Replication - chapter 17 (with images) (Patreon)

I'm at Kate's apartment on a Tuesday night, week thirteen of the pregnancy. The fetus is the length of my palm now, fingers and toes formed, starting to move in a way she can't feel yet. The heart runs fast and steady inside the uterus sitting four feet away from me.

Kate lies sideways on the sofa. She wears heavy wool socks and dark gray sweatpants. Her legs are stretched out, her feet resting directly against my left arm.

I sit on the floor, leaning back against the edge of the coffee table. The hardwood is cold beneath the thin cotton of my leggings. The female pelvis accommodates the floor naturally, the wider spread of the sit bones finding a stable geometry.

In the two years we lived together, Kate kept hard control of her physical space. A knee brushing against hers on the couch required an invitation. A hand resting on her ankle was an intrusion if the mood wasn't calibrated. She guarded her boundaries against me with the vigilance of a woman managing a threat.

Tonight, her foot digs casually under my arm for warmth.

My skin burns where her wool sock presses against my bicep. I let her stay. I hold the olive-toned mask of the face, keeping the jaw soft, letting my shoulders slump into the harmless curve she expects.

"He ordered ginger ale on an app," she says. She stares at the blank television screen. "He had it delivered to the lobby. He texted me the delivery confirmation."

"Mark?" I ask. The voice is pitched in the middle register.

"He had a dinner for the hospital board. I told him I couldn't keep water down." She pulls the fleece blanket higher over her chest. "He didn't come up. He left it with the concierge. He said he wanted to give me space to rest."

I look at my hands resting in my lap. The slender fingers. I know what Mark did. He outsourced the solution and removed himself from the room.

"Some men think fixing the problem is the only way to be in the room," I say. I keep my tone neutral, observational. "If they can't fix it, they avoid it. They call the avoidance respect."

Kate turns her head. She looks at me, the violet shadows under her eyes stark in the low light of the living room lamp.

"You hit the nail on the head," she says. "He wants the structure of a partner. He doesn't want the partner."

"Does he know you're sick?"

"He thinks it's a stomach bug. A long one."

She shifts her weight, pulling her feet away. The absence of the contact leaves a cold patch on my arm. She sits up, pressing a hand to her lower back. The lumbar curve is already beginning to exaggerate itself to counterbalance the slight, internal shift of the uterus.

"I need to change," she says. "This sweater is suffocating me."

She doesn't go to the bedroom. She stands up in the middle of the living room, grabs the hem of the thick gray wool, and pulls it over her head.

I stop breathing and drop my gaze to the coffee table. The spine of a paperback. A coaster. I count the corners of the coaster.

"They hurt constantly," she says.

I look up. I have to look up. Claire would look up.

She stands in a rigid, underwired bra. Her chest heaves a shallow sigh. The glandular tissue has swollen, the breasts heavy and demanding under the lace. The dark areolas are visible over the top edge of the cups. The body's already changing for what's coming, getting ready to feed the life behind her abdominal wall.

"The wire cuts straight into the ribs," she says, her hands coming up to unhook the front clasp.

The bra falls open. She drops it on the velvet chair.

She stands bare-chested in the dim light of the lamp, undressed three feet from me with the same unconscious ease women extend to other women in a room they've decided is safe.

The heat goes off low and immediate. The body wants her, remembers the weight of her hips, the taste of her mouth, and answers without asking me.

I grind my teeth together to keep the jaw soft. I force the Claire smile.

"Mine do that before my cycle," I say. The lie slides out. "The heavy feeling. The wire becomes a cage."

She pulls a loose, faded cotton t-shirt over her head. Her shoulders drop as the fabric falls over her chest. The relief is visible.

"I need to buy new ones," she says, falling back onto the sofa. "Even if I'm not… even for next week. I can't wear the old ones."

Thursday next week. The appointment. The termination of my child.

I shift my weight on the hardwood floor. I bring my knees up and wrap my arms around them.

"Are you afraid of Thursday?" I ask.

She stares at the ceiling. The radiator rattles in the corner of the room.

"I'm afraid of the relief," she whispers. "I'm afraid I'll wake up on Friday and feel empty, and realize the emptiness is better than the alternative."

"The alternative being Mark."

She doesn't answer. She turns her head to look at the dark window. The rain has started, tiny icy drops hitting the glass.

"A baby is an anchor," she says. "It locks you to the geography. It locks you to the other person. I can't anchor myself to a man I don't trust. He lied to me, Claire. He looked me in the eye and lied about another woman."

