“Oh that’s right,” I exclaim. “Jello salads. Church potlucks.”
“Passionfruit,” he adds.
I sigh happily. “Passionfruit.”
Silence settles around the table.
“You got married the night you met?” his mother finally asks.
Of course she’s shocked. Which means now I need to say the other part.
I rip the bandage off as fast as I can. “And I’m pregnant now. That’s what the emergency was last week.”
She stares at me.
“I’m thrilled,” Logan adds. “In case that wasn’t clear. You’re going to be grandparents again.”
“Well at least these two got married first before having a baby,” Jeff says.
“Jeff,” she gasps.
I start to squirm.
This was a mistake.
Logan was wrong to think his parents would understand. I’m twenty-seven years old, about to graduate from medical school, and I’m being judged for getting pregnant right after I got married.
To a stranger.
Heat crawls up my spine and wraps around my throat.
“How was it an emergency?” she asks. “You’re in Los Angeles, right?”
“Yes?” I’m confused. I try to look at Logan, but the hot shame wrapping around my throat and climbing onto my cheeks has me locked in place, having to deal with the confused censure in his mother’s eyes.
“Do you live alone? Were you all alone?”
“No, I have roommates.”
“That’s not the same as a husband, though.” Her brows pull together in an expression so familiar, I suddenly understand that Logan is his mother’s child through and through. “You must have been so scared.”
“Oh.” I gasp in relief. “No. Oh, no, I wasn’t—I mean, I was scared a little, but it wasn’t a pregnancy complication. Thatwasn’t the emergency. It was that I didn’t know I was pregnant. I just found out, and—” I cut myself short from sayingand I was thinking of terminating it.
On the one hand, I’m not ashamed of that choice. On the other, I don’t need to explain it in the context of this moment, when we’ve decided to keep the pregnancy.
Logan shifts so he can wrap his arm around the back of my chair, curling his fingers around my far shoulder. “It was a surprise, because we’d, uh, been careful. But apparently not careful enough. And with the time difference, and she was at the hospital, she told me by text message and I had to make a split decision to go with the team to Boston or get on a plane to LA. Easiest decision of my life. I didn’t know what kind of support Frankie needed, but I knew it needed to be in person.”
“Of course you did.” Annie takes a deep breath. “Well, this is exciting.”
Exciting?
I blink.
She smiles at me. “I can be a lot. My daughter moved across an international border to get away from me.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Logan mutters.
Annie continues. “Emery had her baby last week and I’ve already been sent home.”
