in a sort of startled wonder as he watched his son wave his tiny arms and feet, yawn and suck his thumb.

After he’d seen the whole thing through twice, he glanced up at her. “You said you were all ready for him. Does that mean he has a room and everything?”

She grabbed the two teddy bears and gestured toward the hallway to the bedrooms. “Right this way.” He followed her as she explained, “We’re lucky this house has so many rooms, including five bedrooms on this level. I had a sort of craft room/home office in one.” She led him to the end of the hall where the door stood open. “Ta-da!” She put the bears on the dresser by the door.

“Wow.” Liam seemed really pleased.

And out of nowhere, she was recalling one of the depressing fights she’d had with Ben, Sr., before Ben was born.

Bud, as everyone always called him, had kept promising to help her paint the tiny closet of a spare room at the apartment they’d shared back then.

Somehow, though, he never found the time to keep his promise. Bud had loved the life of a commercial fisherman and he was always out on a boat, working the fisheries up and down the Pacific coast, from Southern California to Alaska. He just kept saying “later,” every time she tried to pin him down as to when, exactly, he would put in some time on the baby’s room.

In the end, she fixed up the room herself, though not until after they’d had a doozy of an argument over it—one in which they both said a lot of things they shouldn’t have. It was always like that with her and Bud. They would argue bitterly.

And then Bud would go off to work and be gone for weeks.

In the end, she’d tackled the nursery nook alone. When Bud came home, she showed him the finished product. He’d waved a dismissing hand and said it looked “fine” in a dead voice that communicated way too clearly how trapped he felt.

Liam’s voice drew her back to the present. “The mural is amazing.”

Covering the whole wall behind the crib, the mural included a snowcapped mountain, a starry night sky, an airplane sailing by the moon and tall evergreens standing sentinel off to one side, everything in grays, greens and silvers.

“Northwest outdoorsy,” Liam said. “I like it a lot.”

She rubbed her belly. The baby was riding really low and she’d had some contractions.

He was watching her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. This baby is coming soon.”

His eyes got bigger and he straightened from his easy slouch in the doorway. “As in now?”

She waved a hand and chuckled, thinking that this visit was going pretty well and she was glad about that. “Relax. Probably not today.”

“Whew.” He gazed at the mural again. “You paint that wall yourself?”

“More or less. Stencils. You can’t beat ’em.”

He shifted his gaze to her. He had a way of studying her, like he was memorizing the lines of her face. He used to do that months ago, sitting across from her at whatever bar they met up in, or later, naked in bed. One night, she’d teased that he should take a picture. He’d promptly grabbed his phone off the table by the bed and aimed it at her, snapping off two shots.

She’d demanded he delete them, because who needs naked pictures of herself on a guy’s phone?

He’d handed her the phone. She’d seen then that he’d only taken close-ups of her face. And when she glanced up at him, he gazed back at her so hopefully, like it would just be the greatest thing in the world, to have a couple of shots of her grinning, with total bedhead. She’d agreed he could keep the pictures—and then grabbed him close for a long, smoking-hot kiss.

Liam was still watching her. “Have you chosen a name for this baby boy of ours?”

“No, I have not. I kind of thought you might want input on his name.”

Apparently, that was the right answer because he granted her a beautiful smile. “Thanks. I’ll be thinking about names. I’ll make up a list of ones I like. We can talk it over.” Solemnly, he added, “I read all about baby daddies. I don’t want to be that guy.”

Her heart felt like someone was squeezing it. She hardly knew what to say. “You have other children?”

“Huh?” He seemed horrified. “No! Wait. I get it. You mean ‘baby daddy’ as in a flaky guy who has kids by different women, but I wasn’t so much referring to the multiple baby mamas aspect. I meant a flaky guy, yeah. But in this case, a guy with only one baby, a guy who’s basically a sperm donor with minimal involvement—that’s what I don’t want to be. I want to be on board with this baby, available, helping out. I want to be there, you know? Tell me you know that.” He seemed so intense suddenly, as though it really bothered him that she might not understand his sincerity about pitching in.

“Hey, really. It’s going to be okay, Liam.”

“I hope so.”

“It really is. I know I dropped the ball in a big way by not telling you what was going on sooner. I should’ve pushed past all the crap going on in my head and gotten in touch.”

He watched her way too closely. “What crap, exactly?”

Uh-uh. Not going there. “My point is, I promise you that we will work together. You don’t have to freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” he said vehemently—and a bit freakily.

Was this all going south suddenly?

And just when they’d both seemed to be feeling more at ease around each other.

She kind of wanted to cry, which was probably just hormones. But still. She really did want to get along with him. “Okay. You’re right. You’re not freaking out and I shouldn’t have even hinted that you were and I’m really, um...” Her already weak train of thought went right off the rails as she felt something shift inside her—a gentle shift, yet also a sudden one, a tiny pop of sensation deep within.

And then something was dripping along the inside of her thighs.

Frowning, she looked down, which was pointless. Her giant belly blocked her view and whatever was dripping down there, it was only a trickle. So far, her thigh-highs seemed to be absorbing it.

“Okay,” said Liam. “Something’s happened. What?”

She made herself look straight into his startled blue eyes and she put real effort into speaking calmly. “My water just broke. Would you mind driving me to Memorial Hospital?”

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