“Serena. Hey. Serena?”

I blinked several times, realizing I’d zoned out. Glancing up from my desk, I found myself staring into the blissful eyes of Monica. Her bright red sweater was a bit too tight over her breasts, making a Christmas tree stretch to odd proportions. I frowned and scrubbed at my eyes, giving her a shrug.

“Sorry. I guess I was just…out of it again.”

In the far room of the office, the other attorneys were celebrating Christmas Eve. Someone had baked a chocolate cake, with dark frosting and a large fondant Santa Claus in the center. I watched as Steve, another coworker, sliced a knife right through Santa.

With a lurch, I felt my stomach grow tense. A wave of nausea shot through me. Panicked, sensing my cheeks growing green, I burst up from my seat and raced toward the bathroom.

“Serena?” Monica scampered after me. I could feel her hot on my heels, almost chasing me. “What’s wrong? Did you eat something…?”

I placed my knees on the ground in the bathroom, hovering over the toilet as I felt my stomach constrict, then release. My shoulders shook and my thoughts raced, trying to pin down a reason why. What had I had for lunch? Nothing. I’d been too busy. For breakfast? A bagel with butter. Could that have been it?

But no. It didn’t add up.

I stood up, mopping at my lips with a bit of toilet paper. I turned around and found myself face-to-face with Monica, near the bathroom sink. She seemed shaken, and she gave me a concerned look, whispering, “Serena, are you okay?”

Glancing into the mirror, I hardly recognized myself: the pale, almost green cheeks, the bleary, red eyes. I shrugged softly, trying to play it off.

“Why aren’t you at the party?” I asked her, scrubbing my hands in the sink. “That cake looks—erm…”

“Have you been eating enough?” Monica asked me, her voice lowering. “I know you’ve been so stuck on that Shane Merkley case. Nobody else wanted it, you know? He’s clearly guilty.”

“He seems like a decent person,” I said, scrubbing at my lips with a paper towel, hoping to rid my mouth of the taste of vomit. “I have my last meeting of the year with him in just a few hours, actually. Prepping for it now.”

Monica allowed silence to fall. Her eyes were dark, penetrating, studying my every move. I felt another wave of nausea wash over me, gripping my stomach.

Reaching for my abs, a sudden flow of reason fell over me. I’d attributed my lack of period to stress.

But now, I realized there might be another reason why.

“Oh my God!” Monica exclaimed. “You’re not—”

“Definitely not,” I whispered, feeling as if someone was punching me in the gut, over and over, with a firm fist. “I can’t be.”

“You haven’t been with—”

“Not since him. No.” For some reason, it felt impossible to say his name, even as it echoed through my brain and seemed to be the only reason to exist, only reason to breathe. Ethan.

“Why not just take a test? To rule it out?” Monica said, shrugging slightly. “I can even run out and get it for you, if you want?”

“No. No, no,” I murmured, reaching upward and gripping my hair. I yanked at it, feeling the strands tug too tight, then reconsidered.

“I’ll do it.”

The walk to the local convenience store felt like a walk along the plank. Wrapping a cardigan around my shoulders, I watched, like a puppy at a pet store, as Monica joined the others in the break room, taking a piece of cake. She stabbed a fork into her slice, giggling along to something Steve said. I felt resigned to a different fate, standing in the shade while the others felt the glittering sun.

The convenience store was more or less abandoned, with entire aisles cleared out for Christmas. The candy section had been ransacked, with just a single package of a generic peanut butter and chocolate hidden along the far edge.

Just as there had always been, each time I’d walked alongside them on my way to something else, there were several different brands of pregnancy tests: each with a woman curling her neck downward like a crane and staring at her round, blissful belly.

As I traced my finger over the edge of the cardboard box, a question circled my mind. Was this something I wanted to be true?

I didn’t know. The question bounced from ear to ear before bounding back into the echoes of my brain. I paid for the test at the counter, making momentary eye contact with the clerk. She was brimming, her cheeks bright. True: I was very much old enough to have a child. I wasn’t some eighteen-year-old, frightened and scrubbing together pennies to pay for the test. I yearned to be a mother, in some respects.

But was this the right way?

“Good luck, and Merry Christmas!” the clerk called as I left, jangling the door as I opened it. It was covered with Christmas bells, lending an air of festive cheer to the foggy streets outside.