"A child isn't just an anchor to a man," I say. I pitch the words with careful neutrality. "It's an anchor to yourself. You don't have to share the geography if the geography is toxic."

She blinks. The thought enters the room, a foreign object placed on the coffee table. She looks at it.

"He would fight me," she says.

"Let him fight. You don't strike me as a woman who loses fights she cares about."

The rain taps against the glass. She closes her eyes. She doesn't agree, but she doesn't reject it.

Week fourteen. Friday afternoon.

The rain has turned the city into a gray smear. The sidewalks are slick with freezing water.

We are sitting in the café near the yoga studio. The distressed wood table barely holds the two ceramic mugs. Kate ordered peppermint tea. Her nausea is subsiding, trading places with the hollow hunger of the approaching second trimester. She eats half a blueberry muffin, breaking it into small pieces with her fingers.

She's been leaning into me for weeks: the brush of her knee under the table, the shoulder against mine on the sofa, the way she let me tuck her hair back five days ago without flinching. She leaned into the touch.

Everything in me recoiled at how near she was. The hand reached out and tucked the hair back anyway, easy, like it did this all the time.

"The editor conceded the third chapter," she says, picking up a crumb of the muffin. "He sent an email this morning. He said he ‘re-evaluated the pacing.'"

"He realized you were right and found a way to make it his idea."

Kate gives the short laugh. "Exactly."

A gray sedan pulls up to the curb outside the café window. The tires hiss against the wet asphalt.

My whole body goes still. The mug stops an inch from my lips.

Mark puts the car in park. He turns the engine off. He reaches into the passenger seat for an umbrella.

"He's early," Kate says. Her voice drops a full octave. The easy cadence vanishes, replaced by the careful tone of a woman bracing for an evaluation.

I set my mug down. The hot tea sloshes against the rim. The front door opens. The cold wind cuts through the warm air of the room.

Mark walks in. He wears a dark wool overcoat and a gray scarf. He shakes the freezing rain from his umbrella. He scans the room, locates Kate, and walks toward the table.

The institutional ease is back. Whatever the infidelity cost him, he's covered it over. He walks in with the claiming stride of a man who's sure of the ground he's on.

I keep my hands in my lap. I lock the olive skin and soften the jaw. I drop the cheekbones. I make myself as small and unremarkable as the physics of the female body allow. I am Claire. I am a thirty-five-year-old woman in a beige coat.

He reaches the table. He rests a hand on the back of Kate's chair. The physical overlap is loud and deliberate.

"Ready?" he asks her.

"Mark," Kate says. She doesn't lean into the hand. She sits still. "This is Claire. From the yoga studio."

Mark looks at me.

The visual sweep takes less than two seconds. I read the calculation happening behind his eyes. He categorizes the coat, the rounded face, the lack of sharp edges. He assesses the threat level and the social utility and dismisses both.

He doesn't see Leila. Claire is background noise. Claire is a civilian.

"Nice to meet you, Claire," he says. He offers a polite, vacant smile. The smile he gives the custodial staff at the hospital. "Kate says you've been helping her with the back pain."

"Just passing along a few stretches that worked for me," I say. I pitch the voice higher, adding a breathy, deferential note. The upward inflection of a subordinate.

"Well, we appreciate it." He looks at Kate. "The traffic on the interstate is terrible. If we want to make the reservation, we should go."

Kate looks at the half-eaten muffin. She looks at the peppermint tea.

"I need a minute," she says.

Mark's smile falters for a fraction of a second. The resistance is minor, but it violates the schedule.

"I can wait in the car," he offers.

"No," Kate says. "Just sit down."

He hesitates. He pulls out the chair next to her and sits. The overcoat is bulky. He takes up too much space at the small table. The distressed wood creaks under his weight.

I look at his hands resting on the table. The same hands that moved over the pale skin of my female body three weeks ago. The same hands that pushed the dark hair back from Leila's face.

The body clocks him before I do, the size of him, the cologne, and answers low and quiet against the cotton, the leftover of the night in his apartment. It remembers the friction even though I'd give anything to make it stop.

I dig my fingernails into my palms under the table. The pain grounds me.

"I'm going to grab a coffee for the road," Mark says. The tension at the table is legible to him, and he chooses the exit. He stands up. "Claire, can I get you anything?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

He walks to the counter. He stands in line behind a man in a raincoat.

Kate watches him go. Her shoulders slump. The exhaustion returns, the skin under her eyes going darker.

"He wants to marry me," she says. The words are barely audible over the hiss of the espresso machine.

I set the mug down before my hand can give me away.

"Did he ask?"

