The Ring

by Sarah Anne Carter

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She waited until the beginning of December to start packing. She knew she wanted to sort through Lucas’ things first so she wouldn’t have to do that when she moved into her apartment in Spokane. She wanted his mementos tucked into boxes and labeled so she could put them in the back of a closet and pull them out when she wanted to remember. It took her three days, two bottles of wine, and four boxes of tissues to sort through Lucas’ clothing, photos, jewelry, military mementos, and other personal items. She had started with the box of items they had brought back from his deployment, along with his duffel bag. She kept one flight suit and all his military patches and pins but put the rest of his uniforms in the donation pile. She kept five T-shirts from locations they had visited together, along with a few of his white undershirts that still smelled like him. She added his watch, high school class ring, and dog tags to her own jewelry box but hid them away in the bottom drawer.

  She was going to organize the office next, but after only an hour of looking through papers and files with Lucas’ handwriting and stumbling upon a paper that had a sticky note that said “Amanda, Just sign on the back at the bottom. Love, Lucas,” Amanda left the room and shut the door. She was emotionally drained. She hadn’t answered the door since she started packing, not really wanting to see anyone while she sorted through their memories. She did answer her phone but only for family, Juliana, and Capt. Stegner. On her second day of packing, Capt. Stegner asked why she wasn’t answering her door. She explained what she was doing, and he said he’d pass the word along but that Bethanne might want to put eyes on her soon. She’d call first, though. He also said Candace would come over anytime if she did want company. Amanda thanked him but knew she wouldn’t want company.

  Amanda went to the living room and started throwing out old magazines. She disconnected the PlayStation and added it and all the games to the donation pile in the garage. She saw the uniforms in the pile and looked around the garage, not knowing what tools she should keep and what ones she would never need. She went back to the living room and found herself staring at the mantel at their wedding picture. She crumpled to the floor and started sobbing. Why wasn’t he here? How was she supposed to do this all on her own? Why her? Why them? If only he hadn’t gone running. If only he hadn’t been deployed. If only she had kept herself from falling in love with a military man. But how could she not fall in love with Lucas? How could Lucas really be gone?

  At first the thoughts were just in her head, and then she started getting mad. She started yelling out her frustration with her situation to the walls. When she was done yelling, she felt a little better, but still mad. She started tackling the house again. She took all the pictures off the mantel and placed them face down on the coffee table. She unhooked the rest of the wires for the TV, DVD player, and stereo, complaining that now her father would have to help her set up her television since her husband wouldn’t be there. In her fury, she took a trash can to the bathroom and threw away all of Lucas’ toiletries and then went to the kitchen and tossed the leftover junk foods that were his favorite.

  “If you’re going to be gone, then be gone,” she shouted, getting worked up again. A glass fell out of the cabinet she opened to look for the German coffee he liked but was too dark for her. It was a glass from a German restaurant that he brought back from his first trip after they were married. She found herself on the floor again crying for a long time before she could get up and sweep up the glass. She took the trash bag to the garage and put it on the opposite end of the donation pile. She decided to let the movers pack up the entire garage and she would ask her dad to help sort through the tools later. Her parents had offered several times for her to come live with them until she felt settled. She wished she felt she could to that, but she wanted a fresh start. She and Lucas wanted to have a baby, and now that child would never come to be. Amanda found herself crying again, and she decided she was done for the day. She had one more day before the movers came, and she still needed to sort through the kitchen a bit more and tackle the office. She ate a bowl of cereal and had a glass of wine before heading to bed.

  Just as she was leaving the kitchen, she felt a sharp pain in her foot. She knew it was a sliver of glass from earlier. She felt herself getting angry again. She looked at her foot and didn’t see any glass sticking out. She felt the area and could feel that it was a very small piece of glass. There was no way she would be able to get it out by herself. She limped to the bedroom and started yelling at Lucas again.

  “You should be here to help me. You should be sorting the office and making the moving appointments and getting the tweezers to get this glass out of my foot! Why aren’t you here? Why, Lucas?” There was no answer, of course.

  “Fine. If you aren’t going to be here, then just go!” She took her wedding ring off her finger and threw it into the closet where all his belongings were boxed up and then flopped onto the bed and cried herself to sleep, again.

  The next morning, even though she told herself to wait, she spent an hour desperately searching for the ring in the closet before giving up. She had so much to do that day, she would have to look for the ring again when everything else was done. Her thumb kept brushing the empty space on her finger. Why should she even wear a ring anymore, she thought? Lucas was gone and, therefore, they were no longer married. She was no longer married. She was a widow. She was a war widow. She looked down at her finger and wondered how long it would take for the indent to disappear. If it did by the time school started in August, she might not even have to tell anyone in Spokane about her sad past. She would truly have a clean slate.

