CHAPTER 2

She was sitting in their happy place alone thinking.

He had gone with Sam and Tom to an expedition to discover a rare species of bird. He had jointed the group easily.

Almost 2 weeks ago she had written Catherine asking a favors, to send her something. Yesterday a little box had arrived. She had hidden it waiting for the right moment, when she would have been alone, to open it.

And now she was sitting in her happy place with a stick in her hands, pondering how could it be possible, how could he react, how would be life with a third person between them.

In the last 5 months they hadn't used any kind of protection. Perhaps at the beginning he could have thought she was still on pills but well they where in the middle of nowhere, she couldn't have so many supplies. They knew the risk, they were adults, they knew it could have happened. But they didn't plan and never talked about having children, about being a normal family. Let's think about their marriage. It remained an unexplained event to her. In fact they had never discussed about such a step before, on the other hand she had always said she was not against marriage but against stupid. But she had done it without thinking twice. One day they were talking about bees and then he proposed and she accepted and… and that night on their way home, on the Strip they got married. They didn't tell anyone about it, they didn't wear their wedding ring: it was their new secret, as their relationship at the beginning.

Lately she wasn't feeling very well. She had dizziness, nausea. She had started throwing up every meals. She thought she had eaten something wrong or drunk bad water. When she basically fainted in front of him, she started to be worry. He had been ready to hold her up but he looked worried too. He wanted to bring her to a doctor in town, but it was far away and she reassured him telling him she was fine and giving him a caress on his cheek. He didn't insist and dropped the discussion; but alone, she gathered all the symptoms again, analyzed them scientifically, as she was used to once, and she realized that maybe, well more than maybe, she could be pregnant. She had never been regular but her last period was almost 4 months ago. She needed to be sure before saying it to him. So she wrote Catherine for the pregnancy test.

And now she was there waiting, thinking, unable to find the courage to look at the result.

She had followed the instruction reported on the rear of the box. It wasn't difficult: pee and wait. She had done it once before. She never told him about it. It was her only remaining secret with him. When Gil went for his sabbatical, she thought to be pregnant. She was one week late and so she did the test. But it was negative, a false alarm, confirmed by the blood she found on her panties a morning two days after. At that time it was a relief, she wasn't ready to be mother. Moreover their relationship was too much complicated and still a secret romance. But now she didn't exactly know what she wanted.