I made it two months. Should'a known I was living on borrowed time.
Jon started at the phone that was going off for the third time in as many minutes. Specifically, he was staring at the name across its face that was glaring at him.
Gertrude.
Yeah, he'd changed the name he used to have in there. Maybe it was petty. Maybe not.
Two months. He'd managed to make the frequent trips from his brother's place to his former home to see Kristy, to be with the mother of his child with a bare minimum of interaction with the woman he'd used to live there with. He considered that bit of dodging to be an accomplishment, and was proud of it. Of getting to know Kristy's moods more than well enough to be able to suss out when the young woman was scheming to get his estranged wife into his vicinity and force them to make nice. The idea was as warming as it was frustrating; that he and Kristy had developed enough of bond for him to read her so well. And, admittedly, to use that connection to beat feet before Gertrude could make an appearance.
Sometimes, though, disappearing wasn't necessary. One thing he'd learned, pretty damned quickly, was that if he had Kristy skewered on his cock and dissolved into a blubbery mess, every misguided urge the crazy girl had to fix what she thought she'd broken went right out the window. Which meant a whole shit-ton of cock-skewering had been going on.
Jon smiled to himself at that fun thought.
Who knew that sexy little twenty-one-year-olds get even sexier when their big bellies are bouncing on your hips?
Take that very morning, for instance. Watching the woman who was bearing his offspring slobber on his dick before climbing aboard and riding it like it someone was going to steal it...
magnificent.
Those tits of hers, already surprisingly big before he'd knocked her up, were now the very picture of fertile lust, and he could admit that he was at least three-quarters hypnotized while watching them jiggle and swing above him.
And the talks they'd had while cuddling. While pressed to each other like they were the only two in the world. The discussions of the future, the tossing around of certain words like
wife,
and
husband...
Wife. Husband.
Jon stared at his phone as it rung yet again.
Past time to do something about that.
He was speaking almost before his thumb hit the button to answer. "Alright, let's do this Gertrude. I know you're not gonna stop—"
"Jon, you have to come to the hospital. Right now."
__________
Trudy never really knew what an executor of an estate actually was, because she'd never had to deal with the idea until now. When she signed the last form on the stack she'd been given, though, it all came clear; executor equals sucker.
How can there be this much paperwork? There's not even an actual estate. All she had was... her.
With that thought, Trudy kicked herself while fighting back tears, which was a skill she'd honed well in her recent history. How could she whine about signing her name when Kristy...
Kristy was dead.
She could
think
the words, accept the brutal injustice of it—preeclampsia, such a sterile phrase for something so evil—but she knew that voicing it was far beyond her for the time being. So she signed papers allowing staff to deal with the... remains.
Oh god, Kristy. Why did I agree to this? Executor if you died and power of attorney if you didn't? Did you see this coming?
Was there a history of fraught pregnancies in her family? Trudy wouldn't know any time soon, if ever. Kristy gave absolutely no information about her people or where she came from. It would take some kind of private investigator to dig up the facts at this point.
A worry for later. One of a million. In the here and now though...
Trudy handed off what she hoped was the last form to the faceless hospital employee who'd nearly had to shove it in her hands, took a deep breath, and made herself ready to enter the place that she both wanted to with everything in her, and feared more than damnation itself. Gowned, gloved, and masked, the trembling woman approached the corner of the NICU like she was on a march through a blasted hellscape that maybe,
maybe
, held an oasis at the far end.
An oasis that was beyond the broad, hunched back of the man before her. The one trembling just as hard as she herself.
"Jon..." That was it. That was all she had in her. She wasn't prepared for this. How could she be? How could anyone? What could she even begin to say that would do a single thing to make this better? Hell, considering it was
her
and
him...
what could she say that wouldn't automatically make it a thousand times worse?
"It's Chris."
Trudy started to nod, but something in her husband's—their marriage was still a thing according to the law—ragged voice made her stop short. The way he said the name, some small inflection...
"Christopher, I mean."
Oh. Oh that's just... he's so...
Trudy lost the fight with herself and let out a sob. "It's perfect. I'll make sure it's... you know..." She sighed. "...on the forms."
