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Lara’s mobile started its haunting cry of Moonlight Sonata. She let it play for some seconds, both to enjoy the melody this very unfortunate day, and to see if the caller would be serious enough to persist.
As the piano played on, she finally slowed down and parked her motorbike on the side of the road, halfway to London. She hoped this wasn’t urgent, she had an appointment she didn’t want to miss.
“Hello?” she asked pleasantly enough, manners taking over.
“Lara! Hey! Long time no hear!”
Lara blinked. That was neither worried nor urgent. Happy, actually. Hearing this voice was fairly unexpected tough.
“Kurtis,” she replied, “Good to hear from you.”
“Yeah, you too, how’s it going?”
“I am well, thank you,” she gave the expected answer, the polite lie. Then she caught herself. This was Kurtis, he didn’t require – rather disliked, really – polite lies. “No, quite badly, in fact. But you sound happy, what is the occasion?”
Of course, the thing with honest answers was that you could follow up on them: “Hey, that can wait a moment, what’s wrong?” Kurtis’ voice turned concerned. “Damn, I have no idea what’s going on in your life, I should call more often… when was the last time we even saw each other?”
“Last time?” Lara repeated, thought back on those infrequent occasions. “Your wedding, if I remember correctly. Is your wife well?”
“Yeah, Martine’s fine. More than fine, actually, that’s- hey, bad news first! What’s up?”
Lara twisted her lips in a wry smile. “I don’t think it works that way when the news come from different people.”
“I don’t care. So?”
He wouldn’t let it go. At least, not unless Lara made it perfectly clear she didn’t want to talk about it. She took a deep breath, weighing her options. She hadn’t told anyone – apart from Winston, of course, and her doctor. She was… friends with Kurtis, even good friends she would say, despite being too busy with their lives to talk often, let alone meet. Should she tell him? She felt in her gut that he was one of the people whose negative judgement would affect her. But… if she knew him at all, he wouldn’t judge her.
Kurtis was waiting patiently for her while she ruminated, her lower lip clenched between her teeth. She sighed. “I… am having some regrets.”
“Regrets? Lara, what happened? Did you release another mad god? Should I come help?”
Lara couldn’t help the surprised laugh and she shook her head at the speed Kurtis was willing to drop everything. Then again, if it really were a world-ending problem…
“No thank you, the world isn’t in danger. It is… personal. My own mistake. I misjudged, I… you would think that after accidentally aiding a god of destruction and other megalomaniacs, I would be careful to not let any of my actions have consequences.”
“Nah, it just wouldn’t be you,” Kurtis joked, then turned serious. “So it’s not not the end of the world but still. You sure there’s nothing I can help with?”
Still willing to help, even if the world stood safe. It warmed Lara’s heart. She had never had many friends, but those she’d chosen… she’d chosen well. “No, really. I am just on my way to deal with the problem myself.”
“Okay, and can you tell me what it is or would you rather not?” Kurtis asked, now more carefully. He was noticing her avoidance.
Well, but she had already started, hadn’t she? “A few weeks ago...” Lara trailed off. “A few weeks ago I spent a night with an acquaintance. He was charming, I admit, but I didn’t expect it to go that far.”
“Oh my god,” Kurtis said. There was surprise, for sure, but not negative, it… sounded slightly delighted? Not the reaction she would expect, she must have imagined it. It was gone in his next words, after all. Kurtis continued more serenely: “I mean, you still have no-one to cheat on, right? So either you contracted an STD or-”
“Kurtis!” Lara called, both amused and shocked. But it was a fair guess. Still, no. “No STD. It could have happened though, considering his protection was… faulty.”
“You’re pregnant,” Kurtis said. There was… no judgement in it, just a statement of a fact.
“Not for long, I am just on my way to the clinic.”
“Okay...”
The tone was too complicated for Lara to figure out. She frowned. “What?”
“Well, you know the reason I called you?”
“No, you wanted bad news first. What is it then?”
Kurtis hardly let her finish the question before he proclaimed: “We’re having a baby!”
The wonder and happiness carried clear through the phone.
“Oh,” Lara blinked. “Congratulations.” It felt hypocritical to say, even though the feeling didn’t really make sense. “Did you plan it?” she asked before she could think too much about it.
