In Death 18 - Divided in Death

scared.”
    “I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”
    “No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.
    “Ah . . . you and Leonardo have a fight?”
    Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”
    “Oh, that’s just crap.”
    “It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”
    “No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”
    “I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”
    “If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”
    If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.
    “What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons—short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”
    “Look at you now. You’ve got the most perfect human being in the universe crazy about you, you’ve got a mag career, and this baby thing going. Oh God, oh God, please don’t cry like that anymore,” she begged when Mavis dissolved again.
    “I don’t know anything.”
    “Yeah, you do. You know . . . stuff. Music stuff.” Such as it was. “Fashion stuff. And you know about people. Maybe you learned it on the grift, Mavis, but you know about people. How to make them feel good about themselves.”
    “Dallas.” Mavis swiped her hands over her face. “I don’t know anything about babies.”
    “Oh. Ah . . . but you’re listening to all those discs, right? And didn’t you say you were going to go to some class about it? Something?”
    Not my area, she thought frantically. Definitely out of my orbit. Why the hell had she sent Peabody to Jamaica?
    “What good’s any of that?” Exhausted from the crying jag, Mavis flopped back, resting her head on the pillows on the end of the couch. “All that’s just how to feed a baby, or change one, or pick them up so you don’t break them. Like that. How to do things. They can’t tell you how to know, how to feel. They can’t tell you how to be a mom, Dallas. I don’t know how to do it.”
    “Maybe it just comes to you. You know, when you finally push it out, it just happens. And you know.”
    “I’m scared I’m going to mess it up. That I’m not going to be able to do it right. Leonardo’s so happy and excited. He wants this so much.”
    “Mavis, if you don’t—”
    “I do. I want it more than anything in the world and beyond. That’s what’s so scary. Dallas, I don’t think I could stand it if I messed this up. If I have this baby and I don’t feel what I’m supposed to, don’t know what it needs—the real needs, not the food and the diapers. How will I know how to love it when nobody ever loved me?”
    “I love you, Mavis.”
    Mavis’s eyes filled again. “I know you do. And Leonardo. But it’s not the same. This . . .” She laid a hand on her belly. “It’s supposed to be different. I know it is, but I just don’t know how. I guess I panicked,” she said on a long sigh. “I couldn’t talk about it to Leonardo. I just needed you.”
    She reached for Eve’s hand. “Some stuff you can only tell your best pal. I’m better now. Probably just hormones weirding me out.”
    “You’re the first real friend I ever had,” Eve said slowly. “You had it stuck in your head to get close to me, and I just couldn’t shake you off. Before I knew it, there we were. We’ve seen each other through some rough spots.”
    “Yeah.” Mavis sniffed, and the first hint of a watery smile touched her lips. “We have.”
    “And because you’re my first real friend, I’d tell you if you were stupid. I’d tell you if I thought you’d make a crappy mother. I’d tell you if I thought you were making a mistake having the baby.”
    “You would? Really?” Mavis clutched Eve’s hand, stared hard at her face. “Swear to God?”
    “Swear to God.”
    “That makes me feel better. It really does.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “Oh boy, it really does. Could I hang for a while? Maybe call Leonardo and tell him to—Oh God. Oh my God.”
    Eve popped up as Mavis’s teary eyes went wide, as she sat straight up, pressing a hand to her belly. “What? Are you going to get sick or something?”
    “It moved. I felt it move.”
    “What moved?”
    “The baby.” She looked up at Eve,