Zoom, Skype, FaceTime calls, and visits when we could afford them were essential in making sure we could keep our bond growing. Especially for Stevie. She lived for those Nan calls.
Her biological mom, biological sister, and sister’s husband, her ex, have all tried reaching out to us. We haven’t answered, nor have we returned any calls. The lawsuit was dropped after almost a year of them trying to fight for it to be heard in a court of law. It was just sad, and they’d used practically all of the money that was left from the divorce and savings to keep paying lawyers to get it pushed through. After the third or fourth lawyer, the lawyers just stopped taking the case, as quite a few judges had it thrown out of their courtrooms. And thank the lord it happened when it did because Stormi gave birth to our girl, who is a carbon copy of her mother, minus the nose, two days after it was dismissed. Again.
Motherhood and the journey to become one had inspired Stormi, and she took photographs of her bump at every stage. She also started interviewing other mothers and asking if she could write their stories in a book. She promised an equal portion of the proceeds to all twenty-five mothers she interviewed. All of them were from all walks of life, with partners of all walks of life, though some had no partner. Husbands. Wives. Boyfriends. Girlfriends. It was beautiful.
The stories of the struggles, triumphs, failures, and successes in situations they didn’t think they could get out of. It made me see motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood in a different light. I respected what my wife’s body could do and learned ways to help during those times when everything was falling apart for the pregnant woman because she didn’t have pickles, or becauseher shoes didn’t fit right. I couldn’t wait to see Stormi pregnant with more of my babies. I moved in with her, and we decided we were going to be doing an addition onto the side of the house to accommodate more children.
We were breaking ground today. We were making the current ‘mud room’ or foyer where we came in, into a short hallway, where we would still be able to enter from the outside, that added four more bedrooms off of a large room that would act as a playroom for the children when they get bigger. We would still be keeping the nursery as a nursery until the kids were big enough to be on their own in a big kid bed. We planned to use this other room, with more rooms off of it, as a guest wing until it got filled, and the nursery could go back to being a guest room.
I couldn’t wait for the future. Every day was a new adventure with my girls.
E L E V E N: The C-Word
Stormi’s POV
I could not believe the addition would be done in a month! Thank goodness, too, because it seemed we would be moving Stevie into her big girl room sooner than anticipated. I’d been more tired than usual and a little moody, which was more so than usual, so I decided to test two days ago. All I could hope was that Bastian would take the news well. We had been…in a weird place. I wasn’t sure what was going on with him.
He had been working a lot lately, I wasn’t sure if a project had him worried or what, or if he was trying to expand the publishing house. It had grown quite a bit since my book was published almost four years ago. He had still been a great father; he had just been distracted whenwewere together. He was always on his phone or his laptop. He was hardly ever home in time for bedtime anymore, let alone during dinner. In the last three weeks, he had only made it to three bedtimes and one dinner. One. Dinner. I knew I had been busy with Stevie lately, but she was finally starting to walk and be a little more independent. Which was a blessing. I just hoped it was nothing too serious.
Cooking dinner for all of us, even though I knew it was most likely only going to be Stevie and me, Bastian probably wasn’t going to make it again, I knew I was going to tell him tonight. Stevie had a shirt on that said, “Big Sis”. I could not wait to see his face when he got home, whenever that was. Hopefully, before bedtime. I hoped he was excited. I made sure I had everything to make his favorite dinner, wedding soup, spaghetti, and meatballs with homemade garlic bread. I set the table, dished out food for the two of us, and hoped I wouldn’t be checking the clock too often.
It was late when Sebastian got home. Incredibly late. Well past Stevie’s bedtime. He jumped when I turned the light in the living room on from the chair I was sitting in. I felt like one of those wives in the movies, where she stays up late to catch her husband, thinking he’s been cheating, but when he gets home, he just gaslights her until it comes out ten minutes further into the movie, her gut feeling was right all along.
“I thought you’d be asleep.” His words were awkward as he looked away while he spoke to me, meeting my gaze when he was done.
“No. I wanted to wait for my husband, because I never see him anymore, Sebastian,” I said, my voice strained, ‘What’s been going on?”
He scoffed. “Nothing. Why would anything be going on?”
“Because you’ve been home forthreebedtimes with Stevie andonedinner withusin three weeks. What is going on? Is everything okay at the publishing house? Is it a client? Are you sick?” I asked, throwing out whatever I could think of, whatever possibility came to mind, “Is there someone else?”
He glared at me when I said that, “Never. Why would you even think that?”
I stood, slowly walking towards him, pausing inches from him. I wanted to see when I hit the mark. I wanted him to see how badly I was hurting. If he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it from across the room, then he was going to see it up close and personal.
“Because you’re never home, Bastian! What’s going on with you?” I practically begged, my voice choking on the emotion ready to pour from me at any moment, “Please. Talk to me. I love you,” I looked in his eyes, reaching out and grabbing onto his shirt, begging him to talk to me, “I love you more thananything, Sebastian. I need you to know that, and I want to fix this. Whatever it is, whatever is going on.”
I was so close, so close I could smell his cologne. I could see how tired his eyes looked. I saw the pain and guilt flash in his eyes. I was begging for him to break my heart. I knew whatever was coming wasn’t going to be pretty. I knew, but I still begged.
“Please?” Tears filled my eyes. I wasn’t above begging my husband to talk to me. To let me help fix us. Or to break my heart into a million pieces, I would never recover from. I was about to become a broken mother of two, and I didn’t know how to fix it. He looked away, taking a deep breath, letting the silence hang heavy in the air between us. When he finally looked back at me, he had tears in his eyes, and the pain and guilt were all-consuming him. This was it.
He was going to shatter me.
“I have cancer.”
What?
“Stage three.” He whispered into the stillness of our living room. My breath hitched in my throat.
No. What?
“What?!” I whispered-shouted, confusion on my face, my brain refusing to accept what was happening. My confused question, that sounded more like a demand, was rasped out, dripping with desperation, that I’d heard him wrong.
“I have stage three colon cancer.” He was talking slowly like he was talking to Stevie, and it was important, and he wanted her to understand. How could he have stage three colon cancer? He looked completely healthy.
“They don’t know if we can operate. I’ve been doing scans and biopsies, and getting second and third, fourth, andfifth opinions these last three weeks since finding out.” I stared at him, my hands gripping so tightly around his shirt that I couldn’t feel my hands anymore.
“No.” I felt my knees give out as Sebastian wrapped me in a hug, slowly easing us onto the floor, me sitting on him. “No,” I said more strongly, like I could tell the cancer to go away and it would listen. Like if I said it enough, it would be true, that I could will the cancer away.
