Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
D arcy’s stomach roiled with confusion. At the railing overlooking the bluffs and the ocean spread out before them like a thick black blanket, she leaned forward and considered what she’d done in telling Reese about the “mystery man” she’d seen Lauren with. It wasn’t her business. And now it seemed clear she’d exacerbated the horrible gap between Reese and Joel.
Just last week, they’d seemed right as rain in their office. They’d worked diligently together, side by side.
It’s almost like you want to stir up trouble. It’s what Carlotta would have done, too.
Don’t you want to be like her?
Steven appeared beside Darcy with a glass of water and a goofy grin. He’d made the rounds at the party today, chatting up Colemans from both islands, teasing her great-grandpa Chuck in a way that made Chuck belly laugh, and helping Darcy’s mother whenever she needed it, even when she didn’t ask for it. In everything, he’d proven his good heart. His worthiness of her love. His incredible strength.
“Are you okay? You look a little pale.” Steven handed her the glass of water she’d presumed he’d intended for himself.
“Thank you.” Darcy drank half of it in a single go and laughed at herself. “I only had a half glass of wine. I don’t know what’s come over me.” She winced, then added, “I think I might have caused some problems between Reese and Joel.”
Steven furrowed his brow. “You said they’ve had years of problems. Whatever you said or did isn’t to blame.”
“I still feel guilty.”
Out across the water came the fireworks, blasting up from the dark shadow of a boat and exploding in pinks and yellows and greens and blues. Everyone at the Solstice Party turned and leaned over the railing to take it in. Steven rubbed Darcy’s back lovingly and kissed her ear and her cheek.
Overwhelmed with the intensity of the colors and the sounds of the explosions, Darcy suddenly turned with tears in her eyes, looked him in the eyes, and breathed, “I love you.”
It was like everything in the world stopped turning for a split second. Steven’s eyes widened. It was the first time she’d said it.
“I love you, too.”
Darcy’s heart melted to a mush. She burrowed her head against his chest and listened to the sturdy beat of his heart. You’re happy. You’re so happy here.
Even if that happiness doesn’t last forever, you feel it right now.
That’s all that matters.
Just before midnight, Darcy drove herself and Steven back to her and Rachelle’s apartment. Steven was effervescent and excited, talking at length about the new additions to the band tour they’d added and which songs they planned to perfect before they headed out. It was as though, in telling him she loved him for the first time, she’d sent electricity through him. He was lit up.
“Maybe you can come to our last few shows after you return from Rome,” Steven said.
Darcy nodded and smiled. Still, her stomach felt uneasy and strange, and she contemplated pulling over and vomiting along the edge of the road. It didn’t sound especially pleasurable. But maybe it would have to come to that.
“How does it feel to be the girlfriend of a soon-to-be-famous rock star?” Steven joked.
Darcy laughed and then clamped her mouth shut to keep the contents of her stomach in.
“You all right?” Steven asked.
Darcy concentrated all her energy on the road and on controlling her stomach. She nodded, swallowed, and tried out a bad joke. “I guess it’s not as sexy to call yourself the boyfriend of a soon-to-be app creator?”
“Actually, that has a great ring to it,” he said. “The boyfriend of a soon-to-be app creator!”
The apartment was quiet, soft, and cleaner than it would have been if Rachelle had been around. That was the nature of little sisters, Darcy remembered. But it was funny to pretend that Steven and Darcy lived there together. Steven removed his shirt in the living room and lay on the couch. “What a day.” Feeling slightly better now, Darcy made miniature milkshakes and cuddled with him on the couch until they both got too tired and had to go to bed.
Your stomach will feel better tomorrow. You’ll be fine.
But when Darcy woke up the following morning, her stomach was much worse. She threw up as quietly as she could in the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and used mouthwash, then proceeded to make a pot of coffee and pancakes. There was nothing Steven liked more than breakfast, and they preferred to eat it in bed together as the sun came up and the birds twittered outside.
“Did you know that when birds tweet, it helps the leaves open up and drink the air?” Steven asked as she entered with a big breakfast tray.
“That can’t be true,” Darcy said.
“It’s as true as saying this breakfast is the best thing I’ve seen all day.” Steven grinned and kissed her.
You know what the problem is. But you can’t admit it. You’re too scared.
