Gretchen

Micah stared at me, so shocked I thought the baby was going to pop right out of her.

“You need a pregnancy test?”

Not the word to screech in the middle of Butterpond.

A herd of senior citizens, clad in track suits and sweat bands, stretched outside Barlow’s Market in preparation for their weekly Saturday morning laps around the building. Unfortunately, the skies had opened and a steady rain interrupted their exercise routine. They huddled together under the awning, forming a tightknit, clucking mass of pensions and photos of grandchildren.

Ambrose couldn’t resist the siren call of Icy Hot. My dog trotted in a circle around the exercise group—currently raising funds for their social charity Bad Kneez for Diabetez. Oxygen tanks clattered, walkers tipped, and the elderly clustered tight, turning up their hearing aids to amass ever more gossip for their bridge game later.

I shushed Micah before she revealed anything else. The last thing Butterpond needed was another pregnancy rumor scandalizing the town. Micah’s pregnancy had been the latest salacious tale. The accidental courtship at the county fair between her and Julian Payne was the talk of the year, surpassing Mrs. Hunter’s unfortunate plastic surgery with resultant nipple migration and even the crochet club’s fiasco that had tangled the group in an affair with not one but two of the founding ladies—with each other.

Best to keep my newfound secret as quiet as we could.

“I need a…” My eyes darted to the eavesdropping elderly. “Bottle of wine. And I need you to get it for me.”

Micah glanced down at her swelling tummy, stretching the soft cotton of her dress. “And you think the pregnant chick buying wine will result in less gossip?”

I huffed. “It won’t look weird if you buy a pregnancy test.”

She laughed. “Honey, no one’s gonna believe that I need a test anymore. Everyone knows I’m pregnant, and if they can’t tell from the bump, they can read the results from the stretch marks on my ass.”

Damn it. “Fine. Then just be moral support. Use that giant booty to shield me while I grab a test.”

Pregnant women were unreasonably cranky. I’d have to remember that.

“Why are you acting crazier than usual?” Micah asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“But you think you need a…” She shooed away Mrs. McDaniels as the old bitty pretended to drop the wrapper for her hard candy in the nearby garbage can. “Bottle of wine.”

I crossed my fingers. “I have a good feeling about it.”

“A good feeling?” My friend groaned. “Gretchen, sweetie, you know you can’t get pregnant from hallucinating having sex with someone.”

Old news. “I know. That’s why I did it for real.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus. With who?”

“Marius, of course.”

Her purse dropped. Her jaw nearly went with it. “You think you’re pregnant with Marius Payne’s baby?”

Pretty sure the entire cluster of elderly heard that one. “I’m hoping.”

“You’re hoping?”

Micah tended to believe she was a refined, elegant sort of woman. Intellectual. Rational. But when the finger wagged and the pregnancy hormones surged? She knew just where to stuff that designer purse.

“What in the hell did you do?” she asked. “Gretchen Murphy, I swear to—please tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”

That didn’t make it any less true. I shrugged.

“What the hell did you do?” she asked.

“You’re pregnant. Take a guess.”

Those manicured nails were made for more than just looking good. I ducked out of the way before she hauled me into the store by my ear.

“What in the world would possess you to have sex with him?”

That was a silly question. “Have you seen him?”

“I can’t believe you.”

I sighed. “It’s okay. We have an arrangement.”

Micah crossed her arms, cocking her hip. The bump only gave her more attitude. “I have another six months to go before I’m allowed to drink again. Gretchen, you can’t be dropping bombs like this on me.”

“It’s not a bomb. It’s just…” I sighed. “It’s hardly more than a firework. It’s a sparkler.”

“You can still get burned. What are you thinking?”

Why lie? “That it’s time to have a baby.” And it had certainly been an interesting week and a half ensuring that it would happen. “Marius was kind enough to help.”

“That doesn’t make a man kind—it makes him a dog.”

“It’s not like that. It’s a…mutual thing. We decided it was in our best interests to have a child. I thought it was the right time for me, and he needed a baby to get that job in DC.”

These facts did not aid the conversation. Micah kept her cool. Barely. Glancing at Ambrose as he herded into a tight circle anyone proudly displaying an AARP card.

