Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
“Today is going to be better,” I tell him every morning. “Today we’re going to get over the hump and start missing him less.”
Some days, I almost believe it.
Then, exactly two weeks and sixteen hours after I left New York, I wake up with gorge surging up my throat. I barely make it to the bathroom before losing my dinner from the night before into the toilet.
“Oh, no,” I whisper to the chunks of undigested lasagna. “No, no, no. I’m not pregnant. I can’t be.”
But after a glance at my planner, I realize that my period is late. Two days late, in fact. I’ve just been too upset to notice.
And I am never late.
Hanging the “Closed for the Day: Be Back Tomorrow” sign on the door, I shower, brush my teeth, and kill an hour pacing my apartment with Captain Crunchypants in my arms.
The Sea Breeze Pharmacy opens at eight. I’m there at 8:01, buying three different brands of pregnancy tests. The clerk, Mrs. Henderson, one of my mom’s friends from church, shoots me a concerned look but doesn’t comment.
Thank goodness.
I don’t think I could stand feeling like any more of a disappointment to my late mother’s memory than I do already.
Mom would be so upset with me. She taught me to know better than to put my safety and future at risk for a man.
Back home, I line the tests up on the bathroom counter like soldiers facing a firing squad. Captain Crunchypants watches from his perch on the edge of the bathtub as I follow the instructions with trembling fingers.
Three minutes.
Three minutes to remember every moment with Hunter. Every kiss, every touch, every time he came inside me because we were trying for this very thing.
Three minutes to imagine his reaction to this news.
Will he be even colder? More brutal? Is there a chance he might even try to take my baby away from me?
I know he doesn’t want to raise our child, but he might not want me to raise him or her, either. He might decide to become a single father and have our baby raised by a flock of nannies, just to punish me.
Billionaires can do things like that. That amount of money buys the power to ensure the justice system always works in your favor.
I have three minutes to wonder if he might actually hate me that much.
Three minutes that change everything…
“Oh God.” I sink to the floor, one hand pressed to my still-flat stomach. Captain Crunchypants hobbles over, butting his head against my knee as tears slip down my face.
The tests were positive. Every single one.
“What am I going to do?” I whisper.
But I already know. I’m going to have this baby, and I’m going to love my child with everything in me.
And I’m never going to tell Hunter about the miracle we made together.
He’s right—a clean break is best. I want a break so clean that I never have to make contact with Hunter Mendelssohn again. It would hurt too much. I don’t want his money or a nice condo in the city.
I want the man I love back in love with me, and excited about starting a family together.
And if I can’t have that…
“I can do it by myself,” I tell the Captain, cuddling him close. “Mom did it. I can do it, too.”
He stretches his neck, licking the tears from my face, as if to say, “You won’t be alone, girl. You’ll always have me.”
I won’t always have the Captain—he’s already a senior cat—but he’s here now.
And now is all I’m capable of focusing on at the moment.
I’ll tackle today and then the next day and the next, until eventually I forget to be sad about Hunter. Until my joy over the life growing inside me eclipses my pain, and I embrace this new version of happily ever after, with just my little one and me.
No matter how desperately I wish this story had ended differently.
twenty-one
HUNTER
Eight months later…
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in March isn’t what most people would consider ideal vacation weather, but my mother loves it. She says the way the wind whips off the ocean reminds her of growing up on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany, though my grandparents left the country when she was barely five years old.
Still, she insists she remembers their small home with the dark wood shutters carved in the Bavarian style, and the way the sun dipped behind the softly rolling green mountains in the summertime.
My grandparents survived Hitler’s Germany by carrying false papers procured by my grandfather’s wealthy Gentile family. They hid in plain sight in a small, but brave Protestant community that closed ranks around them, keeping them safe as the country went mad.
But the constant fear that my Jewish grandmother would be discovered and taken to the concentration camps left scars that refused to heal while they still lived in their native land. After the war ended, as soon as they were able to save up enough money, they immigrated to the United States, eventually moving into a tiny home in a development not far from Buffalo, New York.