"He brought it up last night. Abstractly. He said a child needs a legal framework. He said a household requires a foundation." She traces the rim of the ceramic mug. "He doesn't know about the baby. He's just talking about the future. He's planning the framework."

"He thinks a ring fixes the fracture," I say.

"He thinks a ring proves he's reliable."

"Is he?"

She looks at me.

"He lied to me," she whispers. "He brought another woman into his bed and then he looked me in the eye and lied. And now he wants to build a house on top of it."

Mark reaches the front of the line. He orders. He hands the cashier a credit card.

I lean forward over the distressed wood.

"You look at him like you're waiting for him to disappoint you," I say.

Kate's breath hitches. "He usually does."

"You don't owe him the decision."

She frowns. "What?"

"Thursday," I say. I hold her gaze. The patient eyes of a friend. "You're keeping the appointment because a baby traps you in a room with a man you don't trust. You're afraid you won't be able to leave him if you share a child. So you're erasing the complication."

She stares at me. Her hands tremble against the mug.

"You can walk out of the room, Kate," I say. The voice is low, steady, applying the pressure. "You can leave the man. You don't have to leave the child."

The espresso machine hisses.

Mark turns from the counter. He holds a paper cup. He walks back toward the table.

Kate doesn't look at him. She looks at me. The words sink into the gray water of her exhaustion. They find the bottom. I watch it land, the understanding that she doesn't have to take the whole package, that the child and the man aren't the same decision.

Mark reaches the table. He checks his watch. "Ready?"

Kate blinks. She looks at Mark's face. She looks at the heavy overcoat, the impatient set of his jaw, the man who ordered ginger ale on an app to avoid sitting in a bathroom with a sick woman.

She stands up. She picks up her canvas tote bag.

"Yes," she says. "I'm ready."

She doesn't look at his hand on the chair. She walks past him toward the door.

Mark offers me the vacant smile one last time. "Good seeing you, Claire."

"Drive safe," I say.

I sit at the table and watch them walk out into the freezing rain. Mark opens the large black umbrella. He holds it over her head. They walk toward the gray sedan, not touching, a careful arm's length of cold air between them.

Thursday passes in total silence.

I don't text or call her. I sit in my apartment and listen to the refrigerator cycle on and off.

I know the clinic address and the physician's name. The layout of the waiting room, the sterile smell of the alcohol wipes and the industrial floor cleaner. The protocol of the procedure she scheduled. The dilation. The vacuum. The erasure of the only remaining biological evidence that Julian Reyes ever existed.

I stay on my sofa. I keep the burner phone on the coffee table. The screen remains black.

It comes out in the body. A continuous cramp behind the pubic bone. I can't eat. It turns into a shaking chill that two wool blankets don't touch.

I hold the Claire persona even alone. The soft jaw, the olive skin, the rounded shoulders. I hold it because letting it drop feels like letting the child drop. The mask is the only structure keeping the timeline intact.

Friday morning arrives. The sky outside the window is the flat, bruised purple of a winter dawn.

The burner phone vibrates against the wood.

The sound hits the base of my skull. I pull the blanket off my chest. The cold air bites. I reach across the table and pick up the device. My thumb hovers over the screen.

Are you free this afternoon? Walk the river trail with me.

I read the two sentences. They contain no clinical data. She could be recovering from the termination. She could be carrying the fetus.

I'll meet you at the south lot at two, I type back.

I stand up. The hardwood floor is freezing against my bare feet. Standing up too fast, the blood doesn't get to my head, and the room tilts. I catch the edge of the sofa and wait for the gray static to clear from my vision.

I go to the bathroom. I strip the sweatpants and the shirt.

The mirror reflects the olive skin and the hair hanging loose. The breast tissue is tender. The body's own hormonal clock is ticking toward the luteal phase. The glandular mass feels heavy, pulling downward against the chest wall. The nipples contract into hard knots against the cold air of the bathroom. The towel drags over the nipples and the body answers, low and immediate. I ignore it and dry off fast, refusing to give it any more attention than it's already taken.

I dress for the cold. Thick thermal leggings. A gray long-sleeved shirt. The faded navy fleece zip-up over it. I pull on heavy wool socks and lace up the boots.

The river trail is a paved loop cutting through a dense stretch of bare oak trees on the west side of the city. The water runs high and fast, dark brown with winter mud. The wind sweeps off the surface and hits the parking lot in unbroken gusts.

I park my car near the trailhead and cut the engine.

Kate's car pulls in four minutes later. She parks three spaces away.

She steps out onto the asphalt. She wears a thick black parka and a dark red scarf pulled high around her neck. Her hair is tucked inside the collar.