  She had just finished the kitchen when Capt. Stegner called to check on her. He mentioned that Candace would be over in the morning and Bethanne in the afternoon to help her keep an eye on the movers. They were going to take all of her food items and donate them to a food bank for her, too. She was hoping to load up her car in the morning before the movers came with the items she wanted to take with her on her trip across the country. Everyone she had told that she was going to drive by herself to Washington had offered to go with her, but she really wanted the time to clear her head and prepare for her new life in Spokane. She was going to spend a week just exploring the area and looking at apartments before spending Christmas with her parents. Then, she would head back and get settled and apply for jobs.

  She opened the office door and steeled herself to go through the files. There were four drawers in the filing cabinet, and Amanda needed to decide if each paper should be thrown away, shredded, packed by the movers, or taken with her. She got through each drawer by rewarding herself with a half glass of wine when she finished each one. There was a large pile to be shredded, but she knew she could ask Candace to work on it the next morning. She opened the closet door and saw more file boxes and sighed. Then, she saw the white box on the top shelf and closed the door back up. There would be no baby now. She decided to back up her laptop and then move the box to the trash pile.

  She hadn’t turned on the laptop since the day they came by with the news and she felt a slight shock when she saw the background photo of their engagement photo. She quickly hit the back up button on the top of the screen. She was going to close the lid to put the laptop to sleep during the back up but noticed her calendar button at the bottom. She clicked on it and made it full screen. She wondered if she had missed anything important in the past few weeks. She scrolled through and saw a dental appointment, a staff meeting, several spouses get-togethers, and then she saw the green square at the top of today’s date, which meant she should be having her period. But she wasn’t. In fact, she started to think about when she’d last had one. She had never gone back on the pill. She and Lucas were so sure they wouldn’t be able to get pregnant without help, so she hadn’t worried about anything happening. She’d had a period right before they went on the cruise but couldn’t remember having one since. No, there was no way, she thought. It must be all the stress she’d been experiencing. An
d she hadn’t been eating well. She stood up and opened the closet door back up and got the white box down from the shelf. She took a deep breath, opened it, and quickly moved things around to look for the pregnancy tests. She grabbed one and then quickly put the lid on the box. She started breathing again, but it was shallow breaths. She took the test, put it on the bathroom sink and then sat down on the floor with her back against the wall. She closed her eyes and thought over and over and over again, “I cannot be pregnant. I cannot be pregnant. I cannot be pregnant.”

  She didn’t let another thought enter her head until she felt enough time had passed to check the test. She stood up, but she couldn’t will herself to step forward and look. She was barely able to face living without Lucas by herself. How would she be able to do it with a child? She chided herself, saying the odds of her actually being pregnant were so low that she should just look and chalk it all up to stress. She could see her doctor up in Washington next week, and he could confirm that stress could affect her in that way. She smiled, telling herself she was being overly dramatic, and stepped forward to look. She picked it up and saw two lines. She dropped it like it was burning her and realized the noise she was hearing was her own voice. “Nooooo!”

  She ran to the bedroom and curled up into a ball on the bed. She cried and screamed on an off for a long time. Why now? She didn’t want to be pregnant when she didn’t have a husband. She didn’t want to be a single mother. She did not want to be pregnant at all. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it was a false positive.

  At first, she wanted to call her mom and Juliana and ask them what they should do, but then she realized she didn’t want anyone to know. Who would believe a war widow was pregnant with her dead husband’s child? Of course her parents and Juliana would believe her, but the rest of the world would think differently. She couldn’t let the other spouses know. She’d wait and see a doctor in Spokane to make truly sure and then talk to someone. Yes, there was no sense changing any of her plans until she knew for sure from a doctor. With that resolve, Amanda got up and went to finish sorting the office. She wouldn’t let herself think about anything other than the task at hand.

  Candace was surprised at how much Amanda had done to prepare for the movers when she arrived at 7 a.m. with bagels and coffee. Amanda had barely slept the night before, finding her mind wandering every time she tried to lie down, so she kept herself busy. She got the shredding done and bagged up all the pantry items. She had even loaded up her car and taken the donation items to the local thrift shop late in the evening and then loaded the trash can when she got home, burying the pregnancy test deep in the bags. She even sorted through the garage before finally feeling like she would fall asleep quickly. She was going to have Candace and Bethanne take the tools she didn’t want to their husbands.

  Packing day went by quickly with various people from the squadron coming by to say goodbye throughout the day. Amanda gave everyone a few minutes but then told them that she was tired and needed to get back to the movers. It was true, but she also didn’t want to chit chat. It took almost all her energy to keep her mind off her possible pregnancy. Over and over she said in her head, “No, I can’t be pregnant. No, I can’t be pregnant.”

