“What?” Amanda saw the panic register on Mark’s face before the word shot out of his mouth.
“Are you sure?” He ran a hand through his blond hair, making it stand on end. A Mad Hatter effect atop a heart-stopping face. Her Goldenboy.
“I took a test.” Amanda spoke slowly, to let it sink in. She’d had a week to mull it over and still found the truth unbelievable. Like an exotic rock, she’d pull it out from time to time, feeling the ragged edges. Wondering at its depths, its crevices, before tucking it away again, to share later. Show-and-tell.
“A test? What kind of a test? Did you go to the doctor? Without me?” The questions rolled out of Mark at a lowered pitch as oblivious joggers crunched past them. The sun shone. The birds sang. They sat, two pretty people, the truth an invisible boulder between them.
“Blue lines. One if you’re not, two if you are. We got two.” She held up a peace sign to show him, as if it were some kind of victory. Allowing herself to smile.
He didn’t smile back. “It could be wrong.”
“It’s not. I did more than one. To be sure.” The tests only confirmed what she had already known from her swollen breasts, the calendar days not adding up.
Still, she had stared at those pieces of plastic long enough to know. Read the directions over and over, looking for a loophole, some miscalculation to put the tests in error.
At first, leaning against the tiled white of her bathroom counter, she willed that second line to disappear. Shook the test, blew on it, held it upside down to see if it would go away.
It didn’t.
“I’m pregnant,” she informed her reflection in the mirror, and saw the disbelief there. She lay down on the bathroom floor, fear pouring out in sobs and gasps.
The bathmat tickled her nose as she cried, yellow acrylic gathered in her fingers. Mr. Chesters, a silent witness to despair, brushed against her.
Amanda flipped to her back and grabbed toilet tissue from the roll above her head. She considered the ceiling and the heavens above.
Why?
No answer, only the pounding of her heart and the gurgles from her clogged sinuses.
The toughest part would be telling him. Harder than skulking in the drugstore with her illicit home pregnancy tests, like a beer-buying teenager. Worse than squatting over her potty, trying to hit the miniscule square on the wand.
Scarier even than owning up to what they’d done. Telling friends. Family. Church.
Though it terrified her, deep down she wanted this child. Without question. A secret exhilaration grew as the possibilities raced through her. A baby. Mark’s baby. They’d be together, and have a family. A real one, not like either of the homes they’d come from.
She knew, with Mark by her side, the rest didn’t matter. If only he’d stay by her side.
Now, on the stone bench that felt like quicksand, she prayed for strength. “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow. For blood tests-to find out how far along I am. You can come with me if you want.”
“I just can’t believe it.” Mark shook his head, as if he hadn’t heard her. Still cycling on the curve she’d thrown him. “You can’t be pregnant. How is that possible? How did this happen?”
“Mark.” She smoothed his hair. “I think we both know how this happened.”
He flushed, that athletic color, high and red as if he’d been running sprints. Her heart stretched thin that she could love him even more, now.
She had first realized she loved him, oddly enough, on her initial visit to his church. He’d invited her after one of their early dates. A sense of curiosity, more than obligation, prompted her to go. Confirmed along with the rest of the sixth graders in her parents’ church, Amanda had helped warm the family pew her entire childhood.
Still, church attendance as an adult had been spotty at best. Since college graduation three years ago, she’d landed the job at the communications firm and gotten caught up in life as a single girl in Houston. But something about Mark, his sincerity, his earnestness, fanned the flame of faith that still burned, quiet and long untended, within her.
She got up early, dressed in a fluttery jersey skirt and a yellow sweater. Mark would sing, not preach that morning. She was anxious to see him at work, to meet his friends and his boss, to watch him in his home base.
The glossy building held no intimidation for her, but the crowds of strangers did. She chose a seat a few rows back from the stage, wanting a good view but not the spotlight. She hoped no one would notice her, but other attendees greeted her anyway. They shook her hand at the “Welcome Friends” portion of the service.
With the stubby pencil from the pew in front, she discreetly checked off her bulletin. Choir, check. Opening anthem, check. Communion, check. She doodled in the margins, flowers and stars, waiting for the best part.
Special music.
Up front, Mark stood alone with his guitar. He strummed the strings with a practiced hand, cleared his throat at the side of the microphone, and started singing.
His song-she couldn’t think of the words now, but the tune stayed with her. The notes soared from him, unworldly and rare. The guitar played itself, matching his voice seamlessly. Perfect.
The music pierced her, picked her out among all those suits and panty hose, to cut to her very soul.
His song tied her to him, fused like wings to an angel. Bound by his precious heart. He caught her stare, just once, at the end.
See? his face asked. Do you see?
Yes.
The rest of the service blurred as she stood and sat and prayed like a normal person. A person whose heart hadn’t been revealed and broken and healed by a song. Changed.
How do you tell someone, I’m bound to you for an eternity because I heard you sing and I saw your heart and wherever you go I will follow and now I believe in your dream because you were living it and it was beautiful?
Afterward, he strode directly to her side. Claiming her.
She had gone willingly, and never looked back. Now, she must be gentle, and help him understand what she already knew. That, regardless of timing, together, they were home. Scooting forward, she brushed his hair away from his face and kissed him on the forehead. “Are you asking, literally, how did this happen? The time, you mean?”
“No, I don’t mean that.” He ran his hands down his slacks, the sharp crease wilted from the humidity. “What I wonder is, what are we going to do?” Bewilderment softened his face, made him look younger.
“I know what I’m going to do.” She pressed her face to his neck. “How about you?”
He pushed her away. For a moment, her worst fears bloomed into reality.
But then his hand disappeared inside his coat pocket. An instant later, he was on his knees, on his knees in the dusty gravel in his very best suit. A tiny pop and a stone, brilliant bright, flashed up at her and he said the words. The words her ears had grown tired of straining to hear. The words her heart had been weary of waiting for him to say.
“Will you marry me?”
Pebbles ground her shins as she knelt too, her toes gritty, not caring, as she pulled those broad shoulders to her. “Yes, yes, yes, oh yes!”
He slid the ring on her finger and she pulled away to admire it. “I love it,” she announced. A marquise from her Mark. “When did you …” She raised her gaze, expecting his joy to mirror her own.
Instead, sadness swept his features. A look of resignation. Still on his knees, he no longer seemed heroic, but defeated.
Her question died in her throat and fell, the words drifted like leaves to the ground. Unspoken, they rustled, whispering in her heart. Not when, but why?
Had he asked her for honor? Or for love?