Page 1 of Maybe My Baby

ONE

GINNY BLACK WAS PREGNANT. Possibly. Probably. There was a line on the white plastic stick in her pocket, and she’d felt nauseated when she got up this morning.

The pregnancy test was wrapped in a Kleenex. She’d been rechecking it every half hour, hoping the line would disappear.

So far, no luck.

To be honest, the nausea might have been from worrying about the pregnancy test...and the fact that she was neither married nor in a committed relationship.

She and Donovan had been introduced by mutual friends. They’d been dating for nine months and sleeping together for four of those. But it was a casual thing. Nobody had made any promises.

Meanwhile, Ginny was losing it. Her nerves were frazzled. A woman was entitled—right? This was the kind of life moment that called for a shot of hard liquor. Only Ginny wasn’t a drinker, and if she was pregnant, drowning her sorrows in alcohol was no longer an option.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like babies. From her limited experience, they seemed cute and cuddly. But she was not at a point where motherhood was advisable.

Didn’t matter. The line on the stick was dark and impossible to miss.

Swallowing her understandable panic, she managed a smile for the next group of customers who entered the store. Peaches and Cream was Ginny’s baby right now. As the only ice cream shop in Blossom Branch, Georgia, her fledgling business did well.

She was going into her fourth year. So far, she was breaking even. This endeavor would never make her rich, but ice cream made people happy, and Ginny liked doing that for her customers.

When she was alone again, she came out from behind the counter and paced. Her little shop included three small Victorian-style tables painted white. The matching chairs sported red velvet cushions.

She had hung four large oval mirrors with gilt frames, two on either wall, to make the space seem larger. The layout worked, especially because most people took their ice cream outside to eat while they walked or sat in the town square. The “square” was really a quad...two city blocks spliced together with a large, beautiful gazebo.

With big mirrors around the walls of her shop, it was hard not to see the look on her face. Given her strawberry blond hair, she had the usual fair-skinned coloring, but she was paler than normal. She sometimes wore a red-and-white-striped ball cap that matched the awning outside and carried out the theme of the store, but today it had made her head hurt.

She could use a haircut. Her natural curls tended to resemble a lion’s mane if she let them get much past chin length.

A baby. A baby. What would Donovan say when she told him?

Even thinking about that conversation brought back the nausea. He had used protection every time, though condoms weren’t 100 percent effective. Ginny had tried the pill years ago, but it had messed with her system.

Because she was not what a doctor would describe assexually active—at least not until Donovan—the no-pill situation hadn’t been an issue. Clearly, she had underestimated the danger.

Fortunately, the remainder of the day was very busy. She scooped cones and made milkshakes and cleaned up messes. All the while, she feltawareof her belly. Could she possibly be pregnant? It didn’t seem real.

When she closed and locked the door at five thirty, she couldn’t wait to get home. Her apartment wasn’t fancy, but it suited her. Close to work...and affordable. At twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight, Ginny was proud of what she had accomplished in life.

Her parents were solidly middle-class. They had saved for years so their only daughter could go to the college of her choice. Her older brother, Richard, had chosen Georgia Tech. He was a chemical engineer with a great job, a wife, and a toddler, all in Atlanta.

Ginny had enrolled at Savannah College of Art and Design. Her major was illustration, which accounted for the colorful blackboard drawings on the back wall behind the counter at the ice cream shop. She had also taken electives in jewelry making, furniture design, and advertising. But without her leaving Blossom Branch, her choices were limited, especially since she had decided not to pursue a teaching certification in art.

Blossom Branch suited her, though. She didn’t want to leave. The slow-paced, friendly little town would always be home. She felt grounded here. Content. Happy.

Most weeks, she was satisfied with the popular business she had established. Other moments, she chafed at scooping ice cream all day—and wondered about other creative possibilities that might offer more freedom. Thefreedomthing seemed a heck of a lot more relevant now. Nothing in college had prepared her for being a solo business owner with a baby on the way.

As she walked around the building to the tiny alley where her car was parked, she reached for calm. Ginny’s parents still lived in Blossom Branch. She saw them frequently, though she hadn’t gone as far as introducing them to Donovan yet. They would be thrilled to have another grandchild on the way, though possibly not so thrilled that theirbaby girlwas pregnant and unwed. Ginny could already imagine the looks on their faces when she told them.

Blossom Branch was a small town that had embraced progress and change in many ways, but some social norms stayed stuck in the past.

Just as she unlocked her car, her phone dinged. It was Donovan...

Want to go to the new Marvel movie tonight?

She smiled wistfully. The invitation was sohim. The guy wasn’t a fan of superhero flicks, but he knew Ginny was. Hence the invitation.

Any other night she would have jumped at the offer. But the thought of sitting through a two-hour movie without talking made her antsy. She had to tell Donovan the truth...right?

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