Another week dragged past, then another, slow as a creeping glacier. Kathy spent most of it in bed. She felt restless and frustrated, but she didn't know what to do. She wanted to call Tehar, to at least ask for an update, but she couldn't make herself do it. She wanted to fight Mitchell, but she knew that would only make it worse. Tehar had told her to avoid even going outside.

Around the end of the second week, she had defiantly gone out anyway, to the park near her house. It was getting warmer all the time and the plants were running wild. The scent of the orange blossoms was so strong it made her slightly nauseous. She ignored her unsteady stomach to sit on a bench under the shade of their branches.

She was hoping a little sunshine might shake her out of her funk, but she was already beginning to doubt it. She tipped her head back over the back of the bench, her face turned up to the dappled sunlight shimmering through the leaves, and closed her eyes, trying to imagine some kind of better outcome to all of this.

"Kathy?"

She sat up quickly, surprised at the sound of her name. A familiar man in a blue button-up was standing in front of her, his inoffensively attractive features arranged in an unexpected smile.

"Richard," she said, straightening up. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Just passing through," Richard replied. "I found this great Indian place around the corner. How are you doing? How goes the search?"

"Not great," Kathy answered in reply to both questions. She wasn't sure why she felt compelled to be honest with him, but she did. "I thought I found someone, but it didn't work out. Now I've probably lost my job because of it."

"Ouch," Richard winced. He stepped closer and sat next to her. "Are you still trying?"

She shook her head, making room for him on the bench.

"I don't think so," she said. "It seems like I was kind of naive to even try."

"Well, I might be biased," Richard said with a shrug, "but I don't think it was naïve, per se. I think maybe you went about it wrong."

"Oh?" The skepticism was clear in Kathy's voice. She raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"You went into it looking for the wrong thing," Richard said. "I think I did too, honestly. I'm being serious here. I was trying to treat things casually even though I knew I wanted a wife and a traditional family. I was scared of committing or coming off as desperate. You were taking people on dates and looking at online hookup sites even though you said you didn't want a relationship. So, I mean, we were both screwing ourselves from the beginning. We were setting ourselves up to be disappointed because we weren't actually looking for what we wanted."

"Wise words, guru," Kathy said dryly. "You should open a yoga studio or something."

"I know, it's cheesy." Richard held up his hands in surrender. "But it is the truth. We were both sending mixed signals."

"We also just didn't like each other very much," Kathy pointed out. "That was also an important factor."

"True." Richard laughed. "But, you know, we could change that if we wanted."

Kathy looked up at him with a questioning frown.

"People have been making less than ideal relationships work since mankind first started cohabitating," Richard said. "I'm not saying it's easy. I don't think any lasting relationship is. But we could make it work."

Kathy sighed and looked away.

"Sorry," Richard said, looking away. "Probably shouldn't have jumped right into that. See what I meant about coming across as desperate?"

"You are desperate," Kathy said flatly. Richard shrugged in unflustered acceptance. "Why does it matter so much to you?"

"I've been thinking about that a lot myself," Richard confessed. "I've been trying to figure out what I want, you know? I think part of it is that, growing up, I always thought I'd have all that by the time I was this age. A family, I mean. I got the job and the nice house, but the wife and kids never happened. And it feels incomplete. My home life wasn't great growing up, so I had this big shiny fantasy of what a real family is like. It's like my oldest, most cherished dream."

"Sounds like you're more into the idea of a family than the reality of it," Kathy said. "What happens when you get what you wanted and it doesn't live up to the dream?"

"Good question," Richard replied. "I don't know."

They were both quiet for a moment.

"So much of it, for me, has been about trying to please my dad," Kathy admitted. "I kind of hated him, but at the same time, I wanted his approval so much. I guess I thought if I could prove myself to him, maybe he'd stay. Maybe he'd care about me. But he's dead. He can't approve of anything now. There's just this stupid ultimatum he left behind. At first, I thought maybe it was some kind of last challenge. Like he wanted me to prove I could be a great reporter and have a family the same way he did. Now I'm starting to think he just never wanted me to follow in his footsteps at all."

"Maybe." Richard leaned back against the bench, contemplating the sky. "Who knows? It's not like you can ask him. He probably wouldn't have given you a straight answer if you did."

Kathy looked at Richard in surprise.

"Everyone keeps telling me he meant well," she said.

"I've got some experience with not-so-great parents," Richard replied. "And whatever way you shake it, this wasn’t a nice thing to do. Anyone who says you have to love your family just because they're related to you can stick that where the sun don't shine. Sometimes parents are monsters. Sometimes they're just not cut out to be parents at all. You're not obligated to excuse their behavior."

"Seems like you're pretty passionate about that," Kathy noted, suddenly wondering what Richard had gone through.

"It took a lot of therapy for me to stop trying to find a way to love the people who hurt me," Richard said quietly. "It doesn't have to be that way. You don't owe anyone your forgiveness."

"Thank you," Kathy said, surprised by how much she meant it. "Really."

Richard shrugged.

"I'm not going to marry you," Kathy said after a moment. "Not ever. But I'd like to be your friend."

"That's probably for the best." Richard laughed. "Yeah. Friends sounds good."

"I was going to go out with my friend Tessa this weekend," she said. "You could come with. You like craft beer?"

"Love it."

"Awesome. Tessa's obsessed. She wants to take me to this tasting thing."

"The Wynwood Beer Festival?"

"Yeah, that one."

"I already have tickets!"

"What a stroke of serendipity. Tessa will be thrilled. I really couldn't care less about beer."

Richard shook his head in amused dismay.

