CHAPTER ONE
Standing at the pickup zone outside Lakeland Elementary School, Wei-Wei Lu checked her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, tapping her big toe inside her shoe as she tried not to let her anxiety show to Mason Armstahl, the last student of her fourth grade class—and actually, the last student of the entire school—to be picked up today.
Come on. Not today of all days.
Thankfully, the weather outside was pleasant, early October being one of Wei-Wei’s favorite times of the year in western Michigan, with the temperature not too hot or cold and the sky dazzlingly clear.
She looked at her watch again.
Twenty minutes past pickup time.
“Your babysitter is supposed to pick you up like usual, right?” Wei-Wei asked Mason, who nodded back at her, his thick, dark bangs partially covering his big, round eyes.
“Um, I think so?” Mason responded, his voice barely audible.
Young for the grade—he had yet to turn nine while some students were already ten—Mason was one of the smallest students in the class, which meant that Wei-Wei, who was barely five feet tall herself, stood a head taller than him and had to lean down to hear him.
“Did she say anything when she dropped you off this morning about possibly being late picking you up?” Wei-Wei asked calmly, while inwardly panicking.
She switched from Mandarin, which she had been speaking, to English.
Though Lakeland was a Mandarin immersion school and she had a strict “No English in the classroom” rule, technically they were outside, and plus, she wanted to make sure he fully understood her question.
I can’t be late for my appointment!
Mason started shaking his head, but then paused. “Actually, my mom dropped me off this morning,” he answered.
“Oh.” Wei-Wei wondered if there was any significance to this fact.
Mason’s mother, Riya, was a single mother and an emergency room nurse and she often worked long shifts, so his babysitter, Carla, usually did the drop-offs and pickups.
Late parents or babysitters were common, of course, and normally after pickup duty she would just be heading back to her classroom to grade papers and prepare for the next day, or to the cafeteria where she held a weekly after-school Chinese calligraphy class, but today, Wei-Wei simply did not have the time to wait any longer for Mason to be picked up.
And that was because today, Wei-Wei had her nine-week prenatal appointment to have her very first ultrasound.
She was actually going to see her baby! It was not an overstatement to say that Wei-Wei was overjoyed about being pregnant, something she had been dreaming of since her first day student teaching almost ten years ago.
“Maybe Carla’s sick today?” Mason continued, his mouth crooking to one side. “I think that’s what my mom said…”
“I see,” Wei-Wei answered, switching back to Mandarin.
“It’s okay. Let’s go to the office and call your mom.
” She patted his shoulder gently. No student liked being the last one picked up, and of course Mason—and whoever was supposed to pick him up today—couldn’t have known what an important appointment she had scheduled for that afternoon.
She was just reaching to open the main doors when she heard a deep voice calling from behind them.
“Hey, Mason, buddy!”
Wei-Wei turned around to see a very tall man walking toward them. He had a big mop of thick black hair similar to Mason’s, except it was exceedingly tousled, like he had just gotten out of bed.
“Uncle Ravi!” Mason yelled, louder than Wei-Wei had ever heard him speak before.
Ambling up to them, seemingly oblivious that he was nearly thirty minutes late, the man stuck his hand out, saying, “Hi, I’m Mason’s uncle, Ravi Khan.”
“Hi, Ravi, I’m Mason’s teacher, Miss Wei-Wei,” she said, returning his handshake.
“Right, I forgot!” Mason said, slapping his forehead. He said to Wei-Wei in Mandarin, “My mom said my uncle was going to pick me up today. I guess he didn’t know what time to come?”
“Oh, sorry, am I late?” Ravi replied, also in Mandarin much to Wei-Wei’s surprise. And with a fairly decent accent, she had to admit, if a bit stilted.
“Yes, you are,” Wei-Wei responded, wanting to point out the completely empty pickup zone but restraining herself from doing so. “The dismissal bell rings at two forty-five.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ravi said, “I’m terribly jet-lagged.
I just flew in from Cambodia. I didn’t arrive until very late last night, or rather, early this morning.
” He said the words “jetlagged” and “Cambodia” in English, suggesting to Wei-Wei that he learned Mandarin as a young child and had not been exposed to much advanced vocabulary.
