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Diesel lies down against the door with a grunt, nose to the gap. The paper bag with the two spare tests is still in my hand. I fold the top over. Unfold it. Fold it again. I’m as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. I can’t sit down, so I pace instead, heart tapdancing against my ribs.

Water runs. Stops.

I want this. A week and a half of being allowed to love her out loud, and I already want the whole rest of it. I want her. I want the baby. I want chaos and love in this house for the next fifty years.

Part of my brain has already left for the hardware store. I’m building the crib myself, I’ve already designed it in my head and chosen the wood. Walnut. It’s expensive but durable. We’ll be getting a lot of use out of the crib if I have my way and only the best will do for our child.

The gate at the yard hasn't closed since the nineties; it's going to have to learn how. Can’t risk a toddler getting out and onto the dock. The truck needs a back seat you can bolt a car seat into. There's no rail on the porch steps, we need one on either side. There’s a lot to do.

I’m getting ahead of myself, and I can't bring myself to care.

Whatever that stick says, we're reading it together. And we’ll keep going until it gives us a plus.

The tap runs again. Shuts off. Then I hear her voice through the door, quiet. "Aiden."

I'm inside before she finishes my name. The test is capped and lying flat on the edge of the sink, and she's backed herself up against the towel rack, as far from it as the room allows, which in this bathroom is maybe four feet.

"I had a plan," she tells me. "If this turned out to be real and you wanted nothing to do with me, I was going to handle it by myself. I had it all worked out. Freelance bookkeeping, a two-bedroom apartment in the city. Hopefully on the ground floor with a tiny patch of grass." Her eyes are already filling. "Then you tore up my letter in front of me and read three sets of instructions twice, and the whole plan just looks stupid now. I don't want to handle anything by myself. I don't even want to look at a plastic stick by myself. That's the whole confession."

"Then we look at it together. Get over here."

She comes. We stand side by side in front of the sink, and Diesel pushes the door open the rest of the way and sits down half on my boot. Vanessa laughs through her tears and rubs his silky ears. “Thanks, buddy.” Then the timer on her phone goes off.

"Okay," she says. "No. Yes. Okay." She takes my hand.

We look.

Two dark lines crossing each other in an unmistakable plus. No squinting, no guesswork, no maybe about it.

"Oh." Her grip goes tight around my fingers. "Oh, my God."

She's pregnant.

"We're having a baby?" She says it like a question. Then she says it again, and it isn't a question. "We're having a baby."

"Second line means pregnant," I hear myself say. "It's in the instructions."

A laugh breaks out of her, half sob. "Should I take the other two? To be sure?"

"No. Save them."

"For what?"

"The next one."

She stares at me. Pink floods her whole face. "You can't just… we haven't even…" And now she's laughing and crying at the same time, both hands coming up over her face.

I pull her hands down so she has to look at me.

"I mean it. I've built docks. I've rebuilt half the boats in this harbor. Nothing I've ever made comes close to this. I want you. I want this baby and every crazy second of raising a family with you for the rest of our lives. I want to keep getting you pregnant until we have enough for a football team."

"Okay." Tears everywhere, and I’m kissing them off her cheeks. "Okay. Good. Because I want that too."

I fold her into me. Her cheek lands over my sternum, her arms go around my waist, and Diesel's tail starts hammering the floor.

I'm going to be somebody's father. Me. I'm going to be somebody's father. But first I’m going to be Vanessa’s husband.

Twenty minutes later she's sitting at my kitchen table with her feet tucked up on the chair rung, and I'm laying bacon in the pan, because somebody in this room is eating for two now.