Chapter 12: The Prenatal Vitamins

Monica's POV

Joanne's porch light made Dalton's face look yellow.

"There you are," he said when I opened the door.

He held up the little orange bottle, and my name was on the label in the clinic's tidy print.

"I went home to get my things," he said. "These were in the bathroom."

"Those aren't yours."

"Prenatal vitamins, Monica."

"Give them to me."

"You're pregnant."

Joanne stepped up behind me in her robe and said, "Don't answer him."

I looked at the man I had been married to for seven years.

He had tears in his eyes again.

They didn't move me, but I thought: let him have it, once.

"Yes," I said.

He closed his eyes.

"How far?"

"Almost eight weeks."

"Oh, thank God." He laughed, wet and relieved. "Monica. This changes everything."

"It doesn't."

"We've been trying for three years. This is what we wanted."

"It's what I wanted."

"Come home. I'll end it with Wynn tonight. I'll tell her to move out. We'll do it right this time."

"Do what right?"

"All of it. The baby, the house, a family."

"You have a family."

"Monica."

"You have a son next door."

"He's six," Dalton said. "He doesn't understand any of this. He doesn't have to."

"You're asking me to raise a baby in the house where you hid him."