she and Baby had decided they’d definitely like to adopt, although not the same way as the Lindstrom family.
Nobody would ever adopt the way they had.
But Quinn and Baby had so much love in their hearts to offer a child that adoption had seemed like a wonderful option. Maybe older kids. Maybe foster to adopt.
Quinn had made her peace with never having a biological child. She was fine with it. But she’d never considered that maybe she was terminally ill or something and now any sort of family was out of the question.
She reached over and grabbed Anne’s hand on the baby carrier. “I’m not trying to wreck your weekend, Anne, really. But I want to know if I need to prepare myself, and Baby, for the worst.”
“I knew something was wrong.”
Quinn spun around at Baby’s words, not having realized the guys had walked back over
His green eyes were filled with worry. “I know you been trying to hide it, but I could tell. You’ve been exhausted all the time and quiet. I thought you were sad. I thought maybe being out at Harvard made you realize how much you missed it. But are you saying there’s something physically wrong?”
Quinn should’ve known he would notice. He noticed everything about her—wasn’t that one of the reasons she loved him so much?
She turned back to Anne. “I don’t know if there’s something physically wrong with me. Anne and I thought maybe I was anemic, so I had some blood work done last week.”
Anne rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Actually, it ends up you are a little anemic. We need to get you on some iron.”
“But there’s more,” she and Baby both said it at the same time.
She looked at him, and they both reached out their hands for each other. She stepped over until their hands grasped each other.
Whatever this was, they would handle it the way they had learned how to handle everything life threw at them: together.
He gave her a little nod that let her know he was thinking the same thing. She let go of his hand and wrapped an arm around his waist, feeling his arm come around her shoulders.
“Tell us.” Together, again.
“Fine.” Anne let out a breath and took a step closer. “But I want you to listen to everything I have to say before you react.”
This had to be bad. Baby’s hand squeezed her shoulder.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Girl Riley isn’t the only one who’s pregnant.”
Quinn waited for the rest of the statement, but it didn’t come.
Shock flooded her system. Wait—
“Me?” Her gaze flew to Baby then back to Anne. “I thought you told me I couldn’t get pregnant anymore.”
Anne shook her head. “No, I just said that the older you got, the fewer eggs you release each month, which of course lessened your chance of becoming pregnant, and that you should make sure you’d come to terms with that.”
Quinn could hardly process what she was hearing. She leaned into Baby, staring up at him. Her rock. The one who had helped her make sense of anything she couldn’t seem to understand. “I’m pregnant?”
But there were still shadows in his eyes. He was remembering the rest of what Anne had said. That they had to get all the news before they reacted.
Right. She grabbed a fistful of Baby’s shirt. “Is the fetus okay?”
“Is Quinn okay?” Baby asked.
Anne gave them a tight smile. “Yes. You’re around thirteen weeks pregnant, so the good news is that you’re past the normal miscarriage stage. But getting pregnant at your age is considered high-risk. We’ll have to monitor you closely. Weekly visits. There are factors we’ll want to take into consideration–gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, which can lead to preeclampsia.”
High-risk. Okay, Quinn could handle that.
“You also need to know that women who get pregnant after the age of forty, especially for the first time, run a higher risk of having a child born with Down syndrome. When we ran your blood, it was standard practice to check certain proteins. Those levels weren’t normal.”
Quinn wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react. “Does that definitely mean the baby has Down syndrome?”
Anne shook her head emphatically. “No. It just means the chance is higher.”
“What does that mean?” Baby asked. “I mean, I know what Down syndrome is, but what does it mean? Will the baby die?”
Anne shook her head just as emphatically again. “No. No it just means you might have a kid with an extra chromosome. He or she will still