The Apple of My Eye -Kaz Brekker (Complete)

Chapter Three

VAN DER HOULT

The Van Der Hoult family was not very known in the Barrel or in the city centre of Katterdam at all. They dealt mostly with people of other cities since the richer people in Katterdam had another family to give them good bred horses, so Laura was kept in there in secret.

The first three months had been easy.

Laura had always been a skinny girl and the hunger that the Barrel had made her know had kept her underweight most of her life, so it took her a while to gain weight. Misses Hoult had insister that it was because it was her first pregnancy, so it meant that it was fine, even though Mister Hoult had seemed worried about how thin she continued being.

At that time, she was still moving around quite well even though her lower back would hurt every now and then; her anxiety had been controlled with a great number of easy tasks inside the house and calming walks under the apple trees, even though she had been scolded more often than not for going out there in the winter.

Kaz had visited whenever he could, never staying more than a few hours and leaving before the sun left. He would sit beside her in the parlour sofa and mostly listen to her complain of boredom with surprising amount of attention. Sometimes he would talk about work, but never really gave her the gruesome detail, even though she asked, excited to hear about some action.

The second trimester had brough her inconvenience after inconvenience.

She thought she had been lucky for not having morning-sickness and heartburns, but she had managed to get most of the checklist of the second trimester down. Her belly grew slowly, but in a steady pace, surprising Misses Hoult about how her skin had been taking the stretch.

However, the next few weeks brought her a lot of nosebleeds and constant stuffy-nose, making her sniff and sigh in annoyance a lot. Her breasts had grown too and they hurt quite a bit, Misses Hoult confessed that this part would only get worse; she had lost hope in having her normal breast size back at the end of the pregnancy. The cramps started the very first week, getting her legs more often than anything else; most of the time she would deal with them herself, leaning against the wall and stretching, but there was a time it wasn't working and poor Philip had freaked out when she was in pain, thinking the baby was coming and ran to call her Da, making the pale man stumble into her bedroom shaking only to find her struggling to stretch her leg.

Kaz barely visited her this time, writing her at least once every couple of weeks under different aliases, though she knew it was him just by the small and quick handwriting that she had forced herself to read for years. She didn't write back, but was quite happy that he would write long letters, detailing gruesome details and the Slat-gossip.

The third trimester, however, managed to hit her in the face with strength enough to make her cry most nights.

Besides her skin being awful, her legs being heavy and her back aching all the time, she had manged to get worse.

She couldn't find a position that felt remotely close to comfortable to sleep and the kicking baby had hit her bladder twice, making her pee her sheets in the middle of the night like a child; the baby also managed to kick her ribs and bones she didn't even know the child had access to in her belly. Her circulation had been poor, making her hands and feet cold a lot, and making her thank the Saint for the warmer months.

She would spend most of her time taking care of things for the baby.

Laura was quite good sewing, she had known that every since she was small, but she had gotten much better. She would read a lot about childcare in general and was quite confident of her abilities by the time the kicks started to feel stronger and the bones started to ache much more.