6. Harmony
HARMONY
The day after I tell Lucas about the pregnancy, he comes by with a paper grocery bag tucked under one arm and a look on his face that tells me he’s trying to make it seem casual.
Inside are saltines, ginger chews, peppermint tea, a sleeve of plain bagels, prenatal vitamins, and three different kinds of hard candy because, apparently, Hudson at the station said his wife swore by lemon drops.
Lucas stands in my parents’ kitchen while I unpack everything, looking braced for me to tell him it’s too much.
I don’t.
I can’t.
It’s the most thoughtful thing anyone has done for me in a long time, and the fact that he clearly had to ask someone what to buy only makes it worse. Or better. I still don’t know which word applies to half of what I feel lately.
After that, he checks in every morning without fail. He texts me asking how I slept, whether I’m nauseous, whether I ate something, whether I need anything. When I tell him I made a doctor’s appointment, he asks if I want him there, then immediately follows it with, No pressure.
That part gets me. The no pressure.
Because I can feel the pressure of everything else, the weight of one positive test turning into two, turning into a calendar notification, turning into a pregnancy app telling me the baby is the size of a poppy seed, then an apple seed, then something else so small I can’t believe it has the power to rearrange my entire life.
I keep waiting for the shock to wear off all at once. It doesn’t. It loosens a little at a time. Some mornings I wake up and remember immediately, my hand drifting to my stomach before I’m even fully awake. Other mornings, I make it all the way to brushing my teeth before the nausea reminds me.
I’m pregnant.
Eventually, the sentence stops feeling impossible. But it still doesn’t feel simple.
This isn’t how I pictured having children.
I’ve always wanted them, but in the vague, someday way that came with an imagined husband, a house of our own, a nursery painted in a color we picked together, and a life that already had space carved out for a baby.
I didn’t picture moving back into my childhood bedroom at twenty-eight, unemployed, pregnant after one night with a man who used to be my best friend.
But the more the reality settles, the harder it becomes to call it an accident.
Because it’s Lucas.
He’ll be a great dad. I know that with a certainty that doesn’t need evidence, although I have plenty of it anyway. He’s a deeply good man. Protective. Thoughtful. Willing to put his own life on the line for others. On paper, he’s the perfect guy, really.
Him being the father of my baby is just…complicated.
But maybe complicated doesn’t make it wrong.
Once I can say that to myself without spiraling, I tell my parents.
I don’t give them the full story. They don’t need every detail, and I definitely don’t need to sit across from my father at the kitchen table while he calculates the timeline of my sex life.
I tell them I’m pregnant, and that Lucas is the father.
I tell them he knows, and he’s being supportive, and I’m still figuring out what everything looks like.
They’re shocked. Of course they are. My mom cries, but not in a devastated way, more in the overwhelmed way she cries at weddings, graduations, and particularly emotional commercials. My dad gets very quiet for a few minutes, then asks if I’m all right, which almost makes me cry too.
Neither of them judges me. That should make everything easier. In some ways, it does. But once that conversation is over, there’s nothing left to distract me from everything that comes next.
A few days after telling them, I sit cross-legged on the bed in the guest room with a notebook open in front of me and a pen in my hand. Making a list feels sensible. Responsible. Adult. If my life is going to tilt wildly off course, the least I can do is write things down in neat columns.
At the top of the page, I write: Things to figure out.
Under that, I write job.
Then housing.
Then insurance.
Then doctor appointments.
Then birth plan, although I immediately stare at it because I have no idea what a birth plan actually includes beyond the obvious fact that a birth will happen and I’ll be involved.
I add baby names, childcare, budget, maternity clothes, nursery stuff. The list keeps growing until it takes up the entire page, and instead of feeling organized, I feel as though I’ve created written proof that I’m wildly under-qualified for my own life.
My throat tightens. I press the pen against the paper until the tip leaves a dark dot.
A knock sounds at the door.
“Harmony?” my mom calls softly. “Can I come in?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
She opens the door and steps inside, wearing the old cardigan she puts on every evening no matter the season. Her eyes go straight to my face, then to the notebook in my lap, because she’s my mother and knows how to read me in under three seconds.
“Oh, honey,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re making a list.”
I let out a watery laugh. “That doesn’t automatically mean I’m not fine.”
“With you, it usually means you’re trying very hard to be.”
I look down at the page because she’s right. “I thought it would help. It didn’t.”
She sits on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle the notebook. “What part feels biggest right now?”
“All of it.”
“That’s a lot of parts.”
“I need a job. I need to figure out where I’m going to live.
I need to learn what I’m supposed to do at doctor’s appointments.
I need to somehow become the kind of person who knows what kind of crib is safe.
” My voice wobbles despite my best effort to keep it steady.
“And I know people do this all the time, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to do it. ”
Mom reaches over and takes the pen from my hand before I can make the dot in the paper any darker.
“You don’t have to figure out everything tonight,” she says.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
I drag in a breath. “No.”
Her expression goes tender. “A baby is a wonderful thing, Harmony. That doesn’t mean it isn’t also frightening and overwhelming and every other feeling that keeps changing by the hour.”
“That makes it sound very magical.”
She smiles. “Motherhood usually is, in the least tidy way possible.”
I lean my head back against the wall and stare at the ceiling. “I wanted kids. I always have. I just thought it would happen differently.”
“With a ring on your finger and a house picked out?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s a perfectly normal thing to want.”
“I know. I just feel stupid for being sad about an imaginary version when there’s an actual baby involved.”
“You’re allowed to be sad about the picture changing,” she says. “That doesn’t mean you won’t love the picture you get.”
My eyes burn, and I press my lips together hard.
She squeezes my knee. “Your father and I are here. You don’t have to move out. You can stay as long as you need, and when the baby comes, we’ll help however you want us to help.”
“I’m grateful for you guys,” I tell her. “I really am.”
“I know.”
“I just...” I swallow. “I don’t want to feel like I’m moving backward.”
“Coming home when you need support isn’t moving backward.”
I nod, but an ache remains in my chest. Because I can picture it so clearly, the version I always thought I’d have. A house. A crib in a sunlit room. A husband who comes up behind me while I’m making tea and rests his hand over my stomach because the baby kicked.
For one fleeting, dangerous second, the man in that picture has Lucas’s face.
Mom pats my knee, pulling me back before I can get lost in it. “Come downstairs with me.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’ve done enough list-making for one night.” She stands and holds out her hand. “We’re going to make grilled cheese sandwiches, and then we’re going to watch something where absolutely nobody is pregnant, unemployed, or making major life decisions.”
A laugh slips out of me. “That rules out a lot of shows.”
“Then we’ll be very selective.”
I look at the notebook, at the huge list of everything I don’t know how to solve, then close it.
For tonight, I let my mom pull me to my feet.