“I’m pregnant,” I whisper.
The door opens and closes, the sound echoing through the house. We look at each other as Lindsay heads for the bathroom door.
“I’ll go stall them. Clean up your face or Ty’s gonna know something is wrong,” Lindsay instructs.
“Lindsay!”
“What?” she hisses.
“You are so not moving to Florida.”
She gives me a look, one I’m not totally convinced means she’s going to stop the push for the move, but I’m too amped up to think about it. It’s a conversation for another day.
I splash some water on my face and pat it dry. Tucking the test in toilet paper, I stash it in a cabinet and make a mental note to come back and get it later.
I head down the hall, trying not to touch my stomach and not smile like the loon I feel. Everyone is standing in the kitchen when I arrive.
“You okay?” Ty asks immediately, reaching for me. His brows are pulled together.
“I’m good. Lindsay was just, um, telling me about the baby and I just got a little worked up. It’s so exciting, you know.”
I glance at my brother and he’s oblivious, devouring the rest of the brownies on the plate. But when I look at Cord, he’s grinning.
As subtly as I can, I nod. He winks, his cheeks breaking into a wide smile.
“Ready to go?” Ty asks, pulling me into his side.
I place a hand on his back, feeling his raised scar through the material of his shirt.
He’s here. I’m here. And, maybe, finally, so is our baby.
TY
Slate-colored clouds roll overhead, a low rumble of thunder noticeable every few minutes. The ground sloshes beneath my boots as I make my way to the entrance of the mine alongside Jiggs and Cord.
“Not a bad first week back,” Jiggs notes, swinging his lunchbox beside him. “We met goal. Nothing broke down—”
“And I didn’t kill Pettis,” Cord laughs.
“I reported his bullshit from last night,” I note, thinking back to twelve hours before. “No miner can go any farther than we’ve prepped for. Fucker has a death wish, and while I’m not entirely brokenhearted about that, I kinda wanna live.”
“Me too,” Jiggs snorts. “I got a kid on the way. Would like to be around to teach him how to make a jump shot like his dad.”
“Better let Uncle Ty teach him that if you want him to be the best,” I joke as I spy Pettis and Grunt up ahead. “I have a feeling Pettis is going to get fired tonight once we’re done. When I reported him this morning, Percora said he’d take care of it. You know what it’ll look like if something goes wrong right after we re-open.”
“It’ll close us down and we’ll go without a paycheck again,” Cord says, tinkering with his flashlight. “I think this thing has a loose cable or something. It keeps going off.” He shakes it in the air and mutters under his breath.
“Shit’s breaking already,” Jiggs laughs as we approach Pettis and Grunt. “You boys ready?”
Grunt makes the sound he makes that means yes, no, and maybe. Pettis nods, eyeing us all warily.
I watch the cart come up the ramp. Grunt and Pettis get in first and descend into the darkness.
“Let’s do this and go home for a couple of days.”
ELIN
“Don’t forget your gloves!” I rush to the door and hand a pair of bright red gloves to one of my favorite students. “It’s getting cold out there, big guy. You’ll need these.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Whitt,” he grins a wide, toothy smile.
I ruffle his hair before he turns and joins the line to head out to recess.
Closing the door softly behind me, I let out a long, tired breath. I tossed and turned last night, finally just getting up around one in the morning. I sat in the living room and planned out how to tell Ty about the baby. It was the excitement of knowing that kept me up. But by the time I fell asleep and woke up, the adrenaline had worn off and I was sluggish.
When I realized Ty wasn’t home yet, the adrenaline kicked back in.
Turns out his crew was working over, which isn’t out of the ordinary. A simple call to the Blackwater Office, something I’ve done a number of times over the years, answered that. Still, it started my day off wobbly and the rollercoaster of highs and lows is taking its toll.
“Ouch,” I mutter, stopping in my tracks. One hand goes onto a student’s desk as I bed forward and squeeze my eyes shut. A rumble, not quite a cramp but not not a cramp either, tightens in my belly. “Breathe,” I tell myself, concentrating on the rising and falling of my chest.
My heartbeat races as much as I try to steady it. “No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”
I need my husband. I need to hear his voice.
Quick steps lead me to my purse in my bottom desk drawer. Shaky hands tug at the zipper and retrieve my cell.