Author's note: Again I would like to apologise for my absence. You'd think that self-quarantine would create the ideal circumstances for writing, but nothing could be further from the truth. I hope that everyone's doing ok and staying safe during these crazy times!
Monday
Alicia glanced at the clock on her nightstand and realised she really had to hurry. She had hit the snooze button on her phone a few too many times that morning, which resulted in her being seriously late for work. She quickly buttoned her blouse and pulled one of her favourite pencil skirts out of her closet and stepped into it.
"Mom, I need you to sign this form for me!" she heard Grace call out from the kitchen.
"Ok, I'll be there in a sec," she called back as she zipped up her skirt. Or at least, as she tried to zip it up. She had managed to pull the zipper about two-thirds up before it stalled.
"Oh you've got to be kidding me," she muttered as she turned sideways in front of the mirror. She tried with all her might to pull the zipper up, but it just wouldn't budge. Defeatedly, she stepped out of her skirt and threw it on the bed.
She tried a second skirt but had no luck with that one either. It joined the other discarded skirt on the bed. She pulled up her blouse to take a look at herself in her full-length mirror and let out an audible gasp at the sight of her own body. Her belly had popped over the weekend and she was now suddenly sporting a rather sizeable bump. Of course, it was still relatively small and could easily be hidden under a large sweater but bared like this there was no denying that she was actually pregnant. Since she had spent most of the weekend lounging around the house in sweatpants, she had somehow missed the sudden change to her body.
Alicia thought back to last Friday after she'd come home from court.
Since she didn't have anything important to keep her at the office, Alicia decided to work from home for the rest of the day. She thought it best to lie low for a little bit while the news of the Governor's divorce broke, and she didn't want to have to deal with the inevitable whispering and staring at work.
She was surprised at how much work she had been able to get done in just a few hours when there was nobody or nothing to distract her. Her head shot up when she suddenly heard the front door open. It was only early afternoon and she wasn't expecting anyone at this hour.
Grace came barging into the house. "Mom, are you there?"
"In here," Alicia called from the dining room.
Grace rushed in and dropped her schoolbag next to the table. "There's reporters everywhere!"
"Where exactly?" she asked, sounding surprised.
"Outside our building. There are at least twenty," said Grace as she sat down next to her mother.
"You didn't talk to them, did you?" Alicia asked, looking concerned.
Grace shook her head. "No, I just ignored them. They did shout lots of different things at me, but I just kept on walking".
Alicia didn't say anything for a moment. She had had her fair share of confrontations with reporters over the past five years, so she wasn't exactly surprised that they took an interest in her divorce. But at the same time, it wasn't something you ever got used to. The interest in her private life still managed to catch her off guard.
"Wait, why are you home so early and where's Zach?" Alicia asked suddenly.
"My last class got cancelled and Zach had some exam preparation to do after school, and I didn't want to wait around for him to finish. So, I took the L."
"Well you should've called me. That way I could've picked you up and you'd have been able to avoid the reporters."
Grace shrugged her shoulders. "It's ok, they don't scare me anymore like they used to."
The way she said it, so nonchalantly, almost broke Alicia's heart. Suddenly it hit home again what her children had been put through with Peter's scandal. And now they were being confronted by the media once again thanks to their parents' actions. Even though her children would probably wave it off as being unimportant if she brought it up, she felt guilty about that every single day.
"So, that means the divorce is final now?" Grace asked after a moment of silence.
Alicia nodded. "It is. How do you feel about it?"
"Ok I guess," said Grace. "I mean, you and dad weren't really together anymore so in reality it doesn't change anything. But it's just weird to think that we're now officially not a family anymore."
Alicia stretched her arm out across the table and took one of Grace's hand in hers. "I know sweetie. And it's ok to feel sad about that. But just because we're not a family now, doesn't mean we can't look back on all the happy moments we spent together. We'll always have those."
"Mom, I'm going to be late!"
A few seconds later Grace came bursting into her mother's bedroom. Her attention was first drawn to the pile of clothes thrown haphazardly onto the bed, and then to her half-dressed mother who was rummaging frantically through her normally well-organised closet.
"What's going on, are you ok?" Grace asked.
"I'm trying to find something that fits," Alicia answered, silently cursing her preference for skin-tight outfits.
"Why, do none of your clothes fit you anymore?"
Alicia shook her head. "Well none of my skirts do."
"Then wear a dress," Grace said matter-of-factly.
Now why hadn't she thought of that? Alicia pulled out the first dress she could find, a red one. "Right, let's see if this'll fit me."
She unbuttoned and took off her blouse and heard a gasp not dissimilar to the one she had let out just minutes earlier. "Wow, you're really showing all of a sudden," her daughter said.
"Yeah," she sighed. "Suddenly makes it seem real, doesn't it? And I really need to go shopping," she added.
She pulled the dress over her head and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still fit her. Only this left her with another problem; it accentuated the curve of her belly and it made her look unmistakably pregnant. "See, I can't wear this either. I haven't told the people at work yet and they can't find out like this."
Grace walked over to her mother's closet and inspected it for a moment before pulling out a jacket in a matching colour. "Wear this over it, that should be enough to hide it."
