Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(36)

15


Liza

Her head. It was a million jackhammers. A blinding light that wouldn’t stop shining. A siren that wouldn’t go quiet. Until recently, she hadn’t had a migraine since she’d started practicing yoga and meditation seriously. Not until the IVF, this push for a baby, to start a family. It was something Mako wanted very badly. Apparently everyone did IVF these days—a new norm. Not okay to just try for a while and let it happen naturally. Of course, they had been trying for over a year. Too long, according to Mako. They needed help.

And they got it. Just not the way either of them thought.

She lay very still, knowing that any sudden movement now would result in waves of pain, a terrible bout of nausea. She’d tried to will it all away.

She could still smell the smoke from the grill, the meat. It turned her stomach; she covered her nose with the bedsheets. She never complained about it, even forced herself to eat a bit of meat or fish on occasion because she knew it made Mako happy, but the smell of charred flesh revolted her. The weird chef, his terrible stories. Did anyone else notice that sculpture made from bones? It was all—just awful.

Downstairs they were all laughing and shouting, the volume coming up slowly as the evening wound on.

They were loud people—Mako and Cricket. Hannah and Bruce less so.

The hot tub was right below the master bedroom window. How long would it be before they were all in there? Probably getting high?

She should try to rally again.

This looked bad. She was the hostess after all.

But the pain, the nausea. It kept her rooted and still, wanting to be a part of the fun but stuck in the darkness. Though, of course, she was never really a part of it. Not with those three. Everyone else was on the outside of that group, even Bruce. But it was fine, really. They had all that history. And Liza knew she held herself apart a little, even if in her heart she didn’t want to.

She’d planned to do a special morning class from the deck with the stunning view and the sun rising. But she doubted she’d been in any shape to do that. Maybe Hannah would step in as a guest instructor; she had a beautiful practice.

Liza tried to rouse, to push herself to a seated position, but the pain made the room spin and she wound up back where she started.

Earlier, when Mako followed her up from the table, he’d lain beside her for a while, holding a cold compress to her head.

“I hate seeing you like this,” he’d whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Just go enjoy yourself,” she’d assured him. “This will pass. I’ll be fine by morning. Once the meds kick in.”

She hadn’t taken them. She couldn’t, but she couldn’t tell him why. Not yet.

She’d looked over at him and he’d been watching her with that intense searching stare he had, as if he could see right through all her layers, straight to her core. It had turned her into a puddle of herself the night they met, and never failed to move her even years later. But there was something else there lately—a sadness, a heaviness.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He took her hand and pressed his lips against it, averting his eyes.

“What is it?”

He hadn’t been himself. Not for a while. Does he know? she wondered. On some level does he know? Or did he find something on her phone, her computer. She was careful. But the digital realm was his natural habitat. He knew all its back alleys and secret doorways.

“Remember those tests?”

“Tests?” There was the battery of tests they both took for the fertility doctor. Mako had recently had a full physical where the doctor got on him about his weight, his cholesterol. She felt her heart stutter. Was something wrong with him?

“The DNA kits we got from Secret Santa.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.”

She’d thrown hers away only for Mako to later reveal that he’d fished it out of the trash. He’d wanted her to do it; but she’d refused. She didn’t want some random company to have that much access to her genetic information. Who knew how it could be used in the future—by the government, by insurance companies, by corporations trying to sell this or that? If there was something dark coded into her DNA, she’d find out about it soon enough. She wasn’t going to go looking for trouble. But Mako had spit in the vial and sent it in.

“Did you get your results?”

Statistically speaking, she understood from the research she did after Mako insisted on sending in his kit, you’d find out something surprising. Something that made you question who you are. And whether that was a good thing, or a bad thing you couldn’t know until it was too late.

He still held her hand, didn’t meet her eyes. She waited for him to answer and when he didn’t she pressed.

“What did it say, Mickey?” Sometimes she called him that, in their most intimate moments. He hated it when his family called him that, but he liked it from Liza.

He shook his head. “It was weird. I’ve been doing some research.”

“What kind of research?”

Her head was pounding, but the pain suddenly took a back seat to her worry for him. He’d asked for the full suite of information from family history, medical data, other potential relatives out there looking for connections.