Chapter Thirty-Eight

I didn’t talk for three days after that and I didn’t do much more than sleep. I would wake, drink some water, maybe pee, then sleep again. I didn’t even have the energy to chew food for a whole day.

I knew Xander was worried, but I didn’t even have the energy to worry about him. It was like everything had died inside and my body hadn’t caught on yet.

It took me time, but I started to feel slowly more human.

I ate heartier meals and when Eloim came to my room and asked for a hug—which his father was reluctant to let him have—I spread my arms wide. Xander put him on the bed and we hugged.

Eventually, I spoke again, my voice was rough and weak, but it was there. There verdict had been mostly that of extreme exhaustion, and stress, which I couldn’t deny. The burns and frostbite on my arms slowly healed. I don’t know if those would lave scars though.

The priest, rabbi, and medium all said that she was gone now, that it was over. Eloim was doing surprisingly well, which cheered me up.

Doctors would still come and go, and ask me for a panoply of additional tests, for which I complied.

Miranda and Regis came to visit. Everyone seemed to feel really bad about this situation, about how I got caught in something that had nothing to do with me in the first place. I couldn’t exactly say that I didn’t feel similarly, but despite it all, I had gained something in return. I had a family now.

“We’d like to extend your stay for an additional day, just to be certain,” told us the doctor a few hours later.

“Can we know why?” asked Xander.

Miranda, Regis, and Eloim had gone to pick up some food at a restaurant—take-out—so that I wouldn’t have to eat more hospital food.

“Are you aware Miss, Lavigne, that you are pregnant?” he asked me.

Xander and I froze.

“I guess you didn’t. Then, congratulations. And this is why we’re keeping you under observation a little longer. I’d also like to have a first echography to make sure everything is as it should.

I nodded, numb.

Xander took my head in between his hand and kissed me, hard.

By the time everyone returned, we were so cheerful, it turned into a celebration.

It seemed to take Eloim a bit of time to realise what it all meant, but he enjoyed the festivities anyways.

“If we wait for spring for the wedding, fitting a dress could become a challenge,” I told Xander a little later on. “Besides, getting paid for commissioned work and all that, maybe it would be simple to advance things.

He just smiled broadly.

“What are you thinking?

“That my son is a genius at matchmaking.

That got me laughing.

We called my parents a little later that day. They weren’t super happy to hear just now that I was in the hospital, but when they were told it was just exhaustion, and that I was pregnant, it changed the mood instantly. The following hour, I spent it translating between my parents and Xander’s, which was all mostly wedding preparation, baby showers, and so on.

I moved back home the next day.

I wasn’t sure when we drove back how I’d felt about this house and everything that has happened in it. But when we drove past the bend and I spotted it, in the afternoon sunshine amongst the trees, the exterior finished, it looked absolutely stunning.

But I noticed how terrible our land was looking at the moment. Winter was settling in, and there wouldn’t be much that we could do about it, but I knew that come spring, this would be my next big project.

Marcus came to visit us with Emily that was slowly turning into a good friend. She was goofy and loved to spend afternoons baking, so I invited her in my glitzy new kitchen and we had a few baking parties. Her two daughters were around Eloim’s age, and he was now opening up to other children, which had been something he hadn’t done very often in the past.

I got slowly acquainted with other families in the neighbourhood. It was much easier now that our house was not terrifying most of them. Of course, none of us spoke of what actually happened here. It was useless and would bother them needlessly.

The work was finished in the following month, just in time for the wedding, but Xander seemed keen on renovated the big shed in the back and to turn it into a garage. I tried to convince him to wait a little more for the business side to grow more stable—given all the changes that were happening there, and also the fact that a baby was underway—but he assured me everything was fine, and I decided to stop nagging at him and let him have is pet projects.

We were not at a high risk of financial instabilities after all, it’s just that I’ve always been naturally cautious.

The shed looked even worse than the house had when I came in. The roof was crooked, the windows broken, some of the wood rotten, but Xander was sure that some of it could be saved. So, I decided to trust him on it.

One of my pet projects became landscaping, I couldn’t do any of it myself, but I could measure the land and start planning.

Miranda promised me, that has her flower beds were mature, she had to take away a lot of plants yearly to give them some place to breathe and so could give me tons of them to start up for free, and as I started to show my plans around, and the list of plants I had access to, we started our own little plants exchange circle in the neighbourhood, which was wonderful as I’d have suddenly access to at least a hundred different varieties, if not more.

I was really coming into my mistress of the house role and enjoying it.

I was painting more than ever, especially as Eloim began daycare.

He was so stressed at first that I spent that day there with him. With time he would focus more on the toys, or friends than me, he’d stop holding my hand all the time, and do his thing. After a few times, I began leaving him there a little at a time.

The woman there was really nice and understanding of the situation, and was very willing to work with us at our own pace.

Eloim return to having weekly therapy sessions and I asked Xander that we both did too. It took us a while to find therapists that had knowledge and some understanding of what happened to us without trying to lock us up in a mental institution for even mentioning it, but Hector got us in touch with the right ones. We had to travel all the way to London, but it was working well, and might be phasing out soon. We elected to keep Eloim going for a little while longer, but he was growing into a normal little boy.

We worked really hard toward socialising him, as he’d spent so long isolating himself from everyone and it was clearly a work in progress, that—we had been forewarned—could take years if not a big chunk of his life, and we’d only truly know the true impact when he’d age and mature, but everyone was hopeful.

Moving the date forward for the wedding had all sorts of consequences, but has it wouldn’t be a grand affair, wasn’t too hard to conciliate.

My parents came for a full month, a coupe of weeks before the wedding.

They fell in love with my house, obviously. It was hard for anyone not to. The moldings, the high ceilings, the fireplaces, it was perfect. It had an old-world charm that is so rare in America.

We had made sure that the insulation, the heating and A/C system, that everything was up to snuff, and Xander had made a few modifications to the plans to be able to upgrade to a full smart-house in the future. We decided not to indulge in this right now, as it could be so costly, but I knew he was dying to move forward with it. He already had his place in the basement that I nicknamed the geek room where the central server and everything would be. I caught him a few times shopping around various electronic gears, and comparing prices and specs. I was sure he had a pie chart or two dedicated to that hidden somewhere. Boys!

With my mother around, there was so much cooking going on that we had no space to store everything.

“You just have the one fridge and no spare freezer, how can you be storing everything,” she told me.

“Maybe we can check for an extra freezer later, but maybe we can move to canning some right now instead?” I suggested.

“Have you thought of a vegetable garden in your plans? You have the space. Plus, with this climate, you can produce much longer.

“I thought about it, but I made no plan yet, I just don’t know where to put it.

And the conversation morphed into what vegetables and fruits I should plant.

There will be enough food here by Christmas to feed a small cohort, at least.

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