“Yeah, have been trying for a while actually.” Kurtis sounded so proud.
And he should be, if that was what he wanted, but Lara couldn’t help the next question: “So you trust yourself to be a father?”
“Yeah!” Kurtis didn’t hesitate. “Well, there’s Martine too, we’ll manage together. She used to watcher her neighbor’s kids and stuff. And my mom drop by once in a while… What, you think we can’t manage?”
Couldn’t they? “I have just never imagined you as a parent, I suppose. Never thought about it.”
“I couldn’t imagine you as a parent either,” Kurtis laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Sorry, bad timing.”
Lara shrugged, even if he couldn’t see it. “No, that’s fine, I’m on my way to prevent exactly that, after all.”
“Yeah okay, you would suck as a mom.”
Lara’s eyes narrowed. As much as Lara appreciated Kurtis’ blunt honesty… “Excuse me?”
“Well it’s true!” Kurtis defended himself hurriedly, probably noticing the danger in her tone. She did not like to be told what she was and wasn’t capable of.
“But you think you won’t be bad at it?” Lara returned. “What’s the difference between us?”
“As I said, I have Martine-”
“And I have Winston, and enough money to hire a regiment of nannies. I am asking about you.”
That made him hesitate. “ Uh, well okay, that’s a pretty broad question...”
Lara smirked and made sure he heard it. “So you can’t think of anything off the top of your head?”
“Look, I just think you aren’t the… type.” He was backtracking, clumsily.
“The type.”
Kurtis groaned. “What do you want me to say? You don’t want a baby so it doesn’t matter.”
Technically, no, but: “I don’t like your insinuations about my inability to raise one.”
“So what? You gonna keep it to prove me wrong?” Lara could practically see Kurtis throwing his hands into the air at those words.
“I as well might!” She retorted.
“Hey go for it!” He threw back.
They stayed silent for good five seconds.
Kurtis spoke up first: “You aren’t serious, right?”
Lara also used the seconds to wonder about what had just flown out of her mouth, but it was far from enough time . “ I don’t know… But i t cannot be that hard,” she pointed out quickly. “ And if I can fight secret societies, I could deal with one infant human, despite your lack of faith.” Yes, what did he know?
Kurtis was silent again, for a moment. “Okay, this would be a fun bet and all, only we are talking about an actual tiny person you would be in charge of. You would be a mother.”
The argumentative heat died down in Lara’s chest. Mother. This wasn’t a game, she would be a mother . It sounded terrifying, more than a doomsday device about to go off. But… the feeling of challenge was coming back quickly . How hard would it be to raise a child, to teach them everything she knew, all her hard-won tricks… to share the wonders of the world with. And Winston…
“I have never really thought about it before,” Lara admitted, voicing her thought processes as it was all coming to her. “It was simply… not a possibility I considered. But maybe… maybe it wouldn’t be so impossible.” She smiled. “And Winston said that if I had decided to keep the child, he would have been more than happy to care for it.” She breathed out slowly, to gather her nerves. This was a big decision – a life-changing one, certainly. “I think I can give it a try.”
“Lara, you don’t ‘give it a try’, it’s permanent,” Kurtis said gravely.
“You’re right, a wrong choice of words.” She looked over the fields, to the horizon, the metaphorical infinite possibilities.
“I am keeping the child.”
“That’s really not a decision you make on the fly,” Kurtis was trying to be gentle with her, of all things. “I’m nor saying not to do it, but… You might regret it.”
Ah yes, that had never happened to her before. “I know. As I could regret many other decisions I’ve made in my life. And some I did, some I didn’t. It’s for the future to show.”
“Okay, well, I can’t wait to see it,” the words would sound mocking, if not for the warm tone they were said in. And the worry, there was definitely worry.
“Likewise,” Lara huffed out a laugh, a little stumped about what she had just decided. She shook herself off. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to cancel an appointment and bring Winston the good news. Give my regards to Martine. And… once again, congratulations.”
“Yeah, hey, congratulations to you too!” Kurtis said, probably on instinct. There was a certain undertone of – confusion maybe, or just whiplash. Then he gave a breathy laugh – yes, that was disbelief, definitely. “Say hi to Winston from us!”
“Will do.”
Lara ended the call, revved the engine, painted a half-circle on the road with her rear wheel and sped towards her home.