Hopefully this is the last super short chapter, but I doubt it. I write scene after scene, they all follow the storyline, but they aren't one right after the other. Which is dumb. I'll work on it. Also, I have no idea where this is going. Planning isn't my strong suit. I'll figure it out when I get there.
The next few weeks were uneventful. One day melted into the next. Temperance was busying herself staring at skulls, hundreds of years dead. Seeley muddled through the paper work that had sat on his desk. Their lives went right back to normal, like one had never known the other.
"Hey, Sweetie. What's the matter?" Angela asked, as she walked into Brennen's office, returning a skull to her friend.
"Nothing. I'm just not feeling well today." She knew the reason she wasn't feeling well. She was lonely, and sad. She was stressed out. And she had a sneaking suspicion that she was pregnant. "I just need some rest." She finished not wanting her friend to worry about her.
That night she found herself sitting on the side of the bathtub, in her master bathroom holding a pregnancy test in one hand and her head in the other.
"I'm pregnant." She said, standing up and laying the test on the counter next to the three others. She looked into the mirror, straight into her own blue eyes, and continued, "You are idiotic."
In between thoughts of 'You are 27 years old, you can do this.' and 'Women do it everyday.' came the thoughts of 'How could you let this happen?' and 'There is no excuse this day and age.'
She was almost finished her novel, and Angela said it was destined to be a bestseller, hopefully she was right. Although, she has a well-paying job, she was more than capable.
Temperance was beginning to have her doubts by the time she went to bed. She lay there, staring out the closed window, wondering 'what if I am a terrible mother?' She had to stop letting herself think like that. She may not have wanted children, but fate intervened. She laughed at herself making excuses, like she believed in fate. Every woman had it in her when faced with motherhood, she imagined she did too. Hopefully.
She shoved the pregnancy tests into the trash bin. They had to be wrong. She hated the man, the last thing she wanted to do was have a child with him.
"No one says he has to know." She muttered to herself, her voice catching when she realized how sinister it sounded. Perhaps sinister wasn't the word she was looking for. It sounded desperate, anxious, hasty and cruel. And it was cruel.
Except it wasn't cruel at all, it was cruel to not let a father see his child. If he never knew of the child's existence, it doesn't cause any pain, therefore it is not cruel. Maybe callous. Never cruel.
At that moment she didn't have it in her to be cruel.
It was simply logical not to tell him. They didn't like each other, let alone get along. A child needs parents who love each other. She knew that. Seeing her parents when she was growing up was the best part of her childhood. Temperance remembered how much her father loved her mother. Bringing a child into any situation that doesn't involve love is what would be truly cruel.
And she cried. She showered. She sunk into her sofa. Her wet hair clinging to her neck.
"I need a drink."
And, yes, I realize that everyone else's story has this exact plot. If she wasn't pregnant
nothing would have changed. And I promised that it changed everything. So,
there it is. Please be gentle.