  It wasn’t until she did a final walkthrough with the housing office representative and Capt. Stegner at the end of the day and they were in the bedroom when she remembered her lost wedding ring. She looked all over the closet but didn’t see it. She told the balding man who was checking items off a list and Capt. Stegner what had happened, and they promised they would keep an eye out for it. She hoped it was packed up somewhere. Maybe a mover had found it and put it with her jewelry. She sighed. She wanted the ring back, but as she looked down at her finger, she knew she couldn’t wear it. She was all by herself now.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  She thought she could make it all the way to Spokane before seeing a doctor, but when she saw the sign for the pregnancy center in Missouri that offered free pregnancy tests and checkups, she found herself taking the exit and heading to the building. The billboard said turn left at Wendy’s and it would be straight ahead. She parked and walked in to the building quickly, knowing that if she stopped to think about it, she would never go in. She had to know after spending so many days in the car going back and forth about what her future would look like with or without a baby. She tried to just stick with facts after having to pull off the road in Tennessee. She thought about naming the baby Lucas if it was a boy and started sobbing. Thinking about a part of Lucas living on and about a baby never meeting his father had overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t hold back the tears. It almost felt as if she was losing him all over again. Once she regained control of her emotions and got back on the road, she kept the music loud to drown out most of her thoughts.

  She walked into the center, noting the sign was very nondescript, calling it a Women’s Resource Clinic. She was glad she could go somewhere away from a military base. If she had to get the test done while at Charleston, she knew there was a good chance someone would see her and there would be gossip. There were a few women she would miss from the spouses group and from work, but she was really glad she was going to get a fresh start. Maybe. She knew she couldn’t live in Spokane by herself with a baby. Maybe there would just be no baby.

  The waiting room was empty, and Amanda went up to the reception desk. No one was there, but there was a sign-in sheet. She wrote her name and sat down. The TV was playing “Sleepless in Seattle.” Amanda saw some magazines on the table beside her, but leaned her head back and closed her eyes and tried to think about nothing.

  “Amanda?” she heard after just a few minutes. She opened her eyes and looked toward the reception desk. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. We were having a quick staff meeting. You can follow me back.”

  Amanda followed her, and they went into a room that had four comfortable armchairs. The woman gestured for Amanda to sit.

  “I’m Leesa, and I’ve been working here for seven years. We’ll start with a few details about your situation and then see how best we can help you.”

  Amanda gripped her hands together and said the words out loud for the first time. “I think I might be pregnant.” Then the tears started to fall. Leesa moved her chair right next to Amanda and handed her a tissue and then put her hand on Amanda’s shoulder. She let Amanda cry for a while before speaking again.

  “Whatever your situation is, we can find a way to help you. I think we should start with a pregnancy test first, though.”

  “I took one, and it was positive.”

  “We like to make sure, and if it is positive, we can do an ultrasound to see how far along you are. Do you have any idea when you might have gotten pregnant?”

  “It had to have been in August before my husband left.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Amanda looked at her and realized Leesa thought her husband had walked out on her.

  “No, he left for a deployment and then ...” Amanda started crying again. “He died over there.” Since telling her and Lucas’ parents and Juliana, she hadn’t had to tell anyone about Lucas dying. The whole base knew her story from other people or the news. She saw true sympathy in Leesa’s eyes.

  “My nephew died on a deployment five years ago,” Leesa said and put her hand on top of Amanda’s hands. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  The pregnancy test was positive, and they moved to a different room for the ultrasound. Amanda heard the heartbeat and saw the baby moving around. Leesa said she was probably about 20 weeks pregnant and was due in early May. A doctor would be able to confirm exact dates for her and could tell if the baby was a boy or a girl in a few weeks.

  After the ultrasound, they went back to the first room, and Leesa handed her some of the ultrasound pictures and a printout of the clinic’s results from the pregnancy test and ultrasound.

  “I guess this is real,” Amanda said staring at the photos. “Lucas and I made a baby, and I didn’t even know it. He didn’t even know it.”
Amanda was sad, but she wasn’t crying. While it wasn’t what she wanted, now that she knew for sure she was pregnant, she could feel a little hope well up in her heart. Instead of a fresh start, she would just start another chapter in her and Lucas’ love story – one that included raising their child. She thanked Leesa and promised to stay in touch. She only wanted to go to one place now – home. She had to tell her parents and figure out a way ahead that would include a baby.

  She only answered one phone call a day and made only one for the rest of the trip. She always answered when Capt. Stegner called around 1 p.m. to check on her and see where she was that day. Those calls were always pretty short. She always called her mom at night to let her know where she stopped. That night, Amanda did her best to keep her voice normal as she told her mom she had decided to head to Tacoma first instead of Spokane. She said she just wanted to not sleep in a hotel room for a while, but she knew her mom could tell something was going on with her. Amanda guessed her mom would chalk it up to grief, though. Her news wasn’t something that she wanted to share over the phone. She had to tell her parents in person. And she couldn’t tell Juliana or Capt. Stegner until after she told her parents.

  She arrived at her parents’ house a few days later just before dinner. Her mom had chili waiting in the crockpot. Amanda told them about some of the interesting things she had seen on the drive while they ate and then explained to them the real reason for her change in plans, only shedding a few tears. Her dad’s eyes grew a bit wide, but her mom gasped and hugged her.

  “Oh, Amanda, this is such a blessing. A part of Lucas will live on.”

  “That part is wonderful, isn’t it? But it’s also going to be very hard.”

  “We will help you,” her dad said firmly. “You are definitely not alone. You are welcome to live here as long as you want, and, well, we were going to tell you some news when you came home in a few weeks, too.”