I count days on my finger pads because fingers don’t lie. Twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-one. I stand with the pantry’s cedar in my nose and the lake’s damp in my lungs and draw a box around the date on my spiral. The square looks too neat for what it means.
“Groceries,” I tell the house that is thankfully still dumb from last night. I grab a canvas bag and walk out to the car, avoiding the camera that watches the drive like a polite guard. The neighborhood smells of ozone after a brief noon storm; the sidewalks are clean enough to argue on. I know because our HOA listserv did argue—strollers blocking curb cuts, a thread titled Keep Amenities Child-Neutral stacked with praise. I scroll while the engine warms, then stop. I need a different kind of store.
I drive to a pharmacy two exits past our usual. The clerks here don’t know my foundation smile. I put two brands in the basket—one with blue lines, one with pink—and add a pack of hair ties and saline to make it all look boring. The rook on my keychain taps the cart when I push; I want to throw it into the gum rack, but I don’t. I buy receipt paper with my silence.
At the endcap I pull both boxes close and photograph them flat like artifacts. I steady the phone over the barcodes, the lot numbers, the expiration dates. A woman in scrubs beside me says, “Good catch,” and I pretend she means the saline.
At the register, the clerk hums a tune broadcast from a live-captioned gala clip on the news playing above his head. The captions crawl: LEGACY WITHOUT HEIRS—TRUSTEE HALE TOASTS. The coincidence feels pointed and stupid. I slide cash across anyway. When the drawer inches open, the smell of the bills hits—a dry, papery metal—and I feel my throat heat.
I drive home the long way, past the lake where the dam schedule has pulled the water down another inch. Rocks lean out of the shallows like a ribcage. At the Glass House, I park, then stand in the garage until the overhead shuts off and I can hear only the tiny clicks the world makes when it forgets I’m listening.
In the bathroom I line up the boxes and stage a small photo shoot on the vanity: front, back, sides, lot numbers, control diagrams. I tuck a towel under my knees and open the foil sleeves. The air smells like lemon cleaner and the sweet chemical of the dye waiting in the plastic. My hands shake, so I sit on the floor, spine against the cedar closet door where the wellness bracelet dozes in its drawer. I hear its charger ping a soft confirmation, and my jaw goes hard. I breathe in fours like the clinic nurse taught me years ago when a machine lied.
“Okay,” I say. “Now.”
I pee in the cup, because I don’t trust hand steadiness over a little window. I dip blue, set it on the book I set on the counter to keep it off the wet: a paperback my mother mailed me, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, dog-eared with love. Then I dip pink, set it beside the blue so they look like twins learning to be different. I tap my phone to a fifteen-second timer and watch the seconds walk toward me.
One line shows up like a fact. The other arrives lighter, thin as a whisper. I freeze and then perform the only ritual I know: I take a photo with the strip under natural light, one with the overheads on, one with flash against a white napkin, one against a darker cloth. The blue line remains pale but present. The pink glows like a shy comet.
“Hi,” I say to no one and maybe to something. My throat tightens around the word until it sounds like a hinge.
I sit on the tile and shake. The lake keeps ticking stones together outside. My mouth tastes like copper. In the mirror, my face is the same face it was before the second line, which feels like a betrayal and a mercy.
Micro-hook #1 needles me where hope and fear meet: If the strip is right, does my body become a document before it becomes a home?
I do what I was raised to do. I document. I write the time down to the minute, the temperature from the thermostat, the brand names, the lot numbers, the controls, the specific shade the dye made before it dried. I write what I ate and didn’t—half a banana, coffee, a silence. I hash the photos in a simple app and write the short hash into the margin like a rosary I can count. I print nothing.
I wrap both strips in tissue and then unwrap them because I didn’t photograph the backs. I photograph the backs. The kitchen timer dings from where I set it to check reading windows again. I look. The lines are still themselves.
I hide the blue first. I slide it into the paperback I picked, into chapter fourteen, which is about hunger and cleverness and a girl who learns to love what she can grow. I push the book spine-deep into the cedar closet, behind sweaters no camera stares at. I pocket the pink one for now, because I don’t trust leaving all proof in a house that learned to lie for love.
“Clinic,” I say out loud, and hate that the room knows the word. I take the burner and go to the far side of the bedroom, where the glass makes my reflection look like somebody braver. I search for cash clinic Lakeview Heights walk-in lab confirmation paper copy no insurance and finger-scroll past ads into phone numbers that are real.
I dial the first. “Riverline Health,” a woman answers, kind but efficient.
“Hi,” I say. “I need a pregnancy confirmation. Cash. No insurance. No ID if possible.”
“We need a name for the file.”
“Nora,” I say, borrowing my grandmother from the family tree book. “Nora B.”
“Tomorrow at nine-thirty,” she says. “Blood draw. We can print a paper copy, no portal.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, and the word comes out shredded. “Does the building share data with any third-party wellness programs?”
She pauses just long enough to calibrate me. “We don’t interface with wellness devices,” she says. “We hand you paper. You can burn it or frame it.”
