Chapter 6 Grace #2
I parked in my usual spot and sat there for a long moment, the engine ticking softly as it cooled. The bag rested in my lap, light as paper and somehow impossibly heavy, my fingers curled tight around it like if I loosened my grip, everything inside me might come apart too.
Whatever those tests said, everything was about to change.
I could feel it in my chest, in the way my pulse wouldn’t settle, in the strange pressure behind my eyes.
This was a line I couldn’t uncross. The clean divide of before and after, my life split down the middle by two pink lines I hadn’t even seen yet.
I thought about the woman I’d been this morning. The one who believed she was just tired. Just grieving. Just trying to get through another day.
I took a breath. It caught halfway in, sharp and shallow. I forced another, slower this time, until my hands stopped shaking quite so badly.
I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t think I ever would.
Still, I opened the door.
And then I went inside.
I locked the bathroom door even though no one else was home. Force of habit. Or maybe I just needed the illusion of control, one small thing I could decide for myself.
The first test came out of the box in pieces. Wrapper, instruction sheet, and the white plastic stick. I read the instructions twice. One line means not pregnant. Two lines means pregnant. Wait three minutes for results.
I took the test. Set it face-down on the edge of the sink. Couldn't watch it. Couldn't stand there staring while the chemicals did whatever chemicals do, while my whole future rearranged itself on a plastic stick.
I paced the small bathroom instead. Three steps to the door. Three steps back to the sink. The tile was cold under my bare feet. The faucet dripped. Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked, the old bones settling the way they always did.
One minute.
I thought about the life I'd imagined for myself.
The life I'd imagined with Marcus. We'd talked about it once.
Years ago, before the visits got shorter and the calls got less frequent.
Children, eventually. Two, maybe three. A family to fill the empty rooms of the B&B, the way Gran had always hoped.
I'd pictured Sunday mornings with little feet running down the hallway, Marcus making pancakes while I handled the guests, our kids growing up the way I had—learning to bake and fix leaky faucets and love this old house.
That dream had faded so slowly I hadn't noticed it dying. Marcus stopped talking about someday. Stopped asking what I wanted. And I'd stopped bringing it up, afraid of the answer I'd get.
Now, someday was here.
And Marcus was gone.
Not like this. Never like this.
Two minutes.
My stomach churned. I pressed my hand against it, still flat, still unchanged. If I were pregnant, something was growing in there right now. Cells were dividing, multiplying, becoming something. Someone. The thought made my head spin.
I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at my reflection. Pale face. Dark circles under my eyes. I looked like someone waiting for bad news.
Three minutes.
I turned the test over.
Two lines.
Pink and definite, appearing within seconds. No ambiguity. No room for doubt. No merciful single line telling me this was all just stress, just my body playing tricks, just a false alarm I could laugh about later.
Two lines.
I blinked. Wiped my eyes. Looked again.
Still two lines.
My legs went weak. I sat down on the closed toilet lid, the test still in my hand, and tried to remember how to breathe. The bathroom seemed too small suddenly. The walls were too close. The air was too thick.
Maybe it was wrong. Maybe the test was defective. Maybe I'd done something incorrectly—held it at the wrong angle, waited too long, not long enough.
I grabbed the second test. Different brand. Different packaging. Hands shaking so badly that I could barely tear it open. I fumbled with the wrapper, dropped the cap, and nearly dropped the whole thing in the toilet.
Take a breath. Start again.
I took the test. Set it on the sink beside the first one. This time I watched. Couldn't look away. Couldn't do anything except stand there, frozen, while the seconds ticked by and the result window slowly, slowly filled in.
One line appeared first. The control line, the instructions said. Means the test is working.
Then, faint at first, growing darker with each passing second, the second line emerged.
Two lines.
Pink and definite, appearing within seconds. No ambiguity. No room for doubt. No merciful single line telling me this was all just stress, just my body playing tricks, just a false alarm I could laugh about later.
Again.
Positive.
Pregnant.
The room didn’t spin. The house didn’t collapse. Nothing dramatic happened at all.
The world stayed exactly the same, and somehow that felt worse.
I sat on the bathroom floor. Didn't remember deciding to sit, didn't remember my legs giving out, but suddenly I was down there, back against the cabinet, knees pulled up to my chest, forehead pressed against them.