Alicia took the jacket from her daughter and put it on. It was a slightly looser fit and she was able to button it up without any problems. She inspected herself in the mirror once again and found that the jacket covered up her bump perfectly. As long as she kept it on, nobody would suspect a thing.
She planted a kiss on her daughter's cheek. "Thank you, you're a life saver."
"Ok, now that we've got this sorted, I really need you to come and sign this form for me or I'm going to be seriously late for school," Grace said as she started walking towards the door.
"Yes, I'm coming," Alicia called after her. She took one last look in the mirror and fleetingly stroked her belly with her left hand before following her daughter into the kitchen.
Friday
Alicia glanced nervously at the clock in her office. It was only 1 o'clock, so she still had a few hours to kill before Diane would arrive to officially join their firm. She had said she would walk out of Lockhart/Gardner at 5 along with the other colleagues that were leaving with her and would then come straight over.
Cary and Alicia had asked all the associates to stay a little longer today but hadn't yet specified why. This wasn't met with a lot of enthusiasm, since most people tried to get out early on a Friday and get a few drinks down them at a bar to celebrate the end of the working week. They were taking a bit of a risk here, and she just hoped that the new additions to the firm would get a warm welcome.
With a sigh Alicia returned her focus to the documents on the computer screen in front of her. She didn't have to be in court today, nor did she have any meetings planned, so she had decided that today had to be an admin day. It wasn't the best timing, since it was dull work that didn't really help pass the time. She really needed to stop looking at the clock every ten minutes.
What didn't help either was the sudden heatwave that had descended on Chicago that week, especially because the air conditioning at the office wasn't working properly, along with many other things that still needed fixing. Alicia was too hot to be able to focus properly on the task in hand but didn't dare take off her jacket. All week she'd had this struggle to keep her pregnancy hidden from her colleagues, which was made all the more difficult by the steadily rising temperatures. She was sick of all the secrecy and couldn't wait to tell everyone tonight.
She had talked it over with Cary and they both agreed that it was a good idea to tell everyone at the firm at the same time that Diane would be joining them. That way they could get all the changes and announcements out of the way at once.
Before she had managed to read so much as one page of her document, she was snapped out of her concentration again by the buzzing of her phone.
She didn't recognise the number but answered it anyway. "Hello?"
"Hi, Alicia, it's Dr. Foster," she heard the person on the other end say.
"Oh, hi doctor."
"Is this a bad time?" the doctor asked. "You sound distracted."
"No, no it's fine, sorry if I sound distracted. I was just in the middle of reading something when the phone rang," Alicia said quickly.
"Oh good, because I do have some important news for you. The results of your amnio are in."
As soon as those words were spoken it was as if time slowed down for Alicia. She felt her heart thumping in her throat and her ears were ringing. The test results were in. She would finally know whether her baby was ok or not, and suddenly she didn't feel as if she were ready to know the outcome.
Up until now she had been able to pretend and tell herself that everything was fine. She had become pretty good at compartmentalising over the years, she'd had to be. But results were final. She'd no longer have any uncertainty or the unknown to hide behind. And she wasn't sure she was ready to face the consequences of a negative outcome.
She was snapped back out of her thoughts by the voice on the other end of the line. "Alicia, are you still there?"
"Uh yes, sorry. I'm here," she half-mumbled.
"Well, I won't keep you in suspense any longer than is necessary," Dr Foster said. "All results came back negative. The baby's fine."
Alicia released a breath she didn't realise she had been holding. "Really, are you sure?" she asked, a slight tremor in her voice.
The doctor laughed. "Yes, the results don't lie, you can breathe easily now. I figured I might as well tell you over the phone. Saves you having to drive all the way over here only for me to tell you everything's fine."
Everything's fine. Those words resonated more with her than anything had done in a long time. "Thank you so much, doctor."
"You're welcome," the doctor replied. "There is one other thing though."
"What's that?" asked Alicia.
"Would you like to know the sex of the baby?" she asked.
Alicia stopped to think for a minute. For weeks now Grace had been bugging her about that, saying that her and Zach had a bet going about the sex of the baby. Grace had been convinced from the get-go that the baby was a girl, while Zach had put his money on the baby being a boy. In the meantime, Alicia had had so much on her mind that she hadn't so much as put a thought into the sex of the baby at all.
During her pregnancies with Zach and Grace, respectively, her and Peter had found out the sex in advance. Which had been mostly down to Peter because he was adamant to find out, whereas Alicia had quite liked the idea of having a delivery surprise. But because Peter so desperately wanted to know both times, she had gone along with it.
However, this time the decision was hers alone to take. "No," she finally answered. "I think I'd like to keep it a surprise."
"Alright," her doctor responded. "Well it's on file here, so you could always ask me if you change your mind."
Alicia and Dr. Foster exchanged pleasantries and then ended the conversation. She leaned back in her chair and breathed another sigh of relief. The baby was healthy, she could scarcely believe it.
She looked around furtively to check if no one was watching her, and then proceeded to rub a hand across her belly. "You're ok baby," she whispered softly. And then, looking nowhere in particular she added quietly, "the baby's ok, Will."
Thanks again for sticking with this story and my irregular updating schedule. I would love to hear your thoughts x
