Two Stripes
The Walgreens bathroom was a single stall with a lock that didn't quite catch and fluorescent lighting that made everything look like a verdict painted in jaundiced yellow.
I'd bought three tests. Different brands.
I told myself that was logic — different manufacturers, different sensitivity thresholds.
Maybe one manufacturer had put out a faulty batch, maybe this one had expired while sitting on the shelf, maybe this had been exchanged with one that was already positive. A lot of maybes and this ones.
I took the first one.
Waited.
The instructions said two minutes. I counted to sixty and looked anyway.
Two lines.
I looked at the ceiling. The fluorescent tube had a flicker at one end, a dying thing, an irregular pulse that had probably been reported and ignored for months. I looked at it for a while.
Took the second test.
Waited the full two minutes this time. Counted properly. Stared at the wall where someone had written something in Sharpie that had been partially scrubbed off. I didn't try to read it.
Alright, I did. It said FUCK GOVERNMENT. A slogan as good as any.
I looked down.
Two lines.
I sat on the edge of the toilet lid and held both tests and looked at them side by side.
The third one was still in the bag at my feet.
I didn't take it.
I already knew.
I'd known on the bathroom floor at two in the morning.
I'd known at the breakfast table watching him turn the pages of the paper.
I'd known in the Walgreens aisle standing in front of the display for four minutes before I picked anything up.
The tests hadn't told me anything. They'd just made it a fact instead of a knowing.
I wrapped them in paper towels and put them in the bottom of my bag under everything else. Can’t tell you why I did it. I just… did.
I unlocked the door that didn't quite catch and walked out through the pharmacy past the woman at the register who didn't look up and out into the September heat of Baton Rouge where the world was doing what it always did — carry on.
I sat in my car.
I didn't start it.
The parking lot was ordinary. A woman was loading grocery bags into an SUV. A teenager was on his phone by the entrance. A cart was gently rolled by the wind — a cart someone had left at an angle in an empty space, moving in no particular direction.
I felt a little like the cart.
I put my hands on the steering wheel.
You're pregnant.
I tried it out. Just in my head. The sentence.
You are pregnant with Judah Beaumont's child.
The teenager went inside. The cart rolled another inch and stopped.
I thought about my father's house. Of a silent Sunday afternoon and rooms built around scripture — however twisted it may’ve been. This hadn’t been the plan. My father’s voice rang in my head, and kept ringing.
Whore. Child out of wedlock! A whore!
I pressed my lips together so hard they turned white.
“Mercy… What have you done?”
The drive back to St. Francisville took thirty-four minutes. I watched the clock almost the entire way and somehow still saw two red lines on the face of it.
I had thirty-four minutes to decide what to do. Clearly that was not enough time. My hands were shaking, my eyes were red for having cried for twenty solid minutes in the Walgreen’s bathroom and I couldn’t get my father to shut the fuck up.
I so desperately needed him to shut up.
By the time I pulled onto the gravel drive I had it — or so I thought — figured out. I wouldn’t tell him anything. For now. Because I needed to figure out something better than that, and that needed time.
So I pinched my pale cheeks, bringing some color back into them, blew my nose in a napkin I found in my bag and prayed my eyes wouldn’t show red in the accusatory light of the estate.
He was in the study when I came in. Door open.
“How was the drive?” he called.
“Fine. Traffic on the bridge.”
“There's always traffic on the bridge,” he muttered.
I put my bag down in the hallway.
“I picked up that coffee you like,” I called back. “The Guatemalan.”
A pause.
“Thank you,” he said.
I went to the kitchen and put the coffee away and stood at the counter for a moment with my palms flat on the surface and my eyes closed.
Okay.
Maybe it’s all going to be all right.
Then I started dinner.
He watched me through dinner.
Not obviously. Judah was never obvious about the things that mattered. He ate and asked about the food bank intake numbers and mentioned that the diocese had requested a revised budget proposal, all of it normal, all of it the texture of an ordinary evening in an ordinary house.
But he watched me.
I could feel it. Every time I looked up, he was looking at his plate or the window or his glass. Every time I looked away, I felt his eyes come back. Or I could’ve just been paranoid — which wouldn’t have been that far-fetched.
But I had a feeling Judah knew something had shifted.
He didn't know what. God, I hoped he didn’t know what.
