She inhales shakily and adjusts her robe. “Me, too.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I insist.
“I guess it caught me off guard,” she says meekly. “I hadn’t expected to start so soon. I mean, my temperature only rose nine or ten days ago.”
I frown. “Maybe we should check your progesterone again. That’s a shortluteal phase.”
“I don’t get it, though. I mean, my temperature actually went up a few more tenths of a degree. It usually drops the day my period starts,” she laments with a sniffle, and I sit back on my heels and furrow my brow.
“I was feeling a little crampy the last day or so, but I honestly thought I was just sore … you know, from all of this,” she gestures between us, and even though I shouldn’t be allowing a cocky smirk to take over my face at a time like this, I can’t exactly help myself. She rolls her eyes and allows it, though.
“Can I see your chart?” I ask her.
“My phone’s still on the nightstand,” she replies, looking confused.
“Bleeding or spotting?”
“Uh, spotting, for now.”
I hum thoughtfully then move to dig around beneath the sink for a pregnancy test. “Think you’ve got enough left in the tank?”
She frowns. “Rowan, don’t …”
“I’m serious. Trust me,” I tell her, and she swallows hard and nods before she takes the box from my hands.
I return with her phone a few seconds later, just as she’s setting the test strip onto the counter, and I pull up the charting app she’s been using since the NFP class we accidentally took together less than a year ago.
“You’re about nine days past ovulation, according to your peak day. Since we started with the little hearts a few days before that, there’s a chance this is implantation bleeding. It would also coincide with this secondary temp rise,” I point out, goosebumps lining my arms when I realize I could be right.
She bites her lip and stares down at the chart. “I don’t want to get our hopes up, just to be disappointed.”
“I know, I know. And the odds of it happening so quickly are pretty crazy. But then again, everything you’ve done, all the bloodwork and the hormones, it’s all come out normal, right?”
She shrugs only one shoulder again, as if she’s afraid to confirm what we already know to be true. “Mostly, yeah.”
“It’s not impossible,” I add.
She gulps and reaches out for me, and I pull her down to sit in my lap on the bathroom floor. “I guess … maybe it’s time for me to learn to let go of what I can’t control, to let God lead me to what He wants for us,” she ventures, and I nod and kiss the top of her head.
“Don’t be too discouraged if we don’t get a positive result right now. It’s still pretty early for an hCG spike,” I say. Before I can finish the statement, though, she’s already craning her neck to peer up at the test on the counter.
“Might as well wait another minute,” I say with a chuckle.
But her gaze is still zeroed in on that test strip, and I watch as her face pales.
“Claire?”
Her chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, and her throat works as she continues staring.
“I … I see it,” she chokes out, making my stomach dip.
“What?”
She licks her lips. “I see the second line from here.”
My eyes dart over to the counter, and I immediately know she’s right. She clutches one of my hands in her own as she slowly rises from my lap and leans over the test. Sucking in a sharp breath, she grabs the test and sinks down into my lap, and we stare at it together as I whisper a prayer of gratitude.
“Is this what they mean by God having a sense of humor?” she asks, torn between laughing and crying.
