Page 38

Today is my first OB appointment. I've known I'm pregnant for three weeks, but going to a doctor and getting my first ultrasound makes it real-real.

I still haven't told anyone except Carson. Every time I think about telling Mom or one of the girls, I find some reason to put it off. The next thing I know, three weeks have gone by, and I'm going to do this alone.

But I've got this.

The storm door bangs shut behind me, and my breath comes out white. Frost covers the whole yard, every blade of grass stiff and white after the temperature dropped below freezing overnight. The porch boards are slick under my flats.

I've got my keys hooked on one finger and a travel mug of decaf I resent with my whole body. I told Trina at the office I have a dentist appointment, and she didn't question it. Nobody lies about the dentist.

I make it to the steps before I see a truck parked out front that I don't recognize. It's idling with exhaust curling up into the sky. There's a rental barcode sticker slapped on the back window, and the defroster has cleared two fan-shaped patches in the windshield while the rest is still furred with frost.

The driver's door opens, and Carson gets out. I stop dead in my tracks, my mug halfway to my mouth. He's wearing his hat and that canvas coat.

The coat hangs open over a gray thermal that fits him far too well, and six weeks of telling myself he was a vacation story falls apart in the time it takes him to shut the truck door. My body, which has spent every morning this month throwing up saltines, picks this exact moment to remember everything it did with him on a quilt in front of a Christmas tree.

Showing up outside my house fifteen hundred miles from where he's supposed to be is perfectly normal.

I don't get a chance to figure out what the hell he's doing here, because two doors down, Rhonda's kitchen blind twitches. I need to contain this now. I come down the walk fast, flats be damned.

"What are you doing here?” I whisper, even though no one can hear me.

"You said eleven."

"Yeah. My appointment is at eleven. You never said you were coming. I said I'd text you after."

"Didn't want the text. I figured I needed to be there with you."

I stop beside the truck and stare at him. "You could've let me know. Needless to say, this is a little bit of a surprise."

"Could've. Not sure how that would have made a difference."

Heat crawls up the back of my neck despite the cold, and my pulse is beating hard enough that I can feel it in my throat. I blame the appointment. Him standing here definitely isn't helping.

The blind two doors down shifts again, tipped at the exact angle Rhonda uses when she's pretending she isn't watching something. She’s totally spying on us.

"Well, then let's get going. It's a thirty-minute drive." I jerk my chin toward his truck. "My neighbor has binoculars and a group text."

Carson walks around the front and opens the passenger door for me. I catch the door frame instead of climbing in. "How did you even find my house?"

"You gave me your address."

Right. I completely forgot I gave him my address to send the arbitrary guilt check.

"The completely random five-hundred-dollar check you mailed me with no explanation? That's right."

His mouth tightens a little. "Wasn't random."

"Great. Good talk."

He's standing there in the freezing cold, holding my door like none of this is strange or that he didn't let me prepare to do this alone.

I gave him every way out there was. I thought he took every one of them. He mailed me five hundred dollars with no note, and I haven't heard a peep from him since.

He shuts the door, walks around the truck, and gets behind the wheel.

We pull away before Rhonda can deduce any more of this debacle than a hot cowboy is picking me up for work.

The heater is cranked all the way up, but my body can't seem to pick a temperature. My face is hot while a shiver keeps working its way down my back.