Oh, deep down I knew she was right. I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him again…or worse, asking to see him and having him refuse to do so. What then? Would I still have the responsibility of telling him about the baby if he wouldn’t even meet with me?
But that, as my aunt liked to say, was just borrowing trouble. I hadn’t reached out to him, so I had no idea whether I’d get shot down unmercifully or not. I looked away from Sydney, stared up at the deep black sky, watched the stars twinkling there. I could see the Big Dipper just above the heavy shoulders of Mingus Mountain, which was a deeper black against the velvet sky.
“I know,” I said at last, my voice sounding defeated even to myself. “I guess I just wanted to…I don’t know…have it confirmed independently before I tried to contact him. I mean, those tests aren’t foolproof.”
For a few seconds she didn’t say anything. Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was. True, those tests weren’t completely accurate, but a ninety-eight-percent chance was still pretty good odds.
“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked then. “I mean, to your doctor or Planned Parenthood or whatever?”
“Would you?” It wasn’t until she offered that I realized how much I’d been dreading going alone. With Sydney at my side, maybe it wouldn’t be quite as bad.
“Absolutely,” she responded immediately. “Like you even have to ask.”
“Thank you,” I told her. Simple words, but I could only hope she’d hear the sincerity in them, know how much this meant to me. “I’ll call PP tomorrow and see when they can fit me in. I feel…weird…about going to my own doctor.”
“I totally get it.” She hesitated, then looked over her shoulder and up the steep street to the corner where the Spirit Room stood. “You going to come back inside?”
I shook my head. “I don’t — I can’t do that right now. Tell Anthony I’m sorry, okay?”
“No worries. He knows you’ve been through a lot. And I won’t say anything else. I mean, no one will know until you’re ready to let them know.”
Thanking her again seemed redundant, so I gave her a quick hug before I made my way back up to Main Street, passing the open door of the bar and hearing the music drift out from within, then heading on up the hill to my house. Sydney’s offer had both touched me and reminded me of something very important.
I might think I was alone in this, but I really wasn’t.
* * *
Two days later we drove to Prescott to the Planned Parenthood office there. Everything was very new, clean, and modern; it seemed clear to me that the facility hadn’t been open for very long. I peed in a cup and had them check my blood and all my other vitals.
“You’re definitely pregnant,” the doctor told me. “Looks like around nine weeks. I’d like to schedule an ultrasound in the next week or so, just to fine-tune things. Do you have a doctor closer to home you’d like to see, or do you want to come back here?”
“I — I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Can I call back in a few days to set that up?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Everything is looking fine, and you’re in perfect health otherwise, so an extra day or two isn’t going to make much of a difference.”
I thanked her, and then she left me to get dressed and go back out to meet Sydney. After giving her a little nod, I went to the medical assistant at the front desk and told her I’d probably be scheduling an ultrasound, but I wasn’t sure when. It seemed she was used to that sort of delay, because she just smiled and handed me a business card, and told me to contact them when I was ready.
“Are you going to call Connor now?” Sydney asked after we left the building and were headed back to Jerome.
For a minute I only watched the road passing by, the pale golden grasses blowing in the brisk breeze. “I will. But there’s something else I have to do first.”
She raised an eyebrow, but when she saw I wasn’t going to volunteer any more information, she just shook her head and leaned forward to turn up the music. I guessed she could tell I wasn’t much in the mood to talk.
Unfortunately, I knew I had a lot of talking ahead of me. It just wouldn’t be with her.
* * *
Expressions quizzical, the three clan elders — Margot Emory, Bryce McAllister, and Allegra Moss — sat at my dining room table, waiting for me to explain why I’d summoned them to the house. Of course, as prima, I had the prerogative to do so…I just hadn’t exercised it before now.