3. Delphine #2
She was wearing a silk robe that probably cost more than my first car, her honey blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her feet bare on the cold porch. She looked like she had just rolled out of bed, fresh faced and beautiful and utterly at home in my house.
“Ah.” Her voice was cool, amused. “You’re here.”
“This is my house.” I didn’t get up from the swing. I didn’t give her the satisfaction. “Where else would I be?”
Kendall smiled. It was the kind of smile that had no warmth in it, the kind of smile that said I know things you don’t know and I’m going to enjoy watching you figure it out.
“Not for long.” She leaned against the doorframe, studying me with open contempt. “You’ll be out of here soon enough.”
My hands clenched in my lap. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She tilted her head, that mocking smile still playing at the corners of her lips.
“Did you really think this was going to last? Did you really think a girl like you could hold on to a man like Heath? You were always just a placeholder, Delphine. A warm body in his bed until the real thing came along.”
I should have stood up. I should have walked over to her and slapped that smile off her perfect face. But my legs wouldn’t cooperate, and my voice seemed to have abandoned me entirely.
Kendall laughed, a low chuckle that made my skin crawl. “Enjoy the view while you can. It won’t be yours much longer.”
She turned and walked back inside, leaving the door hanging open behind her, letting the cold air rush into the house I had made into a home.
I sat there on the swing, frozen, trying to process what had just happened. Kendall’s words echoed in my head, mixing with the text message I had read hours earlier, forming a picture I didn’t want to see.
You’ll be out of here soon.
She knew. She knew what Heath was planning, knew more about my marriage than I did, knew that my time in this house was running out.
Inside, someone was cooking breakfast. I could smell it now, the scent of bacon drifting out through the open door, rich and heavy and completely wrong.
My stomach turned violently.
I pressed my hand over my mouth, fighting the sudden wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. The smell was too much. The cold was too much. Everything was too much, and my body was rebelling against all of it.
I hadn’t been eating properly in days. The constant stress, the worry, the midnight crying sessions on bathroom floors. Every time I tried to eat, my stomach rejected it. I had blamed it on nerves, on anxiety, on the slow dissolution of my marriage.
But this was different. This nausea was different. It came in waves, triggered by smells that had never bothered me before, hitting me hardest in the mornings.
When was my last period?
The question surfaced in my mind unbidden, and I felt the blood drain from my face.
When was my last period?
I tried to think, to count backward through the weeks, to remember the last time I had needed to worry about such things. But my mind was foggy with exhaustion and grief, and the numbers kept slipping away from me.
A month ago? No. Longer than that. Six weeks, maybe. Maybe more.
Oh God.
I stood up from the swing so fast that my head spun. The world tilted around me, and I had to grab the railing to keep from falling.
“Delphine?”
Heath’s voice, coming from inside the house. He must have come downstairs, must have seen the open door, must be wondering why his wife was standing on the porch at dawn in her nightgown.
I couldn’t face him. Not now. Not until I knew for certain.
“I have to go out.” My voice came out strange, high and thin. “I need to go to the pharmacy.”
“Now?” He appeared in the doorway, his brow furrowed with confusion. “Delphine, it’s barely six in the morning. What could you possibly need from the pharmacy at this hour?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. I just remembered an errand I can’t put off.”
I was already moving, pushing past him into the house, heading for the front door. I grabbed my coat from the hook in the foyer and my keys from the bowl on the table, my movements frantic and uncoordinated.
“Del, wait.” Heath followed me into the foyer. He looked tired, I noticed. Dark circles under his eyes, stubble on his jaw. Good. Let him be tired. Let him suffer even a fraction of what I had been feeling. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“I can’t talk right now.” I yanked the front door open, letting the cold morning air rush in. “I have to go.”
“Delphine!”
I shoved my feet into the boots by the door and dragged my coat on over the nightgown, and I was down the front steps before he could say my name again.
The pharmacy in town opened at six. I knew that because I had walked past it a hundred times on morning errands, had noticed the hours posted on the door without ever thinking they would matter to me.
They mattered now.
I hated driving. I had hated it since I was seventeen and had spent fourteen years finding ways not to do it.
I did it anyway, too fast, my hands shaking on the wheel, my mind racing through possibilities I wasn’t ready to face.
The roads were empty this early, the town still sleeping, and I made it to the pharmacy in less than ten minutes.
The fluorescent lights inside were harsh after the soft dawn light outside. I squinted against the glare, scanning the aisles for what I needed.
There. On a shelf between the vitamins and the cold medicine. A row of boxes in pink and blue and white, each one promising answers I wasn’t sure I wanted.
I grabbed a box without looking at the brand. I walked to the counter where a tired clerk was sipping coffee and staring at her phone. She rang me up without comment, without even meeting my eyes, and I was grateful for her disinterest.
The bathroom at the back of the pharmacy was small and clean and brightly lit. I locked the door behind me and stood there for a moment, staring at the box in my hands, trying to make myself open it.
This could change everything. This could be the answer to what was wrong with me, the reason for the nausea and the exhaustion and the emotional instability that had been plaguing me for weeks.
Or it could be nothing. A false alarm. Just stress doing terrible things to my body, the same way it had been doing terrible things to my mind.
I opened the box. Two tests inside. I followed the instructions on both and set them on the edge of the sink and stared at the ceiling while I waited, counting the tiles, trying not to think about what it would mean if the result was positive.
Heath and I had talked about children. Years ago, when we were young and in love and certain that our happiness would last forever. We had agreed that we wanted them eventually. Two, maybe three. A house full of noise and laughter and the chaos that came with raising small humans.
Then eventually had become someday, and someday had become not yet, and not yet had stretched into years of just us, just the two of us, building a life that now seemed to be crumbling to dust.
The timer on my phone went off.
I picked up the tests. I looked at the result windows.
Two lines on each. Clear and unmistakable.
Positive.
I was pregnant. Six weeks, if my mental math was right. Six weeks of a new life growing inside me while my marriage fell apart around me, while my husband made plans to leave with another woman, while everything I had built turned to ash.
I sank down onto the bathroom floor, my back against the wall, the test clutched in my trembling hands. The fluorescent light hummed overhead. Somewhere in the pharmacy, a phone was ringing.
I was pregnant.
And I had never felt more alone in my entire life.