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𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐘-𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄

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[ TEXT: LUKAS ] Hello where are you :)))

She glanced at the notification and watched until it slid itself from view. In its place, an identical message appeared, before it too retracted, joining the tally of a growing number, hovering above the Messages app. A hundred and seventy-three.

Cora had to admit that it was a valid question, though the fact he'd felt the need to repeat it so many times had assured that she wasn't going to answer it. The fact she was getting all of them right now was pure strategy, a firm reason to keep her glued to her chair. She'd bought a new phone shortly after touching down, still smelling of business class, Knicks cap throwing her hollowed eyes into shadow.

She could feel the wait staff's itch to tell her to take it off, but she pressed a hundred dollar bill into the palm of the first girl that approached her and winked before waving her off.

"But are you ready to order?"

On cue, her stomach rumbled. She pressed a palm against her abdomen and stared until the waitress cleared her throat.

"Yeah ..." Cora said slowly, drawing out her reply as she bought time to make a decision. She briefly flashed an eye at the menu, realizing with a clench of her stomach that she'd neglected her appetite since the previous evening. "I'll get a ... juice. And the fruit salad. And a croissant. A chocolate one."

The waitress scribbled down her order, only for Cora to call after her as she attempted to inconspicuously slip the bill beneath her bra strap. 

"I also would like ... A New York strip. Medium. If that would be ok." She said, as though to seek permission rather than add to her own order.

"Of course madam." The waitress replied, French accent thick. "And would that be all?"

"Ah, yes. For now. Oh! And I'm waiting for someone. I can ..." Cora gestured to the notepad. 

The waitress handed it to her and she quickly scribbled down a name, the tremble of her hand warping her penmanship. 

Alone again, she sunk into the wooden backing of her chair, letting her gaze climbing tall walls, slender plants in terracotta, craning their fronds towards an crystalline ceiling. Cora took in a deep breath, the air tasting of jasmine and freesia, like a fragrant tea blend. 

It felt like she hadn't stopped moving since leaving Matsson's plane. Shiv had seen her off, not realizing that Cora's Uber was routed to LAX. She'd made the decision in a state of shock, the kind where the brain freezes while the body keeps running. Planes booked out until early morning, she'd stayed overnight in a motel, her fugue great enough to neglect the dripping tap, the scent of mildew, the thin walls that echoed debauchery throughout the night. Cora didn't fully surface until the plane's wheels had descended on the tarmac, looking out the window and discovering that she'd flown home to a different planet.

Having drifted into an open-eyed nap, the first of her food arrived along with her company, both jolting her awake.

"Cordelia is it? Nice to meet you, nice to meet you, yeah."

Cora had assumed that Aubrey D. Woolcroft would be some leggy high strung blonde, given the recommendation from Shiv, but to her surprise, it was a man who shoved his stocky arm across the table. Neither did he have the typical lawyer suave she'd previously been acquainted with: men who spoke coke fast, who wore shiny dark shoes, cologne that smelled like gasoline, with eyes bottomless as the pupils of a shark. Tall, well bred, Ivy leagued, mother hating men.

Aubrey wasn't completely against type. He had a mean little face, a head like a freshly polished bowling ball, and the cadence of someone who'd placed a large bet on the races, which Cora was now preventing him from collecting. As he sat down, a cloud of Caroline Herrera descended with him, and he let out a croaky, old man sigh, cracking his knuckles before rapping them against the table. 

Suddenly, she wasn't so sure of herself. Am I really doing this?

"It's good to meet you Au—"

"There are men named Aubrey." Aubrey said, sharply. His bushy brows suddenly bulged from the taut ridge of his brow.

"Uh ..."

"It's a unisex name." He continued, thrumming his knuckle against the table. "Strong name. Lotsa people have it, like Drake."

"I ... don't doubt it?"

Cora was unable to hide her horror, panic rising in her chest. Who was she kidding? Of course the second she tried to get ahead of disaster, the universe spat in her face, landing her across the table from someone nursing a Napoleon complex.

The shadow of his hand hovered above her own.

"My bad, sweetheart, just didn't wanna get off on the wrong foot." He reached across the table and patted her forearm, relaxing at the touch. It had the opposite effect for Cora, but she managed to keep her expression steady. "Apologies if you thought I was a bit riled up. It's a chain some people think is funny to pull. Sometimes I can see it coming in their eyes. I was testing you. You passed."

To Cora, he'd definitely seemed riled up, but not wanting to dally on the subject, she forced a smile. Unable to hold eye contact for too long, she looked down at the fruit salad in front of her, the glistening pain au chocolat.

As a peace offering, she slid the croissant plate towards him. "Oh, uh, help yourself by the way."

