Page 48 of Marrying the Pakhan

There’s nothing new to find. Just the same storage unit, the same sedan, the same unremarkable man doing a very deliberate job of looking unremarkable.

I think about Harper somewhere in the house right now, probably reading to Ginger, or doing the dishes, or laughing at something on television, entirely unaware that a stranger has been photographing her daughter for weeks.

I think about the promise I made myself the day I recognized Pavel’s face in that courtroom, that I’d handle this quietly, contain it before it ever had to touch either of them directly.

That promise is getting harder to keep with every new piece of information Dimitri brings me. It was easier to make when the threat was still theoretical, a face from my past that might or might not still matter. It’s harder now, staring at proof he’s been watching my family for months.

22

HARPER

I’ve been tired for almost two weeks before I let myself actually notice it.

Not the ordinary tired of a full shift and a six-year-old’s bedtime routine, something heavier, the kind that has me falling asleep on the couch before nine some nights, waking up more exhausted than I went to bed.

I blame it on everything else. The visitation schedule. The man at the school Viktor still won’t fully explain. The strain of loving someone who keeps half of himself locked behind a door he won’t open for me yet, no matter how many times I’ve decided not to push.

There’s plenty to be exhausted about without needing a better explanation. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least, every time I catch myself dozing off during Ginger’s homework or forgetting halfway through a sentence what I was actually saying.

Then the smell of coffee starts turning my stomach, which has never happened to me in my entire life, and I stand in the kitchen one morning staring at a pot I usually can’t function without, nausea rising fast enough that I have to grip the counter.

“You okay?” Viktor asks, watching me from the doorway.

“Fine. Just tired.”

He studies me a beat longer than the answer requires, and for a second I think he’s going to push, the way I’ve been wanting him to push about whatever he’s hiding. He doesn’t. He just kisses my temple and heads out for the day, and I stand there another minute, waiting for the nausea to pass, counting backward in my head without meaning to.

Two weeks of exhaustion. The coffee thing, new as of yesterday. And somewhere in the counting, a slower, colder realization surfaces that I’ve been avoiding since it first tried to.

I haven’t had a period since before the wedding.

I tell myself it’s stress. It’s been an unbelievably stressful few months, and stress does things to a body, skips things, delays things, and I’ve read enough to know that’s not actually a rare occurrence for someone under this much pressure.

I tell myself that all morning, through Ginger’s drop off, through the drive to a pharmacy I don’t even work near, telling myself the whole way there that I’m just being thorough, not worried, just thorough.

The pharmacy aisle with the tests is smaller than I remember from the one time in college I stood in a similar aisle, terrified for entirely different reasons.

I grab a box without really looking at the brand, pay in cash for no reason I can articulate, even to myself, and drive home with it sitting in my bag like something that might detonate if I look at it the wrong way.

I catch myself checking the rearview mirror twice on the drive, half-convinced someone might see the bag and know, though there’s nobody in the car but me and nothing about a paper bag that could possibly reveal what’s inside it.

The house is quiet, Ginger at school for another four hours, Viktor at the club until evening, nobody around to witness whatever I’m about to find out about myself.

I read the instructions twice before I actually take the test, stalling, and then I do it fast, the way you rip off a bandage, because slow never made anything easier in my experience.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub afterward, timer running on my phone, staring at my own hands instead of the test on the counter, because I’m not ready to look yet, not for the full two minutes, not even for one.

When the timer finally goes off, I make myself pick it up before I can talk myself out of it.

Two lines.

I stare at it long enough that the bathroom light starts to feel too bright, too clinical, like I’m standing in a hospital instead of my own home. I read the box instructions again, like maybe I misunderstood something simple enough that a six-year-old could interpret it correctly the first time.

Nope. Two lines means pregnant.

I’m pregnant.

My legs go a little unsteady, and I sit back down on the edge of the tub, test still in my hand, my mind doing that thing where it refuses to produce a single coherent thought, just static, just the two lines repeating themselves over and over like they might change if I look away and look back.