1. Lo #2
I sat in this kitchen with the date circled on the calendar and my phone in my hand and I waited. All day. All night. I finally texted him at eleven: Five years. In case you forgot.
His reply came back at one in the morning, my time: FUCK. Lo. I’m so sorry. There was a thing and I lost track of… I’ll make it up to you. I swear.
He didn’t.
I open the fridge now, standing in the dark, not hungry but knowing I should eat.
There’s leftover chicken and a salad going bad and a six-pack of the beer he likes that I keep buying even though he’s never here to drink it.
I close the fridge. My stomach feels wrong, not sick, exactly, but off. Tight in a way I can’t explain.
My hand goes to my abdomen without thinking.
I’m late.
The realization hits me like cold water. I’m late, not by a lot, maybe a week past when I should have started, but late enough that I’ve been counting the days and trying not to think about what it means.
Jesse was home three weeks ago, in February. Two days between tour legs, barely enough time to sleep let alone anything else, but we managed. We always manage. That’s what marriage is sometimes, managing to find each other in the gaps between everything else.
But I’m late.
I grab my keys before I can talk myself out of it.
***
The drive to Henderson takes forty-five minutes. It’s two towns over, far enough that I won’t run into anyone I know, far enough that the whispers won’t start before I even know if there’s anything to whisper about.
The Walgreens parking lot is nearly empty at this hour.
A couple of cars near the front, probably employees.
A truck idling by the side entrance, someone making a delivery.
I park in the back, under the broken light that’s been broken for years, and I sit in my truck with my hands on the wheel and my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
This is ridiculous.
I’m thirty-one years old and I’ve been married for five years.
If I’m pregnant, that’s not a scandal; that’s a normal thing that happens to married people.
But somehow, sitting in this parking lot, it doesn’t feel normal.
It feels terrifying, like the universe is about to hand me something I don’t know how to hold.
The store is bright and cold inside. Too bright, after the darkness of the ranch and the car and everything I’ve been trying not to think about. A teenage boy behind the register looks up when I come in, looks back down at his phone, doesn’t care. Good. That’s good.
The tests are in aisle six.
I stand there for too long, staring at the options. Different brands, different prices, different promises about accuracy and timing and how soon you can know. Digital or lines. Single pack or double. Early detection or standard.
“Can I help you find something?”
I nearly jump out of my skin. The stock boy is young, maybe nineteen, with acne scars and a genuinely helpful expression that makes me feel worse instead of better.
“No,” I say. Too sharp. “I mean - no thank you. I’m fine.”
He backs away with his hands raised, clearly used to customers being weird in this particular aisle. I wait until he’s gone, then grab two tests, different brands, belt and suspenders, the way Granny used to say, and walk to the checkout like a woman with nothing to hide.
The cashier doesn’t look at me. She’s seventeen and bored and playing something on her phone between customers, and she scans the tests and bags them without a single glance at my face.
I pay cash.
I drive home.
The radio stays off because every third song is his, and I can’t hear his voice right now.
I can’t hear “Honey Eyes” coming through the speakers, that song he wrote for me on the tailgate of my grandmother’s truck, that song that launched a career and is slowly dismantling a marriage.
I can’t hear him sing about my eyes when my eyes are full of tears I’m trying not to let fall.
***
The house is still dark when I get back.
I go straight to the bathroom. I lock the door even though there’s no one here to walk in. Force of habit. Fear of something I can’t name.
The instructions are simple. Pee on the stick. Wait three minutes. Read the result.
I can do this.
I’ve pulled calves and stitched up gashes and run a four-hundred-head operation alone for a year. I can pee on a stick.
The timer on my phone counts down. Three minutes has never been longer.
I sit on the edge of the tub and think about Jesse, about the man I married, the one who couldn’t stop looking at me, who sang me songs he made up on the spot, who promised he’d never be anywhere but here.
I think about the man he’s become, the one who forgets anniversaries, who lets his manager run his life, who looked at me through a phone screen last month and didn’t seem to recognize what he was seeing.
I think about the fact that I still love him.
That’s the hardest part. After everything, the absence, the broken promises, the slow erosion of everything we built, I still love him. I love him with the same desperate, stupid hope I felt on our wedding day, and I don’t know if that makes me loyal or pathetic or both.
The timer goes off.
I pick up the first test. Two pink lines, clear as day.
I pick up the second test. Two pink lines.
Pregnant.
I sit back down on the edge of the tub and I stare at those lines and I try to feel something. Joy, maybe, or fear, or anger: something that makes sense.
What I feel is numb.
A baby. Our baby, Jesse’s baby. The Jesse who used to sing about my eyes, who married me with shaking hands, who swore he’d never leave.
He’s coming home tomorrow. The bonfire’s the next night, the whole town coming out to welcome him back, the homecoming celebration that Ridley throws for their famous son.
I could tell him then. Pull him aside, find a quiet moment, put his hand on my belly and say we’re going to be parents, Jesse, we made a person, please come home to me, please remember who we are.
Maybe this is what brings him back.
Maybe a baby changes everything.