Darcy shook the thought out of her mind. It can’t be. You’ve been careful.
But not careful enough.
Darcy tried to enjoy the morning. She ate half a pancake and drank a few sips of coffee but mostly cuddled up against Steven and felt the vibrations of his chest as he told stories and made jokes. Her eyes filled with tears and stung, but she always blinked them away so Steven didn’t notice.
At ten thirty, Steven admitted he had to hit the road. “I told Dad I’d work today. I’m cursing myself now.”
Darcy waited in bed as Steven got around to pulling on a T-shirt and jumping into his shorts. She felt tremendously heavy and on the verge of throwing up again.
To add insult to injury, Carlotta sent a text:
I’ve adjusted the back half of our pitch. Take a look at the document I sent via email. We only have a few weeks till Roma.
Darcy wanted to curl up in a ball and weep.
Steven kissed her slowly and passionately and said he loved her again. She said it back.
“Stay in bed,” he urged. “You had a long day yesterday.”
“I have to work at one,” she said.
“Call in sick! You’re a little green.” Steven kissed her nose and backed out of the bedroom. Darcy waved meekly until he was out of sight.
After the front door closed behind him Darcy grabbed her phone and googled: am i pregnant , as though the internet knew better than all the signals her body was giving her. She read the “top ten early signs you’re pregnant” list and ticked off seven. Her heartbeat thundered. How are you going to tell Carlotta? You ruined your first and only shot at a real career. She’ll never take you under her wing now.
What will Steven say?
The answer to this last question was a lot easier to come by. It was already clear Steven would welcome the baby with open arms, with whatever he had in his bank account, and with tremendous love and hope. He’d said early on he wanted children by the time he was thirty. He was twenty-seven. Thirty was right around the corner. This is it.
Darcy placed a pillow over her head and cursed herself. Then, for a moment, she allowed a visual of herself, Steven, and a little baby at the beach next summer. She imagined Rachelle flying in to meet the baby. She imagined her mother’s tears of joy.
Darcy got up and wandered around her apartment like a ghost. All she wanted was to spew her fears and anger and confusion at Rachelle. All she wanted was to hear her sister say it was all right.
Around noon, she broke down to text:
I need advice
Rachelle wrote back immediately:
I'm on break. I’ll call you from the alley.
Darcy’s heart blasted against her rib cage. Telling someone about this made it real. She let out a single sob, then fixed her face when Rachelle’s name popped up on her screen. She answered it with a bright, “Hi! Hello!”
“Uh-oh. That’s your crazy voice.” Rachelle smiled from a colorful alley in Rome. Behind her, an Italian smoked a cigarette and wagged his eyebrows toward Rachelle’s screen. In Italian, Rachelle said something to him; something that presumably meant get out of here . It was slightly flirty. When he left, Rachelle spun back around and ordered, “Come on. Tell me. What’s up?”
Darcy sighed and rubbed her temple. “I think I might be pregnant.”
Rachelle’s eyes widened. “Wow. Wow, wow, wow.”
Darcy was momentarily pleased to be the dramatic one for a change. “It’s bad, right? I mean, I already told you how intense Carlotta is. She hates women who give up on their careers to have families. She thinks they’re the single greatest thing holding women back from their full potential or whatever. And she picked me, Rachelle. She picked me to mentor. Nobody has ever picked me before.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rachelle said. “Steven picked you to love.”
“It’s not like there are many people on this island.”
“There are plenty of women in the world Steven could date,” Rachelle insisted. “But he’s smitten with you.”
Darcy’s heart swelled. “We said we love each other for the first time last night.”
“Don’t make me throw up,” Rachelle teased.
Darcy let out a laugh that soon transitioned to a sob. Her emotions were all over the place: another telltale sign of pregnancy.
“Listen, if this Carlotta lady is like this, maybe she isn’t the right woman to follow career-wise,” Rachelle offered. “Diana would understand if I had to take a break to have a kid.”
“Would she? Really?”
“Yes? I mean, I think so.”
Darcy didn’t believe that for a second. Diana had a daughter, but she’d had her after her career had taken off. She’d had Valentina at “the right time.” And now she’d invested time and money into Rachelle. If Rachelle spat on that by taking a few years off to raise her own child, Darcy was sure Diana wouldn’t take kindly to it.
