Chapter 1
“Whose pregnancy test is this?”
I held it above my mother’s marble kitchen island, watching my hand shake.
Two lines.
I knew what they meant. I also knew the test wasn’t mine.
My mother stood so quickly that the cushion behind her slid off the cream sofa. She wore the dark-gray lounge set I had bought her for Christmas. Her hair was swept into a high bun, but strands had come loose around her face.
“Nia,” she said. “Please let me explain.”
I had come home three days early.
Six weeks away supervising the opening of my company’s second event space had left me exhausted. I wanted my own bed, a meal I hadn’t eaten from a cardboard container, and Marcus’s arms around me.
He had told me he would be working late.
Mom had told me she was spending the evening alone.
Yet his sneakers were beside her staircase.
The pregnancy test lay beside a mug he had given her on Mother’s Day.
“Explain what?” I asked.
Mom took a step toward me.
“Put that down, sweetheart.”
“Whose is it?”
Footsteps sounded upstairs.
I turned before the person reached the landing, already knowing whose footsteps they were. Marcus always came downstairs quickly, taking the last two steps together.
He appeared above us wearing gray lounge pants.
Nothing else.
His chest was bare. His hair was damp. He looked comfortable in a house where I thought he visited only when I brought him.
Then he saw me.
His hand closed around the railing.
“Nia?”
I looked at his face, then at Mom.
Neither of them spoke.
“Why are you half-naked in my mother’s house?”
“I was helping her with something,” he said.
“What requires you to take your shirt off?”
He looked past me at the island. He saw the test in my hand, and his expression changed.
Mom covered her mouth.
I had known Marcus for four years. I knew the smile he used with clients, the patient voice he used when he wanted me to stop asking questions, and the little pause before he lied about something small.
That pause filled the room.
I stepped away from both of them.
“Tell me whose test this is.”
Mom began to cry.
“Please calm down.”
“Don’t ask me to calm down before you tell me what happened.”
Marcus descended the last few steps slowly. He stayed near the staircase.
“Can we sit?”
“No.”
I looked at Mom’s face. She was forty-six. She had raised me mostly alone after Dad died when I was fifteen. We were both Black women, and people used to say we looked like sisters when we stood together.
I had loved that.
Now I could barely look at her.
“I came here to surprise you,” I said. “I brought your favorite pastries. They’re in the car.”
Mom shut her eyes.
I remembered all the times she had asked whether Marcus could help her move furniture, fix her television, or carry boxes from the garage. I had been glad he treated her like family.
During my trip, she had sent me pictures of flowers on this island. Marcus had sent me pictures of dinners he claimed he cooked at our apartment.
I wondered which pictures had been taken in this kitchen.
“Were you here last night?” I asked him.
He swallowed.
“Yes.”
“The night before?”
“Nia—”
“Were you here while I called you from my hotel?”
Mom started to say my name again.
I turned toward her.
“You asked whether I was eating enough. You told me to take care of myself. Did you hang up and come back downstairs to him?”
Her tears fell faster. She reached for the arm of the sofa as though she needed it to stay upright.
Marcus moved toward her.
I saw it.
That instinctive step. The way his hand lifted before he remembered I was watching.
I felt something inside me tear loose.
“Don’t,” I said.
He stopped.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know how to answer. I’m standing here. You can tell me.”
Mom wiped her cheeks with both hands.
“We didn’t plan to hurt you.”
“How long?”
She looked at Marcus.
That was worse than any answer she could have given. My mother needed permission from my boyfriend to tell me what they had done.
“How long?” I repeated.
Marcus rubbed the back of his neck.
“A few months.”
I heard the refrigerator humming. A car passed outside. Somewhere upstairs, water moved through a pipe.
Everything ordinary kept happening while my life broke apart.
“A few months,” I said.
Mom whispered, “I was lonely.”
I stared at her.
“I called you every day.”
“I know.”
“I paid for your trip to Savannah because you said you needed something to look forward to.”
“Nia, please.”
“Was he with you?”
She looked down.
I didn’t need her to answer.
Marcus had told me he was attending a supplier conference that weekend. I had booked his hotel for him through my company because we were negotiating rates for business travel.
I remembered teasing him about calling me from the beach.
He had sent a laughing emoji.
My fingers tightened around the test.
“Is this his baby?”
Mom’s eyes went to Marcus again.
He finally spoke.
“Nia… the test isn’t yours.”
“I know it isn’t mine.”
I lifted it between us.
“I asked whether it’s yours.”
He nodded once.
My mother made a small, broken sound.
I took another step backward. The edge of the island pressed against my hip.
“Mom,” I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to a child. “Tell me he’s lying.”
She couldn’t.
Marcus looked at the floor, then at me.
“There’s something else you need to know about the baby.”
Mom began shaking her head.
“Marcus, not like this.”
May you like
I watched the two people I trusted most look at each other across my mother’s kitchen.
I waited for him to finish.
