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Chapter 8
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Late in the evening, Hanna and Caleb were cuddled up on the sofa watching a movie together, waiting for a call from Spencer. They had emailed her the pre-contract and escrow papers so she could forward them to her mother – former lawyer and State Senator Mrs. Veronica Hastings – for a quick check.
Ever since Hanna saw Cecile and Harold's initials– which also happened to be hers and Caleb's initials – in the wooden beam hidden underneath the mirror she had taken it as a sign that the house was meant to become theirs.
When the closing credits rolled across the screen, there still hadn't been a return call from their friend, so the married couple got ready for bed.
Right after they had crawled under the covers and their kiss goodnight had turned into a more heated encounter, Spencer finally called, and Hanna answered the phone before putting her on speaker.
"Hey Spence!"
"Hey!" Caleb called out in the background.
"Yeah, hi! Did I wake you?"
"No, no. Absolutely not," Hanna fended.
"Sorry for calling you this late, but my mom didn't get back to me until just now and I thought you really wanted to hear this as soon as possible."
"Why? Is there anything wrong with the contract?" Hanna assumed.
"No, just the opposite," Spencer explained. "There's just a few things that need to be adjusted, nothing major, just the wording that wasn't precise enough."
"Okay," Caleb said, vague.
"So, what you can do once you decided that you're really buying is you make an appointment with my mom, the realtor and the owner of the house to resolve that. Or you can pick your own lawyer to do that for you if you feel like it would be inappropriate for me to know the details of your house purchase because I usually take part in those kind of meetings, too, taken I'm the paralegal, you know," Spencer drew a deep breath upon ending her lengthy monologue.
"Why would we think it's inappropriate?" Hanna wondered.
"I don't know. Maybe because of our history together?" their friend suggested.
Hanna and Caleb looked at each other, baffled.
"It's totally fine, Spencer. We'll let you know once we talked to our realtor. It would be great if you could set us up for a meeting. But it will only be Mrs. Haynes and us. She has a… has a… what's it called, babe?" Hanna asked, lost.
"She has a warrant. The house owner is her own mother and she's in a nursing home," Caleb intervened.
"Fine, I'll set it up and text you… I'll text you…" Spencer started stammering, and very quietly, Toby's voice could be heard whispering words into her ear that seemed to distract her, keeping her from getting the words out right. "Toby, stop it!" she whispered, admonishing the culprit as she struggled to regain a professional demeanor. "I'll text you the time and the date and what you need to do in advance for the escrow agreement," she spoke in her usual business voice again.
"Okay. That sounds great. Thanks, Spencer!" Caleb said quickly, adding, "We really appreciate it you're doing this for us."
"You just wait for my mother's service fee invoice," she countered, a small smile playing on her lips. "Goodnight, you two!"
"Goodnight to you, too! Say hi to Toby for us," Hanna laughed into the phone and hung up. She put her phone down on the night table and returned to Caleb's side. "Now. Where were we?"
He put his arms around her and resumed kissing her neck and stroking the soft skin of her cleavage, making her feel more and more powerless in his embrace.
Hanna let herself sink into the pillows, pulling him along with her. At that moment, her phone started beeping, prompting Caleb to groan, unnerved. "No, keep going. That's probably just my CLUE app," she instructed.
"Your CLUE app? What does it do? Warn you every time a man comes closer to you?" Caleb joked, his words punctuated by his attempt to juggle speaking and tracing her collarbone with his tongue at the same time.
"No. It's my daily pill reminder," Hanna huffed, her breaths coming in shorter and more quickly in succession as the passion was building. "It'll stop soon."
She hadn't quite finished talking when the beeping stopped indeed. The room was silent again except for the smacking of Caleb's lips touching down on that sensitive spot right behind her ear.
"I'm going to delete it first thing in the morning," she breathed elaborately.
"Sh, stop talking," Caleb murmured right before his lips finally connected with hers. Hanna surrendered to his touch, feeling on top of the world… like things couldn't get any better if she tried.