It was still a backward world for women. Women were sometimes far more aggressive about maintaining old-fashioned rules than men. Which was ridiculous because it was up to women to keep up the world’s population. But Darcy couldn’t change the rules from the quiet shadows of her apartment in Nantucket.
“Have you taken a pregnancy test?” Rachelle asked.
“Not yet.”
Rachelle’s face relaxed into a smile. “You don’t even know if it’s real yet! Why don’t you take one and call me back?”
Darcy groaned into her hand. “I don’t want to walk into the pharmacy and buy a test. Somebody could see.”
Rachelle waved her hand. “I have an extra one at the house. It should be in a plastic bag in the third drawer of my desk. Third or second, I’m not sure.”
Darcy guffawed. “You have a spare pregnancy test here? When did you take a test?”
“Back in Boston,” Rachelle said. “We weren’t as close back then. I didn’t want to tell anyone. It was negative, anyway, so I just brushed it off and kept going.”
Darcy felt a momentary sting at being left out of something potentially enormous in Rachelle’s life. “Did you want the baby? When you took the test, I mean.”
Rachelle looked contemplative. A little wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. “I don’t know. I liked imagining myself as a mother, and you as an aunt, and Mom as a grandma. But the reality of dropping out of culinary school and raising some guy’s baby tore me up inside. I felt so stupid. I’d worked so hard to get into culinary school. It was all going to fall apart after one mistake.”
But that’s what you mean. You have worked to get in Carlotta’s good graces. It’s your one chance at something great.
Does Rachelle not understand that?
Suddenly, an American voice yelled into the alley. “Rach? I need your help with prep.”
Rachelle’s face was stoic. “I gotta go. Let me know what happens as soon as you take it. I’m here for you. Love you!” She hung up immediately. The screen went black.
Just then, Darcy didn’t feel that Rachelle was there for her. It felt more like Rachelle was thousands of miles away, still thinking her career was more worthwhile than Darcy’s. She thought Darcy could just have a baby and it would be fine, whereas if Rachelle had a baby everything would fall apart.
Resentment made Darcy’s stomach stir. Again, she thought she would throw up. But she didn’t. Ten months of this. Can you really handle it?
Darcy got ready for work, then crept into Rachelle’s bedroom to find the pregnancy test. It wasn’t in the third or second drawer but shoved deep under the desk and tucked in the corner. It was like Rachelle was hiding it from everyone, even herself. Darcy put the test on the kitchen table, read the instructions, then resolved to take it after work. But at the last second, she shoved it into her purse and resolved to take it in a neutral location so she could throw it away in a trash can that wasn’t hers. When or if it was negative, she didn’t want Steven to get the wrong idea. She didn’t want him to think she was ready.
Darcy was pleased Barbara was working today. She bustled around the room, sterilizing her equipment and chatting about her son’s recent soccer tournament. One of the other mothers had gotten a nose job that completely changed her face. “She doesn’t look like herself. Her son doesn’t even recognize her.”
This sort of gossip made Darcy forget where she was and how difficult things could get. “I thought we as a society learned from Jennifer Grey that drastically different noses never work?”
“Right?” Barbara shook her head. “I might need you to help this afternoon.” She gestured around her eyes, where fine lines had begun to poke through her otherwise cleanly Botoxed face. It was a perk of the job. Botox and fillers and facials and acid treatments whenever you wanted, forever. At twenty-five, Darcy was still too young for Botox, even preventative Botox. But she treated herself to facials and acid treatments and often professed her dream to Barbara that she would “never wrinkle” because she took such good care of her skin. “Let me know how that works out for you,” Barbara always joked with an eye roll.
Barbara and their clients put Darcy in a fun and easy mood, allowing her to briefly forget her anxiety, her potential pregnancy, and her upcoming life-changing trip to Rome. Steven texted several times during the day to ask her how she was doing, to show off what he’d cooked for lunch, and to remind her he loved her. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. He wanted everyone to know.
Darcy pushed the pregnancy test to the final hour of work, then resolved to take it after work, then found herself carrying it out of the office and into her car. There she pondered what to do. It was after seven, and Rachelle had texted just: ????? She waited for the results.
