A shaky inhale rattled through the line. “You’ll regret this.”
“No, I won’t. I’m finally done protecting the wrong person.”
She started yelling, but I didn’t listen. I hung up.
A strange calm settled over me as I set the phone down. I’d cut out the rot before it spread any further. I just hoped it wasn’t too late to save my marriage.
15
CALLIE
My period was officially two days late. I bought a test yesterday but waited until this morning to take it since the first pee was supposed to be the most accurate. And with how early in the possible pregnancy I was taking this, I needed every advantage I could get to make sure the results were accurate.
Staring at the fogged mirror, I could barely believe this lousy bathroom might be where I discovered life-changing news. But here I was.
My heart thudded painfully as I leaned against the sink. The small cardboard box I’d bought at the drugstore sat beside the faucet, the torn wrapper already in the trash. I’d told myself I was being ridiculous buying a test this early. That stress could delay my cycle. That sleeping in a crappy hotel bed and crying every night would throw off anyone’s biological clock.
But my hands still shook as I took the test. They didn’t stop trembling when I set the little stick on the sink, the little window facing up. Or when I sat on the edge of the bathtub, my bare feet on the cold tile as my emotions swung wildly between hope and fear.
The longest three minutes of my life crawled by.
When a faint second line started to appear, I blinked hard, convinced it had to be a trick of the light. But it darkened, solidifying into a truth that crashed over me so fast my breath caught.
There were two pink lines. The test was positive.
I pressed a trembling hand to my belly, my throat closing around a sound that was equal parts sob and whisper. Tears pricked my eyes before I could stop them.
Ethan and I had tried for six months. I’d been so disappointed each time my period came. And now that it finally happened…I was alone in a cheap hotel bathroom.
I slid to the floor, my knees pulled together as I bent forward, cradling my stomach with both hands. Tears fell freely, dripping onto the fabric of my leggings. The ache in my chest spread until I could barely breathe around it.
“We tried so hard,” I whispered to myself.
A wave of grief hit so hard I nearly folded over. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t in Ethan’s arms. This wasn’t a celebration of the life we’d dreamed of building together.
Instead, I was hiding from the man I loved because trusting him had broken me. The irony twisted like a knife.
I had no idea how Ethan would react to the news. Or how I was supposed to protect a child from Margot’s subtle cruelty.
I curled my fingers around the pregnancy test until the plastic creaked. Then I forced myself to breathe through the flood of emotions. I had time to figure all that out. For now, I just needed to come to terms with being pregnant under these circumstances. The rest could wait until I could breathe again.
The next few days blurred together in a haze of swallowed emotions. I didn’t tell a soul about the pregnancy. Every time I looked at the cheap strip of plastic still tucked inside the toiletry bag under my sink, my throat tightened.
I cycled through every feeling a person could possibly have. Whenever the emotions felt like too much, I opened my journal and let the pen scratch furiously across the page. I filled paragraph after paragraph with everything I didn’t have the courage to speak aloud yet. My fear of doing this alone, my love for the baby I had only just discovered, and my disappointment that the moment I’d dreamed about had turned into something I had to survive instead of celebrate.
Grading finals became my lifeline. I clung to the structure of rubrics. Whenever my mind tried to spiral, I focused on my students’ essays. At least those made sense.
But every night, when I lay down and rested a hand over my stomach, the loneliness pressed in harder. It was odd feeling like I was all by myself when Ethan’s baby was growing inside me. It somehow made the isolation feel even worse.
On Thursday afternoon, after reading the same paragraph on my laptop for twenty minutes, I decided to get out of the room. My head was pounding again from stress and exhaustion, and I told myself a walk around the mall would help. Maybe I’d buy moisturizer or a new notebook. Something practical and inexpensive.
Instead, I found myself drifting toward the baby store near the west entrance, drawn by the stuffed animals in the window.
I didn’t go inside. I just stared for a moment, my hand unconsciously lowering to my belly.
“Callie?”
I flinched and turned to see Gage’s mother standing near the planter beside me, a shopping bag hanging from her wrist. Of all the people to run into, she was near the top of the list for disastrous timing.
