Sometime around mid-December, I’d started to feel odd. Not sick per se, but different in my own body.

My skin felt tighter, my stomach was upset, headaches came on swiftly and passed with just as little time. These were weird sensations, ones I hadn’t felt before. But they came infrequently, and I chalked it up to the cold or the seasons changing. I was, after all, a summer girl at heart and the winters had always been rough on me.

The bell rang over the door of the Chinese restaurant in Corolla, basically the only one on the whole north side of the Outer Banks. It was empty for a Thursday in December, but the owner was as cheery as usual.

“Shrimp and broccoli with a side of lo mein, yes?” She always knew me by my order.

I nodded. “That’s right, thank you!”

Ringing up my total and then taking my card, she set the takeout bag on the counter for me to take after signing the receipt. After setting the pen down, a gust of wind blew at me when another customer opened the door.

My jacket bustled open, the cold air hitting my stomach.

“Oh my gosh, you expecting baby?” Her lilted accent stunned my ears.

“What? No! Oh I think it was just the air, no, I’m not expecting a baby.” I laughed it off, but thought to myself that maybe I had gained weight or something.

“Oh okay, maybe soon!” She winked at me like she knew my intentions.

I felt like telling her that was so not the case, but I didn’t have the heart. Taking my food, I walked to the car and drove towards home. Except … as I kept driving, her words nagged at me. Pregnant. Well, I had been feeling weird. And I was having sex for the first time in years, which was a bittersweet thought. And we hadn’t been using condoms, the times we’d come together were always too filled with passion and love that we didn’t bother to stop for protection.

I wasn’t a dumb woman, I knew that it only took one time.

I was nearing the beach highway to Carova, and a sudden impulse took control of my body. Swiftly, and without measuring where the car was, I took a sharp turn into the Harris Teeter parking lot.

The same grocery store that I’d first seen Carson in only months ago.

My feet seemed to carry me without restraint, and I was a woman on a mission. Searching the shelves I grabbed four pregnancy tests, the digital kind, and hid them under my coat as I made my way to the register. I knew way too many people in this town for rumors to start buzzing.

Opting for the self-checkout, I rang myself up and threw the tests into a plastic bag faster than the speed of light. I strode quickly out like I was a thief and the police were on my heels.

I could barely exercise calm breathing as I parked my Jeep and ran into the house. My nerves were shot, and my emotions were swinging from extreme to extreme. Rhett licked at my boots as I dashed into the first floor bathroom.

“Calm down, calm down.” I looked at myself in the mirror, and a younger face from decades ago stared back at me. I remembered telling myself the same thing hours before I was about to lose my virginity.

The directions blurred in front of my eyes, but I got the gist as I peed on the sticks, lining them up on the counter. It was a little cruel to have to wait three minutes to learn my fate, and Rhett cried at me from outside the bathroom door.

My pulse hammered as I considered all of the possibilities. As life flashed before my eyes, of everything that had been and everything that could be.

Squeezing my lids shut, starry patterns formed in front of my irises as I waited another minute. I had to open them, I knew the answer was there, but for just one more minute I needed to live in blissful ignorance.

And there, staring at me when I opened them, was a plus sign and the word yes.

My heart dropped and I clutched my mouth.

I was … pregnant.

Laughter bubbled up inside of me, spilling out of my mouth in long uncontrollable fits. I doubled over, putting my hand over my stomach as if I could feel anything now.

Despite my earlier worries and doubts, the only thing that pulsed through me when I saw that positive test was pure happiness. I opened the door and Rhett came bounding at me, and I caught him in a hug. How ironic that the woman at the Chinese restaurant would say, almost as if she knew? I would have to check the back of her store for a crystal ball or something.

“I can’t believe it,” I whispered to him like he understood.

After all of the heartache and sadness, there was a shining light of hope trying to burst from me. Emotion drenched me, making me feel all of life’s experiences at once.

I wondered what Carson would say, if he would be as happy as I was. Since he’d come back, I’d learned to live once again. He’d given me back a piece of myself that was essential to finally moving on from the past. And now he’d given me this. Even if he wasn’t ready, I found deep within myself, that I was. If I was being true to myself, bringing another life into this world, a life that had come from me, was what I had been searching for, for a long time. The fact that it was half Carson’s was just … a miracle.

And so if he was upset, or couldn’t handle this … yes, it would be crushing. But I could survive it. Because now, I had a life to live for that was something other than my own.