He wouldn’t be angry. That wasn’t how he was. He would get that look on his face, kind of resigned, when he realized that he had lost a battle. It wasn’t very often, but there were things in the world that you couldn’t control, and Cain Donnelly was a pragmatist.
Alison would be supportive. So supportive. And it made her feel like her chest was going to break open. Because they would be good to her. And she would always wonder just how disappointed they were. That she had done one big irresponsible thing and she had gotten herself in trouble.
You’re not in trouble. It is not 1950 and you are not fifteen.
No. She was twenty-two. She was a twenty-two-year-old woman who was only just now figuring out what she wanted from her life. That was the honest truth. The stark truth. And the things that Clara had said to her suddenly came home to roost. Maybe she was stagnant. Maybe she was stuck in a little bit of a time warp because half of her goal was to make sure that she was still wherever her family wanted her. Pleasing them. Doing what they wanted.
Making up for the fact that her dad had... That he’d had it hard raising her by himself. That he’d been stuck in a marriage that wasn’t any good in the first place because he was trying to be a good father. And that Alison had chosen to be there for her. That Alison had chosen to be the kind of mother her own had never been.
“The test isn’t going to take itself,” she muttered. She managed—with much struggle—to tear the test open. And after reading the instructions four times, she was able to complete the task.
While she waited, she listened. Then she heard heavy footsteps outside the door. Pacing the hall. Back and forth.
“Knock it off,” she shouted.
“Did you get the answer yet?”
“No,” she said. “And listening to you pace isn’t helping me relax.”
“This may shock you, but I don’t really care about your relaxation.”
“Well, it may shock you, but I don’t care about your nerves.”
“I’m not nervous,” he said.
“You’re nervous,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said.
“Are, too,” she shot back.
“Are you having a baby orare you a baby?”
“Fuck off,” she said. And she had never said that to another person in her life.
She walked back over to the test and stared at it. There was a faint pink line beginning to darken. She looked away quickly, unwilling to see if there was a second one trying to appear.
“I will not have a kid out in the world and not be involved,” he said.
“Weird,” she said. “Because you seemed pretty much in the opposite camp when last we spoke of this topic.”
“No,” he said. “I said I didn’t want to have kids. That’s different than...one being inevitable.”
“Did I say I wanted it?” she shouted.
“You do,” he said.
And she hated that he knew that. Hated that somehow, even though he had managed to blindside her in spite of having told her exactly who he was from the very beginning, she didn’t surprise him at all.
She looked back over at the test, and it was unambiguous. There were two glaring pink lines. Pregnant. Absolutely pregnant.
She let out a long breath, and a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away and threw the test in the trash. Then she walked out of the bathroom. “Yeah, congratulations,” she said, pushing past him, out of the bathroom, into the hall.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes,” she said.
He walked into the bathroom, where she heard him moving around for a minute, and then he came out holding the test.