Good luck. What an odd thing to tell someone buying a pregnancy test on Christmas Eve.

I circled the block three times, aware that the longer I waited before taking the test, the longer I could live in this in-between world. I wasn’t pregnant, but I wasn’t not pregnant. I felt like a probability question on a high school math exam. I felt like a statistic, right before it’s written down.

I was grateful that Monica didn’t eye me when I entered the office. She was leaning heavily against Steve’s desk, next to a plate coated in cake crumbs.

Ducking into the bathroom, I opened the packaging, my nostrils flared. In the back of my mind, I yearned, for the first time in months and months, for a drink. Yet alcohol was the last thing in the world I should have, for this potential baby’s sake.

“If I’m not pregnant, I’ll call everything off the rest of the day, and drink myself into a stupor with Monica,” I whispered. “Here goes nothing.”

After peeing on the stick, I tucked the lid back on the end and slipped it back into the packaging, hopeful that no one would catch me. As Christmas celebrators fell into the bathroom, giggling, I slipped past them and returned to my desk, my heart hammering. I knew that in two minutes, the stick would reveal my future.

In the far end of the office, they’d turned up the Christmas music a bit too loud. It blared through the hallway, forcing me to close the glass door and bring the blinds down. I was blocking out all Christmas cheer for the moment.

In the next minutes, I waited, my heart feeling squeezed. Perching on my desk, I reached for my purse and drew out the now-worn polaroid from that gorgeous day with Gracie and Ethan. The way I peered up at him, with such love and adoration, seemed to breathe magic. His face was easy, bright, handsome—with a bit of gruffness to it, hinting at the life he’d led before.

God, I wanted my children to look like him.

With this sudden jolt of emotion, I reached for the cardboard box and drew out the stick.

It read back a bright pink plus sign, sure and true, alerting me, once and for all: I was pregnant. I was pregnant with Ethan’s baby.

The love we’d grown in the mountains, during that fateful week, had found a lasting place in my belly.

“I’ll be damned,” I whispered, glancing down at the photo on my desk, at the way it shimmered beneath the light. In the far room, I heard the pop of a champagne cork. In a strange way, alone, I felt more celebratory than I could comprehend.

But confusion, like a fog, filled my brain almost instantly. My phone chimed, alerting me that it was nearly time to meet with Shane Merkley, the alleged former mob boss. With a flourish, I slipped the polaroid into my folders, put the pregnancy test into a small zip-pocket of my purse, and fled the office, feeling as if I could run like the wind, faster and stronger than ever before.

As I walked, I forced myself to run through my mental notes about this ex-mob boss. Meeting with the polite and handsome thirty-something had been something of a pleasure the past few weeks. We’d met three times to discuss his charges, and each time, he’d made a point to open the door for me, laugh at my jokes, flash his dimples. In a strange way, he was the only man in my life, currently. A person I was trying to “fix,” filling the hole of my loneliness.

Far in the back of my mind, I imagined telling Shane about the pregnancy.

“The father is a man I don’t know all that well,” I’d tell him, conspiratorially. “I’ll raise the baby on my own if he’s not interested. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“You’re like my mother,” Shane would say, his accent lilting and jovial, hinting at his Irish roots. “She worked her entire life to ensure us kids were happy and warm and well fed. You’ve been doing that for your clients for years. Now it’s your turn to build something for yourself.”

His voice, gravelly and dark, was always accompanied by a smile, making me trust him, despite his charges.

I knew Shane would be difficult to defend, but I’d make sure the judge would fall for his charms. And I’d be up for a promotion within the year.

The baby and I would need that money. This thought rang out in the back of my mind, causing a smile to slip across my cheeks.

Shane stood up to greet me. He shook my hand, squeezing it tight. “Merry Christmas Eve to you.”

“And to you,” I told him, giving him a genuine smile. “Let’s get started on this so we can get home.”

“Any plans for you this evening?” he asked, tilting his head. He’d ordered two waters for us, and a whiskey for himself. He sipped it, his nostrils flaring. “Your parents live close by?”

“They do,” I said. “I’m planning on spending tomorrow with them. Taking tonight to catch up on work and relax.”

“Ah, Serena. You should be with the people you love tonight.”

