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She changed the subject. “When are we going to meet this Ben character of yours?”
She knew I was living with Ben; I couldn’t keep him a secret. She’d expressed a great deal of worry that, out of the blue, I’d apparently shacked up with my lawyer. I didn’t tell her he’d become a werewolf in the meantime.
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe Christmas?”
“Kitty. That’s months off. That’s most of the year off.”
“You aren’t even ecstatic that I’m bringing up the possibility of coming home for Christmas this year?”
“I’ll admit, that would be nice.”
“I’ll talk it over with Ben. Maybe we can work something out for this summer.”
She seemed to be happy with the compromise, because she changed the subject, moving on to the topic of family, Dad and my sister and her brood, like our typical calls. The whole thing was comforting. No matter what I did or what happened to me, Mom was always there with her phone calls.
After I’d hung up Ben said, “I’m still not ready to meet your family.”
“You’ll notice I didn’t commit us to anything.”
“I’m just saying.”
I almost argued. I could have said all sorts of things, needled him, picked at that sore spot until it festered: why not, what’s wrong with my family, you just don’t want to admit that we’re in a relationship, and so on. I started to say these things, just to see what his reaction would be.
But I let it go, because I wasn’t ready for that argument any more than Ben was ready to meet my family.
I started bleeding that afternoon. I should have been relieved—my period, that’s all it was. But it was late, there was too much, and something about it wasn’t right. So I went to the doctor on Monday.
The nurse drew blood. The doctor wanted a urine sample. She wanted me to strip and sit on the examination table in a flimsy paper shirt. Then she poked, prodded, all the rest of it. In the five or so years since the last time I’d been in a doctor’s office, I hadn’t missed it, not once, not at all. The place had a weird smell. Everything was disinfected to within an inch of its life, but the antiseptic only covered up an underlying odor of illness telling me that sick people passed through here all day long.
I sat there for an hour, waiting. When the nurse poked her head in and said I could get dressed, I nearly sprang off the table.
“Is Dr. Luce coming back? Did she say anything?”
“She’ll be with you in just a minute.”
The door closed, and I dressed quickly. A knock came a moment later. It cracked open before I said anything, and Dr. Luce, a busy middle-aged woman, short, with graying hair and a fancy multicolored patterned lab coat, hustled in.
“Good, you’re dressed. If you’d take a seat there?”
She took the chair at the desk, I sat in the one right next to it. My stomach was jumping with anxiety. She wasn’t smiling. If nothing was wrong, she’d be smiling. She glanced at my hands, which were kneading the fabric of my jeans, then met my gaze.
“Kitty, did you know you were pregnant?”
I froze, mouth open. That wasn’t what I thought she would say. In retrospect, I should have expected it. All the signs were there: the exhaustion, the nausea, which was how everyone said it started. But that didn’t apply to me, apparently. For some reason I couldn’t process the question. She waited patiently, but my mouth was too dry to speak. I had to swallow a couple of times.
“No. I mean—no. Were? Were pregnant?”
“You’ve had a miscarriage. I’m very sorry.”
“Oh,” was all I could manage.
She launched into the prognosis. “You’re fine. You’re going to be fine, I’ll say that first off. I’m not surprised you didn’t know, you were probably only three or four weeks along based on the hormone levels. You’ll experience cramping for a few more days; I can give you a prescription for that. This is actually fairly common . . . ” And so on. I wished Ben were here. I very much wished Ben were here to hold my hand.
“I recommend waiting several months before trying again.”
“I wasn’t trying this time,” I blurted.
She pursed her lips. “Then I recommend taking extra care with protection for the next few months.”
