Choosing to stay

Finding out

The first thing Stephanie noticed was the tea.

Not the exhaustion, not the ache in her feet from the wedding shoes, not even the strange emptiness of the apartment without Amelia’s sleepy little sounds filling every corner.

The tea.

Richard made it the next morning because he had woken before her, because of course he had, and because apparently marriage had only strengthened his belief that love was best expressed through warm drinks and unnecessary concern.

He brought the mug to her in bed with his hair still damp from the shower and his shirt half-buttoned, looking unfairly pleased with himself.

“Morning, Mrs Hayes.”

Stephanie smiled into the pillow. “You’re enjoying that far too much.”

“I waited years. I’m allowed.”

She pushed herself up on one elbow, laughing softly, and took the mug from him. The warmth settled against her palms. The smell rose first—strong, sweet, familiar.

And her stomach turned.

It was so sudden she barely had time to move. She shoved the mug back into Richard’s hands and scrambled from the bed, one hand pressed over her mouth.

“Steph?”

She made it to the bathroom just in time.

Richard was behind her immediately, not crowding, not panicking, but close enough that she could feel him there as she knelt by the toilet and lost whatever little was in her stomach.

When it passed, she leaned back against the cool tile, embarrassed tears burning at her eyes.

“Oh, that’s romantic,” she muttered.

Richard crouched beside her, one hand hovering before he touched her shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She swallowed. “Probably wedding cake. Or nerves. Or Kyle’s speech poisoned me emotionally.”

Richard smiled, but his eyes stayed concerned. “Could be all three.”

By lunchtime, she had decided it was nothing. By dinner, she had decided it was definitely something.

The second warning came when Richard opened the fridge and Stephanie caught one breath of the leftover salmon his mother had insisted they take home.

“No,” she said immediately, stepping back.

Richard froze with the container in his hand. “No?”

“No. That smells like death.”

He looked down at it. “It smells like salmon.”

“It smells like salmon has been lying to everyone.”

He shut the fridge slowly, watching her with that careful expression she knew too well.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“That’s your thinking face.”

“I have several thinking faces.”

“That one means you’re deciding whether to say something that might make me throw a cushion at you.”

Richard leaned against the counter. “When was your last period?”

Stephanie went still.

The room did too.

For one ridiculous second, she wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny, but because the question belonged to another woman’s life. A woman who had not sat in doctors’ offices hearing words like unlikely and low chance and unexplained. A woman who had not learned how to smile when people said, You never know, as if hope was a party favour they could hand out for free.

“Don’t,” she said quietly.

Richard’s face changed at once. “Okay.”

“No, I mean—” She pressed a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know. I wasn’t tracking. There was the wedding, and Amelia had that cold, and everything with my parents, and—”

“Steph.” His voice was gentle. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

But now the thought was there. Small. Bright. Terrifying.

She hated it immediately.

Because hope had teeth.

Stephanie walked past him into the bathroom without saying another word. She opened the cabinet, hands moving too quickly through cotton pads, plasters, old prescriptions, a half-empty bottle of vitamins. At the very back, behind a pack of Amelia’s bath sponges, was a pregnancy test she had bought months ago on a day when she had been late and foolish enough to believe her body might surprise her.

It had not.

She stared at the box until the letters blurred.

Richard appeared in the doorway but did not step inside.

“Steph?”

“I’m only doing it so I can stop thinking about it,” she said, too quickly.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be negative.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

She looked at him then, furious suddenly, though not at him. “Don’t look hopeful.”

Richard’s throat moved. “I’m trying not to look anything.”

That undid her more than if he had argued.

She closed the bathroom door.

The next three minutes were the longest of Stephanie’s life.

She sat on the closed toilet lid with the test face down on the counter because she could not bear to watch it decide her future in thin lines and silence. Her heart beat so hard it seemed to fill the room.

She told herself not to be stupid. She told herself bodies were strange, stress did things, nausea was not a miracle, one late cycle meant nothing.

She told herself she was already a mother.

That was the thought that steadied her.

Amelia.

Whatever happened on that counter, Stephanie was already Amelia’s mother. That had not been second place. That had not been less. That had been love arriving through a different door and finding her waiting.

She breathed out slowly.

Then the timer on her phone went off.

Stephanie flinched so hard she nearly dropped it.

For a moment, she did nothing.

Outside the bathroom door, Richard did not knock. He did not speak. He just stayed.

That was how she knew he was pressed against the wall on the other side, probably staring at the floor, giving her privacy while refusing to leave her alone.

Stephanie reached for the test. Turned it over. And stopped breathing.

Two lines.

Not faint enough to argue with. Not imagined. Not almost.

Two.

The room tilted.

She made a sound—small, broken, not quite a sob—and Richard knocked once.

“Steph?”

She could not answer.

The door opened slowly. Richard stepped in, saw her face, and went completely still.

“What is it?” he asked, though his eyes had already dropped to the test in her hand.

Stephanie looked up at him. For once, there were no words ready. No joke. No defence. No way to soften the impossible thing sitting between them.

She held out the test.

Richard took it like it might shatter. His eyes moved over it once. Twice.

Then all the colour left his face.

“Steph,” he whispered.

“I know.”

His gaze snapped back to hers, wide and disbelieving. “Is this—?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know, Richie, I’ve never been pregnant before.”

The words came out sharper than she meant them to, but then her face crumpled, because that was the whole impossible truth.

She had never been pregnant before.

Richard set the test down carefully and dropped to his knees in front of her. “Hey. Come here.”

She went because she did not know how not to. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face into her stomach, and that was what broke her.

Not the test. Not the lines. That.

Richard holding her like something precious had happened before either of them could understand it.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.