Chapter 28
Emma
I’ve been feeling off all week. Nothing like the stress of potentially destroying the best relationship of your life to really make your body revolt against you.
It’s so unfair when mental pain turns physical, like my anxiety couldn’t stay in its lane and had to drag my digestive system into the mess too.
I’ve barely been able to eat, haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time, and now I’m white-knuckling my way through traffic feeling like I might throw up at any moment.
The board meeting isn’t helping. Sophie and I have been texting all morning.
Sloane’s been lobbying hard, and our other sisters have always been more likely to side with her than with us.
The thought of walking into that conference room, facing all of them, trying to make a case for something they’ve already decided to ignore, makes my stomach clench even harder.
The nausea spikes suddenly, shifting from vaguely queasy to actively urgent, and I realize I need to pull over before something embarrassing happens.
I take the next exit before I can talk myself out of it, following signs to a gas station that looks clean enough from the road.
The parking lot is mostly empty, just a pickup truck at one of the pumps and a sedan parked near the entrance.
I pull into a spot away from both, cut the engine, and sit there with my eyes closed and my hands still gripping the wheel.
Deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The nausea recedes slightly, enough that I don’t think I’m going to be sick in my car, but my whole body still feels wrong.
I need ginger ale, or crackers, or something to settle my stomach before I have to walk into KidStream’s offices and face my sisters with any semblance of composure.
I grab my phone to check the time, making sure I still have enough buffer before the meeting, and my period tracking app catches my eye on the home screen. When was my last period?
The thought arrives out of nowhere, unbidden, and suddenly the nausea takes on a different quality entirely.
My fingers aren’t quite steady as I open the app, as I scroll through the calendar, as I stare at the dates and the little red dots that mark my cycle.
I’m late. Really late. Like, not just a few days of stress-induced delay late, but genuinely, significantly late.
I guess I’ve been too stressed to notice.
My period may not be the perfect twenty-eight-day clockwork cycle that health class taught us all women supposedly have, but it’s consistent enough that I know my body’s rhythms. And now that I’m on the pill, it should be even more predictable. That’s literally one of the perks.
Maybe it’s just everything that’s been happening with Theo, the emotional upheaval, the sleepless nights, the constant low-grade anxiety humming through my system. Stress can delay a period.
I pull up Google with shaking hands and type in a search I really don’t want to be making in a gas station parking lot. The results load, and I scan through them, looking for reassurance, looking for someone to tell me I’m overreacting.
Instead, I find the words that make my blood run cold: The pill takes 7 days to become fully effective.
I knew that, right? When I started the new prescription, I read all the information. I frantically count backward in my head. When did I start the pill? When was the cabin where we first had unprotected sex?
Five days. I’d only been on the pill for five days before the cabin. Oh fuck.
My legs feel disconnected from my body as I get out of the car and walk past the gas station to a convenience store.
The family planning aisle is small, just a few shelves tucked between feminine hygiene products and condoms, but they have what I need.
I grab two different brands because if I’m doing this, I need to be absolutely certain.
Ginger ale goes into my basket too, and a sleeve of saltines.
Thankfully the bored teenage cashier doesn’t even glance up from her phone as she scans my items. The bathroom is in the back of the store, past the energy drinks and the automotive supplies, and it’s exactly as glamorous as you’d expect from a convenience store off I-5.
Fluorescent lighting that makes my already pale face look vaguely corpse-like in the mirror.
A sour smell the pine-scented air freshener isn’t quite managing to cover.
Someone’s phone number scrawled on the stall door in Sharpie, along with a crude drawing I choose not to examine too closely.
This is where I’m going to find out. Not at my doctor’s office with soft lighting and reassuring nurses who’ve seen this a thousand times.
Not in my own apartment, with time to process and privacy to fall apart if I need to.
Not with Theo beside me, both of us waiting anxiously, his hand warm in mine, ready to face whatever comes together.
No. A gross bathroom somewhere between Dark River and Seattle, with sticky floors and graffiti on the walls and a board meeting I’m supposed to be at in two hours. Fucking great. I lock the stall door behind me and stare at the pregnancy tests in my shaking hands.
I take both tests, following the instructions carefully even though my hands won’t stop trembling, and then I set them face-down on the little metal shelf meant for toilet paper and pull out my phone to start a timer.
I try to think about anything else while I wait.
The board meeting. What I’m going to say to Sloane.
Whether Erica will even listen to me or if she’s already made up her mind.
The traffic I still have to get through.
Literally anything except the two plastic sticks sitting three feet away from me, quietly determining my future.
The timer goes off, shrill and startling in the small space, and my heart slams against my ribs. I pick up both tests and look. Two clear lines on each, unmistakable.
Positive.
I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with Theo’s baby. For a long moment I just stand there, frozen, staring at those two little lines. My brain feels like it’s short-circuiting, trying to process information it wasn’t prepared to receive, emotions crashing into each other so fast I can barely separate them.
Shock. Complete and total shock, the kind that makes the world go slightly fuzzy at the edges and my knees feel like they might give out.
I lower myself onto the closed toilet seat because standing seems suddenly impossible, and I keep staring at the tests in my hands like they belong to someone else.
But underneath the shock, rising up through it like sunlight through water, is something I didn’t expect. Joy. Pure, overwhelming, terrifying joy.
I’ve always loved kids. It’s why I became a teacher, and why spending time with Chloe has been one of the best parts of my relationship with Theo. My whole life, for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted a family of my own. The dream was always to teach and also have children.
And now I’m pregnant. With Theo’s baby. The man I’m completely, desperately, hopelessly in love with, even though I’ve spent the past weeks trying to convince myself that walking away was the right thing to do.
My hand moves to my stomach without conscious thought, pressing against the flat plane of my abdomen where something impossible and miraculous is apparently happening. There’s nothing to feel yet, I know that, but I press my palm there anyway, and the tears start falling before I can stop them.
Happy tears. I want this baby so much it physically hurts, want this future so much I can barely breathe around it.
A child with Theo’s brown eyes and maybe my red hair, growing up alongside Chloe, part of a family I’ve been dreaming about since before I even knew his name. But the timing is a disaster.
The tears come harder now, and I’m not sure anymore if they’re happy or devastated or some impossible mixture of both. I cry into my hands, overwhelmed by everything I’m feeling, everything I’ve done, everything I don’t know how to fix.
I force myself to stand. The board meeting is in less than two hours.
Sophie’s counting on me. I came all this way to fight for my parents’ company, to try to undo some of the damage that’s been done, to stand up for something instead of running away from it.
I’ll figure out what to say to Theo after.
One crisis at a time.
The ride to the executive floor takes forever, the numbers ticking upward with agonizing slowness while generic corporate music plays softly overhead, and when the doors finally open, nothing looks familiar even though I spent years walking these halls.
The board meeting is in the main conference room, the one with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Elliott Bay. I walk through the glass doors and all conversation stops like someone hit pause on a movie.
Sloane sits at the head of the table, of course, because Sloane always takes the head of the table and has since we were kids playing board games in the living room. Her navy power suit is immaculate, and her hair is blown out in that perfect professional wave.
Erica and Morgan flank her on either side, the twins presenting their usual united front, their expressions carefully neutral in that way I remember from every family argument we’ve ever had.
They look tired and uncomfortable though, shifting slightly in their seats.
They’ve always hated conflict, and it’s part of why they’ve gone along with Sloane for so long.
Avoiding her wrath is much easier than facing it.
Sophie sits alone on the opposite side of the table, and relief floods her face when she sees me.
“This is a surprise,” Sloane says, her eyebrows rising. “I didn’t think you’d actually show up.”