The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,81

deeply about my choices. I started to write you several times as well. But every time I did I still felt you looking down at me, like you’d be grading my letter. I thought in the end it would be better if I saw you. I knew I would be coming back soon, and I couldn’t even explain that to you.”

I smiled crookedly. “I understand.” I likely would have been grading her letter. “I realize I didn’t give you a lot of opportunity. I’m sorry. That’s awful, how long you’ve been trying to talk to me.”

We sat, silent, for a moment. I could hear the sounds of our family downstairs, Ramon’s and my mother’s laughter overlapping.

“Do you have a name?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I think so. Hannah. What do you think of Hannah?”

Our grandmother’s name. Life is what happens, Grandma Hannah used to say, when you’re busy making other plans. “It’s lovely,” I said.

“I looked it up,” Lucy said. “Hannah was the mother of the prophet Samuel. She was unable to have children, and so she prayed that if God gave her a son then she would give him up to be a priest.”

“Are you giving her up to me?” I said brightly.

“Are you a priest trainer?”

“How did you guess? All this time hanging with Ramon’s mother has turned me into a priest trainer. There’s a lot I haven’t told you as well,” I said.

Lucy began to laugh and then stopped, her smile fading. “Anyway, the name means ‘God has graced me.’”

I laughed, very softly.

“What?”

“It sounds perfect,” I said. “It’s a perfect, beautiful name.” I took Lucy’s hand in both of mine. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

_______

The talking and laughing ceased when Lucy and I arrived again at the table.

“Everything okay?” my father asked cheerily.

“I see you, Dad,” I said. “Feeding Harriet.”

“Her Royal Highness needs some food. She’s too skinny!”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

And then something unusual happened. My parents turned toward Lucy.

“So,” my mother said. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Do you have a job?”

“Possibly,” Lucy said. “In New York. I’ve been talking to people at the Wildlife Conservation Society.”

“Wonderful!” my parents said at the same time.

“Something along those lines anyway,” she said.

“That sounds good,” Ramon said. “You know who else lives in New York?”

“I know,” Lucy said. “Why on earth else would I want to work for an animal conservation organization in New York City?”

“You better figure all this out, honey,” my father said, slipping Harriet more chicken, totally poker-faced. “When are you due exactly?”

“February twenty-sixth,” Lucy said. “To be exact.”

“That was my grandmother’s birthday.” My father gazed away from the table dramatically.

My mother looked at my sister. “Well, you better get cracking,” she said.

I leaned back, watching everyone. And for the first time in a long time, the pressure was off.

_______

That night, after we finished dinner, and my father’s famous apple pie with cheddar, the way Grandma Hannah showed him how to serve it when he first met our mother, after listening to tales of Lucy’s travels, and after several glasses of wine, Ramon and Harriet and I went upstairs to bed. Harriet was reluctant to leave the living room should more food or more love be proffered, but Ramon swept her up and I watched her look out longingly as he carried her upstairs, cradled in his arms.

He set her down at the end of my bed, where she stretched out. So much so that when I climbed into the tiny bed, I could not straighten my legs. I slid her up, parallel to me. I lifted up her ear leather: Grr, I said, and she licked the air.

“Wow,” Ramon said from the other bed, set perpendicular to mine, when we were still, in the dark.

Downpour. What a color. It made the room exceedingly dark, but for the streetlights shining through the spaces in between the slats of the blinds.

“I must say, I was very surprised,” I said.

“A bit of a shock for sure.” Ramon thumped his pillow.

Here we go, I thought. He’s going under. “I was obviously upset, but I get upset when anyone I know is pregnant. You know? I don’t think it was necessarily particular to Lucy.”

“But it is your sister.”

“But because of that I also feel happy about it. I’m glad that she doesn’t have these struggles, you know?”

“Absolutely,” Ramon said. “Look, every time someone else has a child or gets pregnant or whatever, I die a little. I do. And then I get resurrected or something. This