A hot fist of nausea lodged behind her breastbone. She’d been feeling a bit queasy lately. Nothing extreme. Not enough to notice, to wonder, not when there was the house hunt and then the mad scramble of putting together offers and getting the preapproval. Not when she’d had her period like clockwork (breakthrough bleeding, they’d called it, not uncommon) and had only gone in for an answer to her sudden, overwhelming fatigue.
The house had felt like a mistake from the start. The letter had arrived informing them that the duplex was going up for sale and they had sixty days to vacate, and she’d wanted to start looking for a new apartment. But Nathan had pointed out that with the rental market what it was, and with him finally having steady employment after a decade of patchwork contracts and canceled projects, it might be the perfect time to buy.
She’d blanched at the idea. Her work, which had once kept them afloat, had cratered after the accident, during the long weeks of her recovery. The rest had dried up after her biggest client went under and others tightened their belts. New websites weren’t the priority when they were trying to keep the lights on. But Nathan had finally landed a permanent position. One that paid well—well enough to (mostly, nearly, almost) pay off their small mountain of credit card debt, Nathan’s student loans, the medical bills from the accident.
“Because I technically lied about my employment, we can’t get the earnest money back,” Nathan was saying. “And we were already on the bubble with the loan approval. Justin doesn’t think there’s any way he can push it through, even if I miraculously get a new job offer tomorrow.” He collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table.
Her mind churned quickly over the possibilities. The closing date would have been a tight turnaround as it was. Finding another rental wasn’t an option until Nathan got a job, not without the cash that had now vanished into the hole of the offer that was too high but worth it, completely worth it, when you think about our life there, our future.
He was looking at her like he was waiting for her to tell him what to do. Because she always knew what to do. She was always the one with the plan.
“I’m pregnant,” Emma said. Fingers curled over the edge of the counter. Gaze on the cheap vinyl tile. Were those meant to be roses in the corners? They looked like splotches of mildew.
“What?”
Her eyes flicked up. He stared at her, mouth slack, hair falling boyishly over one eye. Dark hair, blue eyes, a small scar on his chin she liked to set her thumb against right before she kissed him. They’d met at a coffee shop, back when she couldn’t even afford internet, so she’d hidden herself in the corner away from the baristas’ annoyed glances and ordered plain black coffee and nothing else for hours at a time as she worked. He’d been sitting at the table next to hers. When he bought her a chocolate croissant, she tried to wave him off, but he said it was for his sake, since her growling stomach was distracting him.
She took the croissant. And the latte that followed. It was a week before he actually asked her out, to a mediocre movie and good Italian food, and kissed her a gentlemanly kiss good night at her doorstep before she slid her hand into his hair and pulled him to her hungrily, drew him inside the tiny studio, undressed him in the dark.
He told people he’d fallen in love with her over pastries and coffee, but when they were alone he confessed it had been that night with her teeth against his neck, the certainty of her, the hard edges that she had hidden so well.
She told him she’d fallen in love with him with the taste of butter on her lips that first morning, but it was just a story. She had no idea when she’d fallen in love with him. But people needed stories to make sense of things, and she had learned to give them what they needed.
Now his face was pale. His lips shut. That face that couldn’t hide anything failing to hide his unhappiness. “You’re on the pill,” he said.
“It happens,” Emma replied helplessly. She’d missed a pill here or there when she was sick, distracted, traveling. Far from perfect use. “You want children.” That was the point of the house, with its extra bedrooms.
“I do. Of course I do. It’s just—now—” His throat convulsed. “If I can’t find a job … We won’t even have a place to live in a few weeks. We can’t.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Nathan wanted children, and she had said yes, okay, someday, because she wanted to be the person who could want that. Now, though, it was his face that had taken on a gray pallor. His eyes that dropped to the table. “It’s not the right time. Maybe things work out. But what if they don’t? And I wouldn’t want to wait, and then—when it’s further along—”
Emma put her hand against her abdomen. Still flat, no outward sign at all, and she realized she had already made a decision.
“I’m keeping it,” she said.
His brow creased slightly, as if puzzled. Sometimes, she thought, she underestimated how well he knew her. He said we want kids, but maybe he knew that he wanted kids, and she said okay. “We’re out ten thousand dollars, and that was all we had. The down payment was supposed to be another loan. I’m unemployed. We’re getting kicked out at the end of the month. How are we supposed to raise a kid right now?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Her hand became a fist against her belly.
He sat back in his chair, a look of consideration on his face. “What about your parents’ house?” he asked, and there was something odd in his tone—like he’d been waiting to bring it up all along.
“What about it?” Emma asked, instantly wary. Her stomach tightened with a feeling like dread.
“Well, we own it, don’t we?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“Technically, we don’t own anything. The trust does. You know I can’t do anything with the house unless Daphne and Juliette both agree.” They were the names of strangers in her mouth. “We can’t take out a mortgage on it or sell it or anything like that by ourselves.”
The way the trust had been set up, they hadn’t been able to do anything with the house until Daphne turned twenty-one. By then, none of them had spoken to one another in years. It was easier to go on ignoring one another’s existences. Ignoring the house, and the horrors it held.
“I’m not saying sell it—not yet, anyway. But there’s nothing to stop us from living there,” Nathan said. He looked excited. Here it was: the perfect solution to all of their problems. Emma’s heart was rabbit-quick. He stood. He crossed the floor, put his hands on her arms.
“We can’t,” she said. It felt like she was forcing the words out against something solid. She never thought of it as the house where she’d grown up. Only the house where her parents died.
“This is the perfect solution. We move into your folks’ old house. We fix it up, talk to your sisters about selling it, and then we can buy our own house. It’s ridiculous that you’ve all just left it sitting there empty,” he said.
“I can’t go back there,” Emma said, shaking her head. Not to the house. Not to Arden Hills.
He made a frustrated noise. “Why not? Come on, Emma. You’re not being rational. We need a place to live. You own a house. It’s not complicated.” He gathered her to him, her face pressed against his chest. She closed her eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of him. “If you want to have this baby, we have to do this. We’ll move into the house. We’ll figure things out.”
The button of his shirt dug into her cheek. She let him hold her, and said nothing.
Secrets shifted beneath her skin, ready to bloom.
* * *
Emma had never lied to Nathan about her past.
Not exactly.
She’d told him she had two sisters, one older and one younger, that they hadn’t spoken in years, that they had drifted apart after their parents died when she was sixteen. That they had inherited the house—four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two acres of land.
That Juliette, already eighteen when their parents died, had left for college and never came back. That Emma and Daphne had been shuffled off into foster care—split up and then spit out.
He’d asked how her parents died. Of course he had. Delicately, pressing a kiss against her shoulder, his hand against her hip, because that was the only time she ever talked to him about her past—stripped bare in the dark, looking anywhere but into his eyes.