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And it wasn’t just that she missed him.
There was another concern.
Merida knew she had every reason to feel wiped out when she arrived home each night, but she wasmorethan tired. In fact, she was completely exhausted.
Usually being around the theatre energised her, but with each passing week Merida felt her energy being sapped.
The whole cast was feeling the pressure, Merida told herself. But she was worried—dreadfully so—as she awaited her period.
It never came.
And once Sabine, who played a forest bird in the chorus and was also her understudy, had caught Merida throwing up.
‘You okay?’ Sabine checked.
‘Sure.’
Merida tried to be okay, but her mind kept darting back to that morning, getting changed for her audition with Ethan waiting downstairs.
And the teary mess she’d been when she’d returned to the apartment later, after he’d ended things.
Whatever way she looked at things, the one time she had really needed it Merida had missed her Pill.
After the second time Sabine caught her throwing up, Merida stopped at a drugstore on her way home, telling herself she simply couldnotbe pregnant, that there just had to be another reason for her malaise.
After all, she had a part in a Broadway show and nothing,nothingmust get in the way of that.
Except something had.
Pregnant.
Merida had paid extra for the test that actually spelled it out: P.R.E.G.N.A.N.T.
She sat in her tiny apartment, listening to the Italians shouting in the kitchen below, and wondered what to do and who she could call for advice.
Merida thought about her mother for—oh, twenty seconds. She knew her verdict already—Don’t make the same mistake as me!
She’d glossed over things when she’d discussed her parents with Ethan, but the fact was her mother had been eighteen and straight out of school when Merida had been born. And Merida knew she was considered her mother’s biggest mistake.
She thought of calling her father, but could just imagine his wife rolling her eyes at the intrusion. No, she would not be going to her father for advice.
Her parents only wanted her around when she was babysitting. That was the truth and it hurt even now. Even with all that was going on, it hurt to sit in her studio apartment, above an Italian restaurant in another country, and admit that she wasn’t just here for Broadway but to escape the hurt of being ignored.
She wondered if they’d even noticed or cared that she’d gone.
So who could she tell?
Naomi?
Merida did think about calling her closest friend. The problem was Naomi was a maternity nurse and very into babies.
She didn’t want either extreme.
And so Merida found a new role to add to her repertoire—a woman in complete denial.
* * *
