Page 15 of Tiny Precious Secrets (The Brothers of Calloway Creek The Montanas #4)

Allie

Mia brings me a piece of dry toast. “Try this.”

“I don’t want to eat.”

“Allie, you’ve thrown up ten times in the past hour. You have to eat something.” She shoves it at me and I take a small bite to appease her. “I ran into your mom in the kitchen. I told her we’re taking a girls’ day. She said it sounded like a good idea since you’ve been off lately.”

“Off.” I stare at the four positive tests. “That’s one way to describe it.” I rub my red and swollen eyes. “What am I going to do, Mia?”

She hands me my phone. “Maybe call the guy you’re in love with? You know, the father?”

I take it but toss it on the bed. “No.”

“You’re not telling him?”

“I can’t even wrap my mind around it. I’m not going to burden Asher with this.”

“If you think it would be a burden to him, you don’t know him very well. Allie, that guy would marry you today if he knew you were pregnant.”

I pull my knees to my chest. “I’m not putting him through this.”

“So, what? You want an abortion?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“How far along do you think you are?”

I shrug. “You know how whacky my periods can be. I have no idea.” I close my eyes and sigh. “I could be four weeks or four months.”

“You are not four months. You’d be showing. I remember Maddie Calloway once saying she showed a lot earlier with her second because she’d already been stretched out once before.”

I run a hand across my middle. “Here’s the thing, though. I think I already am. My clothes are tight. I know I’ve gained weight. I thought it was because I wasn’t running as much.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” She pulls out her phone. “My cousin can be discreet. I know he’d see you privately.”

I belt out an incredulous scoff. “Hudson McQuaid? Are you fucking crazy?”

She shrugs. “He works with high-risk pregnancies. And he’s proven he can keep his trap shut. Remember when Jaxon Calloway knocked up two women at one time?”

“I’m not going anywhere in Cal Creek, Mia.”

“Okay then, who was your doctor last time?” She opens a browser, ready to do a search.

“Miller. In Brooklyn.”

“Hmmm.” She types, reads, types, reads, then sighs. “There was a Dr. Lauren Miller. OB/GYN in Brooklyn. Retired five years ago.” She taps her screen, and I hear ringing through the speaker. “We can still try her old office.”

I listen as Mia tries to get me an appointment, but the lady on the phone insists the soonest is three weeks.

“Three weeks?” I cry when she hangs up. “I can’t wait that long.”

She tries a few more offices and the quickest appointment she can get is twelve days from now.

“I’ll go crazy if I have to wait twelve days.”

She holds out her phone with her cousin’s number pulled up on the screen. “I’ll bet he could work you in today.”

I bat it away. “Not happening.”

“Okay. Twelve days it is. Guess you’re going in to work today?”

I hate how passive-aggressive she’s being right now. But I also know I’m not going to cave and go somewhere local. “What if we go to an emergency room in the city?”

She eyes me like I’m crazy. “To get an ultrasound?”

“I could say I’m from out of town and I’m spotting and want to make sure everything’s okay.”

She thinks on it and shrugs. “Get dressed. I’ll tell my brothers not to expect me at work until this afternoon.”

An hour later, we’re sitting in a busy emergency room. Unlike me, there are people here with real emergencies. Broken bones. Flu. A guy comes in with a nail in his shoulder. Babies are crying. Kids are complaining. A man is yelling at the admit nurse that he’s been here for four hours.

I lean to Mia. “What do I say when they ask how far along I am or what my due date is?”

“Give them your best guess. By the time you get the ultrasound and they figure out you were lying, you’ll have your answers.”

A kid comes in with a bloody nose. His mom carries him to the front desk, droplets of blood trailing behind them. “I feel guilty about taking a room from someone who really needs it.”

A woman stands up and stomps out. “I’m going to the free clinic. It’ll probably be a shorter wait.”

I raise a brow. “What if we did that? There must be free clinics all over the city.”

“Yeah, if you want to risk life and limb to go there. I’m sure they’re in shady areas.”

“Maybe not.” I search on my phone then grab Mia’s arm. “Check this out. There’s a women’s clinic a mile away. It says they offer free ultrasounds to confirm pregnancy, estimate gestational age, and detect cardiac activity.” I stand. “Come on.”

She takes my phone and looks at the pinned address. “You sure you want to go there?”

“I’m sure.”

She eyes me up and down. “Got any valuables on you?”

“It’s not going to be that bad.”

When we get there, I try to pretend Mia wasn’t right. But, oh my god, she was. We are so out of place here. Most of the women waiting to be seen aren’t even wearing clean clothes. A lot of them have two or three kids in tow, many of them in soiled, ripped clothing.

I run a hand through my hair to mess it up, and I untuck my shirt to appear more disheveled. I sigh, feeling even guiltier here than at the ER.

“You lost?” the woman at the counter asks, popping her gum.