XX
In the morning, Hanna opened her eyes to find it was as bright as day in the bedroom. Caleb was still laying next to her. His hair was messy, one arm was dangling down the side of the bed and his legs were completely entangled in the sheets. He was looking like he'd had a very agitated dream at night.
Hanna's gaze fell on the papers sitting on her night table. The simple thought about the consequences once she and Caleb would sign them, conjured up a huge smile on her face.
They were buying a house! A real four-bedroom house with a backyard and a pool bigger than Caleb's old apartment, a hot tub on the porch and lots of kids in the neighborhood... Not to mention a perfect opportunity to set up a fashion studio in the attic.
So far, they had only told one person about their planned purchase, and Hanna was looking forward to sharing the news with everybody. She was certain that her mom would be thrilled to find out that her daughter would not be going back to New York. She knew her mom and she also knew that her mom had never warmed up to the idea of Hanna and Caleb living in an anonymous environment as big as New York City. She had never said a negative word about it, knowing Hanna was living her dream in the Big Apple, but deep down Ashley Marin loved having her daughter back in Rosewood again.
Enjoying the idea of getting a lazy start into the day, Hanna stretched out under the covers, careful not to wake her husband, and grabbed her phone in order to text her mom that she had some good news to share and wanted to meet her for lunch that day. Upon unlocking her screen, she saw the notification from her CLUE app that had come on the previous evening.
Only it wasn't what she had expected to see. Instead of her daily reminder to take the pill, the app had notified her that her period had been due yesterday.
Meaning it was overdue today.
But there was no period. Why hadn't her period started yesterday? She was usually on time, her body functioning like a clockwork. Hanna had trouble getting her act together.
She jerked into an upright position. Caleb, who was lying on his stomach didn't show any sign of waking. Hanna slid off of the mattress and quickly disappeared into the bathroom.
Minutes later, she returned to the bedroom, looking as confused as before. She took the phone back into her hands, but could only stare at it with disbelief. Several thoughts came to her mind, and slowly, things were starting to fall into place.
Her sudden aversion to coffee... the constant tiredness... her weeping at the sight of the new toilet paper commercial with a toddler on TV... Could this be true? Could she be…? They had only just started to try...
Her mind was trying to do the math despite the fact that she hadn't even had a coffee to really wake her spirits. But before she could get a hold of the situation, Caleb's phone rang, cutting through the silence of the morning and putting a stop to her racing thoughts.
Dumbfounded, Hanna watched him jump off of their bed and answer the call. He muttered occasionally while getting dressed within record speed before eventually ending his conversation saying, "You stay put, OK? Do you hear me? I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
Hanna held out the car keys to him, the situation seeming all too familiar. "I guess that means no breakfast in bed together for us today too, huh?"
"Not today, baby. That was Garner," Caleb started explaining. "His girlfriend broke up with him last night and he had nothing better to do than spend the night at our lab with a bottle of whiskey, and now he called me telling me he'd locked himself out and asking if I knew where he'd parked his car last night. I have to go take him home before he does something stupid."
Hanna closed her eyes and shook her head. This was so Garner. She had never met him before, but from what Caleb had told her about him, this wasn't the first time the guy needed Caleb's help in an exceptional situation. "Again?"
"I admit he's a little extra, but he's also the most brilliant software engineer I ever met," Caleb gave her a quick peck on the lips and then proceeded to walk into the living-room. Hanna followed suit, not liking the idea of having to let him leave while she was in the middle of sorting out a change in their lives that would be even bigger than a house, although figuratively speaking only.
Upon seeing her pouty face, Caleb stepped back from the apartment door and walked over to her. "I'm sorry but I'm gonna have to take a raincheck for our breakfast date this morning." He kissed her again. "I promise I'll be back in time for lunch so we can call Rhonda together and tell her we're buying the house."
"You're being such a good friend," Hanna acknowledged.
"I'm used to helping the people around me out of sticky situations," he smiled at her. "I can't help it."
"And I love you for that," Hanna said before connecting their mouths again for a goodbye kiss. "Bye."
