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It isn’t until they’re standing on the front porch that the panic truly sets in.
“This is a bad idea,” Laurel breathes, glancing sideways at Frank and fidgeting as a cool April breeze rolls through, chilling her to the bone though it carries notes of a thawing spring warmth. “I told you this was a bad idea; we should go back.”
He furrows his brow, stepping toward her. “Everything’s fine, Lau-”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she murmurs, dread coiling hot and tight in her gut, like a snake. “I don’t belong here.”
“’Course you do-”
She shakes her head, and starts to take a step back. “No. They… they won’t want me here.”
“Yeah they do,” Frank soothes, brow furrowed. “You know they do. They loved you the last time.”
“Yeah, well,” she scoffs, and gestures down at her ponderous lump of a stomach. “That was before.”
Frank goes silent, for a moment, not entirely sure what to say to that. It’d taken weeks of persuading to get her to this point, to get her to even consider going to visit his parents again; the idea had filled her with unease, certain they would never want her there, especially considering her current condition and everything else that’s happened, and even now what awaits her on the other side of this door terrifies her to her core, sends little fidgety sparks of anxiety shooting through her limbs that prevent her from standing still. She twists, pacing a little, making an idle stomping motion with her foot as silence washes over them, raining down like the storm that’d ended only minutes ago and still lingers heavy in the air.
They can’t want her here. Not after everything. Not like this.
She tucks her arms against her chest, shifting again. “They think it’s yours, right? You didn’t tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them anything, either way,” he assures her, voice low. “I just… let them make their own assumptions, okay?”
Laurel lets out a breath, relaxing. “Okay.”
“Hey,” Frank says suddenly, and he’s so close now she can feel the warmth of him, and she can’t quell the jumping of her foolish heart, the heat that rises to her cheeks. His voice is tender, smooth as silk, flowing over her like a tidal wave and dragging her under, calming her. She thinks for a moment he might reach out and take her hand, but casual touch is a boundary they haven’t quite crossed yet, and they aren’t a couple anyway, even if Laurel has no damn idea what they are these days. “I got your back. And if you wanna leave, any time, we’ll go, all right? Just lemme know. We can have a… safe word, or something.”
She finds herself smiling, before she can catch the expression, beat it down into submission. “You mean a code word?”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Yeah, uh, right, that’s what I mean.”
A moment passes, and finally Laurel exhales shakily, raising her chin. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s… do this.”
She’s really, really not, and her lack of enthusiasm shows, but she’s about ready as she’ll ever be, and with a grin Frank reaches out, pressing the doorbell and listening to the resulting chipper tune, that song that seems to remind her there’s no going back, now. It isn’t long before the front door flies open, revealing his mother behind it, and when her eyes fall on Laurel her face seems to light up, in a way that makes her feel so horrifically guilty she wants to shrink back and disappear into thin air. She can already sense it coming, the endless gushing over her future grandbaby, the pawing at her stomach, the badgering about names and godparents and this and that and probably a hundred other things she wasn’t even aware needed figuring out.
It never comes. Instead-
“Laurel, honey, finally! We were starting to think we’d never see you again!” she cries, and all but yanks her into her embrace, that familiar thick floral scent of her perfume overwhelming her senses. “Oh, come here, come in, come in! Get out of the rain!”
“What am I, chopped liver?” Frank jokes half-heatedly, beside them, and Mrs. Delfino waves him away, scoffing.
“Just ignore him,” she quips, and leads Laurel inside, into the fray. “How have you been, you have to tell me!”
She swallows, her eardrums pounding from the sudden cacophony of voices and screaming children and the television, playing a sports match. Mrs. Delfino leads her down the hallway, one arm around her, with Frank hovering close behind. “I, uh… I’ve been fine. Just busy.”
“Well, we’ve all been waiting for you – and I made them wait to eat, too. You get first dibs on everything, if you’re eating for two; that’s an ancient Delfino family rule.”
Frank snorts, behind them. “Ain’t ancient; you just made that up now.”
“I’m making sure she eats – and you know what, dear? You ever need a good meal, just give me a call; I’ll be right over with a pan of my famous lasagna. It’s important that you be eating well for the baby, so it comes out healthy and strong. And with an Italian appetite.” She pauses in her excitement for a moment, sweeping her eyes over her from head to toe. Her coat obscures most of her stomach – five months gone, just starting to bulge out beyond the point she can pass it off as merely some weight gain – but Mrs. Delfino gives no indication of the fact, just beams at her. “Oh, look at you. You are glowing.”
