Forever Yours
©2025 Elder Road Books - Lynnwood WA
Chapter 63: Kind of Pregnant
LISA HADN’T HAD a menstrual period before they started screwing again, but none of them had even considered using protection because she was nursing and you can’t get pregnant while you’re breastfeeding, right? Oh, shit! Wrong. The babies would be less than a year apart.
Of course, the shock was simply that she was pregnant already. They’d intended to have another within a couple of years. They weren’t over the newness of having the first yet. And Grace and Paul were coming over almost every day, so there were already two in the house in diapers.
When they stopped to consider all the angles, they started laughing and loving each other. So, they’d start filling up the bedrooms in their house. Lisa put her foot down about telling anyone else. She wanted to wait a few weeks after the doctor confirmed the home pregnancy test and they had a due date before they told anyone else. Of course, Germaine was part of the family, so they knew.
“When you were conceived, we were planning to start a baby as soon as possible,” Henry said as he rocked Cassie. Of course, his singularity was recording. “We were so excited. It was still a surprise when we got the test result and realized you were growing in Mommy’s tummy. It took our breaths away.”
He held a bottle of Lisa’s milk and Cassie never took her eyes off him. It was too early to wean Cassie. But Lisa realized she would need to cut back a little in order to be ready for the next baby. She wasn’t vain about her breasts. At least she told herself that. There was no question in her mind, though, that they would not look or feel like the firm mounds she’d had when she met Henry and Chastity.
“Finding out we’re kind of pregnant with your little sister or brother is a surprise, too. But it wasn’t unplanned. We wanted you to have a sibling soon. We didn’t expect it to happen quite this soon, but we’re happy about it anyway. We want you and your sibling and Paul to all grow up together and be close to each other as brothers and sisters. Having children at just twenty-two years old gives one pause, though. It makes me think.”
He shifted Cassie to his shoulder so she could burp. He burped, too, and Cassie looked at him strangely.
“Yes, that’s something you never outgrow, I guess,” Henry laughed. “When I was born, people were in the midst of ‘waiting till they’re older’ to have children. I was a real surprise to Mom and Dad because they thought they’d be older when they had children. Things happen. When Solange and Beau got together, they just assumed a baby would come along soon. It’s what happened when people had sex without birth control. Bill and Jackie decided a family was the best way to get settled down from Jackie’s rather wild college life. Momma Lisa was a happy pregnancy.”
Cassie had completed her meal with a good burp and Henry could smell that she’d exploded from the other end as well. He took her to the changing table and cleaned up his baby girl, getting her a fresh diaper and clean onesie.
“I can just imagine what it will be like to have two little poopsters in this room. You make a completely grown-up stink.”
Cassie was sleepy and Henry continued rocking her and talking.
“I still want a lot of things in life. I want the business to be wildly successful. I want to invent new things. Did you know we’re going to license a completely self-charging desktop computer? Three companies are bidding on the rights! Cool, huh? Um ... I love Momma Lisa and Mommy Chas and baby Cassie and our yet-to-be-born second child. I want to watch you grow up and be with you when you succeed in your life. I’ll be there to help you up when you fail, too. And you can always talk to me when you need someone to listen. A hundred years wouldn’t be enough to satisfy me. Maybe a hundred centuries. I’m sure if I lived that long, I’d still have things I wanted to do.”
Henry carried his sleeping daughter to her bed and tucked her in. He bent to kiss her head.
“My life is so full of love! I don’t ever want to let go. I think I might have lied to myself about Forever Yours. I thought it would be so I could have my parents with me through their singularity. But then this little miracle came into my life—you. I realized what I really wanted was to leave a piece of myself that you could always talk to. Even if I’m not there, or I’m dead, I’ll still be with you. Good night sweet Cassie. I love you.”
Chastity’s twenty-fourth birthday was the day before Thanksgiving. She and Henry took the day off from work, but instead of going off someplace to celebrate alone, they went home. Lisa was working, but they slipped in and kissed her before picking up Cassie and having Germaine drive the three of them to a local mall where there was a photographer.
