3. Tess
Tess
The examination paper shifted beneath Tess when the ultrasound technician moved the wand lower across her abdomen.
Chilled gel spread under the plastic head, leaving a slick trail over skin that still looked unchanged in the harsh clinic light.
Eight weeks, according to every calendar, blood test, and appointment note in her purse.
None of those numbers made the pregnancy feel as real as the monitor beside her.
“I’m going to press a little lower,” the technician said, adjusting the angle of her wrist. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”
“I’m fine. Keep going.”
The screen showed smudges of gray layered over black, shapes Tess couldn’t make sense of no matter how hard she stared.
She kept expecting something obvious to appear—a tiny hand, a face, some recognizable proof that would explain the nausea, the exhaustion, the positive test hidden at the bottom of her bathroom trash weeks ago.
Instead, the technician worked the console with one hand while moving the wand with the other, calm enough to make this seem ordinary.
“Hold still for me. I’ve almost got the measurement.”
Tess flattened her hands against the paper. “Take your time.”
A small flicker appeared near the center of the monitor.
The technician stopped moving the wand.
“There,” she said. Her finger rose toward the screen. “Tracking a strong, steady rhythm right at the fetal pole, Mrs. Ford.”
She pressed a button on the console.
A galloping rhythm filled the examination room.
Tess’s hand went straight to her mouth. The sound rushed from the speakers in quick, relentless beats, far faster than anything she had expected, and the little flicker kept pulsing on the monitor as if it had been waiting for someone to notice it.
That’s our baby.
Her eyes burned. She blinked and stared harder, afraid that looking away might somehow break whatever impossible connection had formed between the sound in the room and the tiny blur on the screen.
“The sound…” Tess finally pulled her hand away from her mouth. “It’s so fast. The screen looks like static to me, but that sound is really coming from there?”
The technician smiled and tapped the edge of the monitor. “Right there. The gestational age matches what we expected, too. I’ll capture a few images for you.”
Another adjustment sharpened the pale shapes for a moment.
Tess tried to memorize them even though she still couldn’t tell where one blurred patch ended and another began.
It didn’t matter. The technician knew what she was looking at, the machine knew what it was measuring, and that racing rhythm gave Tess the final, undeniable proof she had been waiting for.
Camden was going to lose his mind.
The thought brought a smile through the tears gathering along her lashes.
She could already picture him opening the envelope tonight, confusion giving way to that enormous grin he’d worn on Draft Night when the call had come through.
He would probably stare at the pictures as blankly as she had, then demand that she point out every feature as though eight weeks of pregnancy had produced a full portrait.
This beats the draft.
The printer whirred beside the console. Glossy paper fed from the slot in a short strip while the technician wiped the wand and set it aside.
“I’ll give you these copies,” she said. “You can wipe off the gel, get dressed, and check out at the front desk whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you.” Tess sat up with care as the technician separated the printed images and passed them to her.
The photos weighed almost nothing. Tess held them by the edges anyway, studying the grainy shapes until her vision blurred again.
Somewhere inside those black-and-white patches was the reason the mansion had felt different for weeks, the reason she had spent nights awake imagining a second heartbeat under the same roof.
Her purse sat within reach beside the table. Tess opened it, found the protective envelope she had brought from home, and checked the photographs once more before sliding them inside. She smoothed the flap down with her thumb, careful not to bend a corner.
Tonight, Camden would finally know.
She tucked the envelope into her purse.
The receptionist slid the checkout paperwork across the counter and tapped the clinic’s phone number near the bottom. “You’re all set, Mrs. Ford. Call us when you’re ready to schedule the second-trimester visit, and we’ll make sure you get another early slot.”
“Thank you for squeezing me in today.” Tess tucked the paper into her purse without disturbing the envelope beneath it. “I’ll call as soon as I check Camden’s schedule.”
“Have a good afternoon.”
Tess pushed through the clinic doors wearing a smile she couldn’t shake.
The cool clinic air faded behind her, replaced by heat rising from the parking lot and sunlight bouncing off rows of windshields.
The purse rested against her hip, and the envelope inside suddenly felt more important than everything else she owned.