She isn’t glowing, and Laurel knows it. Some days she thinks she’s doing the opposite of glowing, absorbing light instead of reflecting it, sucking the life out of every room she enters, carrying what feels like death inside her, instead of a life.
“I…” She drifts off, shaking her head, fidgeting a bit awkwardly, and settling on a simple: “Thank you.”
“All right, okay,” Frank cuts in. “Quit fussin’ over her, ma-”
“Oh, would you rather I fuss over you?” his mother replies, as they come to the end of the hallway and reach the cramped little dining room, with place settings positioned around the table. “Because I will. Don’t think I won’t show Laurel all your naked baby pictures-”
Frank cringes, visibly, and Laurel laughs. “Aw – no, ma, c’mon, that’s not necessary-”
“Then let me fuss over Laurel here all I want,” Mrs. Delfino says, as Frank pulls out a chair for her and takes her coat. Once she considers him out of earshot, however, the older woman leans over and hisses into her ear, “I’ll still show you the pictures, okay? I have all the albums upstairs.”
Frank hears, of course, and protests again, “Ma-”
“Hush, you,” she chides good-naturedly. “Go get your father; he’s watching the game. Tell him he better roll his way out here fast before Vinny piles all the garlic bread onto his plate and we have a World War 3.”
It’s easy to settle into a sort of rhythm, after that, though Laurel won’t deny she feels vaguely out of sorts, out of place, unsettled by it all; by his mother’s kindness which she doesn’t deserve, which she’s done nothing to earn, which she’s probably done everything possible to not deserve; by her fussing, which she knows is well-meaning but sets her ill at ease, too. Thankfully – and oddly enough – there’ve been no mentions of this baby as their grandbaby, yet, because Laurel has no idea what she’d say, if she’d let the truth come out or simply play along; Frank had told her he’d let them make assumptions, and she doesn’t know what kind of assumptions they’ve made, but surely they must suspect something, if he’d left the baby’s parentage intentionally ambiguous.
But his father treats her the same, acting as though nothing is amiss, only mentioning the baby in passing and never bringing up the fire, the crime she’d accused Frank of, the time he’d spent in jail because of her, though she’s sure he must have seen the story on the news; the local media had fed on the story like a pack of ravenous hounds. Suddenly it’s as if nothing ever happened at all, like they’ve travelled back in time to that spring night almost a year ago; the first time he brought her home and they accepted her with open arms, when things were so simple, so easy.
She doesn’t understand this. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s never deserved something this good, a family like this, a real home, and she never will, and suddenly that’s the only thought running through her head, over and over, until it pushes every other one out, until it tangles vines of panic around her lungs and squeezes until she feels like she can’t breathe.
She excuses herself to go to the bathroom after dinner and sits on the closed toilet seat for a long while, seeking an escape from the noise and suffocating hospitality; from the adoration in his mother’s gaze, to the fondness in his father’s and his grandmother’s. No one has tried to feel her belly, thank God, because she thinks she might burst into tears if they did, if they tried to tell her all about the joys of pregnancy and the miracle of life which has only ever served to terrify her, not excite her.
They should scorn her, call her a slut – for screwing another guy, getting herself pregnant like some stupid college girl and then hitching herself to Frank and their family when she found herself alone. For sending him to jail and forcing them to relive all those godawful years before. She’s done horrible things. She’s a horrible person, beyond repentance, and suddenly she can feel the weight of the baby inside her like a cold, unwanted tumor, like a giant ball of ice. Like a shameful lie she carries around with her everywhere she goes.
She doesn’t cry, because somehow she’s convinced they’ll know if she cries, but she does stew, long and hard, and try again and again to swallow the persistent lump clogging her throat – before finally there’s a knock on the door, followed by a soothingly familiar voice.
“Laurel? You in there?”
There’s no point hiding from Frank and she knows it, so she sighs, calling back, “Yeah.”
A pause. “Can I come in, or is this… a bad time-”
“It’s fine,” she tells him, and sucks in a breath, feeling herself stabilize. “Uh, I’m fine. Come in.”
The door creaks open, and in he steps, closing it lightly behind him. He’s still in his suit from work, ruffled slightly from the mob of small children he’d found himself all but assaulted by after dinner, and as soon as he sees her, hunched over on the toilet and all curled in herself, worry floods his eyes.
“Hey,” he greets, crouching down before her. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, and lowers her eyes. “Yeah, it’s just… a lot. I needed to get away for a bit.”
