I open the email, tap on the link to the portal, and type in my credentials.
Two things immediately catch my eye. A big green checkmark in a circle with the bold wordsLOW RISKright above. And then… then I see a large purple gender symbol with one word above it:FEMALE.
My eyes tear up. Not only because it’s a girl, which I’d truly hoped for, but because of all the fears I didn’t even allow myself to think about. I’m a woman in my thirties, which can increase the risk of certain chromosomal anomalies, and that was never even a blip of concern on my radar until now.
But it’s a girl.
And she’s healthy.
My hand goes to my stomach, still flat at eleven weeks, and I hold it there as I scan the results page. Seeing words likeTrisomyhas me thinking of my friend, Allie, and what she went through.
My mouth goes dry when I realize what this means. It means today is the day I’m going to tell Trevor he’s going to be a father. I knew it was coming. I’ve been mentally preparing myself for it.
I just hope it doesn’t ruin what we have going.
The past few days with him have been nothing less than magical. Not only have I seen glimpses of the old Trevor, but I’ve really been enjoying the new one. It’s a thought that still amazes me. A week ago, if you’d told me I’d be sleeping with, reading to, and laughing alongside the man who didn’t even remember me, I’d have called you crazy. But now… now I think I might be falling for him. Thenewhim.
Yeah… crazy.
I’ll tell him tonight. After dinner. When we’re relaxing on the couch. After he’s told me about what he did for his training and what new tidbits he learned about the coffee house. After he’s kissed me a few times and told me I’m beautiful. After we’ve gazed deeply into each other’s eyes, trying to learn more about each other from sheer osmosis.
I tuck my phone away, wipe my eyes, and go back to work for the next four hours with an easy, carefree smile.
Everything’s going to work out just the way it’s supposed to.
“Ava.”
My name is being called from the office while I’m cleaning up the back room.
“Be there in a minute.”
I finish scrubbing out the sink and wiping down the counter. When I’m drying my hands, I turn and see Trevor perched against the doorframe, sifting through a stack of papers, his brow wrinkled.
“What’s up?” I ask.
He holds something out. “I was going through the mail earlier. What’s this twenty-five-thousand-dollar loan against the business for?”
I stiffen. I’m not quite prepared for this yet.
He shuffles through the papers again. “I’ve been trying to piece it all together. It doesn’t look like it was used for anything at the shop as there weren’t any unusual business expenditures over the past six months.” He holds up a second wad of papers. “I printed off all our personal bank statements for the past year. And it looks like starting last summer there was a six-thousand-dollar transaction to ‘brownmd—White Plains’ that recurred almost every six weeks. It happened four times, the last time in early January.” He looks up, brows scrunched. “What was that for?”
“Umm…” I look around to see if Jason has gone for the day. He hasn’t. “Can we talk about this later? I have to lock up.”
“Yeah, I guess. But why can’t you just tell me?”
I blow out a long breath, mostly to try and quell my anxiety. “I can. I will. But upstairs, okay? Just let me go tell Jason I’m done cleaning the back and that he can lock up.”
He nods absently, turning his attention back to the thick stack of papers as he heads for the apartment stairs, carrying the evidence of my deceit with him.
How could I have been so naïve? I knew he’d been going over the business books. Why didn’t I think he’d be going through the mail and looking at our personal accounts?
I meander in the shop longer than necessary, waiting for Jason to leave and then wasting a few minutes doing menial tasks out front.
Maybe I should be relieved Trevor happened across it. It means I can’t chicken out and postpone telling him the inevitable.
It’s going to be fine, I tell myself. He’s been told we were battling infertility. He knows we tried IVF. Surely he’ll be able to understand that I only withheld the pregnancy from him becauseheasked me to take baby steps.
Additionally, what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right? We were trying to have a baby. Me using up the last of our embryos seems logical. He doesn’t have to know he wasn’t part of that little decision.