From behind, she could see Jon's head turn ever so slightly in her direction, but not nearly enough that his eyes had to leave the sight of his son, who lied before them hooked up to all manner of gadgetry, struggling for life. "Thank-you, Gertrude."
She sighed again, despondent but not surprised. "Of course." A pause, and she plunged in. "Jon, tell me to fuck off and die if you need to, I won't make a peep. But... can I... please, just for... for a second..."
"Here." He patted the empty chair next to him. "You're company, and I'm..."
"Miserable." Trudy, feeling brave, ran a palm across his still-bowed back as she sat. "I understand."
His answer was a non-committal grunt, and for the next hour, that was it. It was the singular sound that either of them made, other than unpredictable, choked sobs that were cut off as soon as they started. Both knew that small releases were the most they could allow, because to give in to more would be to collapse into uselessness, and that wasn't fair to Chris. Or Kristy, come to that. Even gone, they both owed her more.
Eventually they had to leave, regulations being what they were meant that they had to wait until the next day to return, and they both shuffled out with haunted eyes and exhausted souls. In a strange, poignant moment of synchronicity that Jon and Trudy both would have said was long in the past, they wordlessly made their way to the nearest of their parked cars—hers, as it happened—and together drove to their old home, the one that neither had actually lived in for months. No discussion about it. No argument. It just had to happen, and they both accepted that.
Once inside, they each took a seat facing the other. The silence that pervaded at this point was just an extension of what they'd shared since the hospital, but now it was time to get past that. Time to impart a little order on the horrid chaos their lives had become.
"Jon, there's something I have to show you." Trudy left for a minute, then came back with a large document envelope. "Kristy... she never stopped, uh, making plans—"
"Scheming." Jon smiled as he said the word. "I know. I... well, I won't say I liked it, but that was just... her."
Despite herself, despite what she was going to be forced to say next, Trudy smiled too. "Yeah. She was tireless." The smile fell as she cleared her throat. "So, yeah, Kristy schemed. And... hell." She shoved the envelope towards him. "Read it, I guess. I'll wait." When he reached for it with a scowl of confusion, Trudy held on for a fraction of a second. "Jon, remember... she was young and guilt-ridden... but she absolutely loved you."
Looking even more confused, Jon took the thing, pulled out the legal paperwork, read.... and then laughed like it was a list of the best jokes ever told. "Are you fucking kidding me?" He looked up at his wife then. "Gertrude, you can't seriously think... I mean, holy shit..."
"I know, I know." Trudy shook her head and rested her forehead on her hand. "I'm only even showing you this because she made me promise, and I don't have it in me to go back on that, even now." She nodded to the paperwork. "A will. Adoption papers... it's nuts." She gave a humorless snort. "Which is what I told her every time she brought it up. Which wasn't enough times because we didn't see each other enough for it to sink in, because you kept showing up, and made sure I couldn't... uh..." She swallowed, eyes widening. "Sorry, that was horrible. I'm not blaming you or anything. Hell, if you'd have moved back in, I'd have stayed away permanently, I swear it."
Jon stared at her, then very obviously made the decision to let all that go, instead opting to wave the sheaf of papers he'd been given. "
I want Trudy to adopt the child."
Jon quoted the notarized page on top. "Did she even look at custody laws? I'm the biological father, and even if we weren't married..."
"Like I said;
I know.
" Trudy shrugged uncomfortably. "She wouldn't hear it. She actually thought she could bluff you. She was... hell, I'll just say it. Lately, she became manic about getting us to reconcile. Not... not
be together
." Trudy felt her cheeks heating and hated herself for it. "She wasn't, like, considering some kind of poly... whatever relationship with the three of us. She just wanted you to... well..."
"Stop hating you."
"Yeah." That one word was little more than a mouse-squeak. "She thought, never stopped thinking, that she could force it, even at the risk of what she really wanted."
"God did we ever fuck her up." Jon's nostrils began flaring, and Trudy could see him losing his own inner war. "We broke her. Fuck... I
killed
her!"
His face was pressed to her chest without Trudy even consciously remembering having moved to him. His arms were around her and squeezing without a sliver of protest on her part. "God no. No Jon. You gave her something she didn't know she was missing. A new thing in her life that she needed. You didn't kill her. No one did. Nature fucked
