Chapter 12: Nine Weeks

I stood up, took my jacket off the chair, and said, "Thank you for dinner."

Diane smiled.

She thought she had won.

I walked out the front door, down the porch steps, and along the sidewalk to the gray hatchback parked in the shade.

Shanna had the window down.

Her phone was still in her hand, with the call open and the screen lit.

"You heard," I said.

"I heard."

I got into the passenger seat and shut the door.

She was not crying. She was looking at the steering wheel and breathing slowly, in and out.

"I took the test Thursday," she said. "I didn't tell you, because I wasn't sure, and then you came into the tent and the whole world changed."

"Does he know?"

"No. I told Diane. I tell Diane everything." She laughed, once, and it was awful. "She hugged me. She said it was the best news of her life."

"Shanna."

"She used it, Samantha. She held it in her hand for three days and used it against you at her own table."

"She did."

Shanna pressed her fingers to her stomach, low, below the seat belt.

"I'm going to keep the baby," she said.

"Of course."

"I'm going to keep it, and I'm not going to let that woman near it."

"Good."

"Is it terrible?" she said. "I'm furious, and I'm happy, and it's both at once, and I don't know where to put either one."

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