Bethany’s heartbeat quickened. Why was she so nervous to share this news?
“All right. All right,” she said, conceding.
“I knew it,” Esme said.
“Remember last week when I told you I was entering menopause?” she asked. “Well, I was wrong about that. Very wrong, it turns out.”
She waited for the words to work through them. Valerie’s jaw dropped.
“No. It happened to you, too?” Valerie whispered.
Rebecca got to her feet. She looked amazed. “You’re pregnant?”
“Shh!” Bethany laughed.
But all chaos broke out after that. Valerie and Esme were on their feet, pulling Bethany into their arms for hugs and kisses.
“I can’t believe it! I’m so happy!” Valerie cried.
Bethany couldn’t stop laughing, although tears spilled from her eyes.
“Oh, honey,” Esme said, squeezing her hand.
“I’m just so worried,” Bethany said, sitting down and wiping her cheeks. “I have a thousand things on my mind. It was an accident, obviously, and I’m not always handling it well.”
“But it’s a beautiful thing,” Rebecca assured her.
“Then again,” Valerie added, “it’s okay not to feel like it’s a blessing all the time.”
“I want to be joyful about it,” Bethany agreed. “But my feelings around it are so complicated. And I don’t know how the kids are going to take it!”
“Kids are adaptable,” Esme said. “They have to be! They’re at the beginning of their lives.”
But Bethany wasn’t so sure about that. When she’d been a teenager, their brother Joel had passed away from cancer, and she’d never fully recovered from it. Bringing a baby into the family was different from a death—very different, she knew. But it still had a drama to it that would change the course of everything. It felt like playing with fire.
They ordered a big chicken sandwich for Bethany, fish sandwiches for everyone else, and a big bowl of fries for the table. Bethany drank iced tea and told her sisters and mother about their trip to New York City. She heard their stories about the previous week. Rebecca had a scary incident at the restaurant, where she didn’t recognize a celebrity dining in, who’d expected to be recognized. “Apparently, it was a big faux pas,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes.
After a full hour and a half with her sisters, Bethany felt calm and—maybe—ready to face her children with the news. She decided to prepare food. She’d cook their favorite things: lasagna, grilled fish, maybe a cake or some cookies. She’d make it known that she’d always be there for them, that more love via a brand-new baby was never a bad thing. She’d explain that change was good.
“Good luck, honey,” Esme said just before she left. “Your kids love you more than anything, you know. They’re going to understand. They have to.”
That night,Bethany gathered her children on the veranda, poured them sodas, piled their plates high with their favorite foods, raised a glass of sparkling water, and said she had something to tell them. Rod held her other hand under the table.
“Don’t tell us you’re pregnant,” Maddie joked.
Bethany gritted her teeth. She wanted to snap at Maddie for destroying the moment. Maddie wore a smirk, as though she thought she’d said something really funny. But the air over the table shifted, intensified, until Maddie’s smile fell, and she cried, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Phoebe’s eyes were enormous. Tommy was giving her the exact look Bethany had assumed he would—the one that chilled her blood.
“I’m pregnant,” Bethany said, offering a smile first to them, then to Rod.
Her children were quieter than she’d ever experienced. All she could hear was the sweep of the waves behind her. She told herself that she couldn’t cry, that she had to maintain an easy disposition in front of the kids—despite the hormonal hurricane in her body right now.
“Why didn’t you tell us you wanted more kids?” Phoebe asked, sounding both curious and irritated.
Bethany squeezed Rod’s hand harder. “When Rod and I got married, we didn’t really think it was in the cards for us. We hardly talked about it ourselves.”
“So it was a mistake?” Maddie asked.
