you need one.”
She nodded, feeling numb.
Dr. Hannigan went to his computer and began to pull up some information for her. Annalise tried to marshal her thoughts.
I’m pregnant.
She was going to have a baby.
What would Janette say when Annalise told her?
Please, God, let her be pregnant too by now. Let her be waiting to tell me.
If she was, there would be no jealousy. They would be pregnant together. Their children would be the same age. It would be perfect.
But if she wasn’t…
Annalise had been preparing all her life for the pain of watching her sister go through pregnancy and motherhood without her. She had been ready for it. When Janette had shared her plans, Annalise had been able to embrace them happily.
But Janette hadn’t been preparing for this at all. If Annalise was pregnant before her, it would break Janette’s heart. It would completely discourage her.
I should wait to tell her. I’ll wait as long as I can, and hopefully she’ll come to me and tell me she’s pregnant first. Then we can just celebrate together.
And in the meantime, there was someone else she had to talk to…
She’d promised Curt that she would get in touch with him tonight and let him know how things had gone with the doctor. He would be expecting a call, and if he didn’t get one, he was sure to call her.
But she didn’t want to tell him about this over the phone.
She was afraid, actually, to tell him about it at all. Who knew what he would say? A surprise pregnancy would be a big deal under the simplest of circumstances. But Curt was under contract. No one could know that he was in a relationship. He certainly shouldn’t be having a baby with someone.
Would he lose his job if it became known that Annalise was having his baby?
I can’t be responsible for that.
So maybe it would be better not to tell him about it either. Maybe… she swallowed hard. Maybe it would be better to simply withdraw quietly from his life, to leave him alone to make his movies. She didn’t want her pregnancy to cause problems for him.
But he deserves to know, doesn’t he?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know the answers to any of these questions.
She was going to have to figure it out, and quickly. They were on a clock now. Soon enough—assuming everything went well—she wouldn’t be able to keep this pregnancy to herself.
But maybe she could take a little bit of time to decide what she wanted to do next.
She accepted the piece of paper her doctor handed her with a referral for an OB/GYN, along with a prescription for folic acid supplements. She nodded as he recommended prenatal vitamins and plenty of sleep and reminded her to cut out alcohol and caffeine.
She made her way back out to her car, feeling as if she was walking through a dream.
I’m pregnant, she thought again, wondering if this could really be her life, or if she had somehow found her way into someone else’s.
I’m going to have Curt Slade’s baby.
It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that could be real. It felt like something that couldn’t possibly happen to someone like Annalise Hope.
And yet, it was.
Chapter 13
The good thing about being on hold for two hours was that it stopped her from receiving any incoming calls.
Annalise felt absolutely sick about the fact that she had ignored Curt’s calls last night. Seven missed calls from him. She knew that he was worried about her. But she hadn’t figured out what to say to him, and if she answered that phone, she knew the truth was liable to come out.
She wasn’t ready.
In the end, she’d texted him:
Saw the doc today, all’s well.
He had responded immediately:
What’s wrong? You’re not picking up.
She had ignored that text as thoroughly as she had ignored all seven of his phone calls. Answering questions was not a good idea at the moment. The answers were too complicated, too fraught.
I’ll just wait until the next time we see each other in person. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Today was Saturday, and she was on hold with the OB/GYN’s office, trying to schedule an appointment. She’d been on hold for ages and had put her cell phone on speaker so that she could walk around the apartment and clean things up while she waited for her call to be answered.
If they don’t get to me within the next hour, she thought, looking anxiously at the clock, they’ll close for the