Still the One

by Robin Wells

  Megan: Sounds cool.

  Gracie: At least it’s something 2 do. This town totally sucks.

  Megan: Nothing 2 do here either. Got grounded for getting an F on summer school quiz. How’s the BB?

  Gracie: Going to OB today. Guess I’ll find out.

  Gracie put a hand on her belly. She didn’t feel anything emotional or motherly toward the baby growing inside her. It didn’t really seem to be a person; it was more like an alien that had taken over her body without her permission. Most of the time she just tried not to think about it, but it was getting harder and harder, considering she was starting to look like she’d swallowed a beach ball.

  The whole thing kind of freaked her out. She sorta liked the idea of having something cute and cuddly to love, something that would love her back, no matter what, but she was scared to death that she wouldn’t know how to take care of it. What if she couldn’t be a good mother? After all, she wasn’t a very good person. She couldn’t be, because she’d been a terrible daughter.

  Oh, God—how she wished she could do things over! Now it was too late. She’d never get a chance to make things up to her parents or even tell them she was sorry. They were dead, and it was all her fault.

  A soft knock sounded at the door. “Gracie?”

  It was Katie. Part of her wanted to talk to her. Another part hated that she wanted to. She put a note of annoyance in her voice. “What?”

  “It’s almost time to go to the doctor.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just peachy.”

  Another bout of silence, then Katie’s voice sounded, soft and concerned. “Can I come in?”

  “I can’t keep you out.”

  “I won’t come in if you don’t want me to. Is it all right?”

  “I guess.”

  The door squeaked open. Katie stepped through it, bringing the scent of herbs and flowers with her. She looked around at the room, which was all done in shades of taupe, tan, and brown. “This is really pretty.”

  Gracie lifted her shoulders. “Kinda bland, but beats the hell out of the room the designer did for me. That one looks like she thought I was seven, not seventeen.”

  “I’m sure Zack will let you redecorate.”

  “Nah. I don’t plan to be here long enough to bother with that.” She didn’t know exactly where she was going to be, but once she had some money, it sure wouldn’t be here.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “I never cry.” For some stupid reason, just saying that made the waterworks start up again.

  She hated herself for being weak, but she couldn’t stop the sob from spilling out, a sob that felt like it came from the depths of her soul.

  “Oh, sweetie.” The bed sagged as Katie sat down beside her. Katie’s hand rested on her back, soft and warm and tentative. Gracie wanted to shrug it off, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She kept her face down and cried, her shoulders heaving.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Gracie couldn’t have gotten any words out around the lump in her throat even if she’d had anything to say. She shook her head.

  Katie’s hand moved up and down her back. “That’s okay.” Her hand felt warm and… good. Reassuring, somehow. “It’s good to cry. Sometimes you just need to let the pain out.”

  Wow, this was a switch. Her aunt had made her ashamed to cry. “You need to get ahold of yourself,” Aunt Jean had told her when she’d caught her sobbing into her teddy bear, Beary. “Wallowing in self-pity won’t bring your parents back.”

  Even her friends told her not to cry, but Gracie figured that was because it made them uncomfortable. It was funny—being told it was okay to cry made her feel like she didn’t need to so much. Her sobs slowed to hiccups.

  “If you’re not up to going to the doctor this afternoon, I can reschedule the appointment.”

  Gracie hesitated. “This doctor—is she going to do a, you know, exam?”

  “A pelvic? I’m not sure.”

  Gracie’s shoulders tightened. “The last doctor did, and it really hurt.” Even worse than the pain was the sheer embarrassment. She’d nearly died a thousand deaths. No one had ever seen her private parts before. Even Kurt—or was it Kirk? It might even have been Dirk—she hadn’t been sure—hadn’t looked at her down there. He’d just groped her in the dark and then stuck it in.

  “Dr. Greene’s really gentle,” Katie told her. “It’ll be okay.”

  The fact that the doctor was a woman made her feel better. “All right. I’ll go.”

