The conversation with her sister went even more off the rails than usual. That evening, after returning from her idyll by the town swim hole and her break from reality, she had sent Christie a brief text (So it would appear I am pregnant) and then quickly ducked into the shower. 

She had stood under the stream of hot water, trying to lose herself in the relaxing heat of it, but it never lasted long and less than ten minutes later she was yelping in alarm and scrambling to escape the jet of icy cold water that suddenly exploded from the shower head. So she was more than wide awake when she picked up the phone to read her sister's response:

Oh my god you banged him at the funeral didn't you? I KNEW IT.

Then her sister called. She yelped again and threw the phone onto the twisted piles of unmade linen on her bed. She had to stop doing that whenever someone called her, she'd broken more than one phone that way over the years. Normal people freaked out over the sound of gunshots and cars that unexpectedly backfired, not the sound of a phone ringing or a knock at the door.

She'd take gunshots over her sister's phone call ever time.

She picked up the phone like it was a poisonous bug that might suddenly lunge for her with its little teeth (Pincers? Stinger? Whatever.), holding it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. Why did her sister have to call her? What in God's name did they have to discuss over the phone they couldn't simply text? First Christie would tell her she was an idiot, she wouldn't argue, Christie would ask her what next, she would say she didn't know, and Christie would remind her she was an idiot. Perfectly doable via text.

She sighed in relief when the call went to voicemail, then squeaked when it immediately began ringing again. Either she had to turn the phone off or watch it blow up with 37 voicemails. She sensed Christie was on a rampage.

And then there was the fact she had promised her sister never to fall off the face of the earth again. Goddammit, it wasn't fair of her to extract a promise like that right after their mother had died. She would have promised her anything at that moment, and of course Christie had known that.

"I'm holding you to it, Courtney Park," her sister had said stonily as they sat in the hospital cafeteria waiting for her husband to return with a stack of papers for them to fill out. They had stood at their mother's unconscious side and watched her breathe her last less than an hour previously, and for once her sister had been speechless. At least for a good twenty minutes or so, and then Christie had started in on one of her favorite subjects, her tendency to "ghost" when things got dicey.

So she did the exact opposite of what every cell in her body told her not to do, and the fourth time her sister called she actually answered the phone.

"Hello?" she said tentatively.

"Are you going to tell him?"

"What? Tell who?" Her sister wasn't one for general salutations and polite chit chat on a good day, but still. Why couldn't Christie ease into anything ever? She plopped down onto her messy bed.

"What do you mean 'tell who'? It's Freddy's right? You slept with him at the funeral, I know you did. I saw you sneak off with him during Great Aunt Ginny's eulogy."

"You think I had sex with him during the funeral? In the funeral home? We stepped outside so we could talk. Out in the parking lot!" She wasn't lying, and hopefully her sister wouldn't notice that—

"Ha! You didn't say you didn't have sex with him, only that you didn't have it at the funeral. I knew it Courtney, I knew it!"

She noticed. Of course she had noticed. Her sister had always been able to read her like a book. Or, as Christie so eloquently put it, "like one of those special Dr. Seuss books they make even shorter for the dumb kids."

"Do you still love him? Have you told him? And what were you thinking, not using protection? That was really idiotic you know."

"What? No, I mean—I haven't said anything to him."

"Why not? Whether or not you keep it, he deserves to know. Especially after everything you put him through."

Jesus Christie, she thought. Her sister almost made it sound like she had lost the baby on purpose. She groaned and flopped down on her back. Why had she told her sister? And why didn't she have anyone else she could tell? She really needed to get some friends again. 

"I—I—it's more complicated than that," she mumbled into the phone.

"What? I can barely hear you Courtney. What do you mean it's more complicated? What's going on?"

Maybe she should pretend the signal was getting bad and hang up. Why had she thought for even a single second she was going to achieve anything positive by involving her sister? The proverbial bull in a china shop. Her mother had possessed a knack for reigning in Christie when she was on one of her stampedes, but her mother was gone, her spirit flown far away long before her stroke and quick physical deterioration and death.

She placed a steadying hand on her stomach, which currently felt like a ship adrift in a stormy sea, and took in a deep breath of air.

Here goes nothing, she thought.

"I did sleep with Freddie, but I don't know if it's his."

There. It was out. Done.

She glanced at her phone in confusion. Had the call disconnected? There was complete silence on the other end. Shit, was she going to have to gather up her courage a second time and repeat the words?

Just as she was about to hang up and call her sister back, she heard Christie sigh loudly. So yes, she had heard, she had simply been shocked into silence.

