12. Maren
— ? —
Maren
The eucalyptus is trying to kill me.
I’m standing in the back room of Bellamy Blooms, surrounded by three buckets of fresh silver-dollar eucalyptus, and my stomach is doing something it’s never done in eleven years of handling flowers. It’s climbing up my throat like it’s trying to escape my body entirely.
“Maren?” Nina calls from the front. “The Hendricks order is ready for pickup.”
“Great,” I manage, pressing my wrist against my mouth. “Ring them out.”
The smell isn’t even that strong. Eucalyptus has always been one of my favorites, clean, medicinal, that sharp green bite that makes arrangements feel fresh. I’ve processed hundreds of shipments. Thousands. I could do it blindfolded.
Apparently, I can’t do it today.
I make it to the bathroom with approximately two seconds to spare, which is two seconds more than I had yesterday with the coffee. That was fun. Nora handed me my usual morning cup and I had to physically leave her kitchen because the smell made my eyes water.
“Stress,” I told her.
“Stress,” I’m telling myself now, splashing water on my face and staring at my reflection.
I look like someone dragged me backward through a hedge and then asked me to smile for a photo.
There are circles under my eyes that have circles of their own.
My skin has that grayish quality that suggests I’ve been sleeping in a dumpster, which isn’t far off, Nora’s couch has a spring that’s personally victimizing my left kidney.
I press my hand flat against my stomach.
It’s been almost two weeks since the gala.
Two weeks of dodging reporters, fielding questions from concerned customers, and watching my marriage become a spectator sport.
The tabloids have given the whole mess a name now.
They’re calling it “The Bellamy Breakdown,” which is just, chef’s kiss, really. Points for alliteration.
My phone buzzes. Rhodes, for the fourth time today.
Can we talk? Please.
I shove it back in my pocket without responding and return to the eucalyptus, breathing through my mouth like I’m entering a crime scene. The nausea has settled into a low hum, manageable but persistent. Background music to my catastrophe.
“You look green,” Nora says, appearing in the doorway. She’s been coming to the shop more than usual, which I’m pretending not to notice. “Like, actually green. Kermit green.”
“Thank you for that.”
“I’m just saying.” She crosses her arms and leans against the frame. “Maybe you should go home. Well, my home. The couch that’s slowly murdering your spine.”
“I’m fine.”
“You threw up twice before lunch.”
“I had questionable sushi.”
“You haven’t eaten sushi in three days.”
I grab a bunch of eucalyptus and start stripping the lower leaves, jaw tight. “I’m managing.”
“Managing,” Nora repeats. “Is that what we’re calling it? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re running on spite and denial.”
“Spite and denial are two of my core food groups.”
She doesn’t laugh. That’s how I know she’s actually worried, Nora always laughs at my jokes, even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. She claims it’s sisterly obligation, but I think she just has terrible taste in humor.
“Mare.” Her voice goes soft. “When was your last period?”
The eucalyptus stem snaps in my hand.
“What?”
“Your period. When was it?”
I stare at her. My brain is doing something strange, running calculations I don’t want to run, counting backward through weeks I’ve been too busy surviving to track.
The reconciliation night was, God, how long ago?
The Chinese food and the ranunculus and his hands on my skin and the way I thought, stupidly, insanely, that maybe we could fix this.
“I don’t-” I shake my head. “It’s just late. Stress makes it late.”
“How late?”
“Nora.”
“How late, Maren?”
I close my eyes and count. Then recount. Count again because the first number can’t be right.
“Two weeks,” I whisper. “Maybe a little more.”
Nora doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. Her face says it all.
“That doesn’t mean-” I start.
“When was the last time you slept with him?”
The night I thought he chose me, the night I let myself believe eleven years of marriage meant something, the night I woke up with his arm across my waist and the dried ranunculus on the nightstand and hope lodged somewhere under my ribs I couldn’t dig out.
“A few weeks ago,” I say. “Before the gala. We were, it was a reconciliation thing.”
“And you used protection?”
“We’re married, Nora. We haven’t used protection in years.”
The words settle over the kitchen, heavy.
I watch my sister’s expression shift from worry to something closer to fear, and I want to tell her she’s wrong.
I want to tell her this is ridiculous. I’m thirty-four years old and exhausted and my marriage is imploding in public and there’s no way, absolutely no way, that my body would choose this moment to-
“I’m buying you a test,” Nora says.