“Why…” She’d regret the question. “Why the hell would Marius need a baby to get a job?”

“Because I accidentally told the interviewer I was already pregnant with his child.”

She should have surrendered then. “But…why?”

“To help him during the job interview.”

“Why were you on an interview with him in the first place?”

“I was pretending to be his girlfriend.”

“Ah, right.”

“To appear like he’s balanced and well-adjusted.”

“Of course.”

“So the interviewer wouldn’t think he was a brooding, loner Navy SEAL who isn’t dealing with his injury and is probably suffering from some undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Micah nodded. “Sure, sure. Though…you know…he is a brooding, loner Navy SEAL who isn’t dealing with his injury and is probably suffering from some undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“Oh, most definitely.”

“And you want to have a baby with that?

“Absolutely.”

She sighed. “Gretchen, look, I get it. You’re going through a hard time. You lost your job and your dad is getting married, so you are well within your rights to act quirkier than usual…but you need to think about this. You don’t even love Marius.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You weren’t in love when you made that baby.”

“It helps!”

I patted her tummy. “You’re one to talk. Remember when you couldn’t even stand Julian? But you sure as hell bent over for him?”

“That…” She lowered her voice, avoiding the knowing glance from Mrs. McDaniels as she dropped yet another candy wrapper into the garbage. “That was different.”

“You tell her, honey,” the old lady said. “Get some while it’s hot, that’s what I always say.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Micah, when has a baby ever been a bad thing?”

She brushed my hand off her bump and rubbed it herself. “Look, I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Don’t worry about that. Making a mistake never felt this good.”

Micah covered her face. “I don’t need the details.”

Mrs. McDaniels disagreed. “I do. You should come to our bridge club, honey. You think we’re playing for hearts, but all us old biddies just love a good spade.”

I glanced at them both. “Tell you what—if you can get me in and out of the store without anyone noticing, you’ll both get every dirty detail.”

Mrs. McDaniels hooted. “Is it dirty?”

“Let’s just say I’m lucky he only has one leg.”

Micah groaned, grabbing my hand and hauling me into the store. Unfortunately, the charity walk followed, staging their walk inside the market until the rain let up or the arthritis permanently crippled their joints. The warm-ups started in the produce section. Stretches by the tangerines, back bends across from the melons, pelvic thrusting at the carrots. It was enough to make a girl go carnivore.

We had only a few minutes before the marathon turned migration once the seniors realized they could get their exercise and their meds at the same time.

We had to move quick. Grab the test, hide it to the register, and attempt to get any cashier but Marcy Brandish because only God had more secrets than that busybody.

We ducked through the pharmacy, skirting the Widow Barlow as she begrudgingly waited for her prescriptions, tapping her gnarled cane against the linoleum. Alice Mahoney, one of Butterpond’s more aged residents, waited with her. At her side, Roy Jenkins, who, though people denied it, had been spending quite a lot of time with Alice in the months since her husband’s death.

Sly old fox.

I supposed Butterpond was lucky to have a shelf for pregnancy tests amid the Bengay and sugar testing strips, but only two boxes remained. Micah crept to the end of the aisle, glanced left and right, then waved her hand.

“Go for it.”

In my haste, I’d forgotten to check my corners. I reached for the pregnancy test.

Someone quicker grabbed it first.

I recognized the sorority charms on her bracelet. The nail art. The freckles.

“Oh my God! Gretchen!”

That voice.

Uh-oh.

I turned, trapped between the cough syrups and tampons by the ginger succubus.

She was cute. Curvaceous. Bubbly.

A redhead with a splattering of adorable freckles and eyes so blue she’d only need something old, new, and borrowed when she married my father.

Chloe Waltz was a twenty-two-year-old sorority girl who bounced when she talked, clapped to punctuate her sentences, and like to hug. Too much.

“Gretchen, I can’t believe this!” Chloe dove at me, wrapping me in her arms and squeezing until I was sure she’d have smooshed any baby I might’ve been carrying.

Micah had failed as my lookout, but she was quick to react. She separated us before we needed to break into the Band-Aids and gauze.

“Chloe!” Micah forced a smile. “I didn’t see you there…”

Her eyes darted down. So did mine.

