But I don’t feel pregnant. Nothing in me says pregnant. I’m just crabby and tired and sad and missing Kai.

Damn. I don’t want to miss Kai.

I don’t want to be pregnant, either.

I’m sure I’m not pregnant.

I’ll wait another day. I’m sure my period will come.

Cooking dinner that night, I’m beyond jittery, I’m nearly climbing the walls with worry. I should have just gone and bought a test kit. Why put myself through this? The kit would have put me out of my misery.

Or locked me in it.

Because what if I was pregnant? What would I do? What would everyone say?

I look at the kids, who are clearing the table and jabbing each other with elbows as they try to pass through the doorway, each one refusing to let the other by, and it’s impossible. Me, having a baby, is impossible.

I couldn’t cope. I’d be poor and stressed and out of my mind and—

No.

No way. No baby. There’s no baby. I’m not pregnant.

I’m pregnant.

It’s the next morning, the kids are at school, and I’m sitting in the stall of the drugstore’s employees-only bathroom, staring at the home pregnancy test stick.

Two pink lines. That’s not good. That means pregnant.

Maybe I’m reading it wrong.

I pick up the box, study the side with the little color illustration and the captions beneath the drawing. I read every word, everything, brain freaking. This isn’t real. How could it be real? We had protected sex. Always. In the beginning, always. But the last visit…?

I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering that one time we didn’t, that night in my hotel room when things got heated and intense and we just did it. Went for it. Went for each other.

The bathroom door opens and shuts, and I see wide black pants and sensible black shoes on the other side of the bathroom stall, waiting for me to come out. But I don’t move. I can’t.

I almost hear my eighth-grade health and science teacher tonelessly drilling into our junior high brains, “It only takes one time. Just one little mistake….”

I should have known better. I do know better. I’m forty, for heaven’s sake.

Call Kai. I want to call Kai. I should call him and… what? What do I tell him? Kai, I’m pregnant. And then he says, what? Girl, I’m on my way.

I’ll move to Seattle and marry you, and we’ll raise the baby together.

The lady on the other side of the stall door clears her throat. Her sensible black shoes shuffle.

I’ve got to get off the toilet. Leave. Go.