“Paper, please.” I give her the number for the burner and not the house and spell the made-up email she insists on for reminders with a dot that doesn’t matter. When I hang up, my heart tries to leave through my throat.
I call a second clinic as a redundancy. “Cash okay?” I ask. “Receipt optional.”
“Cash is fine,” he says, already bored. “Receipt default is yes.”
“Then no,” I say. “No receipt.”
“Okay,” he shrugs into the phone. “No receipt.”
I type the two times into my spiral, star both, and photograph the page. The pen leaks a dot beside Nora and I circle it like a sign.
Micro-hook #2 digs in: Which proof will I need if I decide to keep this, and which proof will be used to keep me?
I think of donor salons curated like museum exhibits, live-captioned toasts lofting Legacy in gold. I think of cameras pulsing around Julian’s face as he promised mission purity and the way Trustee Hale’s card cut my clutch with embossed certainty. I think of the advisory committee that uses dependents like malware.
I look at the drawer where the wellness bracelet charges. Its LED breathes. I picture its EULA promising insights to people who never have to bleed. I whisper, “Not yet,” to the drawer, and the breath doubles as if it heard me anyway.
I open my laptop, which I no longer trust, and keep it offline. I create a new local folder and name it the only way I can stand to think: if_then. Under it I make two subfolders—if_keep and if_not—and inside each I create a readme with bullet points and a timestamp for my future panic to hold onto. I don’t fill them. I just label the doors. I’m not ready to open them.
I copy the photo hashes into a text file and save it into if_then with the time and the word home. I write the time on my palm in cheap pen and watch the ink feather into my skin. My mother would scold me about ink and blood; I smile because I want to be scolded by someone who loves me without a brand strategy.
I walk to the kitchen and drink water, enough to obey the next test window. The water tastes like clean lake in a town with money. The lake outside looks like a mouth breathing through parted lips.
I take the second test brand again because redundancy is a lullaby and the opposite of sleep. The line arrives, faint again, but there. I hold it like a match. Tears prick. I blink them back because I didn’t document tears and I don’t know their timestamp.
I sit on the floor and wrap my arms around my knees. The tile is warm where the radiant coils run and cool at the edges where the room forgets corners. My phone vibrates. A calendar reminder from a donor event I’m not attending flashes: Museum Salon: Curator’s Toast with captions set to live. The overlay image on the alert shows a rook-shaped champagne tower decoration. I swipe it away. The tower will be stable until it isn’t.
“Do I tell Tamsin?” I ask the toothbrush cup. The cup says nothing; it’s been trained well. I list pros and cons out loud just to hear a human voice. “Pros: counsel. Cons: metadata. Pros: I don’t die alone. Cons: discovery.” The cons win. I text no one.
Micro-hook #3 tightens like a tourniquet: If I speak before I can prove, who will own the story of my blood?
I step into the closet and breathe the cedar that architects think means calm. I slide the paperback deeper into the shelf and place a sweater over the gap. The wellness drawer hums. I flip the rook-shaped bottle opener so its crown kisses wood. I whisper to the strips, “Stay quiet,” and to myself, “Don’t.”
In the hallway, every reflective surface asks me who is being watched. I hold my stomach, not because anything shows, but because tenderness needs somewhere to sit. My hand feels heat that might be mine and might be terror pretending to be purpose.
I go to the window and let the lake’s low rasp sand my thoughts. A drone wanders the HOA airspace, friendly and nosy; it probably has a permit and a mission. I raise a hand and don’t wave.
I write in the spiral again: Late. Two brands. Faint +. “Nora B.” appt 9:30. Paper only. No portal. Cash ready. I underline paper until the pen threatens to cut. I add a line: Possible pregnancy increases price of every move. I underline that too, and my hand shakes the underline into a small earthquake.
I open the if_then folder and add an audio note. “This is for me,” I say. “Timestamp twenty-three fifteen. If then equals yes, I lock the house down, I confess to no device, I hold paper like skin. If then equals no, I still hold paper. I hold myself.”
I close the laptop and leave it on the counter, a blunt rectangle. I take the pink strip and slide it inside a different book—User Research Methods—because humor sometimes keeps you breathing. I push it into the shelf behind the server alcove where the rook doorknob reflects my eyes back at me, small and mean-looking because metal is honest.
I turn off the kitchen light and the lake fills the room. The house smells like ozone, storm-washed. I place my palm on my belly like a seal and whisper, “I will not let them audit you before I learn your name.”
The drawer with the bracelet glows a soft blue again, patient. I picture its data pipeline, the way it would ping a “fertility window” to someone who books breakfasts for men who think variables are kinder than women. I close the drawer on its breath.
I go to bed without flossing because grace is sometimes choosing sleep. I lie on my side and watch the lake repaint its shadows across the ceiling. My mouth tastes like mint and coin. I think of Mara’s intake photo and a custody memo that used temporary like a promise and a threat, and I tuck the blanket around me the way I want to tuck a future that won’t fit in any drawer.
I end where I have to: I name the folder if_then, I touch my stomach, and I ask the unresolved question that will not let me sleep: If I am pregnant, what do I owe my body first—proof or permission?