“No.”
“I’m buying you two tests.”
“Nora-”
“Three tests. Final offer.”
“I don’t need a test.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend.
“I need to process this eucalyptus and finish the Harlow wedding order and not think about the fact that my husband is probably doing damage control with his PR team right now while I figure out how to make a bridal bouquet without vomiting on the peonies.”
Nora just looks at me. That patient, gentle look she gets when she knows I’m spiraling and she’s going to wait me out.
“I hate that face,” I mutter.
“I know.”
“It’s manipulative.”
“I know.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not.”
“Then taking a test won’t hurt anything.”
I want to argue. I want to list all the reasons this is impossible, impractical, cosmically unfair. But my hands are shaking and my stomach is churning and somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice is doing math I can’t ignore.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m buying my own test. I don’t need my little sister escorting me through the family planning aisle like I’m seventeen.”
“You were the one who escorted me through the family planning aisle when I was seventeen.”
“And I’ll never let you forget it.”
I leave the eucalyptus unfinished and grab my jacket.
Nina gives me a questioning look as I pass through the front, but I just wave vaguely in her direction and push out into the October air.
The shop is three blocks from a pharmacy, which is three blocks too close and three blocks too far at the same time.
My phone buzzes again.
I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. But please, Maren. Let me explain.
I shove it deeper into my pocket and keep walking.
The pharmacy is overly bright and aggressively cheerful, like a fever dream sponsored by fluorescent lighting.
I find the pregnancy tests on an aisle optimistically labeled “Family Planning,” which feels like a cruel joke right now.
There are approximately nine hundred options.
Digital, non-digital, early response, regular response, pink lines, blue lines, smiley faces.
Who wants a smiley face telling them their life is about to change?
I grab two boxes at random, one digital, one with lines, and carry them to the register with the casual confidence of a woman who’s definitely not having a breakdown in the contraceptive aisle.
The cashier doesn’t even look up, which I appreciate.
I’m already imagining the headline: Bellamy’s Jealous Wife Spotted Buying Pregnancy Tests While Husband Defends Female Colleague.
The walk back to Nora’s apartment takes twelve minutes.
I know because I count every single one of them, using the rhythm of my footsteps to drown out the noise in my head.
Step, step, step. This doesn’t mean anything.
Step, step, step. Tests are wrong all the time.
Step, step, step. I’m probably just stressed and exhausted and living off granola bars and anxiety.
Nora’s apartment is small and chaotic and still smells faintly of the lavender candle she burned last night to “improve my energy.” I lock myself in the bathroom without taking off my jacket.
The first test takes three minutes. The second takes two.
I set them both on the edge of the sink and stare at the ceiling instead of looking. There’s a water stain up there, shaped vaguely like a seahorse. I focus on it like it holds the secrets of the universe. Like if I just keep looking at this stain, I won’t have to look at…
Two lines.
One word.
Pregnant.
I sink to the bathroom floor.
The tile is cold through my jeans. The vanity cabinet presses against my spine. I’m holding both tests in my hands like they might change if I stare long enough, like the lines might dissolve and the word might rearrange itself into something else. Not pregnant. Psych! Better luck next time.
But they don’t change. They stay exactly what they are, and I stay exactly where I am, sitting on my sister’s bathroom floor at two in the afternoon with my husband’s baby growing inside me while the world decides whether I’m a jealous wife or a cautionary tale.
The laugh that comes out of me sounds unhinged.
I’m pregnant.
I’m pregnant, and my marriage is on the front page of every tabloid in the city, and Rhodes is probably at this exact moment giving another interview about how emotional I am, and I’m going to have his baby. We made a baby that night. That stupid, hopeful night when I let myself believe.
My hand goes to my stomach automatically. There’s nothing to feel, it’s far too early, I know that. But something is there. Something that exists because of champagne and Chinese food and a dried ranunculus in a champagne bottle and eleven years of loving someone who can’t seem to stop hurting me.
I should call him.
The thought arrives before I can stop it. My first instinct, hardwired after a decade of marriage: tell Rhodes. Whatever else is falling apart between us, this is his too. This tiny, impossible thing that we made together before everything shattered.
I reach for my phone. Pull up his contact. My thumb hovers over the call button.
“Maren never really understood the demands of this business.”
