Vera and Loui had been talking about getting married for a few months now, but they hadn’t officially gotten engaged. Eve thought that perhaps they were too scared that they might lose each other. She was hoping that maybe now that she and Wes had made the leap they might.
VI – New Year’s Surprises
The first time Eve missed her period, she was pregnant with Kyle’s baby. Ever since then, her periods had been a little off. They would come every month, just not with any kind of normalcy. Their lack of a steady routine didn’t bother her though. Up until she had said “yes” to Wes’s marriage proposal, she had not thought to keep track of them. The discussion of children had rarely come up between them before the marriage. She hadn’t known going in if Wes would want to have kids, and she kept telling herself that she should start tracking things in case the desire ever came about, but she never got around to it.
Two days before the year ended, she realized that her period had not come since the week of the wedding. When she had awoken on the third of November to the lovely surprise, she had been angry. Wes had been a perfect gentleman by not making any advances toward her during their courtship, something she had been glad for because she was unsure if she would have been able to restrain herself. There had been a few times when the situation had nearly escalated to it, but fortunately, something always happened to dampen the situation. Therefore, when she thought she might be on her period the night of her wedding, she was furious. Luckily on the eighth it had stopped, giving her the chance to have the honeymoon she had been waiting for since their first kiss.
A few nights after the honeymoon, she and Wes had a little heart to heart about a lot of things and babies had come up, but only briefly. They decided that they would wait to see if Lydia’s next baby survived before considering having one of their own. Eve was in no hurry to relive the experience she had in the second floor bathroom, and Wes was in no hurry to see her go through that again. There was also the fact that they really wanted to spend a little married time together before starting a family.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed drying off from a shower he had taken after spending the last few hours chopping wood with William. Eve was watching him from the bathroom contemplating peeing on her first stick. She was so nervous, more nervous than she was on her wedding night. She had by no means been a virgin, of course, and she knew he knew it, but the world had been short of people, so to be that close and intimate with another person was terrifying.
Wes knew something was wrong with Eve by the way she kept watching him as he got dressed, and by the way she was gnawing on her fingernails. “Okay. Spill,” he demanded, pulling a shirt over his head.
“What?” she asked innocently, coming out of the bathroom with a hairbrush in her hand.
“Something is worrying you. Something big by the stack of half-moon shaped fingernails that are piling up on the bathroom counter.”
Eve took a deep breath and held it and held it and held it.
“Eve, you are turning blue,” he said calmly.
“IthinkI’mpregnant,” she blurted out all at once, stepping back toward the bathroom.
He said nothing for a very long time.
“Wes?” she asked, scared of his reaction.
“Why do you think you are pregnant?” His voice was soft, controlled, to the point.
“I haven’t had my period since the week before the wedding, and the last time I went this long without one, I was pregnant.” She leaned against the wall outside of the bathroom for support.
“Did you get a test?”
“Yes. Ten of them.”
“Have you taken any of them?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Do you have to pee?”
“Badly.”
“All right then, let’s see.”
She eyed him suspiciously.
“What?” he asked.
“You are taking this extremely well.”
“We don’t know anything yet, and even if we are I don’t think it will be the end of the world. We have already lived through that and survived.”
Not funny, she thought, but didn’t reply. “Okay.” She turned to go back to the bathroom, and Wes got up to go with her. “You going to watch me pee?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
She peed into a big red plastic cup, nearly filling it.
“What is with the cup?”
“The last time I was pregnant, I peed on my hand every time I took one of these, it was kind of gross. The paperwork that comes with the tests says we can take the it this way. We just hold the tip of the stick down into the pee for ten seconds then lay it down on a flat surface for three minutes, after that there will either be a plus or minus sign in one of the windows and a vertical line in the other.”
She placed the cup full of urine on the edge of the sink, looked up at him nervously for a second, pulled some toilet paper off the roll, and wiped. He stood in front of the sink, pregnancy test in hand, looking down at her cup of pee as if some kind of urine monster was going to jump out at him.
“Baby?” she asked, pulling up her underwear and buttoning her pants.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“What? Oh. No, I can do it.”
He pulled the cap off the test stick and dunked it into the cup, counted to ten, pulled it out, placed the cap back on, and started to lay it down on the counter next to the cup. Before he could, though, Eve grabbed his hand.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Look at it.”
He looked down at the stick. The dark pink line that comes up that tells you the test is working had already popped up along with a light pink plus sign. He looked at Eve then down at the test.
“It isn’t very dark. Is this how your last one looked?”
“No, it was much darker. Maybe we should try another one.”
“You think?”
“One more.” She picked up another box, opened it, looked at the directions, and said, “This one will be a blue plus sign.”
Wes took the test and repeated the process. This test also came out light.
“We’ll wait until tomorrow night and retake a few more. But I think we should prepare ourselves for the idea that we are pregnant,” she said.
