Page 2 of Plain Sight

We’re in the basement of a cathedral in fresh hell.

“What?”

“Lily’s purse,” Remy repeats. “Is that what you were looking for?”

“She would have taken it if this was real.” I hold up the ball of paper, damp from the sweat of my hand. “This isn’t real. She didn’t leave me.”

“No. No. She wouldn’t.” Remy’s hand flutters to the neckline of her dress, then the hollow of her throat, then her hair. “Of course she wouldn’t, Jameson.”

“I’m going to get her.”

I toss the purse toward a table at the wall, but it lands wrong, taking a box to the floor with it. Things crash. Her purse spills everywhere.

I don’t have time, but I bend to straighten the mess out of some ridiculous idea that I can’t leave Lily’s purse spilled on the floor with this⁠—

With these photos.

Two framed photos and a note from August.

The first one is the group shot, but it’s not the one I remember smiling for, with all of my siblings and Sunshine and Elise and Lydia and Nate and everybody vibrating with the effort of standing still. It’s from just before that, when I thought August was changing his camera settings.

Nobody’s looking at the camera. They’re either looking at each other or looking at me.

They’re looking at me like they can’t believe I made it to the photo shoot, much less to adulthood. They look relieved.

And I don’t see any of it, because I’m looking at Lily.

The second photo is of the two of us, and it hits me like a steel beam plummeting through a burning building.

I’m all lit up, staring at Lily, and I’m about to say I fucking love you.

I do.

I fucking love her.

Nothing matters but getting to her. Nothing.

I shove the things in my hands at the table. The frames go in a neat stack. The rest of Lily’s stuff goes into her purse. I have to go. I have to go now. So when something falls out of my hand and lands on my shoe, I grab for it without looking.

I don’t see the pregnancy test until I’m about to let go of it.

A pregnancy test.

It’s one of the expensive ones. The kinds that have words on the front.

This one has a word on the tiny window.

The word is PREGNANT.

I read it once, then again, then a third time, stopping over every single letter so I can be sure—absolutely fucking sure, no doubt in my mind—that I’m not making this up.

It’s a pregnancy test. From Lily’s purse. There’s no reason anyone else would take a pregnancy test and hide in her purse.

It’s hers.

She’s pregnant.

It’s mine.