Pink and clear and unmistakable in the little window.
My stomach dropped. Here we go again. Another failure. Another month of?—
Wait.
I leaned closer, my breath fogging the plastic.
There was something else. Faint. So faint I thought maybe I was imagining it. A shadow of a line where the second line should be.
I picked up the test with trembling hands and held it directly under the light.
Two lines.
Faint, but there. The second line was lighter than the first, barely visible, but it wasthere. Real. Undeniable.
I stared at it.
Blinked.
Stared again.
The line didn’t disappear.
My hands started shaking harder. I set the test down on the counter before I dropped it, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps that didn’t feel like they were bringing in enough air.
It could be wrong,I thought.It could be a false positive. It could be?—
I grabbed the second test.
This time, my hands were shaking so badly I almost missed. But I managed, and I set the second test next to the first one and forced myself to wait the full three minutes. I watched the clock on my phone tick forward—4:55, 4:56, 4:57—each second stretching into eternity.
When I finally looked, there were two lines again.
Darker this time. Clearer. No question.
I took the third test.
Same result.
Three tests. Three sets of two pink lines. Three confirmations of something I’d been too afraid to hope for.
I was pregnant.
The word felt too big for my mouth. Too real. Too impossible and too inevitable all at once.
I sank onto the bathroom floor, my back against the tub, the three tests lined up on the tile in front of me like evidence in a trial I hadn’t known I was on. The cold seeped through my pajama pants, but I didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Could barely breathe past the tightness in my chest that felt like joy, terror, and relief all tangled together into something I didn’t have a name for.
I was crying before I realized it. Not the desperate, broken crying from two weeks ago when the tests had been negative. This was different. Softer. Deeper. The kind of crying that came from somewhere so far down, I hadn’t known it existed.
I pressed my hands against my stomach—still flat, still the same—and tried to wrap my mind around the fact that there was something there now. A cluster of cells. A possibility. Alife.
A knock on the bathroom door made me jump.
“Baby?” Mama’s voice was rough with sleep and concern. “You okay in there?”
I opened my mouth to answer but nothing came out except another sob.
The door opened. Mama stood in the doorway in her robe and bonnet, her eyes going from my face to the tests on the floor and back again.
