8. Hannah
— ? —
Hannah
I look insane, and I feel insane.
The parking lot is empty except for a delivery truck and a homeless guy sleeping on a bench near the entrance. I turn off the engine and sit in the silence, watching the numbers on the clock change.
6:48.
Thirteen hours ago, I was standing in front of a mirror in a red dress, letting my husband spin me around and tell me I was beautiful. Thirteen hours ago, I still believed in us.
6:49.
I press my hand to my stomach. There’s nothing to feel yet, no bump, no flutter, nothing but flat skin and the faint nausea that’s been following me for days. But I know. My body has been telling me for days, and I’ve finally stopped arguing with it.
6:50.
A woman in scrubs walks past my car, probably heading to a night shift at the hospital down the street. She doesn’t look at me. Nobody looks at me. I’m invisible here in this parking lot, just like I was invisible last night at the party, just like I’ve been invisible for years.
6:51.
I think about the first time Griffin said “after this project.”
It was two years ago. We were lying in bed after sex, and I brought up having kids casually, like it wasn’t a thing I’d been thinking about constantly since I turned twenty-five.
He kissed my forehead and said we should wait until the company was more stable.
“After this project,” he said. “Then we’ll start trying. ”
I believed him.
6:52.
There have been four more since that night. The freshest was two weeks ago, right here in this car, on our way home from Rhonda’s dinner. Every time, the same words.
And every time I believed him, because believing him was the load-bearing wall of my entire life, and I wasn’t ready to find out what fell down without it.
6:53.
I’m such an idiot.
6:54.
The fluorescent lights flicker on inside the store. I can see movement through the windows, one person stocking shelves, another behind the register.
6:55.
I try to imagine telling Griffin I’m pregnant, imagine his face, his reaction. Would he be happy? Would he pretend to be happy while internally calculating how this affects his plans?
Would he ask me to wait? “After this project, we’ll figure out the baby stuff. I promise.”
6:56.
A car pulls into the lot and parks a few spaces away. A woman gets out, probably in her sixties, with a small dog on a leash. She glances at me through my windshield, does a visible double-take at whatever she sees on my face, and hurries toward the store.
I probably look like the survivor of some quiet disaster, and I suppose that’s exactly what I am. The disaster just doesn’t have a name yet, or a police report, or a single visible mark on me.
6:57.
The homeless guy on the bench stirs, sits up, rubs his eyes. He’s got a shopping cart full of bags and a sign that says “Anything helps. God bless.” I should give him something. I should care about someone other than myself for five seconds.
I don’t move.
6:58.
The store lights are fully on now. I can see a tired-looking employee in a red vest unlocking the front doors.
6:59.
I grab my purse, and the three boxes inside it shift and knock together like dice, like the future rattling around waiting to be rolled.
7:00.
I’m inside before the automatic doors have fully opened.
The store has that particular early-morning quiet, muzak playing softly overhead, the hum of refrigerators in the back, the squeak of my shoes on freshly mopped floors.
The employee who unlocked the doors gives me a startled look, probably not used to customers sprinting through the entrance at opening time.
I find the pregnancy tests on aisle six, next to the condoms and the ovulation kits.
There’s a whole wall of options. Digital, early result, two-pack, five-pack. Pink boxes, blue boxes, purple boxes. Some promise results in one minute, some in three, some claim to be accurate up to six days before your missed period.
One of the boxes has a photo of a smiling couple on the front, his hand over hers over the stick, and a banner that says SHARE THE MOMENT. I stand there in the fluorescent hum of aisle six and stare at those two laughing strangers until my eyes burn.
I grab three different brands. None of them are that one.
The teenager at the register gives me a look that’s half pity, half curiosity. She’s probably nineteen, maybe twenty, with a nose ring and purple streaks in her hair. She scans the tests without comment, but I can see the questions in her eyes.
I don’t offer any answers. I pay in cash, shove everything into my purse, and drive home on autopilot.
Griffin’s car is in the driveway.
My stomach clenches. I wanted to do this alone. I wanted to see the results before I had to face him, before I had to decide what any of this means.
But I can’t sit in my car forever. And honestly, part of me wants to see him. Wants to look into his eyes and search for the lie I should have seen years ago.
The front door opens before I reach it.
“Hannah!” Griffin looks wrecked, still in last night’s suit, jacket gone, shirt untucked, stubble darkening his jaw. His eyes are red-rimmed, his hair a disaster. “Jesus Christ, are you okay? I’ve been calling for hours. Where did you go?”
“I needed air.”
“Air?” He stares at me. “You disappeared in the middle of the party. You didn’t come to bed. You locked yourself in the guest room and then vanished at dawn. I thought…” His voice cracks. “I thought something happened to you.”
He looks genuinely worried. Genuinely scared.
I push past him into the house.
“Hannah. Talk to me. Please.”
“I’m fine.” My voice comes out flat. Dead. “I just didn’t feel well.”
“You’re not fine.” He follows me through the living room, into the kitchen. “You look like you’ve been crying all night. What happened? Was it the Julie thing? Because I know I should have said something, and I’m so sorry…”
“It’s not about Julie.”
“Then what? Hannah, you’re scaring me.”
I stop at the island. The same island where he fucked me two weeks ago and promised me everything would be different. The same island where I’ve made him coffee every morning for five years.
“I just need some time alone,” I say. “Can you give me that?”
“Time alone?” He sounds bewildered. “Hannah, the launch is tonight. This is the biggest day of our careers.”
Of course. The launch.