Chloe juggled the pregnancy test as she skipped around the aisle, her beaming grin practically chasing away the day’s storm clouds.

“What a coincidence!” Chloe squealed. “This is so great. My astrologer told me something amazing would happen today. My psychic didn’t believe her, but the stars don’t lie!”

When most people met their end, they saw their life flash before their eyes.

I saw my future.

And it wasn’t pretty.

Astrologers. Juicing. Cleanses.

Chloe was all about the toxins but she didn’t realize that she was the poison destroying my father.

And she was holding a pregnancy test.

“Are you…” The words didn’t want to come out, and my tongue rejected even forming the first syllables. “Preg…”

Chloe giggled. “We’ll find out!”

So, this was what an aneurysm felt like. It was good to have one now, just so I’d be prepared to have a second during their wedding.

I crashed backwards, colliding with a shelf stocked to the brim with condoms. More condoms than the town of Butterpond had reason to use. They were even on sale. Two dollars off a box. What a deal.

Why the hell hadn’t Dad and Chloe stocked up? Barlow’s even honored double coupons.

Chloe’s eyes widened. She looked back at the shelf, grabbed the second box, and wagged it in front of me. “Don’t tell me you need one too!”

“I…”

Chloe’s screech was the only high-pitched sound the elderly trio awaiting their medications could hear. She stamped her feet, clapped her hands, and the only thing tethering her to the ground was the sheer weight of my stare.

“Are we going to have babies?”

Alice Mahoney had accidentally wandered away from the blood pressure cuff and recognized Chloe’s excitement. She poked at Roy.

“What’d she say?” Alice asked.

Roy’s face etched in a dark frown. “Asked her if she had rabies.”

Alice tutted. “Oh, Ethel Jackson’s dog had that. Lost all her hair.”

The Widow Barlow scowled. “That’s scabies.”

Roy chuckled. “No, that’s what I got in the service the day I went off the base. She said rabies. And I’ll tell you why. It’s that Scarsdale property with all those birdfeeders.”

Alice scratched her head. “What about a cheerleader?”

The Widow Barlow hmphed. “That’s no cheerleader. That’s Chloe—Elijah Murphy’s retirement prize.”

Chloe ignored them. “You’re pregnant. Oh my God. Is this not the greatest day ever?”

She was cute, friendly, and would have been my best friend had she not been banging my father.

What the hell did a twenty-two-year-old girl want with a middle-aged veterinarian? I wanted to think the best in people. I wanted to believe they’d fallen in love and were set to live out the rest of their lives in bliss.

But they’d only known each other for a single month before they’d planned a wedding, and they’d be married before the season changed.

And if she was pregnant?

There be no way to stop the wedding.

No way to convince my father he was making the mistake of a lifetime.

“Do you know what this means?” Chloe gasped.

Yes, and, for the sake of my sanity, she’d reduced me to begging. “Don’t say it.”

“I’m going to be a grandma!”

That, Alice heard.

And Roy.

And the Widow Barlow.

And the entire congregation of exercisers power-walking through the grocery store, their rigorous pace maintained by Ambrose trotting at their side.

Everybody silenced.

And that was the instant all of Butterpond learned entirely too much about my uterus.

But Chloe found this to be a tremendous opportunity to get to know her future, reluctant, stepdaughter. She pulled me into a hug, her pregnancy test jammed into my side.

“This is unbelievable,” she said. “I’m so excited I might pee!”

“Chloe, I don’t think…”

“You’re going to be a big sister!”

Micah snorted.

This wasn’t happening.

“We’ll be pregnancy buddies!” Chloe giggled. “My grandbaby. Your little brother or sister. How exciting is that?”

Micah wasn’t helping. “How cute!”

“We’ll do everything together!” Chloe promised. “Pregnancy announcements. Baby showers. Lamaze classes. Gender reveal parties. Birth announcements. Baby pictures. Our kids are going to be best friends.”

The elderly began to swarm, but this wasn’t gossip. This was fucked up.

How could my child have a grandmother younger than their mother?

“Great,” Roy said. “Half of the wildlife and people in Butterpond are gonna have rabies, and our only animal control officer is pregnant.”