“I don’t think we should tell anyone until we get a really dark positive and a good number of them.”
“Are you sure you are all right with all of this.”
“I don’t really have a choice. It isn’t like we can take it back, but like I said earlier, it isn’t going to be the end of the world if we are.”
The next night they took three more; all three of them came out slightly more positive than the ones from the night before. By this time, they were positive they were pregnant.
“Maybe I should take some in the morning. The paperwork on this test says that the first morning pee is the best to use. How many tests do we have left?”
“Five.”
“I will take three more tomorrow morning and the last ones tomorrow night.”
“You don’t think that is overkill?” Wes asked, chuckling.
“I want to be sure.”
“But three tests?”
“Well, if one comes out positive and one comes out negative, we need a third to break the tie.”
“And all the positives you have already taken don’t count.”
“You are applying logic here, and I don’t like it. You know how obsessive I am.”
“All right.” He pulled her to him and kissed her deeply. The kiss led to other things, and the two forgot for a moment about the growing pile of positive pregnancy tests.
-----
At ten minutes until midnight on New Year’s Eve, Eve peed on the last stick then rushed back down to the party. No one else in the house knew. It took all she had not to tell Vera everything, to not show her all of the tests and get her opinion on them. Part of her felt ashame
d for hiding such a big thing from her, but she didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. As they started to count down the minutes, Eve and Wes hurried to the bathroom to read the results.
“Well, that was the last one,” she said.
“I think it is official, we’re pregnant,” Wes said, looking down at the dark pink line.
“You don’t think I should get anymore?”
“Eve, honey, you are pregnant, and you are taking my job away from me.”
“Huh?”
“I’m the one who is supposed to be freaking out here, not you. Come on we should go down and join the party. We are being bad hosts.”
They both looked down at the row of tests, again, all of which were meticulously dated and all clearly shouted that she was pregnant.
“Can we tell people now?” Eve asked.
“Yes, you can tell Vera,” he said, pointedly knowing that Vera was the only one she really wanted to tell.
They hurried back into the living room. Loui and Vera thought they had snuck off for a New Year’s Eve midnight quickie, and were surprised and confused by the looks on their faces when they returned seconds before midnight.
After they had set off numerous fireworks, poured one round of wine, and shared all of their New Year’s kisses, Vera singled them out by asking what was going on between them. Everyone, minus the children, quieted quickly and stared at them. Eve looked at Wes and with her eyes asked if he wanted to tell or if she should. He motioned for her to go ahead.
“Well, uh, we aren’t completely positive, but we think we’re pregnant,” she said.
“We don’t think, we know,” Wes said, clarifying.
Vera leapt from her place beside Loui and threw herself into Eve’s arms, large tears gushing out of her eyes. Eve hugged her back, crying right along with her. Lydia went to the two girls and joined in on the hug, soon all of the women were together in one big group hug. The men moved toward Wes congratulating him and making bad jokes about his life being officially over.
“We don’t know absolutely for sure...” Eve started to say, but Wes interrupted her.
“We know. She took ten tests and they are all positive.”
“Ten,” Vera shouted. “Eve, I want to see them right now.” Vera grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward the stairs.
“Vera, I can walk.”
“I cannot believe you didn’t tell me about this.” She ignored Eve’s complaint.
“I think I should go to the hospital and get an ultrasound machine to check. Those tests might be defective. I mean they are a few years old.”
“The tests worked for me,” Lydia inserted, following closely behind them. “Will and I took about ten to fifteen of them ourselves and all but two came out positive. The other two were completely defective, the control line didn’t even come up. Besides, I think it is about time someone else got pregnant. I was getting sick and tired of being the only baby making machine in this town.” Lydia laughed.
Luckily, Amanda had bowed out shortly after the clock had struck the hour. She had been trying to fall asleep since about ten o’clock. Lydia wouldn’t have dared say such a thing in front of her, though she did quickly realize that Claire was following behind her.
“I’m sorry, Claire. I shouldn’t have said that. It was insensitive.”
“It’s all right. I don’t think Amanda would have minded. She looks frail, but she is tough.”
Amanda, Eve thought as she listened to the conversation going on behind her. She hadn’t thought about what this would do to Amanda.
-----
Two days later, two more people come to town: one from Oregon and one from Maine. That day would be the first time any of them would meet anyone from the Maine group. They carried with them news about the rebels.
Wes, Loui, and Antonio were moving the furniture out of Eve’s family room and upstairs into one of the empty rooms, while the others were running delivery to the house with stuff from the hospital. Lydia’s baby would be coming soon, and no one was comfortable enough with the hospital to want to deliver there.
