Maeve Whalen Novels & Stories

Labor The birth center welcomed them with an atmosphere of professional calm. The walls in earthy tones, the soft lighting, the subtle scent of lavender — everything conspired to create a welcoming environment. The midwife, Helena, a fifty-year-old woman with steady hands and kind eyes, greeted Maeve like an old friend. “How is our mama feeling?” she asked, and there was a maternal quality in her voice that immediately reassured Maeve. “Like I’m about to climb Everest without gear,” Maeve answered honestly.

My men left no stone unturned in unveiling her double life. A harsh laugh tore from me. Fuck. I laughed again. Then clapped the cigar between my lips. Maeve Ivanov, twenty-four years old, a struggling lawyer saddled with student loans, and a singer leading a double life in the shadowy underbelly of the city. How deliciously ironic that my wife, Marina, had chosen this seemingly ordinary girl as a pawn in her twisted game – paying her to seduce me and bear my child, all in a misguided attempt to conceal her own infertility.

she said, “because he knocked next on the worst door he could have found and I am tired of the way Maeve smiles when people pay the price they don’t read.” “Maeve,” I repeated, and the bottle-crack sound of the name told me I’d been right to hate it before I met it. She nodded. “My dear colleague,” she said dryly. “She calls herself a ritualist. I call her a crow who learned to count. She makes men into things they shouldn’t be for the price of their future and two teeth. He brought her the first tooth with his own pliers.” My stomach went cold. “Where.”