Okay, she had to do something about this. She looked Jake square in the eyes. “How’s Mick?”
“He’s, uh, fine.”
“Good.”
“I can bring him by the clinic Monday if you like. I thought you might be busy catching up these first couple weeks back, so I didn’t come very often.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I was. But, uh, yeah, if you want to bring him by Monday, I’ll try to take a break. Things are…still really busy, though.” She was trying to let him off the hook.
No, that was a lie. She was trying to let herself off the hook. She had to tell him. She knew that. She just didn’t want to face it yet. She needed to get…her village lined up before she did.
Jake nodded. He was staring at her really intently, but he didn’t say anything else.
After a few beats of more of that awful silence, Eve said, “Well, girls, shall we get on with it?”
“Yep!” Maya held her basket up to Nora and Eve but spoke to Jake and Sawyer. “Skedaddle, boys. It’s ladies’ night at the wish factory.”
Sawyer and Eve made moony faces at each other, which caused Maya to roll her eyes. Jake just stared at Nora until Sawyer, who’d already turned and started walking away, came back and shoved him to get his attention. Even then, he looked for a beat longer before he turned and trudged off.
Did he have ESP? Could he tell she was pregnant? No. That was just irrational panic. She needed to pull herself together.
“All right, what is happening?” Maya whispered urgently once the men were off the pier.
“You have to tell him!” Eve said. “I mean, you can’t even hide a sneeze in this town, forget a pregnancy.”
“That’s not even what I mean,” Maya said. “You two used to have a kind of ease in each other’s presence. I used to think that was just because you were, like, vaccine-crusading pals, but we now know it was because you were getting it on. I get that you’re ‘estranged for reasons unknown’ or whatever, but that was a hella weird vibe.”
“I’m going to tell him,” Nora said. “Of course I’m going to tell him. I want to give him a chance to be involved if he wants. I just want to wait until after the first-trimester ultrasound. What if something’s wrong with the baby? Or I miscarry? Can he…”
“Can he go through that again?” Eve finished softly.
“Right.” And really, how Jake was going to react to all of this was her biggest fear. Bigger than how she was going to manage the clinic or where she was going to live. “Maybe he can’t go through this again, anyway, even if everything is fine medically. He didn’t sign up for this.”
“I don’t really see Jake letting a kid of his go unacknowledged,” Maya said.
Right. That was completely right. “But I guess if I’m going to ambush him with this news, I want to make sure it’s actually news. However he’s going to react, I don’t want to…scare him more than I have to, you know?”
“I get it,” Eve said.
“Yeah,” Maya said.
“So you’ll keep my secret?”
“Of course we will!” Maya sounded put out that Nora would think otherwise. “We would help you hide a dead body. This is nothing.”
“Well, speak for yourself on the dead body,” Eve said. “But yes on the pregnancy. One hundred percent. I won’t even tell Sawyer.”
“It’s freezing out here,” Maya said. “Let’s get on with this so we can go back to my place and have more tequila.” She made a sad face at Nora. “And you can have some…milk? Kale smoothie? What do pregnant ladies drink?”
Nora took the flower Maya handed her and leaned over the railing. Maya and Eve came to either side of her. They all held their flowers out.
“You know, Eve,” Maya said, “it’s scientifically proven that if you donate your wish to someone else, it has a higher chance of coming true.”
Eve laughed and handed Nora her flower. Maya did the same.
Nora was once again getting a little teary. Hopefully this was a temporary thing and not a pregnancy-hormone-induced preview of how the better part of the next year was going to go down.
“Three wishes!” Maya exclaimed. “Spend them wisely.”
She should wish for a healthy baby, a place to live that ticked all her boxes, and…that Dr. Baker would still sell her the clinic for a good price. But all she could think of was:
Jake.
Jake.
Jake.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The answer to Maya’s question about what pregnant women