How long could Darcy go without knowing? She floated in a liminal space.
Darcy drove out to a diner on the edge of town. It was where she and Steven sometimes got burgers and watched bad game shows from the eighties on television screens that didn’t look much younger than the shows. She grabbed a booth and pretended to read the menu for a long time. On the opposite side of the diner were three families. The mothers slaved over their children, cleaning up their faces and hands, reminding them to sit up straight, and asking them to say please and thank you. Their husbands ate enormous meals and remained quiet. It was as though they didn’t even notice their wives were doing the brunt of the work. They accepted societal rules for husbands and wives breezily. It validated them and their status as “men.”
It wasn’t that Darcy assumed Steven would be like them. But it terrified her.
Then she remembered something else. Oriana mentioned that Reese had been a stay-at-home father for several years while her career continued. But Reese and Joel’s relationship was strained. Does that mean the father shouldn’t take on that role? Her heart raced with anxiety.
Suddenly, the server returned to take her order. The server was a blond cheerleader type, and she swapped green gum from one side of her mouth to the other. She looked bored. Darcy wondered if she’d been a planned pregnancy, or if she had children of her own at home, or what she would think or say or do if it accidentally happened to her.
It’s not fair that women have to deal with this. It’s not fair that all this weight is on our shoulders.
“I’ll have a grilled cheese and a Diet Coke,” Darcy said. “Please.”
The server didn’t bother to write it down. She left Darcy alone in her booth, shivering with adrenaline. Darcy bolted to her feet and swept into the bathroom, where she closed herself in a stall and tore open the pregnancy test. Please, please, please, she thought to herself, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. Do you want to be pregnant? Or do you want your life to start?
Darcy peed on the stick, put it back in the plastic bag, washed her hands for almost two minutes, then looked herself in the eyes. The test was ready. It seemed against nature that you could so swiftly learn something that altered your universe. Come on. Look at it.
Darcy took a deep breath and looked.
Two pink lines.
Two pink lines meant she was pregnant.
Darcy’s stomach twisted into knots. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
You’re going to be a mother.
Darcy returned to the stall and sat on the toilet seat with her face in her hands. She thrummed with a confusing mix of elation and hope and fear and denial. She imagined telling Steven about the baby; she imagined him jumping up and covering her face with kisses. She imagined celebrating with her mother and grandmother and adding to the grand lineage of Colemans. She imagined her grandfather writing her a check that he forced her to take “for the good of my grandchild.” And she imagined knowing for the rest of her life that she could have become someone special, someone else, if only she hadn’t been so careless.
But she’d be in love with her child. Maybe she already was.
Rachelle texted her again:
I'm dying here. You have to tell me.
Darcy’s fingers shook as she texted back:
just took the test. I'm not pregnant.
RACHELLE: omg! What a relief, right? Everything can go back to normal.
RACHELLE: get ready for Roma baby!
Darcy’s head swam. Why did you lie to your sister? Because you’re not ready to face it yet.
It was remarkable to have lied. It meant that Rachelle showed what she really felt about it. Then again, if Darcy had told her the truth, Rachelle probably would have hyped her up. She’d have said I already love your baby!
Darcy left the bathroom to find her grilled cheese already going cold on her table. She took a big sip of Diet Coke as her stomach swirled like a washing machine. The cost was approximately seven bucks. She set down a ten and fled the restaurant as tears spilled from her eyes.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she ran. It kept going and going until she reached her car. It was Carlotta. It was almost as if Carlotta was watching her. As if she knew.
“I need you to come back to Martha’s Vineyard tomorrow,” she insisted when Darcy answered. “I have a fresh take on how we can pitch the food section of WonderBee. I want you to hear it first.”
Darcy sat in the quiet stillness of her car and heard herself agree to go. She had to fake a non-pregnancy as long as she could. She had to manage it in Rome and beyond—at least until the app sold and she was rich. Women faked it all the time.
But faking something this drastic in front of Carlotta would be difficult.
Faking it in front of Rachelle would be next to impossible.
But faking it with Steven would be easy. He had on his “love blinders.” She would smile, tell him she loved him (which was true!), and continue to think about what she wanted and when she wanted it. She was twenty-five years old. It was time to hatch a plan and not let this accident provide her only fate.