Thirty-One November 5, 2023
WHEN ELSIE arrives at her sister’s house, she feels an overwhelming desire to hide in her old basement suite.
She still has the key, so she opens the side door.
But the basement clearly isn’t hers anymore.
None of her things are here, of course. And Travis has already moved in a desk and office chair.
His boxes are scattered around. The move has thrown up dander and mold spores into the air, and she can already feel an allergic reaction coming on.
Elsie sits, wipes her nose on her sleeve and, wheezing, pulls out her inhaler, sucks it back.
But the sensation of not being able to breathe only gets worse.
She’s never been able to tell an asthma attack from panic.
But what’s the difference? Drowning is drowning.
She’s pregnant. Pregnant.
She checks her phone for messages from Zander. There’s nothing. But then she hasn’t texted him since she asked him to leave her bathroom. She forces herself to breathe until the pressure on her chest lifts. Panic, then. She’s not actually dying.
After a few minutes, she hears her sister coming down the stairs, the dog following. Bailey pushes open the door. “Ellie? You here? I saw your car out front.”
“How many times do I have to tell you. It’s Elsie.”
“Sorry, Lizard.”
Elsie smiles despite herself.
“Seriously, Elsie, what are you doing here? You forget something? I think we cleaned everything out.”
The dog, Lulu, hesitates at the door, ears cocked, sniffing the air, looking for danger.
“You okay?” Bailey asks.
“I’m pregnant.”
Bailey drops down onto the desk beside her. She stares at the small basement window a beat too long. “Are you sure?”
“I tested again.”
“What are you going to do?”
She thinks of Luna’s sweet toddler voice, the child in her arms, the peace she felt hugging her.
But then Lizzy was so exhausted, trying to juggle being a mother with managing work, her father’s care.
“I don’t know.” Elsie feels the pressure return to her chest. “Can I do this?” Is she grown up enough to do this?
Most days she still feels like a kid herself.
“I mean, at baseline, can I even deal with all that piss and shit?”
“It’s strange how fast you get used to it,” Bailey says, referring, Elsie guesses, to picking up dog shit with a bag.
“And there’s Zander. We’ve only just started seeing each other, and now I’m having another guy’s kid.” She struggles to catch her breath. It feels like someone’s sitting on her chest.
“Have you told him?”
“He saw the tests.”
“And how did that go?”
Elsie leans forward, holds her head in her hands.
“So, not good.”
And what about Marcus? Would he demand shared custody, equal time with the kid?
Would things get ugly, as they had for a time between her own parents?
More likely, he’d disappear from their lives.
“I’ll end up raising the kid alone. How am I going to manage that?
How do I start a business with a baby in my arms?
” The sleepless nights, the poopy diapers, the crying.
The breastfeeding! She would smell of milk.
“No. I’m not ready. There’s no way I can go through with it.
” She looks to her sister for confirmation. “Right?”
Bailey raises both eyebrows as she thinks about that. “So, what? An abortion?” she asks. “A morning-after pill? Does that work after a week, ten days?”
“No, not after five days.”
“So, you are talking an abortion, then.”
An abortion. How can she possibly make this decision, one way or the other? Feeling like she might be sick, Elsie leans over, elbows on knees. “I can’t do this. I can’t do any of this.”
The dog, Lulu, creeps over and stuffs its muzzle into Elsie’s hand. Elsie pets the dog’s back, feels the warmth of its body under her hand and begins to calm down. The dog huffs, tongue out, contented.
“I held Luna, when she was a baby, and then again as a toddler,” Elsie says, petting the dog.
“Luna? Is that her name?”
The smell, peaches and sunshine, of the child’s crown. Luna’s tiny arms around her neck. “I didn’t want to let her go.”
But she has to let go of the idea of having a baby. She needs to focus on starting a business, on making sure her father never suffers a second stroke, or her plans for her own future will derail. She simply can’t have a child.
Can she?