The Moment of Truth
Exactly. And he wanted it the hell off.
* * *
SATURDAY MADE IT one week and two days since she’d had sex with Josh Redmond. Dana wasn’t worried about STDs. But she was worried.
She was probably just feeling guilty for throwing caution to the wind, was making an issue where there wasn’t one. Her cycle was regular. It always had been. And her small window of opportunity that month hadn’t been the previous week. But just to be sure, she picked up a home-pregnancy test first thing that morning—the brand that claimed it could detect pregnancy as early as one week after unprotected sex. At home in her bathroom, she looked between Kari and Lindy Lu, two little faces staring up at her as though waiting to see what would happen next.
“Taking action is the only way to stop the worry,” she explained. Kari took a paw swat at Lindy Lu’s nose. The puppy blinked, lay down and looked up at Dana again.
She followed the directions on the box and sat down to wait.
Jumping onto the counter, Kari went for the little stick and Dana rescued it just in time. The kitten batted the folded paper directions instead, and Dana grabbed those, too.
Kari sent the box flying to the floor. It landed a foot from the puppy, who stood to investigate. She smelled it. Pawed at it. And then, picking it up in her teeth, dragged the thing that was as long as she was to the corner of the room where she plopped down to chew on it.
“You really shouldn’t be doing that,” Dana admonished, to which Lindy paid no attention at all.
Glancing in the mirror across from her, Dana saw the skinny woman sitting there in jeans and a short-sleeved navy pullover. She looked so ordinary. Plain and wholesome. Not at all like someone who’d be taking a home-pregnancy test.
Dana glanced at her watch. “Another minute and then we can get on with our day,” she said. “I’m sure it’s going to be negative.” She took a deep breath. Watched the kitten bat at a drip from the bathroom sink. “Which doesn’t really let us off the hook.”
She had to be honest with them. “It’s really early so chances are, even if I am pregnant, I’ll get a false negative. Gestation can take up to five days and then you need another few days for the hormones to get flowing, and it’s the hormones that register a positive on that stick.”
Kari licked her newly moist paw. Lindy stood and tried to shake the box, which whopped her upside the head instead.
“Yeah, you’re right. Worrying is silly. It wasn’t my fertile time.”
The kitty landed in her lap, her wet paw leaving a mark on the bottom of Dana’s shirt.
Five...four...three...two...one.
Time to look. She waited a little longer. Just to be sure she’d waited long enough.
Setting the stick on the counter without looking at the results, she scooped up Kari in one hand and Lindy Lu in the other. “Ready?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
Kari batted at Lindy’s nose again. The puppy scrambled to get down. “Shhh. Both of you. It’s fine,” she told them, raising them to either side of her face. “We just have to stay calm, okay? You guys can do that for me. I know you can.”
She kissed each of them, put Kari down and cuddled Lindy Lu between her jaw and her shoulder as she looked at the stick.
Okay.
Not what she’d hoped.
Like she’d told her housemates, all they had to do was remain calm.
* * *
JOSH WAS BARELY out of the sack Saturday morning when he heard pounding on the door.
In boxer briefs and a T-shirt, he stumbled out to the kitchen, leaving a howling L.G. locked in his kennel on the unmade bed. He looked through the peephole and saw nothing.
The pounding came again. On the sliding-glass door off the kitchen. He’d overheard someone mention that there’d been a string of break-ins the previous month in Shelter Valley by a burglar who always entered the premises through sliding-glass doors.
They caught that guy, though. A student who’d since been expelled and was now in jail awaiting trial.
Peeking around the edge of the full-door blind he pulled closed each night after putting L.G. out one last time, Josh saw a black-suited guy with a black ski hat standing in bright sunlight on his back porch, holding two travel coffee mugs.
The getup did nothing to disguise the man. Josh figured he wasn’t going anywhere, either, and took his time grabbing a pair of pants from the hanging rack in the laundry room, pulling them on and fastening them before opening the door.
“Hold on,” he said, and, closing the door so as not to invite the intruder into his actual home, he sauntered back to the master bedroom, grabbed a rambunctious L.G. out of his kennel and made a run for the door.
He was not about to face his long-lost cousin with dog piss running down his pants.