"What do you mean you don't know if it's his? You've been seeing someone?"

"Would it be that incredible if I have been?" was what she wanted to say.

"N-no, not exactly," was what she actually said. Or stuttered really.

"Who is he? Some local?" Her sister said "local" the same way she said "Newark." Like she had taken a bite of one of their mother's terrible spam casseroles from childhood.

"Sort of."

"Courtney, how can I help you if you don't tell me what's up? Please tell me what's up. I'm not going to judge, it happens to all of us." She could practically hear the massive amount of effort it took her sister to remain calm and civil. It was touching in a way. Like watching a fish pull itself out of the water to save another fish. Or something.

"It's this guy ..."

"Yeah? And?"

"It's this guy and, well there's also this other guy—"

"Wait what? How many guys are there?" The fish was beginning to flap around and gasp now, but still it stayed on land, willing itself to be something it was not.

"Two! I mean three with Freddy. That was a mistake. Well all three were mistakes."

Her sister whistled.

"Yeah, you can say that again. And you didn't use protection with any of them? You're not on birth control? What were you thinking?"

Ah yes, the birth control question. How to explain to her sister how pointless it had seemed in this place to take it, in this new life of hers she had made as tiny as possible, and where there was room for little else than work and depression and sleep. As for not using condoms?

"I guess I didn't think I could get pregnant again. After everything."

"You're shitting me. You. Are. Shitting me Courtney! What are you, 12? Do you think you can get pregnant from swimming in a pool as well?" Her sister was yelling now, the fish abruptly finished with its brief foray into the unnatural world of air and light. 

Actually her sister sounded more like she was squawking, and she made a mental note to inform Christie of that fact at a later date.

For now, however, she'd had enough, and she ended the call. And then turned off the phone. Because she knew Christie wasn't done with her. She tossed the phone across the bed and groaned out loud. What had she been thinking? Christie's tough love, or abusive love, or whatever it was, that was the last thing she needed right now. She would have gotten more out of telling Madysen. Well, maybe not. But still. Her sister could be such a judgmental bitch. Even if she was right, even if Christie had managed to put into words everything she had refused to admit to herself. Like, what had she been thinking when she not only slept with Cam and his father, but had neglected to use protection? Or driven to a pharmacy to buy a morning after pill?

Though maybe they didn't sell those in Texas. That was a nice straw to grab on to, but it didn't change the fact that she shouldn't have needed one in the first place. Plus she had been in New Jersey within 24 hours of having sex with both of them, plenty of time left for her to buy a pill at one of the pharmacies there that definitely did provide them to the loose women of the world.

If she was honest with herself, she hadn't been thinking much of anything. Maybe it had been the heat, or the cumulative effects of a year-long depression, or maybe it had been the impossibility of the whole thing, that there was no way she was going to do this, there was no way she was doing this. That she had just done this. With both men. One of them her student. One of them his father. She did have a knack for disassociating from the more stressful events in her life.

But this had been different. She couldn't pretend that she hadn't enjoyed and definitely been present for every single moment of her time with both men. Cam hadn't fucked her when she was drunk, so she didn't even have that excuse.

What about her ex-fiance? What exactly had she been thinking when she had slept with him, in the upstairs bathroom at her sister's house? It had been during the "after-party" as her sister insisted on calling the gathering of family and friends after the funeral was done and they had placed their mother's urn next to their father's in the cemetery. She was pretty sure that time at least she hadn't been thinking much of anything. She had been numb, more than usual, and desperate for sensation. And he had been there, waves of sadness rolling off of him and pulling her back into his desperate arms.

Freddy. Her Freddy. Was he even officially her ex? She had managed to avoid ever having "the talk," simply fading away without a word from the life they had built together. The life she had destroyed, first by losing the baby, then by refusing to grieve with him and, finally, by running away in fear that his grief would overwhelm her, take away her ability to breathe. That she would drown in their combined sadness over the child they had lost.

"I'm such a Goddamned coward," she said to her bedroom ceiling. It didn't disagree with her assessment. The ceiling was supposed to be white, but some former tenant had obviously spent way too much time smoking in bed, so now it looked yellow and haggard, like an old cocktail waitress who had seen and heard it all.

"I need to call her back, don't I?" she asked it. Again it didn't argue. So she sat up, fished her phone out from underneath the covers, and turned it on mid-ring.

She immediately answered it.

"Christie, you're right, I'm a mess. I fucked up. I need your help. I have no idea what I'm going to do."

"Well now Miss Park," a low, familiar voice drawled back at her. "I sure am sorry to hear that ma'am."

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