“Just a minute!” I yell.
Impulsively, I grab one of the many PL tapes from one of the shelves and stuff it into my coat pocket. Then I yank on the cord hanging from the ceiling and the room is plunged back into darkness. I step out of the room and as I shove the bookcase back into place, I hear a reassuring click. When I step back now, I can’t tell the hidden room is even there.
I hurry back into the living room, where Ethan is standing in front of the sofa. He’s grinning ear to ear, and he’s got a bottle of wine dangling from his right hand. “I got the heat going!”
I shiver. “It’s still freezing in here.”
“Well, it’s going to take a little time to heat such a gigantic space.” He nods pointedly at the massive living area. I’d like to point out to him that if we moved in here, our heating bills would be astronomical, but Ethan’s got enough family money that he doesn’t worry about that sort of stuff. “Did you find the bathroom all right?”
“Yes.”
I shove my right hand into my deep coat pocket and feel the rectangular shape of the cassette tape I stole from the hidden room. This would be the time to tell him about my discovery. There’s no reason not to tell him.
But he won’t want me listening to these tapes. He’ll tell me it’s none of my business—he always complains I’m a huge busybody. I’m not a busybody though—I just have a natural sense of curiosity. Is there anything so wrong with that?
One thing I’m sure of though—Ethan will stop me from listening to these tapes if he finds out they exist.
“And look!” Ethan holds up the bottle of blood-colored wine. “I found something to warm us up in the meantime.”
“Oh?”
He lowers the bottle to read the label. “It’s a Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s from… Stellenbosch, South Africa.”
“A wine from South Africa?”
“Oh yeah. There are a lot of good Cabernets from South Africa.”
Ethan would know. He’s something of a wine expert. He can always tell you what regions are the best for what kinds of wine, what sweet or acidic notes to look for in the wine, and what food pairs best with it. Most of the time, I’m just nodding and pretending to know what he’s talking about.
“So,” I say, “you stole a bottle of wine?”
“It’s not great wine,” he says defensively. I don’t know if that’s true, although Ethan isn’t willing to drink anything cheap so it must be at least something decent. His favorite wine is Cheval Blanc. “And anyway, it’s Judy’s fault for inviting us here in the middle of a blizzard and not even showing up herself. We need something to entertain ourselves.”
“I’m sure Judy didn’t realize there was going to be a blizzard,” I say, but it’s too late. Ethan is already pouring the wine into two glasses he set up on the coffee table in front of the fireplace.
Ethan sits down on the sectional sofa, and I sit down beside him. He picks up one of the wine glasses, filled almost to the brim with dark red liquid, and I reluctantly do the same. He tilts his glass towards mine.
“To our new home,” he says.
Oh God.
Ethan takes a long sip from his wine glass while I contemplate what to do with mine. I can’t drink this. Perhaps a sip or two, but not this entire huge glass of wine or anything close to that. And I can’t tell Ethan why because he doesn’t know that I’m pregnant.
That’s right. I’m knocked up.
It’s been two weeks since I missed my period. Just a little over a week since I peed on a stick and those two pink lines appeared that would change our entire lives.
I’m terrified to tell him my little secret. Before we got married, we both decided we wanted children. I have a sister, but Ethan is an only child and his parents have passed on, so we were both on board with the idea of having a family of our own. But—we agreed—no children in the near future. We’re relatively young, and we wanted a chance to travel together, to enjoy each other for a couple of years before we brought a baby into the mix. Two years minimum before we even start trying—that’s what we decided.
Now here I am, six short months after our wedding. A baby on the way.
It wasn’t my fault. I take my birth control pills religiously. I have a timer set to go off on my phone so I don’t forget to take it. But I had a respiratory infection last month and I took some antibiotics for it that they gave me at urgent care. And apparently, that made my birth control pills stop working. Who knew?