Day 20 Nano

“Let me guess,” I ventured, “you came here thinking you were going to tag team brow beat me into having a selective reduction. Please think again because it’s not happening, in fact, I don’t want either one of you going into that examination room with me.”

“Those are my babies,” Annie growled at me, “I’m paying for them and you’re not stopping me.”

Jude moved closer to me, I could feel he was tense, ready for this confrontation. But I felt strong for the first time facing Annie and John and said simply, “Either the two of you leave, or I leave.”

“Annie, honey,” John said, dark brows raised nervously, “Let me talk to Emily for a sec. Get in the car. Please honey”

She almost sprinted away from us, long legs moving swiftly regardless that she wore high heels and a skirt. “She looks so much like you it’s scary, but she looks like a meaner you.” Jude whispered to me.

John approached, hands outreached to me and said in a sorrowful voice, “Emily, honey, I’m so sorry it had to be this way. Annie forced me to give you up but I still love you. Please, if you have any love left in your heart for me, go along with Annie’s request and let the doctor give us twins instead of triplets.”

He looked so miserable that for a millisecond I actually felt a little bit of pity for him. In the last few weeks I’d been reading in the papers about state senator Collins problems and knew that he had more pressing matters going on than trying to deal with me. But knowing that he had been deceiving me, using me just when it was convenient blotted out any compassion I might have felt..

“John,” I said simply and without rancor, “It’s over. All of it.”

The doctor told me there were just one problem with giving me the records, ‘They’re all in Annie Collins name. I was being forced to treat you as Annie Collins.”

Dr Parley hung his head sadly, “I suppose you think I’m a foolish old goat and you’re going to sue now.”

“No,” I said softly, “I think you’re still a doctor, a good doctor. I do appreciate the care you’ve given me. Just bring the records in and give them to me and no one has to know. If anyone pokes around for the them claim they’re misfiled or lost. We both know that John is in so much hot water right now that he’s in no position to hurt either of us.”

We got the records quickly and left. Jude had been silent through most of this and when he finally spoke he asked, “Why would your fertility clinic records be in Annie Collins name?”

I looked up from the file, I’d been reading the reports and looking at the test results, “Because it looks like they were planning a home birth again with a midwife. That was why it was so important to have a selective reduction, not as much risk factor for things to go horribly wrong. I think Annie had it planned I would deliver again with the same midwife at their home and they’d fake the birth certificates again by putting Annies name down instead of my own.”

Spying something in the file I pick it up and show it to Jude, “Look, can you make out the three different babies?” and I laugh.

Several days later I get a strongly worded registered letter from someone else in John’s law firm, indicating that if I do not go through with having these babies and turning them over to the care of John and Annie that I will be found in contempt of an oral agreement by a judge and they would make sure I was stripped of any custody.

I show the letter to Jude, knowing from the fresh allegations against John in today’s paper that this is mere saber rattling. I’m not the dumb naive little college girl I’d been when I met the Collins only about eighteen short months ago. This was a just a last attempt by John and Annie to control me.

“You know there is an easy way to deal with this, to make it go away and make it almost impossible for them to get custody..” Jude said after reading the letter.

“What is that?” I ask, wondering what he’s come up with now. Over the last six weeks he’d become the closest friend I’d ever had. He was a great kisser too and he didn’t try to control me. I was finding myself growing very fond of this sweet man.

“Marry me,” Jude says after dropping to one knee and grasping my hands.

My first urge is to laugh, laugh it off like the joke it strikes me that it has to be. But I see naked vulnerability in his dark eyes and I realize he actually means this. I don’t answer.

“It would almost guaranty that they don’t try to take your babies. Can you imagine the headlines? If John Collins tried to take his three children from a single former girlfriend the media might notice and then again, they might not. But it’s almost surely be negative press if he were to go after a married professional and try to claim her children were his and try to force a paternity test. Messy, nasty and something that he cannot afford now.” he continues on in this practical vein, “Besides, I make a good salary, around a hundred thousand before taxes. You keep saying you’re worried how you were going to raise three kids on your salary. You don’t make bad money but with our combined earning power it wouldn’t be as hard to make ends meet. You’re going to need help with the three babies and besides, you’re going to be on bedrest in a few weeks, who’s going to do your laundry and pay your electric bill.. plus.. I love you, Emily.”

