Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Marty was glad to note that the morning of her next scheduled brunch with her friends, she woke up to a stomach that was behaving a bit better than it had been over the previous week or two. She looked down at her still-flat belly.

"Good work, little pal," she said.

Just to be on the safe side, she was still steering clear of coffee, which was too acidic for her sensitive stomach, and enjoyed an early morning cup of tea instead… though she did gaze jealously over at Wyatt's cup of coffee as he sipped it.

"Man, that looks good," she muttered.

He put the cup down. "I offered to stop drinking it out of solidarity!" he protested.

She shook her head. "No, you need to enjoy it for the both of us."

"So you're eating for two and I'm drinking coffee for two?" he quipped.

She nodded. "Yes, exactly."

When she arrived at brunch, she found that she was facing the other side of pregnancy stomach… she was starving . She grinned. That was far preferable to queasy.

The friends filtered in within a few minutes of one another, exchanging quick hugs, cheek kisses, and hand squeezes before they each settled into their seat. When everyone was in their customary spots, Claire pretended to use her spoon as a gavel.

"I hereby call brunch to order," she joked.

Monica grinned. "Okay, your honor. Why don't you start us off then? How's business? How's a certain handsome firefighter?"

"Both great," Claire said with a happy smile. "I know you all warned me about this, but the tourist boom is no joke! The other day I had to close up the shop early because I was out of basically everything and couldn't get a new delivery until the next morning. Which, obviously I am not complaining, but phew! " She mimed wiping her brow.

"Just normal phew , not too much, right?" Charity asked. Claire had lupus, so she had to be mindful of keeping herself from getting too worn down.

"Just normal," Claire confirmed. "And speaking of handsome firefighters, he's been a big help, obviously. He keeps using his days off to help at the shop, even though I keep telling him he needs rest too. He told me that looking at pretty flowers and his pretty girlfriend," she blushed at this, "was resting compared to firefighting."

The group smiled. They'd watched Liam and Claire fall head over heels for each other the previous winter and were all so happy for their friend and her new boyfriend.

"Okay!" Claire clapped her hands decisively. "That's all from me. Passing the torch to…"

She made a dramatic flourish toward Charity, who sat to her right.

Charity gave a serious nod. "Thank you very much, madam. Okay, the Turner-Reeves report. We have a couple people interested in the house and are expecting them to put in offers pretty soon. There was one really lowball offer that Lori told us was basically a joke. Apparently sometimes people try to see if you'll fall for an early but bad offer." She shook her head in disgust. "Fortunately, we have the best realtor in Whale Harbor."

"Hey!" Claire protested jokingly, in defense of her dad.

"We have part of the best real estate team in Whale Harbor," Charity amended. "Since they're apparently working together and all."

"What!" Monica sat up straight. "Is that true? Flora over at Magnolia Street told me that and I assumed she was just messing with me!"

"Oh, it's true," Marty said with a chuckle and a quick, sly glance at her sister. "But if we get to gossiping about parents, we'll never finish the catch-up. Char, you got anything else?"

Charity chuckled. "Well, just one last thing, I guess. So, Lucas and Addie had this big blow-out fight the other day. I don't even know what it was about. Something silly."

"Oh, no," Darla murmured.

But Charity shook her head, her smile still in place. "Well, yeah, that's what you'd think, right? And so Dominic and I are in there, doing the whole parent thing. ‘Use your words at an inside volume, yelling doesn't accomplish things, don't try to hurt the other person's feelings,' the whole deal. And then he and I leave their rooms, go to ours, and practically fall all over ourselves laughing, because this was the first time that Addie and Lucas have fought like real siblings."

"Nobody has ever been so happy about their kids fighting," Claire teased.

"I know, right?" Charity agreed. "And I'm sure the next time they argue, we won't be so amused, but it's nice to know that we're really all coming together as a family… warts and all." She let out a happy sigh, then turned to Monica. "Okay, Mon, your turn."

Monica's face was tense for a moment. Then…

"I'm pregnant!" she burst out in an excited squeal before clapping her hands over her mouth. Everyone around the table gasped. "I know it's too early to say anything," Monica allowed, dropping her hands. "But I just couldn't wait, not with you guys."

Marty bit her lip. Should she… As it turned out, however, she couldn't wait either.

"I'm pregnant too," she confided.

Monica clapped her hand over her mouth again, this time in surprise.

"That is amazing ," Charity said. "Oh my goodness, both of you at once?"

"Ooh," Claire added, clenching her fists excitedly. "I am going to kiss those fat little baby cheeks. I'm gonna kiss ‘em all over."

Marty shot Monica a sheepish glance. "I hope I didn't steal your thunder."

Monica shook her head, then reached out and clasped Marty's hand. "Oh goodness, not at all. I am so, so, so excited that we'll be going through this together. And we can swap symptoms too, because, I don't know about you, but I am exhausted all the time. How can a creature so little already be sucking up so much of my energy?"

"Ah, I remember that," Charity said with a hint of nostalgia. "Also, it doesn't stop. Addie woke us up just after six this morning asking if it was time for breakfast."

The group laughed at that, and Marty looked over at Darla, who had been silent throughout this revelation. Darla was smiling, but Marty wondered if there wasn't something just the tiniest bit strained about that smile. Marty tried to catch her sister's eye, but Darla wasn't looking in her direction and then Monica was asking her another question.

"How's your morning sickness situation?" Monica asked. "Mine fortunately hasn't been too bad so far."

"You'd better knock on some wood right away," Claire cautioned with a laugh.

Marty smiled, even though her concerns about her sister lingered in the back of her mind.

"Well, now I feel like I'm jinxing myself by saying it, but mine hasn't been too bad either. Some queasiness, but not every single day, and I'm still managing to eat, even if I'm leaning toward simple foods."

"Ugh, stop, both of you," Charity complained teasingly. "I was so sick with Lucas. Just so, so sick for so long. But I had that whole ‘pregnancy glow' thing going on, so people would be like, ‘Wow, you look great! Did you do something with your hair?' And that was nice, of course, but inside I wanted to yell, ‘No! I'm terrible! I haven't eaten anything in two hundred years!'" She rolled her eyes at her past self. "Some of that might have been hormones."

"Either that or your pregnancy with Lucas was really long," Claire joked.

As they all laughed and joked, Marty kept one eye on Darla, who was laughing and smiling at all the right places, and even chiming in with the errant comment or two… But she couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. She knew Darla was trying for her own baby, but she'd been happy when Marty had told her about the pregnancy, right? And it wasn't like Darla and Rick had been trying that long. Marty and Monica had just gotten uncommonly lucky.

Despite the logic of this assessment, Marty couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right with her sister. This feeling only got worse when Darla's phone chimed with a text.

"Oh, darn," Darla said, reading the screen. "There's something going wonky with a delivery at the museum. Sorry, ladies. I have to head over there."

The words were right, and the situation made total sense. But Marty had the sense that her sister was maybe not sorry to be headed out early. Darla seemed almost… relieved.

Everyone bid her farewell with expressions of regret, then dropped easily back into their previous conversations. Marty, however, watched her sister's retreating form, wondering if there was something more going on in Darla's life. They never had, she realized, gotten to Darla's update after all.