She crossed toward her sedan and reached into the purse before she even got to the driver’s door. Camden might still be buried in postgame meetings, but she didn’t care. If he answered, she would tell him to get somewhere private. Then she would make him guess until he started losing patience.
Maybe she wouldn’t tell him over the phone at all.
Make him wait until tonight.
The idea lasted until her fingers closed around the phone. There was no chance she could sit on this news for hours without giving herself away.
“Pick up, Camden.”
She tapped the screen awake.
Her social feed refreshed before she reached the call icon.
A new post filled the display.
Tess stopped beside the rear bumper of her sedan.
For a moment, the picture didn’t make sense.
Camden sat on a treatment table in what looked like one of the stadium rehab rooms, still dressed in his football gear.
Chloe Kensington stood between his knees, leaning across him with one hip pressed against his thigh and her face close enough to his that the photograph looked less like an advertisement than something stolen through a bedroom doorway.
Tess stared at the image.
Then she spread two fingers across the screen and enlarged it.
Camden’s face filled the glass.
He was smiling.
Not grimacing. Not turning away. Not looking toward someone off-camera as though he wanted the whole thing finished. His gaze was locked on the lens, his mouth curved into the easy, media-trained grin Tess had watched him deploy for three seasons.
She shifted the image sideways and enlarged it again.
Chloe’s body stayed wedged between his knees.
His hands were partly outside the crop, hiding where they rested. No push against Chloe’s shoulder. No visible attempt to lean away. Nothing in the photograph suggested interruption or surprise.
The parking-lot heat pressed against the back of Tess’s neck while the phone stayed bright in her hand.
Minutes ago, she had been staring at a monitor, listening to their child’s heartbeat hammer through a clinic speaker.
Now Camden was smiling with another woman practically in his lap.
There has to be an explanation.
Marcus staged everything. Tess knew that better than anyone.
He could turn a handshake into a campaign and a locker-room interview into a six-week marketing rollout.
Camden had probably finished a game half-dead, been shoved onto a treatment table, and found a camera in his face before the trainers could even get his pads off.
But Camden had still allowed Chloe between his knees.
Tess zoomed out on the photograph, revealing the post beneath it.
The caption sat directly under Camden’s smile.
“My favorite brand partner makes the late-night grind look so flawless. Hitting the playbook with QB1.”
Tess read it once without moving.
Then her thumb hovered over the screen as if touching the words might expose whatever context the photograph refused to give her.
“My favorite brand partner makes the late-night grind look so flawless,” she said into the empty parking space. “Hitting the playbook with QB1.”
The call icon remained untouched at the bottom of the screen.
Inside her purse, the sonogram envelope waited for Camden.
The caption stayed open beneath the photograph.
Tess scrolled down the screen before consciously deciding to keep reading.
The photograph slid upward, replaced by a stream of usernames, reaction counters, and comments multiplying faster than she could finish one line.
Hearts and laughing faces crowded the margins. Every refresh added another row.
She should have closed the app.
Instead, she scrolled again.
The reactions blurred together into the same public conclusion: Camden and Chloe looked good together.
Whatever joke or prediction came next hardly mattered.
Thousands of strangers had been handed a photograph of her husband with another woman between his knees, and nobody scrolling past it knew a wife existed somewhere outside the crop.
Nobody knew about the envelope in her purse.
Tess dragged her thumb upward again, searching for something she couldn’t name.
A comment calling the picture staged. Someone pointing out the football pads, the treatment table, the obvious machinery of a campaign shoot.
Anything that might make the image look as harmless to everyone else as Camden would probably insist it was.
The screen kept moving.
Stop reading.
Her thumb moved anyway.
A grocery bag rustled somewhere beside her. Tess shifted backward to escape the screen’s glare, trying to make out another cluster of replies beneath Chloe’s caption.
A hand closed around her upper arm.
“Easy, sweetheart.”
Tess snapped her head up.
An older woman stood beside her, one hand still braced against Tess’s arm to keep her from backing straight into the open tailgate of the car beside hers. Paper grocery sacks filled the cargo space, one tipped sideways with a loaf of bread sticking from the top.