“I understand,” Wei-Wei said, although she really didn’t.
She flew back and forth to see her parents in China every other year or so and never once had she been late for something important as a result of jet lag.
She didn’t have time for idle chitchat, though, and she quickly directed him and Mason into the front office, where she had to confirm that this latecomer was on Mason’s approved pickup list.
Thankfully, when Wei-Wei asked Jenni at the front desk, who Ravi greeted with a fist bump, to check Mason’s file, the name “Ravi Khan, Uncle” was, in fact, listed.
She was about to tell Ravi that they were free to go, but then she overheard him asking Mason, “…What do you say we stop for ice cream on the way home?”
“Ahem.” She cleared her throat. “Mason is allergic to dairy,” she said to Ravi. “He breaks out in hives if he has even a tiny bit.”
Shouldn’t his uncle know that?
He chuckled, not appearing to be at all fazed. “Oh, right. I did know that. Good thing I’m actually a medic! Hopefully I’d be able to get a—how do you say it in Chinese—EpiPen in him in time.” He then winked at her, indicating that he was teasing.
Did he just wink at me?
Wei-Wei didn’t know if the fact that this man was a medical professional made it better or worse that he was joking about giving his severely-allergic-to-dairy nephew ice cream. But she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“Mason, don’t forget to bring back your finished lantern for the festival tomorrow,” she said when she saw the craft dangling from his side, tied to his backpack.
“Yes, Lu Laoshi, I’ll finish decorating it tonight.”
Ravi said, “Mason, race you across the parking lot?”
“Okay!” Mason took off running, the lantern knocking against his leg.
“Now, let’s go get some NONDAIRY ice cream!” Ravi called out, looking at Wei-Wei when he said it and giving her another wink.
Did he really just wink at me again? Ugh, some people!
Worried that she would be late for her appointment, Wei-Wei rushed to her doctor’s office, which was fortunately just a short drive from school.
After getting checked in, she found a seat in the waiting room. Closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths, she shifted her focus from late student pickups to her budding pregnancy.
Hopefully everything is okay, she thought as she put a hand gently on her abdomen.
Her name was soon called, and Wei-Wei was shown to an exam room where she changed into a dressing gown and lay down on the exam table.
Her obstetrician, Dr. Galafi, a black-haired, petite woman with a short, bobbed haircut who wore dark-rimmed glasses—basically a mirror of Wei-Wei—appeared moments later.
“Hi, Wei-Wei, it’s lovely to see you. Are we ready to do this?” the doctor said warmly as she washed and dried her hands.
“Yes, I’m ready,” Wei-Wei said, her heart beating faster in anticipation.
“Excellent. Let’s see if we can get a good view from your belly today.
” The doctor put on gloves and started up the ultrasound machine.
She squeezed some cool gel onto Wei-Wei’s belly and made contact with the handheld transducer.
Just a few seconds later, a white glow appeared on the screen, pulsing fast.
“And there’s your baby,” Dr. Galafi announced. “That’s a nice, strong heartbeat.”
Wei-Wei’s own heart skipped a beat as she stared at the screen.
I can’t believe it. My baby.
“For sure—I’m pregnant?” she asked. The home pregnancy test she had taken a month ago and subsequent blood test had all been positive, but now, seeing the bright, blinking heartbeat on screen, it finally felt real.
“Yes, for sure. It looks like the procedure worked exactly as intended, and you are, let’s see, about nine weeks pregnant,” the doctor reported as she clicked on a few points on the screen, making some measurements.
“Does everything look okay?” Wei-Wei asked, wanting to be completely sure. She had a million other questions but this one was good enough for now.
“Yes,” the doctor said, smiling. “Everything looks great.”
Wei-Wei let out a huge sigh of relief. “Oh, wow. Thank you, Doctor.”
I’m going to be a mother.
After failing to find Mr. Right but really wanting to be a mother, Wei-Wei had decided at the beginning of the year to pursue artificial insemination.
After careful review of hundreds of applicants, screening hair and eye color, health history, education, languages spoken and even personality characteristics, she had finally narrowed it down to one donor, and then Dr. Galafi had expertly guided her through the process of becoming pregnant.
