“My curiosity is killing me,” I confessed.
“I knew it!”
“Shhhh… you’re going to wake the kids.”
She pulled the carton toward her and impatiently took the spoon we were supposed to be sharing. “I could do some recon for you. You distract Nick with your feminine wiles, and I’ll sneak into his apartment and have a look around.”
“I’m not aiding and abetting a B and E so you can go snooping in a detective’s apartment. You just got your charges dropped. Can we please just enjoy this new normal for a while?” I wasn’t ready for any more surprises. Experience (and my gut) told me this peace couldn’t last, but I was determined to live in denial a little while longer.
At least until the ice cream was gone.
“Fine, I’ll be patient,” Vero harrumphed, scraping the bottom of the carton. “But whatever’s in that box had better be worth it.”
“Size isn’t important.”
“Speak for yourself. If Javi ever gets down on one knee, I’m not settling for anything under a carat. You and I have earned at least that much. I’m proud of us, by the way. We took matters into our own hands and found the missing money. We got out of that whole mess in Maryland, and neither of us got accused of murdering anybody. Now you and Nick have an easy path ahead of you. When he pops the question, you can relax and finally settle down.”
I laughed wryly at that.
“Stop being such a worrywart! You’re not pregnant,” she said, as if the very notion were preposterous.
“I’m late.”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress, and our periods are probably all screwy because we’re living under the same roof again. You know, that whole red-tent thing that happens when our cycles sync up. Either that or it’s the change. You are pretty old, you know.”
“I’m only thirty-one. I’m not menopausal.”
“You’ll be thirty-two in a month. That’s definitely peri. I’m just saying,” she said as I glared at her sideways, “you have nothing to worry about. A late period is like a missing shower curtain. You can’t assume there’s a body involved. You need to gather all the evidence before you go jumping to conclusions. Besides, I have a sixth sense about these things. I knew my Aunt Esme was pregnant before she was even late. And I correctly guessed the sex of at least three celebrity babies. If my best friend was pregnant, I would definitely know.”
“But what if—?”
Vero dropped her spoon into the carton. “Would you just take the damn test already? It’s not a calculus exam. All you have to do is pee on a stick. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”
“This is different.”
“You’re right. It is different. Because you’re crazy about him. And he’s crazy about you, Finlay. And all this worrying is making me crazy, too. Which is why I’m taking you upstairs right now to put you out of your misery.” Vero shoved aside her empty ice cream carton and towed me with her to the bathroom. She retrieved the twin-pack of pregnancy tests from the cabinet and peeled off the cellophane.
“I only need one,” I pointed out when she opened both the boxes and dumped the contents on the counter.
“What kind of friend would I be if I let you go through it alone?” she said, parroting my own words back to me. “We’re doing this together, just like everything else.”
“Give me that,” I said, taking the test she held out to me. We split up to pee on our respective sticks, then regrouped at the kitchen table to wait. We set our tests on their empty boxes in front of us.
“How long?” I asked, squinting at the tiny window at the end of my test stick.
“Three minutes,” she said, setting the timer on her phone. “Don’t look. A watched pot never boils.” She pushed me back in my seat and handed me a potato chip.
I shook my head, too nervous to eat it. I dropped my head into my hands, feeling nauseated as I listened to Vero crunch into it herself.
She rubbed a few soothing circles on my back, the way she did for the kids when they needed comforting. “Would it really be so bad if the test was positive? You love each other. You both have stable careers. And you have me! Delia and Zach would be great older siblings,” she added, “and Nick would be an amazing dad. And since you are, in fact, a hopeless fashion nightmare, you already have plenty of elastic-waisted pants.”
That pulled a reluctant laugh out of me.
She put her hand on mine and gave it a squeeze, her eyes warm and her smile comforting. “It could be really great, you know?”
I smiled. “I know.” The same thoughts had entered my mind as well, more and more often since we’d come home. I’d find myself leaning against a doorframe, watching Nick with the kids, my heart swelling when he played board games with Delia or napped on the sofa with Zach curled under his arm. I’d caught myself smiling as I listened to Delia dote on her baby dolls. Had become wistfulputting Zach’s changing table in storage and folding up the tiny clothes he had outgrown. I’d paused to watch other mothers push their strollers down the streets of our neighborhood. More than once, I had put a hand to my belly, wondering if it would be so bad if things I sometimes secretly wished for happened a little out of order this time.
Our lives were always out of order. But there was also joy in some of that chaos. Maybe a few more surprises wouldn’t be so bad.