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I told ‘em to go easy, not fuss over you so much-”
“No, it’s… it’s not them.” She clenches her jaw. “I just don’t belong here.”
He furrows his brow. “Why do you keep sayin’ that, huh? You know you do. You saw how much everyone out there loves you, my ma especially-”
“Why would they want me here? Really?” she asks, voice strained. “Maybe it’d be different, if… the baby was yours, and it was gonna be their grandkid, and we were together, but-” She cuts herself off. “I feel like I’m lying to them. And they’re all being so nice.”
Frank looks confused. “What, you want ‘em to be mean?”
“I think they should be,” Laurel mutters, low and morose. “It’d be easier, almost.”
“They want you here,” he tells her, and he sounds so good, so sure. So naïve, she thinks. “And even if they didn’t? Screw ‘em. I want you here. What they think doesn’t matter.” He pauses, licking his lips. “But they love you. Like I-”
Like I love you. She can almost hear the words on the tip of his tongue, but he stops himself before the foolish things can go tumbling off; they’re not there yet, in a place where he can just come out and say that to her, and he knows that so he bites it back, swallows the words down, even though he doesn’t need to say them at all, because she already knows them. It’s an incontrovertible truth, the fact that Frank loves her; something always present, woven into the fabric of the universe, unfailing and tireless, and with an air of hopelessness to it too, like he’ll continue to love her even if she’s never able to come to a place where she can say it back, like he’ll love her to his grave, love her even if it’s what sends him to his grave.
Frank catches himself, and clears his throat. “Look, if you wanna go, we can go. I’ll tell ‘em you don’t feel good-”
“No,” she cuts him off, reacting before she can think things through, properly. She stands, suddenly, and Frank rises with her. “No, I’ll go back out there. I wanna talk to your mom, I think.”
“You sure?” he presses, and it draws a smile out of her, his attentiveness, the look in his eyes.
“Yeah. I’m okay now.”
She isn’t sure she is okay, really, because okay isn’t something she thinks she can be, anymore, but she’s better at least, less overwhelmed, and so she sucks in another breath to steady herself and lets him lead her back into the lion’s den, past the shrieking hordes of children that make her want to squeeze her legs shut and never let this thing inside her come out. They part ways in the hallway, only after assuring him half a dozen times more that she’ll be all right, and Laurel comes upon his mother washing the dinner dishes in the kitchen, thankfully alone.
“Need any help?” she asks, lingering in the doorway, and the older woman turns to look at her with a furrowed brow.
“No, honey, go sit down, get off your feet. Tell Frankie to get in here and make his sorry ass useful.”
“I can help,” Laurel urges, and strides over, coming to stand beside her. “I’d rather be up.”
“Suit yourself then. You’re on drying duty. See? Now this is why you’re my favorite.”
It’s droll work, drying the dishes with a frayed old kitchen rag as Mrs. Delfino hands them to her, one by one. For a while they make idle conversation, not really about anything in particular, though of course there’s that proverbial elephant in the room, that truth begging to be told, and so finally Laurel turns to her, unable to hold back any longer.
“Mrs. Delfino, I…”
She drifts off, unable to keep going, and she must look vaguely nauseous, because immediately the woman seems concerned. “You feeling all right? Is it too hot in here?”
“No, it’s – I’m fine, I just-”
“Good, good. I got horrible dizzy spells when I was pregnant with Frankie – and I do mean the worst-”
“It’s not that,” she says, lowly, keeping her eyes downcast, fixed on the damp towel as she turns it over in her hands anxiously. “I just… wanted to say I’m sorry. For what happened. The fire. Frank in jail. That was…” Again, her voice catches in her throat, faulty, malfunctioning thing it is. She’s avoiding the real truth, dancing around it. Stalling, like a fool. “That was my fault. I got him sent there.”
“Laurel, honey, that doesn’t matter now,” she soothes, momentarily abandoning her efforts with the dishes. “It’s in the past.”
It’s so easy. She forgives her so easily, without even a second’s hesitation, and somehow that only makes her feel infinitely worse, not better at all.
“We were scared it was true, at first. What they said he did to that boy,” she goes on, lips pursed into a thin line. “Frankie’s had a troubled life. He’s done bad things. But then there were rumors… that he’d done it for that woman he works for, turned himself in. That Annalise. We didn’t know what to believe. But Frankie’s better now, I think. Now that he has you, and you’ve got each other again. Maybe things can start to heal.”
