“Understood.”
twenty-eight
GRAY
Gettinga hug from her mom felt so good after six weeks of not feeling her arms wrapped around her back. Gray wasn’t a child, but there was nothing like walking into the familiar safety of your parent’s embrace.
Her mom kept her promise and took her for a full breakfast. Now they were lounging in a hammock, side by side under her dad’s outdoor kitchen’s pergola, sipping unsweetened Lipton’s iced tea.
Her dad was working on a late lunch feast with her brother. It was comforting to be surrounded by her family. She’d needed the healing of being far away from everyone, but her family had always centered her.
Gray mused, “I shouldn’t be so hungry, but dang, Dad, that smells good. I swear, Mom, when I get home, I’m going on a cleanse.”
Her mom turned on her side and wrapped her arm around Gray’s waist, snuggling against her back. Gray felt her stomach rumble and hoped the gas turning over in her stomach didn’tslip. Her brother would tease her for ten years if she farted on their mom.
Had they not been so close, Gray would have missed her mother stiffening into a statue, but she felt it clearly and was about to ask if she was okay when her mom caught her eye and shook her head no.
She whispered, “If I had to pass gas, I would have moved. Geesh.”
“I know. Drop it.”
Unsettled by her mother’s tense mood all of a sudden, Gray started to say, “But—” except her mom cut her off.
“Later, Gray, please.”
That evening, Gray excused herself to go to her room and pack. She was flying back to Dublin first thing. She wasn’t the best packer, so when her mom knocked on the frame of the open door, it was to find Gray bouncing her ass on the stuffed suitcase trying to get the zipper to close.
“Jesus, Gray,” her mom sighed, getting on her knees to help with the zipper. “You are so neat and tidy in every other aspect of your life. Why can’t some of those organizational skills spill over into packing?”
“If there’s a master class on packing, sign me up,” Gray quipped. “I’m not above learning a new skill."
Her mom stood and went over to close the bedroom door before turning and leaning against it. The sad look on her face had the hair on the back of Gray’s neck standing.
“You’re freaking me out. What the hell is going on with you?”
Her mom lifted her oversized t-shirt from her jeans and pulled out a box, which was weird as all hell, but when she said, “Baby, I think you might be pregnant. I ran uptown and bought you a test,” Gray felt time stop.
She looked at the box, looked at her mother’s worried face, and then back to the box. She grappled with getting off thesuitcase and pressed shaky hands to her bed until she sat heavily on the comforter.
“What is this? Why would you say something like that? I told you I’ve put on a few pounds. Jesus, Mom, I hardly think that necessitated buying a…a pregnancy test. Plus, I haven’t had sex since…since him.”
Her mom sat next to her on the bed and laid the test between them. “When I had my arm around you earlier in the hammock, I felt something nudge me.”
“I was gassy! For the love of God!”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but when I was pregnant with you, I was exactly the same. I gained a few pounds. I thought it was water retention, or that I was eating too much, or some dire gastrointestinal disease.
“I was almost five months pregnant when I got the news. I’ve thought about this all afternoon. Do you remember when you got that horrible flu, and you came home to recover? The diarrhea, the vomiting?—”
“I certainly don’t need reminding. Nightmare.”
“You would have puked up your birth control pills for at least three days. You went to Colorado right after you recovered.”
Those words settled as comfortably as a pinless grenade. “But,” Gray paused, placing a hand on her stomach, “I’m not pregnant. No way. I think I would know.”
“Have you had a period during the placebo pill weeks?”
Gray blanched, trying to remember. “The first month or two after Colorado, I did have slight spotting, but I’ve never had heavy periods,” she defended.