After a brief pause, and a stab of realization that he was right—mob boss or not—we dove into the meeting. I took quick notes, asking him questions about his alleged crime.

“And that was the night of November 22nd?” I asked, my eyebrows lowering. “The cops have you at the scene.”

“That was my brother’s doing,” Shane said, sounding almost hesitant. “He asked me to swing by and help him move out of his ex-lady’s house. All these boxes. I strained a few muscles trying to help him, to be honest. The doctor at the jail can probably tell you that. I asked him for an ice pack.”

“And you never heard any shots fired or anything, while there?” I asked him, my brain a million miles away from our conversation, from this world. “It’s just good if I get as much information as I can.”

“It all happened so fast,” Shane said quietly. “If only because I was only there a second. Grabbed my brother’s boxes and drove them down the road. Had nothing else going beyond that. Then we all met up at my mama’s for Thanksgiving dinner. You can ask her yourself.”

“She’ll be a good witness. And anyone else you saw that evening?”

“I’ve got loads of friends who came to Thanksgiving,” Shane said, slipping his fingers through his curly hair. “I think you’ll find this one easy to wrap up.”

“That’s my hope,” I sighed, slapping the folder closed and making one last note.

I flashed a final smile, feeling my heart yanking me out the door. I needed to retreat, regroup. I needed to lay on my back in my bedroom and slide my fingers over and over my stomach, daydreaming about the future. Figuring out a way to make it so.

“Come on, Serena,” Shane said, his voice cool and smooth. “Why not stay and have a drink? Because of you, I’ll be free for good. Because of you, I can kiss my mama goodnight every day of the week, if I want to. I want to thank you for that.”

“Maybe after Christmas, Shane,” I told him, giving him a slight shrug. “Right now, I’m off the clock.”

I stood up from the bar chair, wrapping my arm around a manila folder and sliding my hand toward his to shake it. As he took it, a few slips of paper glided out from the bottom of the folder, falling to the floor at Shane’s feet.

“Shoot,” I said, my eyebrows rising. The light shimmered off the items, including the polaroid, which was face-up. I stared into Ethan’s eyes, gazing up at me. Time ticked along, making my shoulders sag forward. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Not a problem,” Shane said, diving beneath the table to retrieve them. After a slight hesitation, he gripped the polaroid, his face breaking into a slight smile. My heart hammered with embarrassment.

Placing the photo on the table between us, he slipped it across, giving it back, along with the few other pieces of paper. He chuckled, saying, “I feel like I just saw something private about you, sorry. I know it’s important for you types to keep your private life separate.”

My cheeks grew bright red. I returned his laugh, slipping the polaroid into the folder. “Oh, don’t worry about it. My mistake, having it floating around.”

“He’s got such unique good looks,” Shane continued, making my eyes grow wide with discomfort. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask, but…are the two of you an item?”

I flushed again, shrugging. Was Shane hitting on me?

“I’m, um… I mean…” My brain felt off-kilter. We were far away from the bounds of professionalism. “I really should be going, Mr. Merkley. I do appreciate you meeting with me today. We’ll catch up again after the holidays, yes?”

Shane’s eyes were steady, dark. He nodded primly, pressing his lips together. “Merry Christmas, Serena. Take care of yourself out there, won’t you?”

Feeling like I was floating, I darted back into the fog. The sun bled through the thickness, but the air was cool, causing me to pull my sweater tighter around my shoulders. I felt the weight of that conversation crash against my chest. For the first time, Shane’s words had felt creepy, off. I imagined him as a mob boss, using his words to terrorize his minions.

For the first time, I doubted his innocence, could almost hear him ordering his minions to commit unspeakable crimes. I could visualize him doing all of that, and then returning to his mother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner without even batting an eye.

I whisked back toward my office, gathering supplies for the next few days, and then fled without saying goodbye. Monica waved her hand as I left, tossing her red hair back. It glittered in the Christmas tree lights. “Happy holidays!” she cried, just as the elevator door closed between us.

There was so much I wanted to say to her. So much I couldn’t describe. I was feeling completely and totally off, carrying Ethan’s baby in my belly and fear in my heart.

I ducked into my car in the parking garage, rested my head against the steering wheel, and felt the tears descend. The baby in my womb knew nothing of this outside world. I would protect him or her as long as I could.