Then I looked.
Two lines.
Two lines.
I picked it up. I put it down. I picked it up again. I held it up to the window, to the light, like maybe the second line was a trick of the shadows.
It was still there. Faint. But there.
I screamed. I don’t think I’d ever screamed with happiness before. I didn’t know a sound like that could come out of me.
Ben was already at work. I called him, and he picked up on the first ring.
“Claire? You okay?”
“Come home,” I said. I was laughing and crying at the same time. “Ben, come home right now.”
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Just come home.”
He made it home in eighteen minutes. A drive that normally took thirty-five. He burst through the front door with his tie flapping and his face gray with panic.
I was standing in the hallway. I didn’t say anything. I just held up the test.