Always the launch. Always the project. Always something more important than me.
“Then go without me.”
“What?”
“I’ll meet you there.” I finally turn to face him. “I just need a few hours. Please.”
He searches my face. I watch his expression shift through confusion, concern, frustration. He opens his mouth like he’s going to push, like he’s finally going to actually ask what’s wrong, what happened, why his wife looks like her whole world collapsed overnight.
But he doesn’t.
“Okay.” He steps closer, reaching for me. “But you have to tell me what’s going on. After the launch. Promise me we’ll talk.”
After the launch. Always after.
I let him hug me. I stand stiff in his arms and count the seconds until he lets go, one for every year I stood exactly here and believed him.
“I love you,” he says into my hair. “Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out. Together.”
The word love makes me want to scream.
I say nothing.
He pulls back, and for a second he doesn’t move toward the door. His hand comes up like he’s going to touch my face, then stops halfway.
“Hannah.” His voice is quiet. “Last night. Before you left. Did something happen? Did someone say something to you?”
He’s so close. One question away from the truth, and for one second I almost hand it to him, almost say you did, you said everything, just to watch his face when he realizes I know.
But if I say it now, he’ll fix it the only way he knows how, and I’ll let him, and I can’t afford that today.
“Go, Griffin. You’ll be late.”
He studies me a moment longer. Then he kisses my forehead and leaves.
I listen to his car pull out of the driveway. Then I’m finally, blessedly alone.
The bathroom feels smaller than I remember.
I line the three tests up on the counter. I read the instructions even though I already know them by heart. I’ve read about pregnancy tests a hundred times in the past two years, researching for the day we’d finally start trying.
I pee on three sticks and set timers on my phone.
Then I sit on the edge of the tub and wait.
Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds.
I try not to think. I try to just sit here, in this white bathroom, in this silent house, and exist without thinking.
It doesn’t work.
I think about the first time Griffin said “I love you.” We were in his shitty apartment, the one with the broken heater and the neighbor who played drums at 2 a.m. I’d just helped him finish a pitch deck that had taken us three weeks to perfect.
He pulled me into his arms and said it, just like that, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Did he mean it? Or did he just know it was what I wanted to hear?
I think about our wedding day. Walking down the aisle, seeing him standing there in his suit, tears streaming down his face. Everyone said it was so romantic, that they’d never seen a groom cry like that. I thought it meant he loved me so much he couldn’t contain it.
Now I wonder if he was just putting on a show. Giving everyone what they expected to see.
I think about the vows he wrote himself. Partnership, he said, standing across from me with his voice breaking. Forever. Building a life where we each carry half. I mouthed the word half back at him with tears running down my face, and the whole room sighed.
I’ve been carrying it all, and calling it half, for five years.
I think about last night. His arm around me at the party, his smile when he introduced me to people. “This is my wife, Hannah. She’s amazing.”
Empty words. A script he’s been reading for years.
The timer goes off.
I stand. My legs feel weak, shaky. I walk to the counter.
I look.
Three tests. Six lines. No ambiguity.
I’m pregnant.
I sink to the floor, my back against the bathroom cabinet, my knees pulled up to my chest. The cold tile seeps through my dress but I don’t care.
“Hey,” I whisper to my stomach, pressing my palm flat against it, feeling ridiculous and holy at the same time. “Hey, baby.”
My voice cracks on the word.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I tell the tiny cluster of cells that will someday be my child. “I don’t know if your dad and I are going to make it. I don’t know if he ever really loved me, or if he’s capable of loving anyone besides himself.”
I take a shaky breath.
“But I love you. I already love you so much. And whatever happens, I’m going to figure this out. I promise. I’m going to be the mom you deserve, even if I have to do it alone.”
The tears come then, quieter than last night but just as devastating. I sit on my bathroom floor and cry for the future I thought I was going to have and the one I’m actually facing.
Eventually, I pick myself up.
I wash my face with cold water and look in the mirror at the woman staring back at me, hollow-eyed, pale, someone I barely recognize.
But she’s got my mother’s stubborn chin and my father’s steady eyes, and underneath the wreckage, underneath everything, I can see the one thing this night didn’t manage to break.
She’s still standing. Whatever else is true this morning, she’s still standing.
I take off the rumpled clothes I slept in and stand under the hottest water I can bear until my skin turns red, until the shaking stops, until the woman in the mirror has a pulse again.
I wash my hair, condition it, shave my legs, all the small ordinary maintenance of a person who intends to keep existing.
My hand keeps drifting to my stomach under the spray.
There’s a person in there now. A person who needs me functional, today and every day after, no matter what her father did.
Then I get dressed.
I choose black pants and a silk blouse. Simple. Professional. Armor.
I fix my makeup carefully, covering the evidence of my breakdown with concealer and mascara. I look almost normal when I’m done. Almost like a woman who didn’t just have her entire world destroyed.
In the car, I run today like any other event in my head, because that’s the only way I’ll survive it. Arrive, check the vendors, check the seating, check the feed, keep the machine running. Smile when spoken to. Stand where the wife stands. Get through the speech, get through the toasts, get home.
And then, when the last glass is empty, decide the rest of my life.
I slide one of the positive tests into my purse and pick up my keys.
Because that’s what I do. That’s who I am. Hannah Bloom, the woman who holds everything together, who shows up no matter what, who gives and gives until there’s nothing left.
Not anymore, a voice whispers in the back of my head.
Not anymore.
I drive to the launch venue with a positive pregnancy test in my purse and my husband’s words echoing in my head.
Today, everything changes.