The tile was cold. The faucet dripped, slow and steady, like a countdown. Like a heartbeat. Like time passing, whether I was ready for it or not.
My heart pounded so hard I could feel it everywhere.
In my throat. In my temples. In my fingertips, still clutching that stupid plastic stick with its two pink lines.
My breath came too fast, too shallow. The edges of my vision started to darken, the way they used to during panic attacks, the way they had the night Mom finally fell apart for good.
No. Not now. I couldn't fall apart now.
I forced myself to breathe. In through my nose, out through my mouth.
Count to four on the inhale. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Repeat.
One, two, three, four.
Hold.
One, two, three, four.
Exhale.
One, two, three, four.
Slowly—so slowly—my heartbeat steadied. The darkness at the edges of my vision receded. The bathroom came back into focus. White tile. Dripping faucet. Two pregnancy tests sitting on the edge of the sink, their pink lines glaring at me like accusations.
Pregnant.
I was pregnant with Marcus's baby.
The man who had left me three weeks ago for a woman he'd known three months.
The man who couldn't be bothered to answer my calls, who texted about phone chargers instead of asking if I was okay, who had looked at me in the garden under the apple blossoms and told me he'd been unhappy for a long time.
The man who had looked right through me in my own kitchen, who had called the B&B a distraction, and who had chosen someone else without even having the decency to admit it.
I was carrying his child.
No partner. No plan. Just me.
The words settled over me like a weight. Alone. I was going to have to do this alone. No partner. No support. No one to hold my hand in the delivery room or wake up for midnight feedings or tell me everything was going to be okay.
Just me.
Just me and this baby I hadn't planned for, hadn't asked for, wasn't sure I was ready for.
I pressed my hand to my stomach. Still flat. Still unchanged. No outward sign of the chaos happening inside.
I wouldn't tell anyone. Not yet. Not until I knew what I wanted, what I was capable of, what this even meant. I needed time to think. Time to process. Time to figure out how to be a mother when I'd barely figured out how to be alone.
I would handle this myself. That's what the women in my family did. They endured. They survived. They built lives from wreckage.
Gran had done it. Widowed at forty with a failing business and a daughter to raise, she'd turned it into something that lasted generations.
My mother had tried to do it. She'd failed, in the end, but she'd tried. And maybe that was something.
Now it was my turn.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Red eyes. Pale skin. Hair that needed washing. I looked like someone who had been through a war.
Maybe I had.
“Okay,” I said again, firmer this time. To myself. To the reflection staring back at me. To the tiny cluster of cells that had no idea what kind of world it was being born into. “We'll figure this out.”
It wasn't a plan. It wasn't even hope.
But it was a start.
That night, I found a plate of warm cookies outside my bedroom door.
Chocolate chip. Still soft from the oven, the chocolate slightly melted, the edges golden brown. The smell hit me before I even bent down to pick them up—warm and sweet and so achingly familiar that my chest tightened.
A note sat folded beneath the plate, written in Mrs. Patterson's careful handwriting. The same handwriting I'd seen on birthday cards and thank-you notes for fifteen years.
Whatever it is, dear, it'll keep until morning. Get some sleep.
I stood in the hallway holding the plate, tears blurring my vision.
How did she always know? How did she always know when I was falling apart, when the weight was too heavy, when I needed someone to remind me that kindness still existed?
She didn't know about Marcus. Didn't know about the pregnancy.
Didn't know any of the details that were threatening to drown me.
But she knew something was wrong. She'd known since that first morning after he left, when she'd looked at me across the breakfast table and seen through every wall I'd built.
I carried the cookies into my room and sat on the edge of the bed. Ate one, then another, letting the sweetness dissolve on my tongue. Outside my window, the stars were out, scattered across the sky like promises I wasn't sure I believed in anymore.
Tomorrow, I would have to figure out what to do. Tomorrow, I would have to make decisions, face realities, and build some kind of plan from the rubble of my life.
But tonight, I had cookies. And a note from someone who cared. And the sense that whatever was coming, I wouldn't have to face it completely alone.
It wasn't much.
But it was enough to get me through the night.