I crouch down on the carpet next to him and say quietly, “Are you really sure that you’re fully committed to raise another man’s children like this? You want to get up and change diapers in the middle of the night? You forget I know what it’s like but you don’t.”

Jude confuses the issue by kissing me and I lose all train of thought, I just want the kiss to go on forever but eventually we come up for air and he says, “I’ve loved your babies as much as I’ve loved you from almost the first day I want a family. We could be a ready made family, knock out a few walls between our condos, remodel just a little bit and we’d even have more than enough room for two boys and a girl to grow up in.”

“You’ve really given this some thought, haven’t you?” I said

“It’s all I’ve thought about since about a week after you decided to call me your boyfriend. I knew for the last year I’ve lived here that I had to find a way to get your notice, but once we’ve been together I just knew that this was it for me. You have my heart.” Jude said, hugging me even tighter.

“I.. I don’t love you,” I confessed, “I mean, I love you as a friend and I’m starting to feel more for you each day but I don’t have that all encompassing thing I thought I’d feel for the man I’d marry.”

He smiled tenderly and kissed me again, “I know that, but I also think with time you’ll fall as hard for me as I have for you. You gotta admit what’s between us, it’s pretty spectacular. You’re just speeding up the inevitable and it’s going to solve the problem with the Collins.”

So I finally said yes. What else could I do? I cherished Jude dearly, I was physically attracted to him and he was right in pointing out that I really needed a partner to help me with the day to day of raising the babies.

We asked the minister from the church we attended to marry us on the beach the next weekend, applied for a marriage license and told our respective families. Jake and his partner decided to fly in from Key West and Cynthia Rose excitedly dragged me to a number of fancy maternity boutiques and wedding attire places to get a dress. “Great,” I’d griped, “I’ll be wearing a lace potato sack and look like a huge lace embellished ball, perfectly round.

But we found something of thin white cotton embroidered with white and pastels that had very little lace. The dress was beautiful, we had a small cake and I ordered a small spread from a caterer. Jude’s only living relative, an older sister and her grown children, couldn’t make it down from Minnesota on such short notice but a handful of people from his office and mine rounded out the numbers. For my witness I used my first real friend in Biloxi, Roberta. Even if we’d not seen as much of each other in the last year I still loved her dearly.

The wedding was simple but simply beautiful. Jude decorated our patios with simple potted plants and wedding decorations from an art supply house. He wore a simple white linen suit and we took off our shoes to exchange our vows on the beach. I smiled happily, thinking that as a girl I’d never dreamed that my Prince Charming would be a Jewish guy with a sweet smile and beautiful curls.

During our small reception Roberta approached me and apologized to me for getting me enmeshed with the Collins. “Did you see today’s paper?” she asked quietly, “The state police arrested John this morning.”

Poor John, I couldn’t help but feel that in some small measure he wasn’t entirely responsible for his crimes. I felt that probably Annie had exerted pressure on him over various things until they’d come to this scurrilous interlude. I feel sorry for him, sorrow and nothing else. Any love I felt for him was long gone now.

We took off right after the wedding for Pennsylvania because my new doctor, a nice lady with an office only a few miles from the condo, had given me a bed rest date of the next week. So this small window of time, between our wedding and when I was to stop working for awhile, was our only opportunity for Jude to meet my parents and for me to reconnect with them.

This pregnancy of mine had given me a gift, the gift that I now had enormous respect for them, for the first time I truly understood how much my mother had sacrificed to have and raise all of us kids. It couldn’t have been easy always standing up for their beliefs in every aspect of our lives in the face of a hostile world. I didn’t necessarily believe the same way as them but I wanted them to see that I hadn’t really turned out that badly. I was grateful to them for giving me life.