Red Lily

I have some sort of über eggs or something, and they just spit on barriers and suck the sperm in.”
    He laughed, then gave her another squeeze. “Sorry. I know it’s not funny to you. Let’s calm down here and take a look at the big picture. You’re in love with Harper.”
    “Of course I am, but—”
    “He’s in love with you.”
    “Yes, but—Oh, David, we’re just getting started on that. On being in love, on being together. Maybe I let myself imagine how it might be down the road some. But we haven’t made any plans about the long-term. We haven’t talked about it at all.”
    “That’s why sooner comes before later, honey. You’ll talk now.”
    “How can any man in the world not feel trapped when a woman comes up and tells him she’s pregnant?”
    “You manage to get that way all by yourself?”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “Hayley.” He drew back, tipped her sunglasses down her nose so he could look into her eyes. “That’s exactly the point. With Lily, you did what was right for you, and what you felt in your heart was right for the father, and for the baby. Right or wrong—and personally I think it wasright—but either way, I think it was brave. Now you’ve got to be brave again, do what’s right for everybody concerned. You’ve got to tell Harper.”
    “I don’t know how. I get sick thinking about it.”
    “Then you might love him, but you’re not giving him credit for being the man he is.”
    “I am, that’s the trouble.” She stared back down at the stick and the word in that window seemed to scream in her head. “He’ll stand up. How will I know if he did because he loves me, or because he feels responsible?”
    David leaned over, kissed her temple. “Because you will.”
    I T ALL SOUNDED good. It sounded reasonable, logical, and adult. But it didn’t make it any easier to do what she was about to do.
    She wished she could delay it, just ignore it all for a few days. Even pretend it would go away. And that was small and selfish and childish.
    When she reached the nursery, she slipped into one of the employee bathrooms to take the second test. She glugged down most of a pint of water, turned the spigot on for good measure. She started to cross her fingers, but told herself not to be a complete ass.
    Still, she read the results with eyes squinted half shut.
    It didn’t change the outcome.
    Well, still pregnant, she thought. There was no crying this time, no cursing fate. She simply tucked the stick back in her pocket, opened the door, and prepared to do what needed to be done next. She had to tell Harper.
    Why? Why did he have to know? She could go away now, she thought. Pack up and go. The baby was hers.
    He was rich, he was powerful. He would take the childand toss her aside. Take her son. For the glory of the great Harper name he would use her like a vessel, then rip away what grew in her.
    He had no right to what was hers. No right to what she carried inside her.
    “Hayley.”
    “What?” She jolted like a thief, then blinked at Stella.
    She was standing among the shade plants, surrounded by hostas green as Ireland. Yards away from the restroom.
    How long had she been standing there, thinking thoughts not her own?
    “Are you all right?”
    “A little turned around.” She drew in a long breath. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “I’ll make it up. But I need . . . I have to talk to Harper. Before I get started I need to talk to him.”
    “In the grafting house. He wanted to know when you got in. Hayley, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.”
    “I need to talk to Harper first.” Before she lost her nerve, or her mind.
    She hurried away, walking quickly between the tables of plants, across the asphalt skirt, past the greenhouses. Business was picking up, she noted, after the high summer slump. Temperatures were easing off, just a little, and made people think about their fall plantings. Stella’s boys were going back to school. Days were getting shorter.
    The world didn’t stop just because she had a crisis on her hands.
    She hesitated outside of the grafting house, struck by the fact that her mind—so full a moment before—was now a complete blank.
    There was only one thing to do, she decided. That was to go in.

    The house was warm and full of music. It so well suited him, full of plants in various stages of growth and development, smelling of soil and green.
    She didn’t know the music that played, something with harps