When he was out the door and the apartment was quiet again, Hanna sunk into the couch cushions and started typing out the message to her mother which she had meant to send earlier.
Hey mom. Are you free for dinner? We've got some great news to share. XOXO
Within seconds, her mother's response showed up on the screen.
But instead of a text message, her mom had sent her something else. A fleeting smile played on her lips at the realization that her mother was working on her social media skills.
There it was on the screen, followed by a series of question marks: a baby emoji.
Thoughts were running through Hanna's mind. Excitement. Anxiousness. Hope… All at the same time.
She settled deeper into the couch, and sat dead still for long moments while staring at the display of her phone. "Yeah, I'm asking myself that very same question, mom," she eventually said to herself before she typed a short reply, putting her mom off until dinner. What else could she have said? She didn't even know for real herself.
She needed clarification. Confirmation, at best.
The next instant, Hanna was up on her feet, scrambling to find her car keys and her purse. She was almost out in the hallway when she finally noticed that she was barefoot and still wearing her pajamas. She turned on her heel and quickly slipped into a pair of leather boots that was standing right by the door. Then she spotted Caleb's raincoat lying on the backrest of their couch, hung it over her shoulder and left the apartment.
XX
Half an hour later, a bulky plastic bag from CVS, a set of keys and an iPhone were carelessly dropped on the kitchen island in a hurry. The display of the phone had been flashing on and off in the past minutes with a dozen messages coming in from people who had seen Hanna Rivers, normally very fashion forward, run errands while dressed in Minions pajama bottoms and an oversized men's raincoat on a sunny winter morning in Rosewood, asking if she was starting some form of a new trend.
Hanna moaned at the sight of herself in the mirror, but then she turned her phone over deciding to ignore the rest of the world for now.
The loft was still quiet and deserted but soon the rustling noise of Hanna attempting to empty out the bag with trembling hands filled the air.
One after another, she arranged the items on the countertop, sorting them by their size. When she was done, she sat down on a barstool, staring at all the different brands of pregnancy tests that their local drugstore carried, and took a deep breath. After letting her still shaky fingers run over the different boxes, she finally decided on a bright pink one that said 'early result pregnancy test' on it.
Shuffling through the living room, Hanna got rid of the heavy boots and the coat before squatting down on the closed lid of the toilet in their main bathroom. She unpacked the box and started reading the instructions.
Hanna looked at the inconspicuous white plastic stick that was holding the power to change her life forever. Was she really ready to do this? She did recall telling Caleb that she was ready to start trying for kids, but what if there was no more time left to actually try? What if this was already it? Would Caleb be happy about having a baby that soon? Like… by the end of that very same year?
When she told him she wanted to have a baby she never thought she would be sitting on her toilet seat with a pregnancy test in her hand just a mere three days later, facing the possibility that maybe there was a baby inside of her already.
"OK, let's do this," she muttered before proceeding to follow the instructions.
Afterwards, she put the cap back on the stick and laid it out ready on the vanity. While she was swiping through the apps on her phone to find the timer, her gaze went back and forth between the two displays. Having found the right app to start the countdown, another look at the plastic stick almost caused her to drop the phone down onto the tiles.
"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Hanna's eyes flew wide open. "Is this thing broken? Wasn't I supposed to wait three minutes? I haven't even set the timer yet," she whined, completely forgetting the fact that there was no-one around to respond… and the fact that the test had just given her the exact result she had been secretly praying for.
Two lines.
Positive.
Pregnant!
"I'm pregnant," she said before her hands covered her mouth as if afraid to spill the beans to an unwanted eavesdropper. Nonetheless, the corners of her mouth twitched, and before long, a broad smile started spreading on her face. "I can't believe this," she whispered to herself, voicing her bewilderment about how the positive result was even possible when she had been continuously on the pill in the last couple of years.
In a blur, she was back in the kitchen scooping up the rest of the tests on the countertop with her arms before dropping them into the sink in the bathroom. One by one, she unpacked all the test sticks.
