Page 47 of Accidental Groom

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“He’ll just say it’s stress,” she mutters from beneath the mound of blankets I wrapped her in on her bed. “I’ve had a lot on my plate, Harry. Like,a lot.My body’s been thrown all out of whack.”

“Maybe.” I shrug, staring down at my phone as the notification pops up that someone’s at the gate. I don’t check the video feed — just speak a quick,“We’re in the cottage,”into the microphone before pressing the button to open the gate. “I’m not taking chances, Elena.”

She hasn’t thrown up again since I called, but I’d grabbed a pot from the kitchen for her just in case. She sips at the water I gave her, her gaze not quite meeting mine, but hovering near me like shewantsto look but can’t quite bring herself to. Itchurns something in me — guilt, maybe, over Geraldine, or fear, or something deeper I don’t want to quite drag out.

The knock at the door breaks the quiet.

Dr. Frasier lets himself in, walking into the room in his usual uniform — grey sports zip up, shoes too polished, eyes sharper than they have any right to be for a man pushing sixty. His gaze lands on Elena, then on me, narrowing slightly.

“Harald,” he says flatly. “Mrs. Highcourt.”

Elena flinches at the name. My jaw clenches. Dr. Frasier hasn’t exactly been my biggest fan since Geraldine’s death, but apparently, the payroll is too good to give up, and I need him so infrequently that it’s never really mattered much. But the way he’s looking at me says far too much.

“Symptoms?” he asks, brushing past me to her side.

I start to explain what I’ve observed and what she’s told me, but she cuts in with her own version — a little nauseous last night, dizzy earlier, a churning stomach all morning, just bile. He checks her pupils, her pulse, and her temperature, then sets his bag on the bed by her feet and opens it.

“When was the wedding?” he asks, pulling out a handful of items to search a little deeper.

My brows knit. “About a month and a half ago, almost two months,” I answer. “Why? I added her to the patient documents?—”

“Have you had sex?”

I blink at him. “Yes.”

“Protection?”

Elena shifts to sit up. “I have the arm implant.”

Dr. Frasier eyes her. “When was your last period?”

“Six-ish weeks ago.” Her face goes pale again. “I’m not exactly regular, even with the implant. I—uh—stress usually makes it worse.”

My stomach twists.

Dr. Frasier pulls a small, flat cardboard box out of his bag and pops it open. He doesn’t ask for her hand — just picks it up from the bed and presses his thumb into her palm, keeping it locked in his grip.

“Fraiser—”

Elena’s yelp cuts me off, and I nearly lunge the moment he pulls the needle away from her finger and a little bead of blood forms. He collects it in a little plastic tube before putting a bandaid over the wound, then pulls out a little plastic test strip.

“We’ll know in ten,” he says.

————

Ten minutes feels like an hour.

Elena curls onto her side, a blanket pulled up to her chin, her hair falling across the pillow. She hasn’t said much. Neither have I.

I sit in the armchair across from her, watching the shadows crawl slowly across the wall. I used to sit with Geraldine like this — when her migraines would flatten her, when she was too proud to let me carry her to the doctor, when she didn’t want anyone to know she was sick.

The night she died still weighs heavily on me. That final kiss on my cheek. I should’ve known what would happen, should have chosen any other route than the one I’d gone with?—

“You look like you’re spiraling,” Elena croaks.

“I’m not,” I say, offering her a half-truth. Because sure, I am, but it’s not over the possibility of a child growing in her.