Cowboy Baby Daddy

Suddenly, I frowned. I flipped back in the calendar to the last day with a red dot in the corner of the box. It had been over a month since my last period. In fact, if everything was normal, I should have gotten my period about a week ago. Yet nothing had happened.

Queasiness and a missed period…

My stomach lurched, and I thought I was going to get sick right there. But fortunately, there was nothing left to come up after my episode that morning. Still, I felt entirely unsettled. “I need to get to the pharmacy,” I muttered to myself.

I could hardly consider that I might be, well, pregnant. Despite all the signs. We'd had sex a couple of times, but I was on birth control, and we'd used a condom. Still, I knew neither of those things were 100% foolproof. There was still the chance that I might be pregnant.

I wasn't going to be able to relax until I knew for sure.

I realized that I couldn't buy a pregnancy test at the local pharmacy; the news would be all over town by lunchtime. So I took a long drive, going a few towns over before I bought the test and then backtracking. Even though the wait to know if I was pregnant was making my stomach churn. The bag on the passenger's seat left me preoccupied.

Even if I was pregnant, what was I going to do? I couldn't imagine a way to tell Eric. And then there was Emma. How would she feel, knowing that she was about to have a little brother or little sister? She already had it so rough. She was already so desperate for attention. What if her little sibling upstaged her? Would she be able to recover?

I peed on

the stick; then, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, counting to 20. I glanced at the instruction manual, making sure I knew what the symbols stood for before I looked at the results.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

“No,” I whimpered, sinking to the cold, tile floor. Disbelief flooded through me. And shame.

How was I going to explain this to anyone? Things between Eric and I were already so strained and awkward. I had barely heard from him over the past couple weeks, and it wasn't as though I had tried to contact him, either. I hadn't known what to say to him, even when he had shown up at the daycare to drop off his daughter. It wasn't as though now I could suddenly call him up out of the blue and admit that I was pregnant.

But in a town as small as this, it wasn't as though I could avoid him. Sure, I could stall for a little while, but eventually, he was going to find out the truth. Especially since he was the town's one main doctor. If I tried to hide this from him, he would probably be able to diagnose me long before I even started to show.

I grabbed my keys, before I even knew what I was doing, and headed out, locking the door behind me and walking to Mom's house.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, finding her in the kitchen. “What are you working on?”

“Hey, sweetie,” Mom said warmly, taking a break from whatever it was so that she could kiss me on the cheek. “I'm canning cherries. The crop has been so good this year that I don't even know what to do with all the fruit. So I figured, a few dozen jars of cherry preserves to keep us through the winter! Can you imagine cherries on waffles, cherries in cookies? It'll be great.”

“Sounds yummy,” I agreed, taking a look down into the vat that she was stirring.

“What's up?” Mom asked, looking worried.

I didn't know how she could tell so easily that something was wrong, but I appreciated it. I wanted to tell her all about the pregnancy test and about the fact that it was positive, but the more I thought about it, the more sure I was that that was a bad idea.

I swallowed hard. Ever since Mom had found out that she had cancer, she'd become spacey. I knew she wanted the best for me; she always had. But as much as she wanted me to be happy, and as much as she wanted to have grandchildren, I couldn't help but wonder how pleased she would be for me if she were to find out that I was pregnant.

I didn't want her to think that I was making the same mistakes that she had made. Of course, she would never phrase things in that negative light, but all the same.

Besides, I didn't want to tell her and have Eric find out from someone else before I had the chance to tell him. He was the father of this child, whatever else might happen, and he deserved to hear the news from me. Before anyone else did.

I shook my head and took a step back from the pot of cherries. “I just was wondering what you were up to,” I lied.

Mom raised an eyebrow at me, continuing to stir her cherries. “Are you sure that you're not just here to check up on me?” Mom asked.

“Mom, I know you can get by just fine on your own,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Sure,” Mom agreed. “But the next thing I know, you're probably going to be asking me if Dr. Jones has called again recently. And you'll want to know what I've said to him, what I've decided regarding the chemotherapy, and everything else. Isn't that right?”

I blushed and ducked my head. From the way she said it, I could tell that she really thought this was all none of my business. I didn't understand how she could feel that way when I was her only daughter. Didn't she realize how much I stood to lose? But I shook my head, knowing that an argumentative approach was going to get us nowhere. In fact, it would probably only cause us to lose ground.

“So has he called?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “Yes,” she admitted, sounding only amused. “The good doctor gave me a call yesterday to see how I was doing. I told him that nothing's changed.”

“Well, did he ask you to come in for more tests?” I asked.