Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
12:21 a.m.
Edgar: Remember how we used to tell each other everything?
12:58 a.m.
Edgar: Night bro. I hope you’re okay. I love you.
***
Allie handed Edgar the bowl of batter and the spatula and collapsed onto the barstool in slow motion, hand on her belly. “I’m gonna need you to make these, actually.”
“How’s the—what fruit or household object is it this week?”
Allie had an app on her phone that told her the size of her fetus as compared to inanimate objects, and it amused her deeply. “It’s the size of a cauliflower, and believe me, it fucking feels like I’ve got one lodged in there.”
Edgar melted butter in Allie’s cast iron pan, the same one their mother had used to make pancakes. The batter sizzled as it hit the pan, heat holding it together.
After their mother died, Edgar had worried that the pancakes would never taste the same again. She’d always said there was a special ingredient in there, and he’d never thought to watch and see what it was. Then Allie had slid a plate of pancakes in front of him and Poe one day, and they had tasted exactly like their mother’s. Years later, when he’d told Allie how glad he was that she knew the secret ingredient, her face had gone soft. Aw, Edgar, she’d told him. The secret ingredient she meant was love. These are straight off the back of the box.
But Edgar was pretty sure that wasn’t the whole truth, because he’d made the recipe off the back of the box himself, and they hadn’t tasted like his mom’s or Allie’s.
Still, he watched the bubbles like Allie had taught him and flipped the pancakes when they were a perfect golden brown. He loved the smell of them on the griddle and the sweet scent of syrup hitting their warm, buttery surface.
When he set them in front of Allie, she inhaled the steam with closed eyes.
“Damn, I love pancakes,” she said. “The baby loves pancakes too.”
“Any movement on the name front?”
Allie spoke through a huge bite. “No. Names are weird.”
Edgar snorted. “Tell me about it.”
“Whatever. Edgar’s a dream compared to being a girl named Allan.”
They exchanged speaking looks.
“Come on, you have to have some ideas.”
“It’s a lot of fucking pressure to choose a name for another person without ever having met them,” Allie insisted.
“Yeah. You should probably just leave them nameless until they can decide. I’ll call them Lovejoy until then.”
“Maybe we can just call them ‘It,’ like the Stephen King book,” Allie mused. “Or Pennywise. Do you think their teachers would call CPS if I named them Pennywise? Penny for short.”
Edgar didn’t dignify that with a response.
“God, they’re gonna be in school one day,” Allie said. “They’re gonna have a personality and things that annoy them and stuff they love. And it’ll be on me to not crush their fragile little spirit. Fuuuuck.”
Allie shoved another bite of pancake in her mouth.
“On me too,” Edgar added. “I’m here, Al. You know I’m gonna be here for you and little Lovejoy, right?”
Allie frowned, then started to cry. She waved Edgar off.
“I know, thanks. That’s so nice. Ignore my face.” She wiped at her eyes. At a certain point in her pregnancy, Allie’s emotions had begun to overflow and leak out her eyes—at least, that’s how she’d described it when it happened the first time and Edgar, concerned, had wrapped her in his arms.
“You’re the best brother, you know that?”
“Well, I’m the one who stayed,” Edgar said.
You’re my favorite Lovejoy, Antoine had whispered in his ear, the sweet scent of apples on his breath, before wading deeper into the bayou.
“What if I’m making a huge mistake?” Allie’s voice was softer, more uncertain than he’d heard it since the night she showed up at his apartment with a positive pregnancy test.
“It’s not too late,” Edgar offered. “Adoption.”
“I know. I just can’t stand the thought of…what if they do see ghosts and they grow up with some normie family who makes them feel insane? Can you imagine how much worse it would all have been if we’d grown up with only Dad? How long do you think we would’ve lasted before we believed him that we were actually crazy?”
Their father’s voice still lived in Edgar’s head and spoke to him sometimes in the aftermath of an encounter when he was shaking and terrified: Coward. There’s nothing fucking there. You look like a fool. Weak. Pathetic.
“I talked to Cameron the other day,” Allie said.
Edgar’s heart started pounding. Cameron’s parents had sent her to a science boarding school in Atlanta for her final year of high school, and she’d gone to college and medical school in Boston after that. She and Allie had always stayed in touch, but Edgar had only seen her a few times, when she’d visited for the holidays or her parents’ birthdays. She’d always been warm to him, but he’d never been able to enjoy seeing her because all he could think was, It’s my fault your brother died, and you should hate me.