  Thirty minutes later, Gracie found herself in the bright, fluorescent-lit waiting room, her palms sweating, sitting next to a pregnant woman who looked pretty old—probably in her thirties. The door to the inner office opened and a grandmotherly woman in blue-flowered scrubs called her name. Gracie’s fingers squeezed together so tightly that they hurt. Her butt felt glued to the chair.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Katie asked.

  “Suit yourself.” Gracie gave an I-don’t-care shrug, but she was relieved when Katie stood and followed her down the hall into the examination room. Katie turned to the wall and pretended to stare at a poster of the female reproductive tract while Gracie changed into a paper gown.

  Dr. Greene was surprisingly young and pretty, with shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a ponytail, and she talked to Gracie like an adult. She asked questions about the date of her last period and her medical care, but she didn’t push for info about the baby’s dad. When the doctor asked her to lie on the table and put her legs in the stirrups, Katie stood by her head and reached for her hand. Gracie let her take it, then wound her fingers tightly around Katie’s, squeezing hard while the doctor prodded and poked.

  “You can scoot back,” Dr. Greene said, rising from the stool and pulling off her latex gloves. “Everything looks fine.”

  Blowing out a sigh of relief, Gracie released her grip on Katie’s fingers—jeez, she’d been gripping them so hard her own fingers were sore—and moved up the table.

  “Are you ready to look at the baby on the ultrasound?” the doctor asked.

  Gracie’s heart pounded. “Sure.”

  Dr. Greene switched on a machine that looked like a computer, then adjusted the paper blanket to expose Gracie’s belly. “This is ultrasound gel. I’m going to put some on your stomach to help the transducer slide over your skin. The image will appear on the screen.” She indicated a screen that looked like a computer. Katie kept her eyes locked on it as Dr. Greene squirted on something cold and wet, then ran a thing that looked like a computer mouse over her belly. A bunch of blobs and squiggles appeared on the screen, shifting from dark to light as Dr. Greene moved the mouselike thing around.

  “There’s the baby—right there,” the doctor said.

  Gracie lifted her head and craned her neck. “Where?”

  Dr. Greene pointed to a light blob on the screen. “That’s the head.”

  Gracie peered at the blob, trying to make it out. And then, all of a sudden, she saw it. A baby, all curled up like a cat. Gracie’s mouth fell open. “It—it’s sucking its thumb!”

  Dr. Greene smiled. “That’s right.”

  “Oh my God.” Gracie’s gaze was glued to the screen. A baby. Her baby. Right there, on the ultrasound. A sense of awe swelled around her, large and engulfing and speech-stealing. “It can suck its thumb?”

  “Sure can.”

  “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” Katie’s voice sounded as breathless as Gracie felt.

  The doctor moved around the ultrasound mouse or whatever it was. “Not today. The baby’s torso is turned away.”

  “But—wow. That’s my baby!”

  “Yeah. Wow,” Katie echoed.

  “This is really happening!” Gracie exclaimed. “There’s really a baby in there.” The moment she said
it, she felt ridiculous. “I mean, I knew there was, of course… but seeing it—it makes it so real.”

  “Having a baby, Gracie, is as real as it gets.” Dr. Greene smiled. Katie beamed, her eyes so warm and caring that Gracie almost liked her in spite of herself.

  “The baby’s okay?” Gracie asked.

  “The baby looks wonderful, and the heartbeat is perfect. Have you felt it move yet?”

  “No. Not really.” Not that she’d noticed, anyway.

  Dr. Greene nodded. “With a first pregnancy, it can be hard to tell. You’ve probably felt something and thought it was just gas.”

  Now that she thought about it, her stomach had felt awfully grumbly lately.

  “Look—the baby’s kicking.” The doctor pointed at the screen. “Do you feel that?”

  Oh, God—something was happening in her belly. It was very faint, like an air bubble popping. She felt it again as the baby’s foot kicked on the screen. “Yeah!” Her insides suddenly felt all lit up, as if a bulb of joy had flashed on. “I feel it!” She put her hands on her stomach, right over the slimy gel, hoping to feel the baby kick again, wanting to feel it from the outside as well as the inside. To her disappointment, the baby’s legs stilled.

