Chapter 28 Andrea #2
Tara asked how far along I was. When I said ten weeks she pulled a list of prenatal vitamins out of her bag. She circled two brands, wrote her phone number at the bottom, handed it to me. “Call me if you need anything. Three in the morning, doesn’t matter.”
“You carry prenatal vitamin lists in your purse?”
“I carry everything in my purse.” She unzipped the bag wider. Band-Aids, granola bars, a mini flashlight, a sewing kit, two kinds of painkillers. “You never know.”
Adela looked at me across the circle. “You coming back next Wednesday?”
I looked at the terrible coffee, the folding chairs, the fluorescent lights. These women I’d known for an hour who called my situation garbage and offered me tissues without being asked and carried emergency sewing kits.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
After the session, Hallie grabbed my phone before I could put it away.
“Numbers. All of us. Non-negotiable.” She typed her number in, passed it to Adela, who passed it to Tara, who handed it back with all three contacts saved and a text already sent to a new group chat she’d created in the thirty seconds she had my phone.
My screen lit up.
Tara: Welcome to the group Andrea! Hallie: we need a name for this chat Adela: no we don’t Hallie: rude. I’m calling it the wednesday club Adela: absolutely not
I stood in the parking lot reading the texts rolling in, three women I’d known for an hour already arguing about a group chat name, and my chest felt different.
Not healed, not better exactly, but lighter.
Like someone had lifted one of the weights off the pile, just one, just enough that I could breathe a fraction deeper.
I sat in my car with the windows down, the late afternoon sun warm on my arm, and I called Mary.
“I went.”
“AND?”
“I laughed.”
“I knew it. I knew you would.” Her voice went thick and I could hear her smiling through the phone. “See? I’m always right. Write that down. Frame it. Put it on your wall.”
“One of them carries prenatal vitamins in her purse.”
“I love her already. What’s her name?”
“Tara. And there’s Adela, who told me my situation was garbage within ten minutes of meeting me, and Hallie, who told a story about an ex that made me laugh so hard I almost threw up.”
“See, you already have names. That’s not just a group, Andrea. That’s the beginning of friends.”
I sat in the car for a while after we hung up. The parking lot was emptying, the other women getting into their cars, waving to each other. Adela caught my eye through her windshield and gave me a nod. Not a wave, not a smile, just a nod. An acknowledgment. You showed up. Good.
I nodded back.
I went back the next Wednesday. Then the one after that.
Adela saved me the chair by the door, which became my chair.
Hallie brought homemade banana bread that was somehow both dry and perfect.
Tara upgraded from tissues to a full care package placed under my chair without ceremony.
The sessions weren’t magical. They didn’t erase anything.
But for ninety minutes every week I sat in a room with women who didn’t flinch when I said “I’m angry” or “I miss him” or “I don’t know how to do this.
” They just nodded, passed the terrible coffee, and that was enough.
One evening, after dinner, Grandma and I were doing dishes. She washed, I dried. The kitchen window was open, the jasmine thankfully done blooming for the day, evening air cool on my face.
“You’re different lately,” Grandma said, handing me a plate.
“Different how?”
“You’re eating more toast. You only cried once this week, and that was at a cat food commercial, which I think even non-pregnant people would cry at because that commercial is emotionally manipulative.”
“It really was.”
“And you’re talking to the baby on your walks. I can see your lips moving when you come up the path.”
I looked at her. “You watch me from the window?”
“Of course I watch you from the window. I’m your grandmother. Watching from windows is what we do.” She handed me the last plate. “I’m just saying. You seem a little lighter.”
I dried the plate and put it in the cabinet and thought about whether she was right.
Lighter wasn’t the word. The weight was still there, heavy, constant, sitting on my chest every morning when I woke up.
But maybe I was getting stronger underneath it.
Building muscle that lets you carry heavy things without being crushed.
That night I sat on the porch. Grandma’s porch, the swing my father built, wood weathered smooth from years of use. I’d been reading here every evening since I arrived, drawn to it without understanding why until I was already sitting down with a book and the quiet pressing in from every direction.
I started the highland series over. Page one, chapter one.
I read silently, turning pages without the voices, without the terrible Scottish accent that made Fin huff.
The hero was being stubborn, the heroine was calling him on it, and I used to perform every word of it.
I used to pause between chapters and say things like “See, Fin? This is what communication looks like. You should take notes. Tell your owner.” The memory of my own voice saying those words to a dog on my Atlanta porch hit me so hard I had to set the book down for a second.
I picked it back up. Kept reading.
Two chapters in, my hand dropped to the space beside me on the swing.
Reaching for warm fur that wasn’t there.
I caught myself and pulled my hand back. The absence punched through me, sudden, total. I closed the book, pressed it against my chest, breathed through the tightness in my throat. The swing creaked under me, empty on one side, crickets filling the space where his breathing used to be.
I missed him. The grunt when I handed him a report.
The rolled sleeves, the forearms I’d stared at for two years.
The way he held his coffee mug like it had personally wronged him.
I missed the warm weight against my side on the porch, the head in my lap, the dark eyes watching me while I read.
I missed reaching down without looking and finding fur under my fingers, soft and warm, his ear twitching when I scratched behind it.
I couldn’t separate them. The man, the wolf. Losing one meant losing both.
I put my hand on my stomach. The swing rocked gently under me, the chains creaking in a rhythm that almost sounded like breathing if I let myself pretend.
“It’s just us,” I said to the dark. “We’re going to be okay.”
Grandma’s light was still on inside. I could see her through the window, sitting in her chair with a book and her reading glasses, waiting up for me without saying she was waiting up for me.
She’d been doing that every night. Leaving her light on until I came in from the porch, the same way she’d left it on when I was sixteen and staying out too late.
I went inside, kissed her forehead as I passed her chair, and she squeezed my hand without looking up from her book. “Goodnight, Andy.”
“Goodnight, Grandma.”
I got into the bed with the quilt my mother sewed. Lay there with my hand on my belly in the dark.
I didn’t cry tonight. I just breathed and held on.
Not every night was like that. Some nights I cried until the pillow was wet, missing him with a ferocity that scared me because it hadn’t faded despite everything he’d done.
Some mornings the ache was so heavy I couldn’t get out of bed.
I’d lie there with my face in the pillow, grief pressing on my chest, thinking about staying there forever.
But the baby was growing. Grandma was downstairs making tea. The therapy group met on Wednesday. I talked to Mary every morning. I was surrounded by supportive people.
So I got up. Every time, I got up.