They had already exhausted the memory on their phones with pictures of Cassie and of each other with the child. They’d come to the mall photographer a week earlier and had a family portrait of the four of them. They’d also had mother-daughter pictures of Lisa and Cassie.
When they left, Henry realized that they had made a big mistake and was determined to take Cassie and Chastity back to the photographer for a mother-daughter photo. Chastity thought they were just going to pick up the photos they’d had taken the week before.
“Right this way into Studio Two,” the photographer said, leading them into the room set up with a simple backdrop and a chair. Germaine carried Cassie’s diaper bag and a blanket.
“What are we doing back here?” Chastity asked. “Do they show us the pictures here?”
“No, honey. They take pictures here. We were so confused last week, trying to get everything done, that we didn’t get a mommy-daughter photo of you and Cassie,” Henry explained.
“Me? But I’m...”
“You’re Cassie’s other mommy,” Henry completed. “This photographer is going to be getting a lot of business from us over the coming years. We got photos with all four of us together and with Lisa and Cassie, but we didn’t get all the combinations. We’re taking one of the two of you and one of you and me. And next week, you’re coming in for a photo of just you and Lisa together. Then there will be photos of the pregnancy and we’ll be back here for pictures of our happy family of five with pictures of the mommies with their two children instead of just one.”
“I’m going to cry,” Chastity said. “Are you sure? Is this okay?”
“We bought a house together. We have children together. We have a life together,” Henry said. “Now dry your tears and touch up your makeup. Then it’s time to pose you.”
“I don’t think the photographer knew what to make of it,” Chastity laughed when they got home and Lisa greeted them. “He was, like, ‘I know I took a mother daughter picture last week. And we’re going to have how many more?’ Henry laid it on thick and bought a package for pictures every month for the next year.”
“I told him to,” Lisa said. “The only reason I wasn’t with you for this one was because you have a special tradition with Henry of celebrating your birthday and I have my special celebrations, too. Besides, I had to talk to grandma to make sure I was making the jambalaya right.”
“Jambalaya?” Chastity asked.
Germaine took Cassie to the nursery to change and play.
“You loved it when we had it at Gram’s. I wanted to make it for your birthday.”
“This is the best birthday ever!”
“Oh, it will get better later,” Henry chuckled. He and Lisa both winked at Chastity.
“You get to find out first this time,” Henry said when his parents joined the family for Thanksgiving Dinner. “We are kind of pregnant.”
“Kind of?” Sylvia asked.
“Well, I guess the doctor confirmed it last week,” Henry continued. “We’re going to have another one in May.”
“Irish twins,” Ryan snickered.
“Dad! That’s kind of racist, you know,” Henry shot at his father.
“I know. It’s your fault,” Ryan said.
“What? Why?”
“You got me recording my life and it started me digging into my ancestry. You know I never met my grandparents, just like you. Or maybe I did when I was a kid. I ran the family name through genealogy sites and even submitted DNA samples. Turns out, my grandparents immigrated from Ireland, not France. We aren’t really related to the famous mathematician at all. We’re related to a potato farmer near Dublin,” Ryan said.
“I wondered where the name Ryan came from,” Henry said. “Your father was named Henry.”
“Henry Kenneth,” his father said. “Or in the immigration records, Henry Cináed. My father was Irish and I’m half-Irish. That makes you a quarter.”
“Well, that still doesn’t excuse making a racist comment,” Henry griped.
“You’re right, son. Sometimes we don’t make good distinctions between what is funny and what is nasty,” Ryan said.
“It was funny,” Lisa said. “We might as well call them Cajun twins since siblings less than a year apart were once as common among them.”
“None of that is helping us celebrate the announcement of a new grandchild on the way,” Sylvia said. “Congratulations! I’m personally very excited.”
“We are, too,” Lisa said.
“I can’t believe I’m going to be a mommy again!” Chastity exclaimed. There was a split-second of silence and then a cheer from all the adults present.
It was impossible to hold the news from Lisa’s parents until the family visited at Christmas. They called Thursday night and there was just as much celebrating from Bill, Jackie, Beau, and Solange. The weekend vanished and the march toward the winter holiday moved on.
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