CH 36 - #twolines
#twolines
Meredith
My sister and Bella had been at my and Tanner’s house for our cookout for a couple of hours, hanging out and having a fun time with everyone, when I realized Madison had been in the guest bathroom for longer than normal. I left everyone in the backyard to see what the deal was.
“Are you okay in there?” I asked my sister after tapping on the door.
“Yes, I’ll be out in a sec.” After well over a minute, she opened the door. “Hey.”
“Seth overwhelmed you, didn’t he? He can be pretty intense, but he’s harmless. The best thing about him is that he looks like Chris Hemsworth. He just needs an Australian accent,” I chuckled.
“Seth didn’t overwhelm me.”
I studied Madison’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“Do you think it’s something you ate since you got here?”
She took a deep breath and shook her head no.
“Then what is it?” I continued.
“Can we go to your bedroom? I need to talk to you.”
“Come on.”
We sat on the edge of my bed. Madison looked at me, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m pretty certain I’m pregnant.”
My mouth fell open. “Oh, my gosh.”
“I was late with my period, then I spotted, thinking I was starting, and then I stopped spotting two days later.”
“Going by that, plus your nausea, I would say that you are pregnant. I have a test here if you want to take it.”
“I’m so scared. What if I am carrying Luke’s baby?”
“Let’s find out if you are first, then we’ll go from there.”
Madison and I went into my bathroom. After closing the door behind us, I got one of several pregnancy tests that I kept on hand out of the cabinet, opened it, and handed the white plastic stick to my sister.
She pulled down her yoga pants and panties, sat on the toilet, and peed on the stick.
Afterward, she set it on the vanity counter, and we waited for the result.
Not even a minute had passed when two lines appeared.
My sister was indeed pregnant. She looked at me, her chin quivering.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her as she quietly cried.
Once she calmed down, she lifted her head off my shoulder.
“You’ve always been so careful about not getting pregnant, going by your cycle,” I said.
“I lost track while I was with Luke. I know I got pregnant when we had sex in the hayloft. I counted back the days. What am I supposed to do, Meredith?”
“What is your heart telling you to do?”
“Do you mean, like, am I having the baby or not?”
“Well, that’s the first decision to be made.”
“I can’t get an abortion. I’m not knocking any woman who has. It just isn’t for me.”
“So, you’re going to have Luke’s baby then. My next question for you is, are you going to tell him?”
“I-I don’t know. I wouldn’t know how even to begin to approach this situation with him.”
“It’s only fair to him that you tell him he’s going to be a father.”
Madison covered her mouth and went back over to the toilet, throwing up. I held her hair away from her face until she was done. Afterward, I got her a cool washcloth and held it to her forehead as we looked at each other.
“You’re going to think I’m an awful person for what I’m about to say,” my sister began.
“I doubt it, but go ahead.”
“I’m not going to burden Luke with all of this. He needs to live his life without the complexity of mine. He’s doing well at the new ranch he’s at, and I will not disrupt that.”
“So you’re going to tackle raising two children by yourself? Ty’s been MIA since he received the modification papers from your attorney. Now, Luke is going to be unknowingly MIA since you aren’t going to tell him that you’re pregnant with his child.”
“I’ve essentially been raising Bella on my own anyway since she was born. What’s one more kid, right?”
Madison dropped her head and started crying again. I held her once more until she’d composed herself. Then she told me not to tell our parents about her pregnancy, that she would when the time was right.
She and Bella left the cookout, which wasn’t surprising.
As I watched my sister pull out of my driveway, all I could think about was Luke.
I felt sorry for him. He had been through so much, losing his dad, losing Madison and Bella, and also leaving his ancestral ranch.
Now, he was going to lose his opportunity to be a father to his child.
I understood my sister’s stance on the matter because I understood her, but that didn’t mean I agreed with how she was handling it.