Getting down on my knees beside her, I carefully picked her up and held her close to my chest.
“What’s wrong with taking the test, Heidi? Do you not want another baby?”
She looked up at me, tears glimmering in her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t. It’s just bad timing.”
I frowned down at her. “It is?”
“You’re painting the restaurant, and I’ve got cakes to make. Nemi’s at school…” Heidi wailed, huge sobs now being the culprits for her body shaking.
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. “Heidi, babies need to bake inside you for forty weeks. You’ve done this before, you know that. You’re talking like, if you’re pregnant, it’s coming into our lives tomorrow. We’ll be fine, honey, you know that.”
This didn’t help her. If anything, she started crying even harder. “Oh God, if it’s busy like this now, what’s it going to be like when it’s time for the baby to be here?”
Sighing, I carried her through to the kitchen, stopped at the cupboard we had a stack of dixie cups in from the last time we’d had a family get together here, and grabbed one before taking her back to the bathroom.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said seriously, making sure I had her eyes on me. “You’re going to pee in this cup, then we’ll dip the ten tests—”
“Ten?” she gasped, looking like I was the crazy one.
“Yes, ten.” My tone made it clear we were doing every last one of those freaking things. “Then we’re going to cuddle until the timer goes off on my phone, telling us it’s time to look at them.” Passing the cup to her, I nodded at the toilet. “On you go.”
Painfully slowly, her hand came out to take the cup. “I’m not peeing in it with you in here.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m damn well not,” Heidi spluttered, glaring at me now. “We might be married, you may have seen and touched every last part of me, but I’m not going to the bathroom with you in the room. You know, we haven’t been married long, there’s still that new car scent to it, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
In response, I leaned back on my arms and stared at her.
“Bond, please.”
“No.”
Her face turned from anxious to sad. “Do you think I’ll do something to the tests? Try and fool you into thinking I’m pregnant so I can have your money?”
“Baby,” I snorted, “you had access to everything that’s mine the day you married me. I don’t think you’re going to do something to the tests, I just want to be a part of this from start to finish.” I leaned forward, staring at her earnestly. “Heidi, I feel like I missed out on the most important part of my daughter, when she came into the world. I’m making up for it with her, but I have almost three years of lost memories with her.
“I want to look at our baby and know that I was there for every part of its life. It’s conception, the day we discovered it existed, the first scan, the day it comes into the world… I want it all. I’m doing everything I can to make those memories for Nemi so that she never remembers a day I wasn’t in her life. Let me just have this one thing, please.”
Huffing out a breath, she pulled her leggings and panties down and sat on the toilet, awkwardly holding the cup under her. “Damn, you’re too good at that.”
“I am.”
For all her protests, it took her a matter of seconds to begin peeing. “You don’t have to look at me so closely while I’m doing it, you know.”
I shrugged a shoulder and continued to watch her. When I heard it beginning to trail off, I reached out and grabbed a handful of toilet paper off the roll and waited to pass it to her.
“If you lean in and try and wipe me, I’ll shave your head in your sleep,” she clipped, her upper lip curled at the thought.
“I love you, but wiping your vagina is all your territory. I’m just here to take it off the roll and give it to you when you finally finish filling the cup.”
Sighing, she angled herself to the side, held her leg up in the air, and removed the red cup from where it’d been.
“Ugh, it’s so warm. I feel so bad handing it to you now. Like, you know when you’re at the doctor’s, and they ask you to do a pee sample in that tiny pot? I always feel guilty that someone has to pick that warm thing up and then open the lid on it. Pee isn’t scent-free, what if someone had asparagus the night before?”
She was rambling to delay what was going to happen, and it was so amusing, I just let her continue.