“Maybe that’s why she was fired.” The Widow Barlow tutted. “So many unwed mothers in this town now. Shameful. No wonder we’re beset by rabid bears. It’s a sign of Revelations.”

Chloe nodded towards the widow. “Oh! We can do baptisms together too!”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I said.

Micah rubbed my back. “Could be morning sickness?”

No. I wasn’t that lucky.

Chloe hugged me again. “Just wait until I tell Elijah. He is going to be over the moon.”

Oh God. I gripped her hand. “Do not tell my father.”

“Why not? This is wonderful news!”

Having a baby without a job, room for a nursery, or husband?

Sure. Dad would love that.

“Don’t tell them yet,” I said. “Please.”

Chloe placed a hand over her heart. “Oh no. Gretchen, are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

I needed the pregnancy test, a little privacy, and a tranquilizer for Chloe.

“Everything is fine,” I said.

Chloe didn’t believe me. “You can always come to us with any problems. I know you think of me as your sister…”

I grimaced. “Not…quite a sister.”

She took my hand. “But you can always think of me as your mother too.”

Micah lost it, clutching a nearby shelf to giggle into a display of loofahs. Some friend she was.

“Believe me…” I gritted my teeth. “I don’t think of you as a mother.”

Chloe tapped her tummy with a wink. “Maybe you should.”

At least the soaps were close. I’d need a couple bottles of sanitizer to scrub the thought from my brain.

Chloe never knew when to keep her mouth shut. “I mean…we’re not sure, but we’re trying. Elijah’s the first to admit that no one is getting any younger, but he does not act his age. He might be a little gray, but he’s got the stamina of a twenty-year-old.”

There was an image that would never fall out of my head. And I had tried before. I’d consumed a dangerous volume of tequila the night of the bachelorette party, but no margarita could bury a memory forever.

Chloe cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen and grinned. “That’s my midwife. We’re starting a birthing plan right away.”

Pretty sure Micah didn’t even have a plan, though at least she had a barn now if she wanted to do it at home. She frowned. “Shouldn’t you wait until you’re sure you’re pregnant?”

“Oh, believe me. We haven’t gone a single day without trying. And, for an older man, Elijah is always…successful in our attempts, if you know what I mean.”

Everybody knew what she meant. Me. Micah. The entire population of Green Acres Retirement Home.

“And…” Chloe leaned in, smile bright. “My midwife has a secret weapon to help us conceive.”

I closed my eyes. “Please be a sperm donor.”

“Just the opposite. It’s a vitality shake. She has your daddy drinking a mixture of all these vitamins and proteins. It’s made his semen as thick as glue!”

Well.

That was the line.

What had been said could never be unheard. Lives were changed. History rewritten. The future a bastion of broken dreams.

I wasn’t just sick to my stomach now. Chloe had turned me celibate. There was no way I would ever have sex again without thinking of my father.

If Marius wanted a baby, he and his semen of regular consistency were on their own.

Chloe excused herself to answer the call from her midwife, bouncing to the front of the store with her pregnancy test in hand.

Micah sighed. “Well, if there’s one good thing about today…I think it’ll be easier when your father and his balls of vitality move away.”

“The Bahamas are not nearly far enough.” I sucked in a breath. “I can’t let them get married.”

“It sounds like they’re pretty dedicated.”

“This isn’t good. I’m sure she sweet, but her uterus is entirely too young for my father. I have to do something.”

Micah frowned. “Like what?”

“If she gets pregnant, Dad will never leave her.” I clutched the test in my hand. “I have to find out if she’s pregnant. If she’s not, there’s still time to stop the wedding.”

Micah made a face. “She’s pretty open about it. Just ask her. She’d probably let you crawl up her hoo-ha to check it out for yourself.”

“I have to find out the results of the test.”

“How are you gonna do that?”

“Covertly.”

“Don’t you even think about it.”

“I’m going to have to call in the troops,” I said. “Fortunately, I know someone who can help. He’s got experience in this sort of top-secret, important assignment.”

“I don’t think the SEALs are used for…” She crinkled her nose. “Urine extraction.”

“They are now.” I readied myself for the mission of a lifetime. “Operation Pee Stick is confirmed for launch.”