Chapter 1
Lester awoke, and he could smell it.
The sea.
He smiled, stretching, positive the move was the right thing. And it wasn’t even like it was a permanent move, an uprooting of their lives in Manila. Just a vacation.
A vacation by the sea, to ease the stress and tension of Anne’s pregnancy. On her seventh month now, and both of them wanted so much to be optimistic, but here they were, cautious, careful. (The thrill of it though… enticing. To just up and start buying clothes and bottles and mobiles and rattles. But no. Not yet.)
Lester looked over at Anne, still asleep, her stomach bloated with life, with a Lester, Jr., healthy and whole. He had the almost irresistible urge to kiss the distended skin of her belly, but he reined in the urge, afraid he’d disturb her sleep.
He looked at his wife’s face, and saw peace there. Serenity.
During the day, awake, she would be her usual self, yes, with the occasional mood swings and cravings of the pregnant, but there would be a shadowed wariness in her eyes, as of a dog, slinking past a master it fully expects will kick it, though uncomprehending of its transgression.
They’d tried twice before, and both had been difficult, trying, and ultimately truncated pregnancies.
Anne wasn’t a particularly robust woman, and the infants had seemed ill-fated from the start: the first, without any forethought or consideration; the second, as a miserable consolation for the first one lost.
This one—Lester, Jr.—had been well-considered. Years had passed after that second miscarriage, and there had been many a midnight discussion in bed, in each other’s arms, before the decision, and the conception.
And now, now they were here, in the seaside village Anne’s O.B. Gyne, Doctora Teresa Milagrosa, hailed from, and they were holding their figurative breaths, waiting.
It was, in fact, the Doctora’s idea for Anne to be sequestered here, in her own home, so that her beloved patient could rest and relax and enjoy the process of motherhood. All was set, down to the specific nurses who lived in the village who could be called in when Anne’s time to deliver came.
Lester looked around the guest room, and was surprised to feel a strange level of comfort from his surroundings. It didn’t look like home, certainly not that, but it did look… lived in. He could see traces of himself in the room, traces of Anne, subtle marks—some, near-invisible—of their presence: a framed photograph here, a well-thumbed paperback there.
He looked out the window, the second floor room overlooking the dirt road which passed as the house’s front drive, and the gargantuan mango tree which marked the border of Doctora Milagrosa’s lot, its leaves and branches suggesting the intricate webwork of a vast maze, and for a moment, Lester allowed himself to be lost in its infinite windings, in its hidden depths and secret shadows. For a moment, Lester felt an utter, blessed calm.
Then, suddenly remembering today was a Thursday, Lester realized the Doctora was expected late afternoon tomorrow. (She’d long made it a habit to limit her Friday appointments to before lunch, so she could drive up to spend the weekends away from Manila.)
Lester got out of bed then, slowly, quietly, to start getting ready for the long day ahead, knowing he had to clean up around the house a little, if only to show their host that they hadn’t turned her home into a pigsty.
And Anne, alone in bed, stirred, her hand going to her belly, resting there, as if to shield her unborn child from some unseen, unknown menace.
CRAVING by David Hontiveros
Published by PENUMBRA (a Visprint imprint)
Cover art by Carlo Vergara
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