  Dr. Greene pressed some buttons. Little green markers showed up on the screen. She pressed another button. The image froze for a moment, as if she were taking a picture.

  “What are you doing?” Gracie asked.

  “Taking measurements.” She took a few more pictures. “Looking at the size of the baby, I’d say our due date is right on the money. You’re about twenty-four weeks along. You’ll have this baby in about sixteen weeks—right around Thanksgiving.”

  That seemed like forever.

  Dr. Greene moved the mouse thing some more. “There’s one thing I’m not liking.”

  Gracie’s heart nearly stopped. “What?”

  “The placenta is attached awfully low.” Dr. Greene pointed to a large mass of squiggles. “It’s partially covering your cervix, which could be a problem. Hopefully, the placenta will move upward as the baby grows. Ninety percent of the time, it grows toward the top of your uterus, and all will be well.”

  “And if it doesn’t grow upward?” Katie asked.

  “Yeah. What if it doesn’t?” Gracie echoed.

  “Well, as you get closer to delivery, your cervix will start to dilate and thin, and if the placenta is covering it, you could start bleeding. If you have any bleeding at all, Gracie, I want you to lie down and call me immediately. Better yet, just go to the hospital.”

  “It’s that serious?” Katie said.

  “Yes. It can be a life-threatening condition for both the mother and the baby. But as I said, ninety percent of the time, partial placenta previa resolves itself.”

  Katie’s brow wrinkled. “What will you do if she starts bleeding?”

  “It depends. If it’s close to her due date, we’ll deliver by C-section. If the bleeding isn’t too severe, we’ll put her on bedrest for the remainder of her pregnancy, but we’ll still need to deliver by cesarean, probably a week or so early.”

  “So I’ll have a scar?” Gracie asked. The thought of having one wasn’t quite as intriguing as looking at them on other people.

  “Yes, but it would be low enough you can still wear a bikini.” Dr. Greene clicked some more buttons on the console. “In the meantime, don’t worry. But as a precaution, I don’t want you having sex or putting anything in your vagina.”

  As if! Gracie felt her face heat.

  “She’s just gotten a job as the recreation assistant at Sunnyside. Is it okay for her to work?”

  “Sure. She can do anything she normally does.” Dr. Greene smiled. “Congratulations, Gracie. Your baby looks beautiful and completely healthy.”

  A grin started deep inside her and radiated out, a grin so big it hurt her face.

  “I’ll make a disk for you to take with you.”

  “Awesome,” Gracie said. She couldn’t wait to send it to Megan. “Thanks!”

  “Zack will want to see it,” Katie said.

  “Yeah,” Gracie said. “He’ll be blown away.” If she wanted to keep up the screw-you attitude, she shouldn’t be so freaking agreeable, but she was too excited to care. That was her baby, right there on the screen. Holy shit—this was for real! “How big is my baby right now?”

  “About the size of an eggplant.” Dr. Greene shut off the ultrasound machine and opened a cabinet on the far wall. She pulled out a model of a fetus. “Your baby is just a little smaller than this.”

  The plastic baby was a little bigger than the doctor’s hand. A baby like that, perfectly formed with little eyes and ears and everything, was moving and alive inside her! Wow. It was totally awesome—scary and wonderful and amazing, all at the same time. A sense of pride and importance surged through her. For the first time in her life, she felt as if she mattered, as if she had a purpose.

  She was going to be a mother!

  Oh, God. A mother! The pride was chased by panic. She was just a kid herself. She didn’t know anything about how to be an adult—how to pay bills or get insurance or any of those other mysterious things that grown-ups knew how to do. How was she going to take care of a baby by herself?

  Dr. Greene handed her some paper towels to wipe the gel off her belly. “You can get dressed, Gracie. Considering the position of your placenta, I’d like to see you in two weeks.”

  “Okay.”

  Katie handed her her clothes, her eyes tender and warm, and a traitorous thought crossed Gracie’s mind: She might want Katie’s help after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Zack squinted at the screen of his laptop open on the kitchen table. It was like looking at a moving Rorschach test. He saw lots of things that looked like bubbles and spilled cola, but nothing remotely humanoid. “I still don’t see it.”