I evaluate her gait. I watch the stride length and the tilt of the pelvis. I look for the careful, protective hesitation that follows a cervical procedure. I look for the physical guarding of the abdomen.

She walks smoothly. Her stride is unbroken. Her shoulders are relaxed.

I open my door and step out into the wind.

"You came," she says. She pulls her hands out of her pockets and wraps her arms around my shoulders.

The hug is sudden. We haven't embraced before. We've sat shoulder-to-shoulder on her couch, brushed arms in the yoga studio. The full-body contact is new.

Her chest presses against mine. The bulky layers of fleece and wool blunt the collision, but the proximity hits. The vanilla lotion cuts through the river water and the dead leaves and goes straight to two years of mornings. I stop breathing, then bring my arms up and return the pressure.

I can feel the heat of her through the fabric, and the body answers it, wanting the warmth.

She steps back. She smiles. The shadows under her eyes are lighter today. The exhaustion has lifted.

"I needed out of the apartment," she says. "The walls were closing in."

"The river usually fixes that." I keep my voice pitched in Claire's soft, unhurried cadence.

We walk toward the trailhead. The asphalt path slopes down toward the bank. The wind is louder here, rattling the bare branches overhead.

We walk side by side. The shared geometry of two women navigating a physical space. The distance between our shoulders is narrow. We fall into the same stride. The hip rotation synchronizes.

She tells me about the translation project. The Portuguese novel is nearing completion. She talks about the rhythm of the language, the difficulty of matching the cadence in English without losing the intent. She speaks with the engaged energy I haven't seen since our first year together.

I listen. I ask the right questions, and leave the silence open for her to fill.

The cold air stings my cheeks. I force my hands deep into the pockets of the fleece.

"I'm eating again," she says.

We are a mile into the loop. The river curves away to our left. A cyclist passes us, the tires humming against the pavement.

"The nausea's gone?" I ask.

"Mostly. It hit me this morning, but I kept a piece of toast down. Yesterday I ate a whole bowl of pasta." She looks straight ahead at the tree line. "I haven't eaten a full meal in a month."

The placenta is taking over hormone production. The hCG levels are stabilizing. The second trimester's approaching.

"That's a good sign," I say.

She stops walking.

The path is empty. The brown water rushes past the muddy bank. The wind bites at the exposed skin of my neck.

She turns to face me. She buries her hands in the pockets of the black parka.

"The appointment was yesterday," she says.

The words hang in the freezing air. My chest locks up. I force the olive-toned face to remain blank and widen my eyes a fraction.

"I know," I say.

She looks at the river. She watches a dead branch spin in the current and disappear under the surface.

"I woke up at seven," she says. "I showered. I got dressed and put my keys in my pocket. I stood by the door for an hour."

I don't speak. I let the silence pull the rest of it out of her.

"Mark called at eight-thirty. He asked if I needed anything from the pharmacy. He was at work. He sounded normal." She swallows hard. "I realized I was going to the clinic to protect him. I was going to erase the complication so he wouldn't have to deal with the messy reality."

The wind whips a strand of dark hair across my mouth. I don't brush it away.

"You told me I could walk out of the room," she whispers. Her voice is fragile. It trembles against the cold. "You said I didn't have to share the geography."

Hearing my own words come back out of her mouth lands somewhere under the ribs.

"I didn't go," she says. She finally looks at my face. Her eyes are bright with tears. The tears don't fall. They pool at the lower lids. "I missed the appointment, Claire. I'm keeping the baby."

I keep my face still. I reach out and place my hand on her upper arm. The nylon of the parka is freezing.

"Okay," I say. The soft, affirming tone of the friend. "Okay, Kate."

"I'm terrified," she breathes. A tear spills over the lid and cuts a hot path down her cold cheek. "I'm going to have a child. I'm going to do this."

"You're going to be wonderful."

"He doesn't know. I haven't told Mark." She wipes the tear away with the back of her glove. "I don't know how to tell him. I don't know if I want him in the room when I do."

"You don't owe him the room."

She nods. The decision settles into her posture. She exhales a long, white cloud of vapor into the winter air.

"Thank you," she says. She looks at me with a gratitude that's hard to hold. "You're the only person who hasn't told me what to do. You just let me hear myself."

I drop my hand from her arm and smile at her.

"Let's keep walking," I say. "You're freezing."

We resume the pace. The tension is gone. The conversation shifts away from the clinic and the pregnancy. We talk about the city, about the books she's reading.

She leans into my space. When a cyclist passes too closely on her left, she steps sideways, her shoulder bumping against mine. She doesn't apologize. She stays close.