He took one look at the plate and let out a hearty laugh, which lasted a few seconds too long. "Hahaha, oh no no no, not for me, no thanks." He mouth the word 'O', motioned trigger fingers toward himself, then when it was evident Cora still misunderstood, Aubrey clarified that he was on Ozempic.

Before a flushing Cora could attempt to salvage (or ruin) the moment, Aubrey promptly launched into a spiel. Thankful that he'd decided to steer the conversation, she picked up her fork and began to spear pieces of melon, settling into listen.

"Now, had a whole chat with Siobhan yesterday afternoon, and she's under the impression that you're definitely having it here, yeah? Well, you might wanna reconsider. New York paternity's sticky. I can't see a ring, so I'm assuming this is outta wedlock but that don't mean much. If he's willing and able to throw money, he doesn't need your signature to petition paternity. This'll force a DNA test and he'll gain parental rights.

"Court's not exactly easy now, but Siobhan, she mentioned there's a matter of profiles in all of this. Maybe he's a CEO, maybe you've been in the papers before for some not so savory things. Don't freak out, sweetheart, I'm a family lawyer, not a prosecutor, but a judge's not gonna be so kind. His council'll use that to crack the foundation enough for the weasel to squeeze in. With parental rights, it opens up the possibility of full custody. Even if he doesn't get it immediately, he keeps you locked up there long enough, well, he can start calling into question the best interests of the kid ... You mind if I sip this?"

Aubrey had already taken a large gulp of the glass of juice but Cora nodded anyway. She watched the pink pulp within swirl with specks of seed, imagining her insides melting to a similar consistency. A cold sweat had broken out on her forehead. 

She'd seen this before. The parents of her wealthy cohort, engaged in domestic warfare, pre- and mid- and post-divorce, the custody battles that followed. This wasn't a matter of principle, it was a matter of power, one final 'fuck you' to the bitch wife who dared think she could escape whatever grip had been her collar. 

The difference was that Cora was defenseless. She didn't have the track record of a marriage, a career. She had money but that money was finite and bolstered by investments, not employment. How much did a child cost? A million? Two? She thought back to her Rhode Island kindergarten, the private school education, a cushiony college fund. How much had that all totaled? 

Meanwhile, Matsson rose as a behemoth before her very eyes, unsaddled with the financial drain of pregnancy and the years convening, when the funnel of single motherhood split into a multi-pronged artery, pumping the digits of her bank account. Legal fees, psychiatrist visits, never-ending cab fares to the tune of New York in gridlock, a benzo prescription.

Cora winced. No, not that. After all, what was the point of making this gambit, if not to prove that she could do it better than Reagan. Her first thought when she'd set eyes on that little pink cross had not necessarily been her own, instead it was a chorus of skepticism, of every possible rebuttal to what threatened to be the worst decision of her life. Yet clawing through it all, the image of her mother, and that low, low bar, a hurdle with parameters Cora could meet. 

She couldn't, wouldn't, trick herself into the delusion that it would be easy. Already it wasn't, but the unnerving part of it all was not the clamminess of her palms. It was the strange swell of butterflies, feathering the inside of her chest, like her foot was jammed down on an empty highway, chasing the figure of a distant sun.

Aubrey stalled, waiting for her to balk. Sucking on a grape, she urged him forward with a soft flick of her chin.

"But all that's not the only funk in paternity." He reached across the table suddenly and grabbed her hand. She clasped his back and he shot her an odd look, Cora confused, until she saw where he was pointing.

Cora laughed, disentangling.

"What? No. Really?"

"State of New York recognizes whoever the mother's married to as the father of her child, biological or not. Doesn't make it impossible, but it's a shield. Hell, if ya that kind of girl, maybe dad just assumes you were screwing around."

Cora's brow arched. "So long as a man's in the picture, it doesn't matter?" She snorted. Maybe she should've joined that women's group in college, then she might've had something insightful to say other than, "Well, fuck me I guess."

"You know, there's other options here."

"Would I really have bothered with the consultation fee if anything else was on the table?" Cora said.

She could lie to this man, this ostensible stranger, but not to herself. She had entertained the options, but they all felt thin as novelties. Like they were impractical in the face of creating another human.

A mention of marriage, though, was an omen. Briefly, she'd stopped at her apartment, to empty her hands of luggage, and double check that Olivia hadn't undertaken the hints at renovation she'd dropped. On the kitchen bench, on top of a pile of mail, neglected before her departure to Norway, sat a package, addressed in hawkish cursive, stamped Italian. She hadn't needed to open it to know.

"I meant have the thing outside of New York."

Cora decided not to question his word choice as she shook her head. "My entire life's here. My last living family member, my ... support network, if you can call it that. I just bought a new place, a new pet."

