I just did all those things because that’s what you do.
Nathan was… well. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone.
But Adam, and McKay, and Donovan are still here.
Just the way I want them.
Maggie is here too. And I love her to death. I would do anything for that little girl. But sometimes… I hate to even think this, but sometimes Maggie feels like a secret. Something I should hide away from the world.
I don’t understand this feeling very well. I tried to tell myself I’m a mother and that’s a mother’s job. But that’s not it. I did give birth to her, but am I her mother?
No. I don’t feel like a mother. She feels more like a friend too. It’s almost like I’m her… Donovan. Except she has Donovan too, so I can’t be her Donovan.
I feel like her Adam and McKay as well. I want to protect her fiercely and I want to teach her things and make her strong. But again, she already has an Adam and a McKay.
I’m sitting on her bed—my old bed, actually—listening to her brush her teeth in the bathroom down the hall. It’s bedtime. She goes to sleep at nine o’clock on the freaking dot every single night.
Just like I did.
McKay cooks her food, and teaches her lessons, and he even bought her a set of throwing knives and has her in martial arts training three times a week because both of those are things you can start young.
This also parallels my training somewhat.
She’s very good at both. And we all know that Adam took advantage of the last four years and started training her, even though we don’t talk about it.
In fact, almost everything about her life here is just Indie 2.0.
Minus Nathan, of course. I hate that she has no Nathan. It feels like she’s missing out on something.
But that can’t be helped.
I don’t know if I was just too young when I had her. Too immature. Or if it’s that I’ve missed out on so much of her life—more than half of it, to be exact. But I don’t feel like she’s my daughter. I think mothers spend their pregnancies dreaming of the lives their children will live. What they can give them. How they want to shape them and things like that. And I just didn’t do that.
I try to tell myself that it’s not my fault—not her fault, for sure, but not my fault either. Because I spent the first trimester of my pregnancy trying to deny it was happening. And I spent the second trying to figure out what was happening with Nathan, trying to keep Adam from killing him, and trying to maintain my relationship with McKay.
The last trimester I fell into a little funk because it was clear that Nathan was not ready for this. Neither was I. And now, looking back, it didn’t even matter. He wasn’t her father. Or so that card from Carter said a couple weeks ago on Maggie’s sixth birthday.
We don’t know if Carter is telling the truth. I guess, since he’s Donovan’s twin brother, we could just do a DNA test using Donovan’s blood and see. But Adam says that’s risky because, obviously, we have to send that test out somewhere. And his people—which is a whole other topic of conversation—aren’t set up to do science like that. So we’d have to send it to a private lab that he has no association with.
Donovan was a hard no on that. So. End of story there.
And it’s not like Nathan’s even here to push the issue. We’re in limbo as far as her father goes.
My point was that I didn’t spend my last trimester planning Maggie’s life out the way I should’ve. And even after she was born, I was barely equipped to deal with a baby.
I was good with her. I think. And I do love her. My heart gets tight when I think about her, and I’m pretty sure that’s love. But McKay took over because that’s what McKay does. And I was… postpartum. I guess that’s what we’re calling it. That was Donovan’s professional opinion.
I’m not sure I completely buy the idea that postpartum depression lasts for two years, but… OK.
It’s just… if I were to plan a life for her, I’m not sure I would plan this one.
I love these men. And they love us. But should a six-year-old girl be throwing knives? Even if she’s really good at it?
I’m not convinced. I’m just not. I don’t know what another life looks like—I just have the one to compare things to—but not all people are like us. I do know that.
“Hell-looow!”
I look up and see Maggie standing in front of me with her hands on her hips. Her long, blonde hair is still damp from the bubble bath she took in my old tub just a little while earlier. She’s wearing pink bed shorts and a matching tank top. She smells like bubble gum. Kinda looks like it too.
“What?” I ask.
“I was calling your name, Indie. I said it like six times.”
“Sorry, I was thinking. Are you ready for bed? Do you want a story tonight?”
She bounces on the mattress past me and then slips under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. It’s summer, and it’s hot out tonight, but the AC in this room always did work too well. And we keep this house a nice cool sixty-eight degrees almost year-round. “No story tonight. I have things to think about and I don’t want to be distracted.”
I scrunch up my nose at her. She’s forever saying weird shit like this, like she has secret plans going on inside that head of hers. “What things?”
“What I’m gonna do tomorrow, of course.”
“What are you gonna do tomorrow? I can’t imagine it’s any different than what you did today.”
She tsks her tongue at me, not liking my statement. “It’s Saturday. It’s the weekend.”
“Hmm.” I want to say, So? Because again, it’s not that she’s gonna do anything different. She has no Nathan to make her days special. That really bothers me. “So what are your plans?”
“I’m gonna learn something new. That’s always the plan.”
“Wouldn’t a book help you with that?”
“Your books are stories, Indie. I like the factual books. But before you offer to read me a factual book, just… no thanks. I can do it myself.”
She can do it herself. Yes. She can.
I smile at her, kiss her on the head, and then get up and walk over to the door. “Good night, Mags. I love you.”
“Night, Mama. I love you too.”
I flick the light off and close her door, then stand there in the hallway as I listen to the sounds of Old Home.
I’m sleeping with Adam tonight. They won’t let me sleep alone because Carter might try to steal me away. We put bars up on Maggie’s window the day after that card came. It’s got a fire latch or whatever they call it so Maggie can climb out in an emergency. But if she uses it, an alarm will sound on the new security system we now have.
I laugh thinking about all that because Adam was like, “Why the fuck didn’t you put bars on this window fourteen years ago, McKay?”
And I knew what he was saying. If my window had bars on it, then a lot of things that happened would not ever have happened.
Including Maggie. Maybe.
If she is Nathan’s, then yeah. That would’ve put an end to Maggie. But if she’s not, well. I’m not sure where Carter got a hold of me so we could have sex in the first place, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t crawl out my bedroom window to see him.