"Yeah, we really shouldn't date," he said with a laugh.

Kathy snorted, then wrinkled her nose in distaste at the sickly-sweet orange blossom scent.

"I have to get out of here," she said. "The orange smell is making me feel sick."

"Really?" Richard frowned, sniffing the air. "I thought it was pretty mild today. I can barely smell it."

"Well, I'm going to throw up if I stay here any longer," Kathy replied. "I'm going home. I'll send you a message about Wynwood later."

"See you there," Richard said, watching her go with a slightly concerned frown. He really wasn't such a bad guy.

Kathy was still feeling unwell when she got home, though it had faded a little away from the orange blossoms. She shook it off, only for it to return in force when she opened the fridge to contemplate dinner.

The box of leftover Chinese food on the top shelf had only been there a day, but the smell hit her like a rogue wave and sent her reeling and dry heaving. She gave up on the idea of food entirely and crawled into bed until the room stopped spinning. What the hell had that been? Maybe she was coming down with something. She went to bed early in the hopes that it would be gone, but the next morning the nausea was still there. She wasn't throwing up, but any strong smell seemed to set her off. Christ, she thought, it’s a good thing Tessa isn't seeing this. You'd almost think I was—

Kathy froze in the middle of retching over the kitchen sink and did some mental math. It was three, almost four weeks since Valentine's Day. She'd never kept careful track of her period, but it was fairly regular. She'd been expecting it the past several days, blaming her bloating and moodiness on the upcoming visit from Mother Nature. But it wasn't here. She swallowed hard and her stomach churned for an entirely new reason.

She pulled on sweatpants and double timed it to the nearest corner store that sold pregnancy tests. Don't panic, she told herself as she hurried home. She probably just had a stomach bug. She was overreacting. It was better to be cautious, but still. There was no chance she was pregnant.

Well, maybe not no chance, she thought, remembering Valentine's Day. But only a very slim chance. Twenty percent, tops. She did a mental tally and ruefully upgraded the odds to fifty percent. Still, she wasn't pregnant. Maybe if she thought it hard enough, it would be true.

She took the test as quickly as possible, then paced, fretting, while the result developed. Then, throwing the first result in the garbage, she did it again. But the result was the same. Sitting on the toilet, Kathy looked at the test stick in her hand and the two little pink lines that indicated a positive result. Then she reached for her phone.

It was hard to say how she was feeling. Perhaps the most honest answer would be to say that she was not. She was having some kind of delayed reaction. Her brain just wouldn't process it. So, she was just sitting there on the couch, totally blank, while Tessa bounced between euphoria and terror like an emotional pinball. She was pacing in front of Kathy's sofa, brandishing a takeout menu like a baton.

"But this is great!" Tessa said, hitting euphoria again. "You're going to get your inheritance! The family house! This is exactly what you wanted! I mean sure, it’s probably going to ruin your career and QIC Media and the scandal will be awful…" Tessa was dropping back down into terror again, the shift visible on her expression, which just as suddenly lifted. "But just think of the baby! It's going to be so gorgeous, and a prince!"

"I told you," Kathy said, "Tehar's not—"

"Semantics!" Tessa said with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "The point is, you're having a baby! What did the Sheikh say?"

"I haven't told him yet," Kathy confessed.

"Aww, you told me first." Tessa looked briefly touched, then smacked Kathy on the arm with the takeout menu. "I can't believe you told me before the father!"

"This isn't exactly the way we planned it!" Kathy said in her defense. "We were going to use IVF. It was supposed to be clinical and impersonal and guaranteed. God only knows what's happening inside me right now. I could miscarry tomorrow for all we know!"

"So?" Tessa looked baffled. "What, are you going to wait until it's born to tell him? He has a right to know!"

"I know!" Kathy shouted, exasperated. "I just… I'm not ready. I can't have that conversation."

"We need to get you to a doctor," Tessa said, swinging back into worry, tapping the takeout menu on her lips as she thought. "Have you picked an obstetrician yet?"

"No." Kathy put her face in her hands. It was starting to get through to her now. She stared down at her stomach through her fingers. It still looked perfectly normal. Was there really a little life growing in there? A life she had made. Her and Tehar. She remembered the dream she'd had, that first night he'd taken her to dinner. Standing on the shore, holding hands with a child that had the perfect combination of their features…

"I'm going to the airport."

She stood up, interrupting Tessa in the middle of a rant about her ob-gyn. Tessa stared at her in surprise.

"What?"

Kathy was already heading towards her room.

"I'm going to Abu Sadah," she said. "Today."

"First of all—what?" Tessa replied. "Secondly, why and with what money?"

"I've got some savings," Kathy said, confidence wavering a little as she dragged her suitcase out from under her bed. It wasn't a lie, but she didn't exactly have surprise vacation money. "I can't tell him this over the phone, Tess. I just can't."

"Are you sure he wants to see you?"

That made her stop for a second, fistfuls of clothes in her hands. He probably didn't.

"I don't care," she said and put another handful of clothes into her suitcase. "I need to see him."

Tessa watched her for a moment longer, obviously concerned.

"Okay," she said at last. "If that's what you need. I'll even help with the ticket."

Kathy dropped the clothes she was holding to throw her arms around Tessa in gratitude. Tessa hugged back her tightly.

"What a mess," she said. "Just be safe, okay?"

"I will," Kathy promised. "I just need to do this."

"You're going to miss Wynwood." Tess pouted in disappointment.

"Richard will keep you company," Kathy said with a small laugh. "You know I'm worthless with beer. Plus, it’s not like I can drink now, anyway!"