"So what?" Aubrey said, putting down the glass. He seemed happy to gamble the potential retainer on the promise of debate alone. "Sell the place, fuck your family. All that money you save, you can just buy a new one. Might even double your luck!"

 Cora's fork chimed against the porcelain rim of her bowl. Her phone had spent the conversation thankfully still, but in that moment it came alive in quick succession. She stared at the back of it, knowing exactly what she'd find if she bothered flipping it over.

Firm, she shook her head.

"Even if I wanted to leave, it wouldn't matter. He'd find me anywhere I went. It wouldn't matter if I gave birth in Tulsa or a village in the Tibetan mountains, he'd find a way. And when he did, if I were anywhere else, I'd be completely alone."

They both heard the falter in her voice as her words petered out. 

Then, he dropped both his voice and his head low, reaching into the breast pocket of his blazer. He produced a slender business card, pinched between fore and middle, sliding it through the air with practiced ease.

"In case Siobhan didn't pass on my deets. I don't doubt the conviction, but you're doubting magnitude. These tend to get ugly. Tonight, when you're in bed, imagine the worst possible scenario. Sleep on it. If you survive the nightmare, call me."

≪ °❈° ≫

Olenska stretched across Cora's lap, limbs splaying out in a stretch, giving her the look of a fur shawl. Cora ran a hand against the silk of the cat's stomach. Olenska's responding purr was almost enough to drown out the chatter of the television, but her present company was fierce competition.

"You! Eight! Weeks! Eight! Weeks!"

Despite being home for only an hour, she'd heard 'eight weeks' far more than eight times. 

Cora hadn't intended to tell anyone else about the pregnancy, at least not until she'd gotten a handle of everything else, but she only had herself to blame. She'd been tasked to pick up prenatal vitamins by a doctor, and in the process, had unearthed a brand new area of retail, and she was loathe to let this distraction go.

The second Cora had stepped through the door, one of her bulging shopping bags had split open and spilled its contents in the foyer. She'd tried calling out that she was fine to deal with it herself, but the second Olivia had poked her head over the banister above, it'd all been over.

At first Olivia didn't say a thing, helping her gather up anti-nausea pills and massage balls in complete silence. Cora had arrived at the conclusion that this was than any verbal reaction when, after placing the final supplement bottle on the kitchen counter, Olivia let out an ear piercing shriek.

"Pregnant?!"

The petrified look written across Cora's face was indictment enough.

Though she hadn't managed to fully calm down, Olivia was finally at a volume that didn't cause Olenska to yowl. For her own part, Cora managed her irritation with surprising ease. In fact, she was incredibly calm, all things considered.

"So!" Olivia squealed. "What are you naming the baby?"

"I was thinking 'Olivia'," Cora said.

"What?! Really?!"

"No." She clarified, knowing the joke was cruel, but her ear drums demanded retribution. "I'm sorry."

"Damnit. It's fine, I have a cousin called Olivia as well. That's already so confusing. And it probably would've been weird."

"Yeah, probably."

Cora scratched the back of Olenska's ears, snowy peaks standing angular from the constant intrusion of shrieks. She wasn't the only one craning an ear. The livestream for the Living+ presentation was on the edge of beginning. The faint jostle of a settling crowd underscored a looping PR clips on the screen behind the stage. A mix of stock footage, interspersed with speculative renderings of the facilities, and brief clips of Logan fading in and out of sterile outer facades, neatly boxed gardens, tooth achingly blue pools.

As the footage drew to an end, the downlights dimmed, audience fading to dark. Cora felt her stomach twist.

" ... So, is it ... Who's ... Shit, I shouldn't ask that, should I?"

"You can ask, but I'm not going to answer." Cora replied, chewing on her bottom lip. 

Worst case scenarios had plagued her all afternoon, projecting themselves onto the idle screen, strong enough to blot the image of whatever ATN darling they had hocking their election coverage. Their contents were easy to guess, ultimately meaningless, because what set her stomach to boil was that they were innumerable.

The nightmare was waking, her world on fire. Sitting in the back of a cab, forehead pressed to glass heated by late afternoon sun, a stroke of genius hit her on Park Ave. For things to be negative meant that they must counter a positive.

Cora's happy ending. What did that look like? 

No Matsson, for starters. She could handle the hand around her neck, but she felt the reality of creation in her depths, its growing weight. Her life flashing before her eyes, she knew she could not will that upon anyone else. 

New York, or at least as close as possible. She could give up the city, but not proximity. Long Island, along the water, or near the Connecticut panhandle. A child in the suburbs, formative years in the city. 

And, even though it sounded awfully Game of Thrones, a strategic alliance. An ideal world would let her be a single mother in peace, to let her figure things out on her own timeline. She was conscious that the threat of complacency was forcing a decision that she was still tentative about. Her instinctual response to pregnancy was not to yearn for motherhood, but the North Star of something bigger than herself. 