There had been a few setbacks—self-injecting medications turned out to be more difficult than Wei-Wei had expected, and then the first two tries didn’t take—but she was here now, really pregnant.
I’m going to be a mother!
“What’s my due date?” she asked, wanting to confirm the estimate she had already made herself.
“Looks like May 7,” the doctor answered after checking her chart.
“Got it,” Wei-Wei said. The date matched her own calculations. A little unfortunate, as she had hoped to time the baby’s arrival for after the end of the school year, but after the first two attempts were unsuccessful, she had decided not to wait before trying a third time.
It’s okay. I’m sure we’ll get a great substitute for the last month of the school year. And maybe I can come in for a visit with the baby to see the class before school lets out.
Wei-Wei then asked Dr. Galafi another important question. “When can I find out the sex?”
“Usually around eighteen weeks,” she answered. “So, in about two months. Can you wait that long? And are you sure you really want to know?”
“I just want to have the nursery all ready,” Wei-Wei said.
“Well, luckily I think the old days of pink or blue are behind us,” Dr. Galafi commented. “You can decorate your nursery however you like.”
“Right, I know,” Wei-Wei said. But still, she bit her lip as she thought about planning for the baby’s arrival. “I just want everything to be perfect.”
“I understand,” Dr. Galafi said, nodding sympathetically. “For now, you just take care of yourself. Eat healthy, get plenty of rest and exercise and I’ll see you in four weeks.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Wei-Wei said, “for helping make my dreams come true.”
* * *
Back at home, Wei-Wei felt much calmer than she had been earlier that afternoon at the pickup zone. She really hoped she hadn’t been rude to Mason; after all, it wasn’t his fault his uncle was late. She made a note in her planner to apologize to him in the morning.
Now that she had had her first ultrasound, she walked into the guest room of her small but cozy one-story house, armed with a measuring tape, day planner and pen, feeling excited to transform the room into the perfect nursery.
Like the house overall, the room was modest—it wasn’t technically a bedroom as it lacked a closet—but it had a large, south-facing window that flooded the room with natural light, and a corner nook with sloping ceilings that would be a perfect place for a crib.
Wei-Wei had in fact pictured a crib in that exact place when she had first seen the house eight years ago, freshly arrived in Lakeland to start her job at the elementary school.
At last, I get to put a crib there.
Working steadily, she measured the room, drawing diagrams and taking careful notes in her planner.
Then she sat down at her desk with her laptop, turned to a blank page in her planner, uncapped a new gel pen and started writing her to-do list in neat Chinese script.
She titled the page “For Baby” and, referencing books and online sites she had already read months ago, she organized the list by category, and then further broke it down by possible actions needed depending on outcomes—including “Baby arrives early/late,” “Over/under eight pounds,” and even “Allergic to breast milk.”
After filling nearly two pages, she started a new one, writing at the top “For School,” and then listed a dozen things that needed to be done in advance of her maternity leave.
After almost a solid hour of planning, she stopped to go back over everything she had written.
Her list was long, but Wei-Wei was eager to tackle it.
Except…there was one last item she had to include, and she had been avoiding even thinking about it until now.
Lifting her pen, she wrote at the bottom of the page in characters that were a little shakier:
“Tell Mom and Dad about the baby.”
Wei-Wei put her pen down, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Her parents had been supportive all her life—doting on her through her childhood, sending her off with great fanfare to study in the US, and not even complaining much when she told them she was going to stay in Michigan and take a job at Lakeland Elementary after graduating with her early education degree; but still, they were fairly traditional.
Wei-Wei knew that it would be a departure from their idea of what a family was when she told them that she hadn’t found someone to marry and instead was going to have a baby on her own.
She thought some more, and for this item, she turned the page and started composing another list, this one devising possible ways she could tell them: “Option 1: tell them on our regular video call after first trimester is past,” “Option 2: email them so I don’t have to see their reaction live,” and “Option 3: tell them when they come for their visit in the summer, after the baby is actually born???”
At that point they can’t react too strongly to my choice…right?
Copyright ? 2026 by Kristi Hong