Also, Eve was impatient about having the ultrasound. Since she was no longer allowed to do anything, because apparently when people find out you are pregnant they start treating you like a porcelain doll, she loaded up on medical books and was teaching herself how to read an ultrasound machine. Eve would wait another week to ensure she was far enough along to see something on the machine or at the very least hear a heartbeat.
She would have done this earlier for Lydia, but she and Will had insisted that they didn’t want to know what they were having. Secretly, Lydia told Eve that she thought she was having another girl.
Wes spotted Parker Adams and John Faraday walking up the road toward Eve’s house as he was unloading the last box of medical equipment. They were unarmed and carried no bags with them. Wes set the box on the porch and yelled out for Antonio and Loui, who promptly came running.
“What’s going on, Wes?” Loui asked, not following either mans’ gaze.
Wes nodded, then said, “Go find…everyone, tell them to hide until we find out what is going on.”
Loui retreated into the house. Their behavior didn’t seem to faze either of the two men coming up the road. The two continued to the house as if they had known these people all of their lives.
Loui found Eve and Lydia in the living room looking through medical books, thoroughly examining ultrasound pictures.
“Where is Vera?” he asked.
His tone caused the two pregnant women to jerk their heads up at him. Eve who wasn’t that far along, quickly threw her book onto the coffee table and jumped to her feet. Lydia on the other hand needed help getting off the low sofa.
“Why? What is wrong?” Eve asked.
“There are two men walking up the road. Wes and Antonio are out front waiting for them.”
They followed Loui to the stairs.
“Will is on the second floor moving things around, and Vera and Wendy are up in Caleb’s room putting the kids down for a nap.”
Loui quickly pulled the radio from its holster on his hip and called for the rest of Richardson’s population to come around to the back door.
“Wes is on the front porch. I will get Will to watch the pregos and the children. Everyone else needs to go straight to Wes’s side,” he said into the radio.
The group at Claire and Amanda’s was already on the move. They snuck around behind Loui and Antonio’s house, came to the house through Eve’s back gate, and entered the house through the back door. Amanda opted to join Will in watching the people upstairs. Her eyes said she wanted Claire to go with her, but she wouldn’t ask. If she had it her way, Claire would stay by her side always.
Upstairs, Loui tried to get Vera to stay with Eve, but she refused. Wendy wanted to go down also, but Eve and Vera had vehemently argued against it. She was near adulthood, but not enough for them to allow her to witness whatever was going to happen with the two men.
Once they were all together, Eve locked all of the doors from the inside. She sent Will’s radio down with Loui, telling him to keep it on at all times so that she could hear everything that was going on. She didn’t regret the baby growing inside of her, but at that moment, she did wish she weren’t pregnant that way she could be downstairs with everyone else, protecting her home.
In the meantime, the two men had stopped a few yards from Eve’s house. They had heard people sneaking out of one of the houses to the left of them. They decided to give those people time to get to Eve’s house. They were also bracing themselves for a possible overreaction to their presences. Speaking softly to each other, they worked out a plan of action. If what they had heard about Eve was true, these people wouldn’t harm them as long as they proved peaceful. They watched as one person after another gathered onto Eve’s front porch.
The two began walking again as soon as they decided that no one else was coming out of the house. They only saw three women on the porch, none of whom looked like
what they had been told Eve looked like. None of Eve’s group had been to Maine, so they wouldn’t know who John Faraday was, nor would they know Parker Adams because he wasn’t with the Oregon group either time Eve’s people had gone there.
When they got to the gate, Wes ordered them to stop. He was shouldering a shotgun, wanting the two men to see it, and wanting it understood that he wouldn’t use it if the two men did as he ordered. They could see that most of the others had also pulled their weapons out for the two to see them.
“We have come to speak with Eve,” the one named John Faraday announced.
“I’m Eve,” Vera said, stepping forward.
Wes shot her a questioning look out of the corner of his eyes, a look both men saw but ignored. They knew she was lying. This made them a little worried.
“No, you are not. Where is she? Is she all right? Eve?” Parker yelled up at the house as if he were an old friend who was worried about her. For all any of them knew, he might have been. Eve heard her name and peeked out of the third floor window; she didn’t recognize either man.
Wes looked around at his people in confusion. He could tell by the looks on their faces that they had no clue as to whom these two men where or why they sounded worried for Eve’s well-being.
“How do you know I’m not Eve?” Vera asked.
“You look nothing like what the twins told us she looks like. Nor what Amber and Chandler said she looks like.” He could see the skepticism in their eyes, along with a hint of trust. “My name is Parker Adams. I’m from the Oregon group. This is my cousin John Faraday; he is from the Maine group.”
“A week ago, word got to me from Amber’s people that the twins had received three new members. One of them was Parker. Since he is my cousin, I was able to convince Raven to let me bring him to Maine to stay with us. We were traveling back there when our plane began to run out of fuel.” The second one spoke up.
Alone Page 26