Mia nudges me forward. I approach slowly. “I, uh… would like an ultrasound.”

She huffs. “Don’t want it showing up on Daddy’s insurance?” She rolls her eyes and hands me a clipboard. “Fill this out, princess.”

Mia steps in front of me and puts her hands flat on the desk. “Looks like you missed the etiquette training. You have no fucking idea what she’s going through, who she is, or what she’s lost. So why don’t you keep your judgmental thoughts to yourself?”

That’s my best friend. Brusque as she is. But she always has my back.

I spend two hours trying not to make eye contact with women who are obviously judging me the same as the receptionist. Just when I think I can’t take another under-the-breath comment or turned-up nose, my name is called. Not my real name. The name Mia put on the form when she filled it out for me.

“Miss Anderson?”

Rolling my eyes at the mention of Asher’s last name, I stand and pull Mia with me.

We’re escorted to a large room with five or six curtain separators.

The lady points to the third one. “That’s yours.

Undress your lower half. A tech will be in shortly.

Mondays are our busiest days since we’re closed on the weekend.

The wait might be a bit longer than normal, especially since one of our techs called in sick. Sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

Once the curtain is drawn, there’s barely enough room for the bed and one small chair. I almost fall over while removing my pants, then sit on the table and cover my lower half with the provided paper sheet.

I hear sobs from across the room. A woman is crying and saying, “I can’t be pregnant. I just can’t. He’ll kill me.”

Mia shoves her AirPods in my ears and plays music. I’m grateful I don’t have to listen to anyone else. I’m fairly sure I’m the one who will be sobbing as soon as it’s my turn.

Lying flat, music in my ears and Mia stroking my arm, I almost fall asleep and am startled when the music stops. I look up to see a young woman. Girl is more like it. I give Mia’s AirPods back to her.

“I’m Clara. I’ll be doing your ultrasound.” The baby-faced tech rolls an ancient-looking machine up next to me, disturbing the closed curtain to my right.

Mia and I share a look. We’re both thinking the same thing. Is this kid even out of high school?

Clara’s cheeks pink. “I’m young, I know. But I’ve been working here over a month, and I’ve done a hundred of these.” She laughs and tries to make a joke. “It’s not like I’m performing surgery.”

I throw an arm over my eyes. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The machine beeps as it turns on and I hear the squirt of lube knowing it’s going on the wand thingy she’s about to impale me with. When she tells me to relax, I want to kick her with the foot that is inches from her face, because relaxing is the last thing I’m about to do.

The wand moves around inside me as I try to go to a better place in my mind. A beach. A blanket. A bottle of champagne. And Asher. That’s my place. It’s the place I dream of. It’s where my mind goes when I think of him. When I don’t think of him. When I try to think of life without him.

“There it is.”

I don’t look at the screen. Because I know what ‘it’ means.

“Do you want to hear the heartbeat?”

My eyes are squeezed tightly shut as I shake my head. Maybe if I don’t hear the heartbeat, I won’t have the instant connection I had when I heard Christopher’s heartbeat. Maybe if I don’t let myself connect with this baby, I won’t be so devastated when I find out something is wrong with it.

Mia holds my hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

I’m sure her eyes are plastered to the screen.

She knows my story almost as well as I do, but it’s not her story.

She’s not scared of being pregnant. Of falling in love with another human being only to have that love ripped to shreds and her world torn apart.

“It looks like you’re about eleven weeks,” Clara says. “But let me take a few more measurements.”

My mind is reeling. Eleven weeks. Almost three months. How did I not know this before now?

You did.

“We need a bed!” someone yells. “Got a laboring woman out here. She’s crowning.”

I rise up on my elbows. “I’m done here. Use this bed.” I’m scooting up so the wand thing just kind of falls away as the girl looks up at me. “I got what I came for. You need the room.”

I take tissues off the stand, wipe up, and quickly put on my jeans and shoes. Then I pull Mia out to the front and drop three fifty-dollar bills in the nearly empty plastic jar labeled “Contributions appreciated.”

Mia wraps her arm around my shoulders as we walk to the train station.

All I can think of is the word eleven.

I’m eleven weeks pregnant.

Eleven weeks ago, Asher’s sperm unknowingly fertilized my egg and now I’m pregnant with his baby.

For eleven weeks, there’s been something growing inside me. It started as just a few cells. But now it probably has arms and legs and might even look like a person.

Eleven weeks.

Eleven weeks is too far along to terminate.

I press my forehead against the train car window knowing that even if they’d said four weeks, I wouldn’t do it. It’s a part of me. A part of him.

I swallow the bile rising in my throat and take a sip of water, positive my heart is about to be put through a blender and pulverized as visions of Christopher appear in my mind.

And when our train goes over the bridge on the way to Calloway Creek, I contemplate if this is the one I’ll jump from when everything goes to shit.