Chapter 1 - the announcement
My baby shower had been perfect for exactly one hour and twenty minutes.
Long enough for my aunt to cry over the tiny socks she bought. Long enough for my best friend Cory to keep the gifts moving and the lemonade cold. Long enough for me to believe, just for one afternoon, that this pregnancy could belong entirely to me.
Then the back gate swung open, and my sister Beatatrice walked in wearing a tight white dress, full makeup, and the kind of smile she only used when she wanted a room to rearrange itself around her.
Every head turned.
She pressed one hand to her rounded belly and sighed theatrically. “Sorry I’m late. This little one kept me up all night.”
I saw the exact moment my party stopped being mine. Women stood up from pink folding chairs. My mother crossed the yard first. Someone told Beatatrice she looked radiant. Someone else asked if she wanted a pillow. I sat frozen in my ribbon-covered chair with a half-opened package of baby blankets in my lap and watched people flock to her like I had become part of the furniture.
Cory tried to pull them back. “Okay, everyone, Jodie still has a mountain of gifts left.”
People returned, but the energy never did.
Beatatrice made sure of that.
She positioned herself directly across from me, one hand always on her belly, wincing every few minutes just enough to make somebody ask if she was okay. She had always known how to steal attention without appearing to touch it. She did it at graduations, at birthday dinners, even at my engagement party. She could turn a sneeze into a spotlight if she wanted to.
An hour later, while I was opening a hand-knitted blanket from my aunt, Beatatrice suddenly stood.
“Oh my God, I totally forgot,” she said, loudly enough that every conversation stopped. “I have news. I know this is Jodie’s day, but I just can’t hold it in anymore.”
Something cold moved through my chest.
She stepped into the center of the yard, one hand pressed to her bump, smiling like she was about to cut a ribbon.
“Damon and I finally picked our baby name,” she announced. “We’re naming her Charlie. Charlie Anne.”
Gasps. Applause. My mother’s delighted squeal.
Within seconds, women were crowding around her. My mother hugged her. My aunt asked how she spelled it. My cousin said it was adorable. My baby shower had become Beatatrice’s name ceremony so quickly it almost made me dizzy.
“Can this wait?” I said.
My voice cut through the yard sharper than I meant it to, but I didn’t care.
Everyone turned toward me.
I was still in that stupid white chair, holding the blanket, feeling ridiculous and invisible and suddenly very, very done.
“This is my shower,” I said. “Could you announce your baby name literally any other day?”
The silence that followed was instant and ugly.
Beatatrice’s face crumpled on command. “Oh my God, Jodie, I’m sorry. I just thought we could share this moment since we’re both pregnant.”
My mother’s expression turned hard. “There’s no need to make a scene.”
I laughed once because it was either that or scream. “I’m making a scene? She hijacked my baby shower.”
“Sweetheart,” my aunt said in the soft, patronizing voice adults use on overtired children, “it’s not a competition.”
No one was on my side.
No one except Andre, who had gone still near the gift table, and Cory, who was glaring at Beatatrice so fiercely she looked like she might throw a cupcake stand.
The rest of the party limped on after that, but the damage was done. People kept bringing up Charlie. Kept congratulating Beatatrice. Kept looking at me like I was one emotional wobble away from ruining dessert.
When the shower finally ended, Beatatrice hugged me at the gate and whispered, “I really didn’t mean to steal your thunder. I love you.”
Then she left without helping clean up.
Of course she did.
I was pulling ribbons off the chairs when Andre came up behind me and said quietly, “That was deliberate.”
“I know.”
He took the tape roll from my hand. “You don’t have to keep protecting her.”
That hit harder than he probably meant it to.
Because he was right.
I had been protecting her for months.
Protecting her from Damon. Protecting her from our mother. Protecting her from the consequences of a truth she swore she would tell herself.
I looked toward the driveway just in time to see Beatatrice laughing beside Damon’s car, one hand on her belly, the other smoothing her hair.
Something inside me snapped cleanly into place.
I walked straight across the yard before Andre could stop me.
Damon looked up as I approached. Beatatrice’s smile faltered.
“Jodie?” she said.
I looked directly at Damon.
“Before you celebrate that name,” I said, my voice calm now, almost frighteningly calm, “you should ask Beatatrice who the baby’s father really is.”
The world seemed to stop.
Damon’s face emptied.
May you like
Beatatrice went white.
And my mother, who had just stepped onto the porch behind me, nearly dropped the serving tray in her hands.
