The world stayed exactly the same, and somehow that felt worse.
I sat on the bathroom floor. Didn't remember deciding to sit, didn't remember my legs giving out, but suddenly I was down there, back against the cabinet, knees pulled up to my chest, forehead pressed against them.
The tile was cold. The faucet dripped, slow and steady, like a countdown. Like a heartbeat. Like time passing, whether I was ready for it or not.
My heart pounded so hard I could feel it everywhere. In my throat. In my temples. In my fingertips, still clutching that stupid plastic stick with its two pink lines. My breath came too fast, too shallow. The edges of my vision started to darken, the way they used to during panic attacks, the way they had the night Mom finally fell apart for good.
No. Not now. I couldn't fall apart now.
I forced myself to breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth.
Count to four on the inhale. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Repeat.
One, two, three, four.
Hold.
One, two, three, four.
Exhale.
One, two, three, four.
Slowly—so slowly—my heartbeat steadied. The darkness at the edges of my vision receded. The bathroom came back into focus. White tile. Dripping faucet. Two pregnancy tests sitting on the edge of the sink, their pink lines glaring at me like accusations.
Pregnant.
I was pregnant with Marcus's baby.
The man who had left me three weeks ago for a woman he'd known three months. The man who couldn't be bothered to answer my calls, who texted about phone chargers instead of asking if I was okay, who had looked at me in the garden under the apple blossoms and told me he'd been unhappy for a long time.
The man who had looked right through me in my own kitchen, who had called the B&B a distraction, and who had chosen someone else without even having the decency to admit it.
I was carrying his child.
No partner. No plan. Just me.
The words settled over me like a weight. Alone. I was going to have to do this alone. No partner. No support. No one to hold my hand in the delivery room or wake up for midnight feedings or tell me everything was going to be okay.
Just me.
Just me and this baby I hadn't planned for, hadn't asked for, wasn't sure I was ready for.
I pressed my hand to my stomach. Still flat. Still unchanged. No outward sign of the chaos happening inside.
I wouldn't tell anyone. Not yet. Not until I knew what I wanted, what I was capable of, what this even meant. I needed time to think. Time to process. Time to figure out how to be a mother when I'd barely figured out how to be alone.
I would handle this myself. That's what the women in my family did. They endured. They survived. They built lives from wreckage.
Gran had done it. Widowed at forty with a failing business and a daughter to raise, she'd turned it into something that lasted generations.
My mother had tried to do it. She'd failed, in the end, but she'd tried. And maybe that was something.
Now it was my turn.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Red eyes. Pale skin. Hair that needed washing. I looked like someone who had been through a war.
Maybe I had.