"Shoot", she exclaimed upon noticing that she wasn't able to repeat the procedure with the next test just like that. Again, she hurried back to the kitchen and took a can of soda from the fridge. Back in the bathroom, she took large swigs, attempting to dash down the entire can of soda so that she could finally go pee again before Caleb got back home. All of a sudden, she felt like being on a secret mission that needed to be accomplished by just the two of them: her and the tiny needlepoint in her womb that was Baby Rivers.
In between gulps, Hanna checked her phone once again. Among the messages she had received earlier, there was one from Caleb telling her he would have to stay at work longer and wouldn't be able to make it back home until dinner because they had uncovered a major glitch in their encryption algorithm – whatever that meant. She put the phone down on the vanity. Another message from Caleb appeared on the screen, asking her to tell Rhonda that they were calling dibs on the house.
Undecided between the joy of the moment and disappointment because Caleb wouldn't be home for another eight hours, Hanna sat down on the edge of the bathtub, the soda can still in her hand. She didn't want to tell him the big news on the phone. She wanted to see his face the very moment that she told him… wanted to see it light up with joy, just like hers had upon getting the positive result. In her mind, she could already see him react surprised before he'd hopefully swoop her up with elation.
Still, how was she supposed to tell him? An event like that called for something special. And she had eight hours to come up with an idea.
But first she needed more proof that this wasn't a dream and that the one test she had taken hadn't been malfunctioning. She took a few deep breaths just to alleviate her inner tension before she gulped down the remainder of the beverage. When the can was empty at last, she felt like giving the process a new try.
In the end, there were eight used pregnancy tests laid out on the vanity, seven of them showing the exact same result as the first, and one had turned out to be malfunctioning, showing nothing at all.
Hanna tossed the void one in the trash, then grabbed the seven positive sticks and went back to the bedroom.
"Okay. Okay. Okay," she said, repeating the word over and over again as she started pacing the room while trying to fan herself with her handful of test sticks. She rounded the bed once, twice before she could think of anything else to say. "So, that's good. I guess. Phew." Her fanning movements became faster as she broke into a sweat from processing this new information. Time and again, she sighed with relief or giggled to herself as all kinds of emotions were playing out inside of her.
Eventually, she laid out the tests on the bed before taking the one marked "pregnant 4-6 weeks" into her hand again when an idea came to her.
She got her phone from next-door and navigated through her calendar, checking the past six weeks for possible dates of conception. Her head was still spinning, and suddenly all her knowledge about human reproduction seemed to have gone out the window.
But in her hands, she was holding the source of every information one could ask for. Hanna opened the app store, and it wasn't long before she found what she had been looking for. She quickly downloaded and installed the first pregnancy tracking app she could find. Starting the app, she stumbled upon the first obstacle: It was asking for the date of her last period.
Hanna sat down on the bed and thought hard for a moment. There had been their wedding, of course, their second wedding and their honeymoon and not to mention — the uncovering of A.D.! In between all those events it was hard to remember what had been going on because everything had gone by in a blur. And her powers of recollection on this whirlwind morning weren't helping.
Rubbing the bridge of her nose, she closed her eyes and tried to focus. When part of her brain finally resumed its work, she opened the CLUE app and immediately figured out the date in question and fed it into the tracker. Along with the duration of her cycle, the app eventually calculated a possible conception date: February 11!
Their honeymoon. Aruba.
Tiny smithereens of her memory were slowly coming back to her... There had been that horrible flight from Philadelphia to Aruba which she had spent enduring not only the seemingly endless crying of a baby two rows behind her, but cramps and a migraine, too. Caleb had tried his best distracting her from her misery, but she hadn't stopped yammering until she had set foot on the serene island in the southern Caribbean Sea five hours later.
Then, there had been that awful food poisoning after they had been out for a quick lunch at Henk's Crab Shack. Hanna distinctly remembered that Caleb hadn't gotten sick and had written several anonymous Yelp reviews basting the place on her behalf.
And then there had been that Sunday on the beach...
to be continued...
Thank you for all your kind words, here and on twitter. They really mean so much to me! Hope you enjoyed this chapter... XO, Zip
