10. Gracie
— ? —
Gracie
The ultrasound room is cold.
They always are, some universal law about medical offices and aggressive air conditioning, and I’m lying on the exam table in a paper gown, shivering, while Dr. Meadows moves the wand across my belly and frowns at the screen.
“Doc?” I watch her face. “Everything okay?”
“Hold on.” She adjusts a dial, tilts the wand, and the frown deepens into what looks like surprise. “Mrs. Koch-”
“Tate. Gracie Tate.”
“Gracie.” She turns the screen toward me. “You see this?”
I squint at the gray-and-white blur. I’ve looked at more ultrasounds than I can remember in my career, but they’ve all been cows and horses and goats, and the anatomy is different, and I can’t quite-
“That’s one heartbeat.” Dr. Meadows points to a pulsing spot. “And that’s another.”
The room gets very quiet.
“Another.”
“Twins.” She says it gently, like she knows exactly what she just did to my entire life. “Eight weeks along, both heartbeats strong. Congratulations.”
I don’t remember getting dressed, or the checkout desk or the parking lot or the moment I started my truck. I just know that I’m driving, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, doing the math out loud to the windshield.
“Two babies.” The highway stretches ahead, flat Texas nothing in every direction. “Two, not one.”
One vet salary, one partially-rebuilt farm, and no husband.
Two.
“I was going to do this alone. I can do this alone. One baby, alone, that’s - people do that. People do that all the time. But two-”
Two cribs and two college funds and two mouths to feed at three in the morning when I’ve been up all night with a calving heifer.
“Two. Okay, I can do two, people do two.” I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard my fingers are numb. “I can - I’ll figure it out. I have savings, and the farm, and Denny, he’ll help, and Bree, and June-”
I’m spiraling.
I know I’m spiraling, can feel the panic climbing my throat, and I just keep driving, faster than I should, the speedometer creeping up, the exit for Marigold getting closer.
By the time I pull into the Salazar driveway, I can barely breathe.
Bree meets me at the kitchen door. One look at my face and she’s got me inside, seated at the big table, a mug of tea appearing from nowhere. Rafael hovers in the doorway, holding Rosie on his hip.
“Hey, Rosie, let’s go check on Hamlet.” He backs away carefully, like I’m a wild animal that might spook. “Give Dr. Gracie some space.”
“She looks upset,” Rosie observes.
“That’s why we’re giving her space. Come on.”
They disappear, and Bree sits down across from me, and the warmth of a borrowed family closes around me like arms.
“Twins,” I say.
Bree’s eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “Two of them.”
“Two of them. Two heartbeats. Two actual human babies that I have to grow and birth and raise by myself on a vet salary while running a farm that’s been fallow for three years.”
“Okay.”
“I was doing the math. In my head. The whole drive home. And the math doesn’t - I mean, it does, if I’m careful, but there’s no margin for error. No room for anything to go wrong. And things go wrong, Bree. I’m a vet. I know exactly how many ways things go wrong.”
“Gracie-”
“What if one of them has complications? What if I have complications? What if I can’t work the third trimester and I burn through my savings before they’re even born? What if-”
“Gracie.” Bree’s voice is firm. “Breathe.”
I breathe.
“You’re not alone,” she says. “You have us, and June, and your farmhand, Denny. Hell, you have Hamlet - he’s a terrible support animal, but he’s consistent.”
I almost laugh.
“One day at a time. That’s all you can do. One day, one decision, one breath. The future is a story you’re telling yourself, and right now you’re telling yourself the scary version. But there are other versions.”
“What if the scary version is the true one?”
“Then you’ll handle it.” She shrugs. “Because you’ve already handled worse.
You walked away from your whole life, drove halfway across the country, and started over.
Twice now, technically - once when you left your farm, once when you came back.
You know how to survive. The twins are just going to have to learn from the master. ”
I wrap my hands around the mug of tea. It’s warm and smells like chamomile, and Bree is looking at me with steady eyes, and the panic is still there but it’s quieter now. Manageable.
“I’m keeping them,” I say. “That was never a question. I just-”
“Panicked, yeah. That’s normal.”
“Is it?”
“I threw up for three hours when I found out about Rosie, and that was planned.” Bree grins. “Pregnancy is terrifying. Doing it alone is more terrifying, and with twins, I assume, it’s a special kind of horror. But you’re going to be okay, Gracie. I promise.”
That night, alone in the little guest room the Salazars have let me use, I stare at the ceiling and think about Mal.
I’ve been so careful. Five weeks of no contact, of teaching myself how to exist without him, how to make decisions without checking his calendar, how to fall asleep without his weight on the other side of the bed.
And now this.
I pick up my phone. The screen glows in the dark, his name still buried in my contacts, still blocked. My thumb hovers over the settings. Unblock him, just to-
What, tell him?
*Hey, remember me? Your wife that you neglected for five years? Guess what, I’m pregnant with twins and I need you to, *
To what?
Save me, come running, fix it?
I don’t want to be saved. That’s the entire point. I left so I could remember how to save myself.
But my thumb is moving anyway, muscle memory, five years of telling him everything first, and suddenly his number is unblocked and I’m dialing, and-
I hang up before it rings.
My heart slams against my ribs. The phone screen goes dark. I stare at it, furious at my own thumb, furious at the part of me that still reaches for him in the dark.
I block him again. Harder this time, like that counts.
Then I sit up in bed and talk myself back to the plan.
“Not yet.” My voice is quiet in the empty room, one hand pressed flat against my stomach. “I’m not telling him yet. I need to be alone a while longer, to be mine a while longer.”
The twins don’t answer. They’re too small to answer, too small to be anything but potential, but I talk to them anyway.
“We’re going to figure this out. The three of us. I’m going to finish the month here, buy the rest of my starter herd, and then we’re going home. Back to Cedar Hollow, to the farm I grew up on, the land my father left me.”
I lie back down. The ceiling is the same ceiling, the dark is the same dark, but the ground has shifted.
I have a plan.
Next month, I go home.