“A personal insecurity that unfortunately became public.”
“I built this. You decorate it.”
I put the phone down.
This isn’t something I want to tell him over the phone. It’s not something I want to tell him at all right now, but I will, because he deserves to know, and because this isn’t about revenge. I’m not going to hide his child from him because he hurt me. I’m not that person.
But I need to be standing in front of him when I say it. I need to see his face. I need to know whether he’s going to look at me with love or calculation, whether he’s going to reach for me or reach for his phone to call his publicist.
I need to know if there’s anything left of the man I married.
Still coming tonight? His last text. He wants to meet. He’s been asking for days.
I type back: Yes.
Then I pull out the second test and slip it into my bag, along with a pamphlet I picked up at the pharmacy. Evidence. Proof. Like I’m building a case instead of sharing news with my husband.
Tomorrow, I think. I’ll tell him tomorrow. I’ll walk into whatever neutral location he picks, and I’ll sit across from him, and I’ll say the words.
I’m pregnant. It’s yours. What are we going to do?
And then I’ll know.
Nora finds me an hour later, still on the bathroom floor.
“Oh, Mare.”
She doesn’t ask. She just sees the tests on the sink and slides down to sit beside me, shoulder pressed against mine. We stay like that for a while, not talking. Sisters in the wreckage.
“I’m going to tell him,” I say finally. “Tomorrow. We’re supposed to meet.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not hiding it. I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
“I just-” My voice cracks. “I need to see his face, need to know if he even-”
“I know.”
She puts her arm around me, and I let myself lean into her. For five minutes, I let myself be the older sister who’s falling apart instead of the older sister who has everything together. It feels like failure. It also feels like relief.
“You’re going to be okay,” Nora says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. Because you’re the strongest person I know, and whatever happens, you’re going to handle it. With your usual terrifying competence.”
“Terrifying competence is my brand.”
“Exactly.”
I almost smile. Almost.
Then my phone starts exploding.
Not buzzing, exploding. Notification after notification, the kind of rapid-fire alerts that only happen when something goes viral. Nora and I look at each other, and then I pull out my phone, and then I see the headline.
NEW GALA FOOTAGE: Rhodes Calloway on His Marriage-“Maren Gets Emotional. She’ll Cool Off.”
The clip is everywhere. Twitter, Instagram, entertainment news. Someone recorded Rhodes after I left the gala, cornered by a reporter in the hallway. The timestamp says 11:47 p.m., forty-five minutes after I walked out with my head high and my heart in pieces.
I press play.
“Mr. Calloway, is your marriage in trouble?”
Rhodes gives an awkward laugh. The kind of laugh that means he’s uncomfortable, that means he wishes he were anywhere else. I know that laugh. I’ve heard it a thousand times.
“Maren gets emotional,” he says. “She’ll cool off.”
The reporter presses closer. “Is she threatened by Rachel Vaughn?”
And my husband, my husband of eleven years, father of the child I just discovered I’m carrying, looks into the camera and says:
“Rachel understands the demands of my life in a way not everyone does.”
The clip ends.
The silence in the bathroom is absolute.
“Maren,” Nora says carefully.
My phone buzzes. Rhodes.
Still coming tonight?
I stare at the message. I think about the test in my bag, the pamphlet, the plan I made to tell him face-to-face, about sitting across from him tomorrow and being vulnerable, being honest, opening myself up to whatever response he has.
I think about the way he said not everyone.
My reply is one word: No.
Three dots appear immediately.
Can we please talk?
I don’t have anything to say to you tonight.
Then I send it and put my phone face-down on the tile. Nora doesn’t try to comfort me. She just stays pressed against my shoulder, solid and warm, while I stare at the water stain on the ceiling and try to remember how to breathe.
I’m still going to tell him.
I’m still going to sit across from him and say the words and watch his face. I’m not hiding this baby, and I’m not that cruel, or that broken.
But not tonight. Not after learning that even after I left with what little dignity I had, he kept humiliating me. Not with his voice still in my head saying Rachel understands him in ways I don’t.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Now I’m not sure when.
My hand presses flat against my stomach, against the impossible thing growing there. The thing that exists because I loved him. The thing that proves, more than anything else, how badly I wanted us to work.
And all I can think is: I can’t tell him while he’s still choosing her.
I won’t.
Not until I know he’s chosen me.