Page 153 of Roadrunner

Neither of us said anything else.

Neither of us needed to.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Alex

Now

I stood in the bathroom and looked at a thin pink line.

I sat on the edge of the tub.

The tile was cold.

Sundays. Arthur at a new school. The Jeep in the drive until the paint stopped looking like a miracle. I had stopped counting nights.

It was different.

I looked at the line and felt nothing complicated.

Just warmth.

Immediate and uncomplicated and filling the room the way the desert sun filled things. Without asking permission. Without negotiating with whatever else was in the space.

I thought about when.

I thought about it the way Alex-who-was-a-nurse thought about it rather than Alex-who-was-overwhelmed.

Clinically. Working backward from the date.

It hadn’t been difficult to determine.

The timing was sloppy and unmistakable once I bothered to look.

I knew that with the certainty of a woman who knew her own body and had been paying attention. The timing was unambiguous. The math was simple.

We’d made a family the first time without trying and without knowing.

It seemed right that we’d made one again the same way.

I looked at the test in my hand. Then, I went to find him.

He was on the back porch.

Saturday morning. Coffee. The desert doing what it did.

I came out and sat beside him.

He said good morning without looking up.

I set the test on the porch rail in front of him.

He looked at it.

He picked it up.

He studied it for a moment.