Maybe that was a bad reason to entertain gutting her life. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, sacrificing a trip to the courthouse was nothing when weighed against the opposing choices risks.

"I need—" Cora began, quickly stumbling on her words.

She caught sight of Kendall as he appeared from backstage, beneath the glare of a spotlight. Applause and hip hop ferried him forward, his own hands joining the fray. Despite the distance of the camera, she could see a strange glint in his eyes. 

Cora cleared her throat, shooting the wide-eyed girl through her peripherals. Olivia hung on the pause, long enough for the clapping to die down, pulling the grain of his microphone into sharp focus. Fractured nerves were palpable. Cora had seen enough trainwrecks to know where this was going.

"Why does he keep talking about shoes?" Olivia muttered.

"I need to get married," Cora blurted out. "That's what I have to worry about. That and not throwing up in front of people."

"Ooh, my mom used to suck on Warheads when she was pregnant with me. Gave her cavities but at least she wasn't upchucking." Olivia paused as her expression faltered. "Oh, er, to Lukas Matsson?"

"To anyone who isn't him. I'm sorry to skimp on the details, but if I unpack it right now, I don't know, I'll start thinking too much. I'll lose my nerve. I can only say that if I just break up with him, and it comes out I'm pregnant, he won't leave it alone."

"Oh shoot." Olivia whispered, chewing on her bottom lip. "So like, do you want suggestions? Because, I think, I mean, it's the obvious answer, right?"

Cora felt the cold impression of the engagement ring and had skim her ring finger to confirm her imagination. Obvious, but more importantly, plausible, as far as outsiders would be concerned. Old flame, restoked proximity. Due dates could be fickle, and Cora's insides were hardly up to Paltrow standards. What were a few weeks here or there?

Hope had pushed her shoulders to attention, but reality knocked the air from her, and she crumpled.

"I'm pretty sure the only way he would marry me right now is if I asked for a divorce," she muttered. Olivia's look of confusion softened the cold glint of her eyes. "He's on a mission to the surface of the sun. Unless marrying me was the end of the world, I doubt he'd consider the favour."

The words were sticky from her throat. This was an impossible position. Sure, she could probably find a replacement out on the street if she wanted to, this was New York, crazier proposals had been made. But this had to look convincing if it was going to provide any semblance of protection. She also had to trust whoever she picked, be able to rely on them, feel safe with them around her child. She needed a good husband.

Tough luck Cordelia, they're hard enough to find with the purest of intentions.

"Oh ... Oh. Ok, well ... What about ... Kendall?"

"He doesn't need anymore children to neglect. Besides, old tabloids won't look good in court."

"Greg?"

Cora didn't need to open her mouth for Olivia to quickly reconsider.

"Tom? ... Shiv?!"

"Polygamy isn't legal."

"Right, duh! I'm no help. I mean you could marry me if you really wan—"

Cora placed a hand on her shoulder, smiling as she softly shook her head. "I think I've burdened you enough with my life altering decisions."

"But who! Who then? Who's believable, but not crazy, but also crazy enough to, y'know, marry you, which isn't a bad thing! That's not what I'm saying, b-but you know what I mean! I mean, you don't really find someone like that lying around. Wait, actually, did the skinny one end up getting married or was that called off?"

Cora didn't answer, her attention drawn back to the screen. Somehow, Kendall had managed to stumble his way to the end of a successful speech, applause ringing through the speakers, distorting like rainfall on concrete. The scar tissue of memory ebbed with phantom pain.

In the span of a blink, she had arrived at her course of action. Air lifting Olenska off her lap, ignoring a grumble of complaint, she brushed the hair from her pants and reached for the remote, throwing the room to silence. Cora turned to face Olivia.

"I know what to do."

"Wait, really? Who? When? Can I be there for it?" 

"Slow down, not too fast. First thing's first. I have to lose the guy first." 

She paused to steady herself. Adrenaline had flooded her system, from excitement, from dread. This was the front of the line, her point of no return. Set one action into motion, and the rest would fall, easy as wind fells a house of cards. Tomorrow was the beginning of forever.

Cora met Olivia's nervous gaze.

"Does Mac still work in PR?"

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

AUTHOR'S NOTES

i. alexa, play i can do it with a broken heart!!

ii. ty for your patience with this story guys <3 i was a bit lost abt it but i've tempered by ego. i think this story was best when i wasn't second guessing every line. i'm making the effort to have fun with writing again, and i hope that'll come through on this home stretch. 

bc of this, im going to go back to prioritising remaining 'in the zone' vs spending hours rewriting (procrastinating), so sorry in advance for any hiccups in grammar xx