I drive down the quiet street and meet an achingly familiar Jeep. I slow my car to a crawl, and amazingly… so does he.
Two windows roll down. One by the driver’s seat, revealing Ethan with both hands clasped tightly on the wheel. There’s no smile on his face, his jaw tense.
The backseat reveals the cutest little six-year-old ever to live, with two ribboned pigtails. “Bella!” Haven says. “Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around, sweetie,” I say, refusing to look at her father. “I’ve been very busy.”
“Can you come over later? I’m going to a birthday party and I want braids, but Daddy can’t do braids, and Maria isn’t home tonight.”
It takes everything I am to shake my head. Thankfully, Ethan spares me from answering. “Bella is busy tonight, too,” he says. “She has school, you know. She needs to study.”
Haven’s face falls, and she shoots her father a glare. He can’t see it, but judging by its potency, I’m sure he can feel it through the seat.
“That’s right,” I agree. “But I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”
It’s a lie, because I’m not sure at all, not judging from the way her father is frowning. He looks over at me, and for the first time, our gazes lock.
His brow is furrowed, his eyes narrowed with conflicting emotion. I can’t tell if he misses me or wants to strangle me. Or himself. Or us both.
“Ethan,” I murmur.
He shakes his head. “We can talk later,” he says, rolling up their windows. I lift my foot off the brake and like two ships in the night, our cars start moving again. Haven waves cheerily from the backseat and I wave back.
I manage to keep my composure for roughly five more seconds before my eyes well up, and by the time I park outside the pharmacy, I have to give myself a few minutes before I can go inside.
I can’t possibly be pregnant. This can’t be happening, because if I am… there’s no way Ethan will ever look at me softly again.
When I return to my oversized, over-empty mansion, Toast greets me by the door. He winds his way in between my legs and gives a soulful meow. I glance down at my watch, but it’s not mealtime yet.
I scratch him under the chin, sniffling. “Thank you,” I tell him. “You’re a lot of work, but I like you.”
He butts his head against my leg one last time. You’re welcome. I imagine him saying. But don’t get used to it.
I don’t make it further than the guest bathroom on the first floor. There, under the soft lighting from directional spotlights, I’m faced with the truth.
I’m pregnant.
At least if the four different pregnancy tests I’ve bought and taken are to be trusted, and considering there’s four of them… I can’t rationalize it away.
Pregnant.
How? Had my birth control pills expired? I race up the stairs to my bedroom, as if solving this problem might somehow solve the other one, the one involving unexpected motherhood.
My hands shake as I look on the back of my birth control pills. Finding the expiration date and… no. They’re not expired. Not even close.
What’s happened? How have they failed?
My gaze snags on the green bottle of sleeping aids that Wilma had given me. A bunch of leafy herbs are pictured on the front.
Still trembling, I reach out and grab the bottle. Pills rattle inside. I scan the back… St John’s Wort, chamomile, ginger. And below, in the tiniest font known to man.
Should NOT be taken in conjunction with hormone-based birth control.
I sink down onto my larger-than-life bed, in my larger-than-life house with my larger-than-life problem.
I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.
And it’s a fucking herb’s fault.
Which isn’t comforting at all, because it’s not really true. It’s my fault for not reading. For not researching. For assuring Ethan that I was on birth control and had the situation handled when I didn’t.
My stomach sinks with the realization that he’s not going to handle this well. He’s not going to believe me, not after knowing how Lyra had trapped him. And combined with my previous lie… What will he think of me?
My stomach drops out from under me entirely, and I race to the bathroom, violently ill for the first time during this pregnancy.
It won’t be the last.
20
Bella
The knowledge is irrevocable. It weighs on my mind every second of every hour, pulling me from sleep, from rest, from study. I spend that night staring up at the ceiling, trying to come