In a Book Club Far Away(34)
“Shhhhh. I said that when I was drunk.” She looked around for prying ears, and remembered she’d revealed the same thing to Adelaide and Sophie the first night they met.
“Why is it a secret?”
“Because that’s not what I went to college for!” A wave of emotion rose in her chest. She didn’t graduate from a great college and then join the Army so she could eventually grill burgers whenever her husband burned dinner. Nor would she give up the security of being able to support herself to chase a pipe dream of being a chef. Not only would she have to go back to school (um, no), but her projected income would be pennies for a long time as she established herself.
She had always been a responsible person. She had great credit, and she helped out by sending cash to her brothers, who were still in college.
At the thought of burgers, her tummy growled, and she laid a palm against it. “Ugh.”
“Oh God, you don’t sound so good.”
“I did stop by my friend Sophie’s place the other day. She had a houseful of kids. We were making Christmas cookies to send downrange. Maybe I got sick from them?”
At the mention of cookies, she detected a butter aftertaste in the back of her throat, and her nose conjured up the smell of cookie dough. A quiet burp escaped her, which gave her a moment’s relief, but what followed was a bubble of disgusting, sickening air. Cyn was still chatting away as the bubble rose up higher and higher, until Regina felt it in her nose.
Regina halted a quarter mile away from the run’s end point, and in between the winter-hardy holly bushes that lined the trail of the running path, she bent over at the waist, both hands resting on her knees as she heaved, though nothing came out. Tears leaked from her eyes at the effort, and her chest burned, body lurching in between the gasps.
“Oh my God. Are you okay?” Cyn ran toward her.
Regina shook her head, eyes wet. Then, another bubble rose from the pit of her stomach, and this time, she gave into it. Sure enough, last night’s dinner, along with half her intestines, came up and out.
The effort put her in a daze, so much that she didn’t know how she made it back to her car and then home. But with Cyn to help her, she somehow climbed up to the third-floor apartment without upchucking in the stairwell. She hobbled into the apartment, beelining straight to the bathroom, passing by her bedroom, where she caught sight of her hanging calendar over her desk.
She knelt in front of the toilet. Cyn rubbed her back as she emptied her tummy again.
It had been years since Regina had hugged the porcelain goddess, and even then, she could count on one hand how many times she’d drunk enough to feel sick. Throughout the years that were supposed to be the wildest in her life, she’d kept the fine balance of working hard and playing hard. There was too much pressure on her to succeed. Excuses were not tolerated in the Castro family, especially from her, the eldest and a girl.
Her heart dropped.
She was a girl. A girl who could become a mother.
“No, no, no, no, no.” She shook her head. Thoughts on the calendar she’d seen a moment ago, her mind counted down the days since Logan left. About eight weeks. Had she had a period in between?
“What is it?” Cynthia said, coming from the kitchen, a glass of water in her hand.
Reality crashed down. “Oh God.”
Regina and Logan had decided to wait to get pregnant. If she was indeed pregnant, Logan would miss the entire pregnancy. They would somehow have to work together, harder—they couldn’t be dysfunctional. They could not continue on the same contentious road they had traveled the last two years.
Regina shut her eyes and leaned back against the porcelain tub. Breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly. She imagined herself physically pushing the nausea back down her esophagus.
She had to calm down. She had to think.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sophie
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Mommy,” Olivia warned Sophie from the back seat of her SUV.
“Mommy, they’re fighting!” added Carmela, who was looking out her window.
In front of them was a blooming confrontation. At the parking lot of the post office, next to the only grocery store open in town, the night before Thanksgiving, Sophie watched as a woman exited her vehicle to yell at a man who’d crashed his shopping cart into her front fender.
’Tis the holiday season.
“We’ll walk the other way. Mommy has an important thing to drop off at the post office that can’t wait.”
“Is this for your new school?”
“Maybe, sweetie, maybe.” Sophie swallowed her giddiness.
The last couple of months had been tough. Harder than it had been in the past, perhaps because now, her schedule oscillated between stark loneliness when the girls were at school to chaos when the girls arrived home each day. Sophie, proud of her profession, of managing a challenging work schedule, had found herself with little to do that was for herself. Since the deployment, she’d decluttered everything in her home twice over, caught up on all the shows she’d been recording on the DVR, and even meal planned through December.
Then, the other week, Sophie’d read an article about being able to earn a master’s degree online. She’d undertaken a deep dive into the different schools and what kind of degree she could get, the requirements and cost, and if she’d needed to take the GRE. She discovered that with some nursing master’s programs, it wasn’t necessary, though she would need to coordinate her clinical rotations with a local hospital.