“It’s…” Laurel swallows thickly, still unable to look at her. “The baby’s not his, Mrs. Delfino.”
A moment of silence. She can’t see her face, doesn’t know what she should be expecting; a tirade, a slap, a slew of hateful words, all of which she’d probably deserve.
Again, like everything she’d expected from the woman before, none of that ever comes.
“Oh, honey,” she says, voice almost a coo. “I know.”
She blinks, glancing up at her, bewildered. There’s that same lump in her throat again, choking her voice until it’s a small, weak, pathetic little thing. “You do?”
She nods, and there’s no anger in her eyes, not a shred of disappointment. There’s only that same affection there’s always been, affection she can never seem to destroy no matter what she does; the same enduring kind of love Frank has for her, reflected in the eyes of his mother.
“We heard the story on the news. And Frankie told us.” She takes a step forward, shaking her head and reaching out to her as if realizing something all at once. “Oh, you don’t think that matters to us, do you?”
Her brain is misfiring, short-circuiting. This is nothing like she’d expected, and all she can do is sputter, “I, uh… I don’t see how it couldn’t.”
“We love you. We always will, no matter what happens. You’ll always have a place here with us. You’re part of our family, and nothing can ever change that.” She pauses, and places her hands on her cheeks gently, lovingly, with that motherly tenderness she’d never known enough of as a child, never know enough of ever. “We know what happened, the fire. How much you’ve been hurting. I want you to know we’ll always be here for you, and the baby. That baby’s part of our family too, if you want it to be.”
“I don’t-” She pauses, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I’m… keeping it, I-”
“You don’t have to know,” she consoles her, staring up at her with those eyes; Frank’s eyes, the same certainty, that same unconditional acceptance. “Even if you don’t. Whatever choice you make… it doesn’t change the fact that you’re my daughter. And I love you. And this is your home, all right? This will always be your home.”
The room is a blur around her, all fuzzy, indiscernible shapes, and she feels like a stupid, blubbering, hormonal mess, but before she knows it there are fat tears sliding down her cheeks, and Mrs. Delfino is drawing her closer, wrapping her arms around her, and she leans into her, leans her weight on her, because she’s so, so tired of standing on her own, all alone.
She’s so tired of standing alone. And she doesn’t have to.
~
After insisting on shoving half a hundred plastic containers of leftovers into her hands, Mrs. Delfino finally lets them go on their way, and Frank carries them for her, across the street and out to his car. The pavement on the street glistens from the rain, sparkling like obsidian beneath the moonlight, and Laurel tugs her coat around herself a bit tighter as Frank deposits the food in the back seat, then turns to look at her, more at ease and happier than she’s seen him in months.
“Well,” he begins, chuckling. “Looks like we’re set on meals until the kid’s born.”
She smiles. “Uh, knowing me recently, it’ll all be gone in two days.”
They go silent for a moment, allowing the lively hum of the city to wash over them; the neighborhood dogs barking, the cars whizzing by, the sirens screeching somewhere a few streets over. It’s a rundown, blue collar neighborhood, this place, his Fishtown; nothing of note and nothing to remark on, but it feels more like home than any place she’s ever lived in her life, just standing here on this empty street with Frank.
So much has changed, since the last time they stood here together. Everything is different. Yet it feels so much like it had, then, like nothing has changed at all, and she loves him as much as she did then, even if the words are too terrifying to say aloud, just as terrifying as they were then.
“You told them,” Laurel says, suddenly. “That the baby isn’t yours. I thought you said you just… let them assume.”
He looks sheepish, and shoves his hands in his pockets, as if afraid he’s displeased her. “I had to. Figured my ma might have a stroke if she thought she was getting a grandbaby outta me. And…” He drifts off, giving her a shy smile. “I told her she’ll just have to wait for that. ‘Cause I don’t wanna be with anyone but you.”
She swallows. “I’m not-”
“I know,” he assures her. “I know you’re not ready.”
They sound like a promise, those words; a promise to wait for her, wait until she’s ready. He’ll be there when she is, however long it takes. Months. Years. Forever. He’d wait forever, for her, if he had to.
“You wouldn’t want to be with me, anyway.”
“Hey,” he murmurs, and he’s so close now she can smell his cologne, that scent which triggers an almost Pavlovian response in her, uncoils her muscles and sets her at ease. “When are you gonna believe I do?”
“It’s not your obligation, the baby. There’s nothing… keeping you here-”
“That’s not why I wanna stay,” he tells her, voice deep, rasping. “You know that.”