  “Right there.” Gracie leaned over and pointed to a blob. “That’s the head. Do you see it now?”

  Zack still didn’t, but he didn’t want to disappoint Gracie. She and Katie had burst through the door after the doctor’s visit, happy and hyper and talking a mile a minute, and Gracie was obviously eager for Zack to share her excitement. He didn’t want to let her down.

  “That’s a foot right there, ” Katie said, bending over his other shoulder. The scent of her shampoo made it hard to concentrate.

  Something on the screen moved—and all of a sudden, he made out a tiny form. His pulse kicked up as if he’d drawn the last ace in a straight. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Holy smokes—it looked so—so human! In an abstract kind of way, like it had been run through a special-effects machine or something.

  Still, it was definitely a baby.

  “The doctor said it looks perfect,” Gracie said. “The heartbeat is strong and the head size is right and everything looks great.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “Yeah.” Gracie smiled. For the first time, she had that glow that people talked about pregnant women having. “The placenta is kinda low, though, and that might be a problem, but the doctor thinks it’ll be okay.”

  “Why would that be a problem?”

  “The placenta is the part that implants in the uterus and feeds the baby. It’s supposed to come out after the baby, not before,” Katie explained. “If it’s over the cervix, she might start bleeding and have the baby too early.”

  Zack’s stomach tightened.

  “The doctor says it usually corrects itself as the pregnancy progresses. She thinks it’ll be all right.”

  The screen went blank. Gracie headed for the refrigerator and lifted out a carton of milk. “The doctor said my diet is really important, so we’re going to need to get lots of fruits and vegetables and healthy crap.” She cut a guilty glance at Zack. “I mean stuff.”

  She was trying to clean up her language. She got an A for effort. “Sure thing.”

  “What’s for dinner, anyway? I’m starved.”

  “I, uh, don’t know.” Zack us
ually didn’t think about dinner until he was hungry. “We can go out, or we can order pizza.”

  “Again?”

  There weren’t a lot of culinary options in Chartreuse.

  “I’ve got frozen veggies and some cooked chicken,” Katie offered. “You can come home with me and we’ll make stir-fry.”

  “Sounds great,” Gracie said. “I’ll cook.”

  Katie gave Zack a polite smile. “You’re welcome to join us.”

  She didn’t really want his company; she was inviting him out of her ingrained sense of Southern hospitality. She’d been stiff and distant ever since he’d kissed her, sending off prickly vibes.

  Well, hell. He deserved stiff and prickly. He deserved a whole porcupine, shoved squarely where the sun didn’t shine. What had he been thinking? He’d told himself before he came to Chartreuse that he wasn’t going to get anything started with Katie. He wasn’t even sure how it had happened. One minute they were arguing about getting Gracie a car, and the next…

  Hell. What had happened next had melted his brain, and he hadn’t thought straight since. He shouldn’t have touched Katie. That had been his downfall. Touching her had set off some kind of weird chemical reaction that had short-circuited his prefrontal cortex. His reptilian brain had taken over, and it had held only one thought: Get closer. It hadn’t helped that Katie had seemed awfully amenable to the idea at the time.

  He hadn’t been able to get rid of that reptilian thought, either. It kept nagging at him, making him take long showers and use excessive amounts of soap, which only resulted in an unsatisfactory, temporary abatement of what seemed like a chronic condition.

  From her reserved, overly polite behavior, it was pretty clear that Katie regretted the moment of regressive behavior and wanted to keep her distance. If he was any kind of gentleman, he’d refuse the dinner invitation and let her off the hook.

  Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t. “Thanks. That sounds great.”

  The summer air steamed around them as the three of them traipsed down the block to Katie’s house, past an elderly couple sitting on a front porch swing. The man wore an orange plaid shirt, olive khakis, and bright green suspenders. The woman wore a flowered button-up dress like his great-aunt used to wear, a thing she called a housecoat.