He Auctioned Our Week to My Best Friend, So I Took the Helm novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Seven Weeks

Joanna's friend the OB confirms seven weeks and a heartbeat, Samantha tells no one, and Finnegan texts that the $25,000 came from the Kemper joint account, as Tobias waits in the hospital lobby.

My sister opened her apartment door in purple scrubs with a granola bar in her mouth.

Joanna took one look at my tote and my face and stepped aside.

"I saw the clip," she said. "Eleven thousand views by breakfast. Your husband looks like he's holding a hostage."

"He was holding my wrist."

"I saw that part too."

She dropped the granola bar in the sink and sat me down on her couch, under the blanket she always kept there.

I took the pregnancy test out of my clutch and put it on her coffee table.

Joanna stared at it.

She was four years older than me and had delivered about two thousand babies, and I had never seen her speechless.

"Is that today's?" she said.

"Yesterday's. I took it in the hotel bathroom before the gala."

"Samantha."

"I know."

She picked it up very carefully, holding it by the end.

"Does Tobias know?"

"No."

"Does Brynn?"

"No. Nobody does. Just you."

Joanna put the test down, came around the table, and hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.

"Four years," she said into my shoulder. "You get up out of that chair. We're going in to see your doctor right now."

The obstetrician Joanna had sent me to in June worked on the third floor of the hospital where Joanna worked.

She was in on her day off because Joanna had called her from the stairwell.

The exam room was small and cold.

I lay back with the paper sheet over my knees and my sister standing at my head, and the doctor squeezed gel onto my stomach.

"You said seven weeks by your dates," she said. "Let's see if the baby agrees."

She moved the wand, and the screen filled with grey static.

Then she stopped.

There was a small dark circle on the screen, and inside it a bright flicker that did not stop.

"There it is," she said. "That's the heartbeat. Strong. Seven weeks, right on the nose."

I put my hand over my mouth.

I cried for a long time, with four years of it coming out at once.

Joanna cried too, loudly, and swore at the ceiling.

The doctor handed us tissues from a box without looking away from the screen.

"This is fast, you know," she said. "Three months after the new dose. Some people take years to find the right prescription."

"Four years," I said. "I took everything I was given."

"Well, something finally landed."

I looked at the flicker.

I didn't think about the pills again for a while.

Afterward we sat in the hospital cafeteria with vending machine tea.

"You have to tell Tobias," Joanna said. "Eventually."

"Eventually."

"Not today?"

"He sat there and held my arm down while she bought my father's boat. I'm not giving him this today."

"Brynn?"

"Especially not Brynn."

Joanna studied me over her cup.

"You sound like you've already decided something."

"I haven't," I said. "I'm just not telling them."

My phone buzzed on the table.

The number was not in my contacts.

Mrs. Kemper, it's Finnegan Lyle at the foundation. I wanted you to hear this from me. Lot 317's payment cleared this morning, $25,000, from the Kemper joint account. The sale is not final until you sign. I haven't released the boat to anyone.

I read it twice.

The joint account held my paychecks too.

Brynn had bought my husband's seven days with my money.

"What?" Joanna said.

I turned the phone around.

She read it and said a word our mother would have washed her mouth out for.

Then her own phone buzzed, and she looked down at it, and her whole face changed.

"That's the front desk," she said. "There's a man in the lobby asking for you."

"Who?"

"Sandy hair, nice suit." She held up the phone, which showed a security guard's text. "He brought flowers, and he won't leave."

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