The body I inhabit reacts with a demand that won't back down.

The breast tissue aches under the fleece. The cold air keeps the nipples hard, a constant friction against the lace of the bra. The heat in the pelvis won't quit, the slickness steady, and I'm walking through a frozen park in the middle of winter soaked through with it.

The body has the lotion and the voice and the brush of her coat and it knows who it's walking next to and what it wants from her.

We reach the end of the loop. The parking lot appears through the trees.

The sky has darkened into a uniform gray. The wind has died down, leaving a flat cold over the asphalt.

There are only four cars left in the lot. Mine. Hers. Two empty sedans parked near the trailhead.

We walk toward her car.

The conversation quiets. The natural silence that falls at the end of an afternoon.

She stops at the driver's side door of her small SUV.

I stand facing her. The distance between us is perhaps two feet. The gray light washes over her face. Her nose is red from the cold. Her eyes are clear.

"Are you going to be okay tonight?" I ask.

"I think so." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her keys. She doesn't unlock the door. She holds the keys in her hand. The metal jingles.

She looks at the asphalt, at the keys. She looks at my face.

I know the look. I saw her give it to me once, two years ago, in the kitchen of the apartment we shared.

The silence stretches. The winter cold presses against my cheeks.

She drops the keys back into her pocket.

She takes a half-step forward. The distance closes to inches.

I freeze. The breath stops dead in my lungs. My heart slams against the sternum.

She lifts her right hand. She touches the side of my neck. Her fingers are cold from the wind. She slides her hand upward, her thumb tracing the line of my jaw. Claire's rounded jaw.

The cold of her touch goes all the way down before I can do anything about it, the stomach pulling tight. My eyes shut for a second on their own. I lean into the cold of her hand.

She steps into my space. The nylon of her parka brushes against the fleece of my jacket.

She tilts her head and leans forward.

She kisses me.

The collision of her mouth against mine is soft. Unhurried. She doesn't demand. She asks.

Her lips are cold. They taste like peppermint tea and the winter air.

I'm a man, and the woman I love is touching my face. I'm a woman she's kissing in a parking lot.

The heat in the groin flashes into something blinding, aching against the cotton, the slickness flooding through, the whole lower half of me on her side of this. The body wants to be touched. It wants the weight of her against it.

I don't pull away.

I bring my hands up from my sides and place them on her waist. I grip the fabric of the parka.

I kiss her back.

I open my mouth. She breathes into me, deepening the kiss, sliding her hand from my jaw to the back of my neck to tangle her fingers in the hair.

She pulls me closer. Our chests press together.

My breasts crush against hers and the contact is its own shock, the pleasure spreading down through me, and my hips twitch forward on their own, looking for her thigh.

A breathless sound escapes my throat. A feminine sigh.

She hears it. She kisses me harder.

The parking lot, the freezing wind, all of it vanishes. There is only the heat of her mouth and the cold fingers in my hair.

She breaks the kiss and pulls her mouth away.

She keeps her hand on the back of my neck and rests her forehead against mine.

We are both breathing hard. The white vapor of our breath mixes in the cold air between us.

My heartbeat is going hard against the ribs. The wet between my legs is heavy. My hands are still on her waist and I don't let go.

She keeps her eyes closed.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. The voice is fragile. "I shouldn't have."

"Don't apologize." I pitch the voice low. The steady anchor.

She opens her eyes and looks at my face. The olive skin. The dark eyes. The lie.

She sees what I designed her to see. A safe harbor. A warm, uncomplicated presence who listens and asks for nothing.

"I have to go," she says. She doesn't move.

"I know."

She drops her hand from my neck. The skin where her fingers were goes cold. She steps back, the distance returning.

She reaches into her pocket and pulls the keys out. She unlocks the SUV.

She opens the door, then looks at me over the roof of the car.

"I'll text you," she says.

"Drive safe, Kate."

She gets in and shuts the door. The engine turns over. The headlights cut through the gray afternoon gloom.

I stand on the asphalt and watch her reverse out of the parking space. I watch the red taillights navigate the exit of the lot and turn onto the main road, until the car disappears behind the tree line.

The parking lot is dead quiet. The wind howls over the river.

I stand alone in the cold. My hands are numb. The throbbing ache in the pelvis refuses to subside. The slickness cools against my thighs.

I turn and walk toward my car. The hips sway with the wider, biological geometry. The breasts pull against the straps. I unlock the door and slide into the freezing cabin.

I grip the steering wheel with the slender hands.

I got what I came for. And it's the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me.