I kept my face exactly where I'd put it on the drive home and talked about the budget proposal and didn't touch the wine he'd poured, which I realized too late was itself a tell. I reached for the glass. Brought it to my lips. Set it down without drinking, which was worse.
His eyes came up.
I reached for my water instead.
“You're quiet,” he said.
“Tired.” I met his gaze. “The drive.”
He looked at me too long.
“Early night, then,” he said.
He came to bed at eleven.
I was on my side, facing the window, not asleep. He knew I wasn't asleep — my breathing was wrong, too controlled. He'd know that by now. He knew everything about me by now.
The bed shifted with his weight.
His hand found my hip.
“Judah—”
“Turn over.”
I did.
I met his eyes in the dim light of the bedroom.
They were pale and unreadable, focused entirely on my face as though searching for something.
His hand moved from my hip to my stomach, fingers splaying possessively across the flat plane where something impossible was happening.
I wondered if he knew, if he could somehow feel the change in me before I'd found the words to tell him.
His thumb traced a small circle there, a small circle here. And then, without warning, he moved over me, pressing me into the mattress, one hand beside my head, the other still on my belly.
His mouth came down on mine, hard, demanding in a way it hadn't been before. No gentle beginning, no sweet words whispered against my skin. Just teeth and tongue and a force that pushed me deeper into the mattress.
“Judah, wait—”
He didn't. His hand gripped my wrist, pinning it above my head. The other moved from my stomach to my thigh, fingers digging in with a possessive pressure that would leave marks. His weight settled fully against me, heavier than usual.
I turned my face away, caught my breath. “Maybe we shouldn't—”
“Shouldn't what?” His voice was low, controlled, but with an edge I'd never heard before. He bit down on my neck, and I gasped. “You don't want me tonight, Mercy?”
His hips ground against mine, insistent. I felt the heat building in my core even as another part of me recoiled. My father's voice, unbidden: Protect the innocent. The unborn are sacred vessels.
Shut the fuck up!
“It's not that,” I whispered, my hand pressing against his chest, not quite pushing him away. “I just don't feel well,” I finished lamely, the lie tasting sour in my mouth.
His movements stilled. For a moment, the only sound was our breathing in the darkened room.
Then he shifted, leaning on one elbow, his face hovering above mine.
Those light eyes studied me with such intensity that I felt exposed, as if he could see through skin to the cellular changes happening within.
“You’ve been not-well for a long time,” he said, and his free hand brushed a hair from my face with unexpected tenderness. “I start to worry.”
I swallowed, feeling the weight of his gaze like a physical thing. “It's just stress,” I said, my voice small against his. “The food bank, the budget proposal. Everything.”
“Everything,” he echoed, drawing the word out like he was tasting it for lies. His hand moved from my hair to my throat, resting there.
My pulse throbbed against his palm.
“Tell me about it,” he whispered as he leaned toward my neck. “This everything…” His hot breath ghosted against my skin. He kissed me where he’d bitten me, then lower. My shoulder, my collarbone. The thin strap of my nightgown slipped off my shoulder. His knee pushed my legs apart.
“I…” My voice broke off when his mouth fell over my breast, wetting the silk over my nipple with his tongue.
My breasts were fuller — I prayed he wouldn’t notice.
He traced circles through the damp fabric, and then — he pulled the nightgown down and took my naked breast into his mouth.
My nipple hardened into a painful peak, more sensitive than it had ever been before.
My back arched involuntarily, betraying me.
His fingers found the edge of my underwear, teasing along the elastic before slipping beneath. I bit my lip to stifle a moan. I knew I was already wet. There was no denying it.
We both knew by then where the lie ended, and the truth began.
My hand reached for his cock, hoping that maybe that would distract him enough.
He hissed through his teeth as my fingers wrapped around him through his pajama pants. I stroked him firmly. His eyes fluttered closed for just a moment — a small victory.
But when they opened again, that searching look hadn't disappeared. If anything, it had intensified, turned predatory. He caught my wrist, stilling my movements.
“Not tonight,” he murmured, and pulled my hand away.
Before I could respond, he'd tugged my underwear down my thighs with one smooth move. I felt exposed in a way I never had before with him, vulnerable not just in body but in the secret I was keeping. His fingers found me, slid through the wetness there.
“You're different,” he whispered, and my heart nearly stopped.