CHAPTER 2  Pregnant?

Eva POV

I sat on the edge of the tub for a long time after the two lines appeared, my hands still holding the test strip like it might change its answer if I stared at it long enough. It did not change. I set it down on the counter and pressed both hands over my face, and for a while I did not think anything at all, my mind was too full to hold a single clear thought.

Eventually I picked myself up off the floor and went to bed, though I did not sleep. I lay on my back staring at the ceiling, turning the same question over and over until it wore a groove into my thoughts. How was I supposed to tell him? Whether I told him now or later, this changed everything, or it changed nothing, and I could not decide which possibility frightened me more.

If it changed everything, maybe there was still something worth saving between us, some reason for him to stop and look at me the way he used to before his grandfather's arrangement turned us into strangers sharing a house. If it changed nothing, then I would be raising a child alone inside a marriage that was already finished in every way that mattered, and Richard would go on treating me exactly the way he always had, cold and closed, a man waiting for permission to stop pretending.

I thought about waiting. I thought about staying quiet until I had more time to understand what I was even asking of him. But I knew, somewhere underneath all the fear, that this was not something I had the right to keep to myself, no matter how he had treated me the night before, no matter how little I wanted to face him again so soon after he had returned my ring in front of an entire restaurant.

By the time the sky outside my window turned pale gray with morning, I had made my decision. I would tell him before he left for work. I would say it plainly and get it over with, because if I waited even one more day, I was not sure I would find the courage again.

I heard him moving around downstairs a little after seven, the sound of his footsteps in the front hall and the jingle of his car keys. I got up, splashed water on my face, and went down before I could talk myself out of it.

He was standing by the door already, coat half on, checking something on his phone.

"Richard."

He looked up, surprised to see me awake this early. "What?"

"I need to talk to you. Before you go."

"I have a meeting in forty minutes."

"This will not take long."

He sighed and set his phone down on the small table by the door, the way he always did when he wanted me to know I was inconveniencing him. "Fine. What is it?" 

I had rehearsed this a dozen different ways in my head overnight, softer versions, gentler versions, versions where I eased into it slowly. In the end, none of them came out. I just said it.

"I am pregnant."

For a moment he did not react at all. He just stood there, coat half buttoned, staring at me like I had spoken in a language he did not understand.

"What did you say?"

"I am pregnant, Richard."

His face changed slowly, the surprise draining out of it and something harder taking its place. "You are pregnant."

"Yes."

"Now. You are telling me this now."

"I only found out last night."

He let out a short, humorless laugh and turned away from me, running a hand through his hair. "Of course you did. Last night. The same night I gave you the ring back."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He turned back to face me, and his eyes had gone cold in a way I recognized too well, the same coldness he wore whenever he decided I was not worth listening to.

"It means the timing is very convenient, Eva."

"Convenient?" My voice rose before I could stop it. "You think I planned this?"

"I think you know exactly what happens if the divorce goes through and you have nothing to show for four years of marriage." His voice was flat, clipped, each word landing like it had been chosen carefully to hurt. "A baby changes that. A baby means money, support, a claim on this family that would not exist otherwise."

"You cannot actually believe that."

"Why shouldn't I?" He stepped closer, his jaw tight. "You show up the night after I end things with a story like this. What am I supposed to think?"

"I am supposed to think you would trust me," I said, my voice cracking despite everything I did to hold it steady. "After four years, Richard, I thought you would at least give me that much."

"Trust you." He said the words like they tasted bad in his mouth. "You want me to trust you, when I do not even know if this is real."

"It is real."

"Well, anyone would say that."

"I am not lying to you."

"You expect me to just take your word for it," he said, his voice rising now too, "after everything, after four years of a marriage neither of us wanted, you expect me to believe you got pregnant by accident the same week I finally end it."

"It is not the same week," I said. "This happened weeks ago. Before any of this. You know that if you actually think about it instead of assuming the worst of me like you always do."

He went quiet for a moment, and I let myself hope, just barely, that something in what I said had reached him. It had not.

"I am not accepting anything," he said finally, his voice cold and final, "not a single word of it, until there is proof."

"Proof?" 

"A DNA test."

"Richard, I am barely a few weeks along. That is not even possible yet, not the way you mean it."

"I don't care what is possible right now." He picked his phone back up off the table, his voice hardening with every word. "I want it done the moment it can be done. Not after the baby is born. Not months from now when it is too late to matter. I want proof as soon as there is proof to get, and until then, I am not accepting a single thing you have told me this morning."