Think like a lawyer.
Facts.
Positive home pregnancy test. Possible early pregnancy. Need medical confirmation. Need an appointment. Need to know timing. Need to know options. Need to know what I am legally, medically, emotionally supposed to do next.
Need to stop shaking.
I lower my hands and reach for my phone on the coffee table.
There are messages.
Ainsley, again.
Benjamin, confirming he covered the 10:30.
One missed call from my mother that has nothing to do with any of this and somehow makes me want to burst into tears.
And Mario.
My entire body goes still.
One message.
You left the office sick. Are you all right?
I stare at it for so long the screen dims.
Then I tap it awake again.
Of course he knows I left.
He knows everything that happens under his roof.
It does not mean anything.
It does not mean he knows why.
He cannot know why.
Unless—
No. Stop.
He knows I was sick. That is all.
I sit there, thumb hovering over the screen, trying to decide what a normal person would send.
A normal woman who had eaten something bad.
A normal outside counsel attorney who needed to work from home.
A normal person who did not have a positive pregnancy test hidden behind hand towels, two more in the trash, and a search history full of his dead wife.
I type:
Yes. Home now. I’m fine.
I stare at it, then I delete it.
