Shock flowed through her body. This couldn't be happening. What she was seeing, what she was witnessing, what the intuition in her firmly told her was true...couldn't be. But even though every rational part in her told her it was untrue, false, a lie, the knowledge settled itself within, and she couldn't bring herself to deny it.
She exited the claustrophobic room and slipped through the hallways, back to the sitting room where she had been having a rather strained conversation a mere moment before. Numbly, she reached into her purse, drew out the object that she kept around only for nostalgic purposes, the one thing she thought would never have a use, and walked back to the tiny room.
There, she found the woman, trying to put one shaking foot beneath her as she attempted to stand. With a firm hand, she guided her back down to the ground, her knees braced on the cold tile. There was still fight left in the other woman though, and she struggled against the pressure, but with that keen mind focused on something else, it was all too easy to overcome the halfhearted attempt. Then, with the same firm intentions, she pressed the object in sister-in-law's hand and walked out, shutting the door behind her.
She had bought two when she thought she was pregnant with her youngest. Mostly because she wasn't thinking straight, also because she had craved a second opinion before she even knew the first. She already had five children, one was still breast-fed, and she didn't think she had the time, energy, or desire for a sixth.
But her husband had been so excited over each and every child, caring for each one and never growing tired of the many long months of hormones and the even longer hours of childbirth. The look on his face when she told him the news each time was the breaking factor in her decision to keep the youngest. Even when her husband was wrenched from life, she still held to what she knew he would have wanted. But things like that can't be kept up forever.
While her husband was still alive, he managed her business while she took care of the children. It was an arrangement that had suited her perfectly, and she found that she could not return to management after being a mother. And so when her family had called on her to do the job of the heir, the job her husband had done every day for fifteen years then, she refused. She "retired," moved into a smaller home, and dedicated her energies into raising her children. She lived on her husband's social security, the financial arrangements he had made in case of his death, and a grudgingly given monthly allowance from her mother. Her prudence as a mother kicked in here, and throughout the years she gradually rid her life of everything that didn't have a purpose, and that included the things that were now useless because they had once been his.
And so it came to be that the only reminder of him that she kept around was the extra pregnancy test she bought that day at the drugstore, if only to reminisce of that glorious face he showed her when he realized she was pregnant again.
Hard to believe that it would come to use again, huh?
Admittedly, she had been waiting for Antony and/or Elizabeth to announce the upcoming arrival of the newest Palone ever since they came back from their honeymoon. But she had thought that, with Antony in Italy conciliating Nathaniel for the past month without a single visit between the two, it would be impossible for a little while. And, really, why wouldn't it be? Who could expect the self-contained, level-headed Elizabeth to have an affair?
This may be morning sickness, the rational part of her argued, but that doesn't mean that she had an affair, does it? She could have conceived before he left.
No, her intuition told her firmly, No. This is not Antony's child. She wouldn't act like this if it was.
She heard the water run through the pipes, and, sighing, she opened the door again. There, she found her sister-in-law of only eleven months, pregnant with her lover's child. She didn't need to look at the test itself to know that now.
"Can I ask you to call a family meeting?" Elizabeth asked, voice unnaturally distant.
Jacqueline inhaled, already regretting the child's fate, but truly having no choice. Pregnancy wasn't exactly something a woman could keep from the world for long. "Of course. Would you rather meet here or at Mother and Father's house?"