Yes, she does know that. And she knows why he wants to stay. He loves her. He loves her and she’s told him he’s not allowed to say those words because she can’t handle them, can’t stand to hear them, so he’s obedient, and he doesn’t. Not that it helps much anyway, because Frank has somehow learned to say them a million other ways instead, in different words and phrases, but also in ways that aren’t verbal at all. He can say it with his eyes, that expressive, crystalline blue; those eyes that’d never been able to hide much, back when they’d still hidden things from each other.
They don’t do that, anymore. He promised never to lie to her again and she to him, and what they have is so much more honest, now; so much truer. So much better, even if they don’t kiss, or fuck, or do any of those things.
They don’t need to. They’ve gone back to square one, back where perhaps they should’ve started; becoming friends first.
“’Sides,” Frank says, suddenly, yanking her from her reverie with a wink. “So what if you’re a package deal now? Two’s better ‘n one anyway.”
Laurel isn’t sure what spurs the desire in her, what makes her do it, but before she realizes it she’s moving forward, close to him, and winding her arms around Frank, burying her face into his shoulder. It’s a sudden, almost aggressive movement, their bodies colliding a bit awkwardly, and initially Frank tenses, caught off guard, unsure what to do. After a moment, though, all the tension floods out of him, and he reaches up, encircling her in his arms too, locking her in his hulking embrace; this embrace with no key, one she wants to tangle herself up in and never be free from.
She hasn’t been this close to Frank in ages, felt the weight of him, the firm, steady power of his muscles, the way he wraps her in his arms like protecting something treasured, something golden; like throwing himself over her to shield her from the world, bear it’s lashes or bullets or whatever else it throws at them. If she closes her eyes and takes a breath of him into her lungs and holds it there, she can almost pretend they’re back where they were all those months ago, two simple people falling for each other, nothing more, nothing less, stepping off that perilous cliff’s edge hand in hand and plummeting down into the great unknown.
Maybe they’d let each other fall, that first go around. They won’t, this time.
But she wouldn’t want to go back, even if she could, because this is better. This feels more real than any time they’ve ever fucked, kissed, throw each other up against walls, bent each other over things. That was all passion, all raging wildfire; this is softer and sweeter, like they’re two ocean stones, their jagged edges worn away by the lapping of the waves over time, left smooth and shining and beautiful up on the shore.
Laurel tucks her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling that faint scent of sweat and warm skin, brushing her nose against the soft flesh and hiding herself away, and all she wants to do is inhabit this moment forever, never go forward or back, just be here. His heart is like a drumbeat between them, playing in time with her own, and she imagines it hammering in time with the child’s inside her, too, because they’re in this together, all three of them, him and her and this unseen, terrifying third party that grows larger by the day. And he wants to be here. Wants this baby too. Wants everything that’s a part of her, loves everything she loves without question, like his heart exists solely to function as an extension of hers.
It’s a bit clumsy, this embrace; they can’t get as close as they’d like because of her swollen stomach, like they might have used to. It’s funny to Laurel, to think that the larger it grows, the larger she grows, the farther they’ll be pushed apart, when really it feels like the exact opposite, this life inside her drawing them closer together by the day, like a magnet, and allowing them to heal, allowing them to see more in the world than just that all-pervading, sinister darkness.
They come apart after God knows how long; Laurel certainly doesn’t. It could’ve been seconds, minutes, hours, days; time had elongated, ever the illusion that it is, and she’d lost herself in it, in him. She feels shaky and flushed all over, when they separate, her breath faster and knees weaker than she’d like to admit. She’ll chalk the heat on her cheeks up to a hot flash, though. Most definitely a hot flash.
“Thank you,” she tells him, finally. She’s sure he can feel the tension in the air, the heavy longing occupying the inches of space between them like humidity before a thunderstorm, coaxing them closer together. She could move forward, kiss him. Part of her wants to so, so much. But another part of her knows that it doesn’t feel right, that it wouldn’t be right, yet. “For tonight. I think… I really needed this.”
“Yeah. Yeah, ‘course,” he undertones, his voice deep, laden with sincerity in that way it becomes only when he’s saying something he truly means, with every ounce of his soul; if souls can be measured in ounces, on any conventional earthly scale. “What’re friends for, right?”
Friends. She replays the word over and over in her head, as he opens the passenger side door for her and she takes her seat, lets him take her home. Friends. She really, really likes that.
It also feels like it's really, really not enough.