All I Want. Nicole Helm

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      She swallowed at the nausea that swam up her esophagus. But it wasn’t a mistake, was it? It was a life. She’d created it in bad choices, but that was hardly the thing growing inside her’s fault.

      Meg squeezed her eyes shut. Dear Lord, she was pregnant.

      Needless to say, she didn’t sleep. She tried, lying there, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, but then her alarm went off and the goats needed milking, and dawn slowly rose on a new day.

      A new day in which she had to start facing the consequences of her actions. That was scary, because all the options felt wrong and hard and overwhelming.

      She got ready to go to breakfast with Elsie, determined to keep her problems to herself. Elsie’s chemo was showing promising results, but she was still weak and frail. The reality of the situation was Meg had come to rely on the company probably more than Elsie did.

      Funny, Meg thought she was finally getting her life together, and now it felt unraveled and pathetic.

      But she was going to keep that to herself. She would be cheerful and encouraging with Elsie. She ordered their food at Moonrise, took the bags from the waitress and smiled the whole time. She was fine. She could handle this. Tonight, when she got home, she would figure out what she was going to do. Alone.

      Because she was alone.

      When Elsie opened the door, Meg burst into tears. Elsie didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask what was wrong; she bustled her onto the couch, took the bags of food and plopped a box of tissues next to her.

      “Eat, please, eat, while I get myself together,” Meg croaked, trying to breathe, trying to cope.

      Elsie pulled out her foam container of food, and then she handed Meg hers on the little TV trays that more often served as a dining table for Dan and Elsie than their actual kitchen table.

      “Now, I’m not taking a bite if you don’t spill what’s troubling you.”

      “That’s mean.”

      “Darn straight it is. I’ll use a little meanness to get my way.”

      Meg swallowed, tried to manage a wobbly smile. “Take a bite and I’ll talk.”

      Elsie gave her a suspicious look, but she unwrapped the plastic cutlery from the bag and cut a bite of pancake before lifting it to her mouth.

      Meg waited for her to chew a few times, and then she knew she had to be honest. When she was honest with Elsie, Elsie was honest with her, and Meg liked to believe it had helped at least a little in these weeks Meg had been visiting with her.

      “I... It’s...”

      “Spit it out, child.”

      “I’m pregnant.”

      Elsie’s eyes widened and she set her plastic fork down. “Well, didn’t know you was seeing someone.”

      Miserable, Meg shook her head. Her own pancakes made her stomach turn, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with pregnancy. It had everything to do with Elsie being disappointed in her.

      She wanted someone to be proud of her. Someone to look at her and see success instead of failure.

      Maybe she should stop failing.

      “Now, I don’t condone getting the sheets sweaty with someone who you ain’t married to, let alone not well acquainted with,” Elsie said primly. “’Course, I can’t exactly judge either, as I’m not a hypocrite.”

      Meg wanted to laugh—leave it to Elsie—but it just came out like more of a sob. “What am I going to do?” she asked in a hushed whisper. Elsie pursed her lips and studied her sternly. “Don’t have any people, do you?”

      Meg swallowed. It sounded so harsh when she put it that way, but it was true. Even her friends who’d gotten clean had a hard time being around each other; it dredged up memories of how they’d wasted their youth. And then, of course, her family pretended she didn’t exist, and it had been hard to make new friends with the hours she poured into her business.

      Charlie Wainwright was the most non-business-related interaction she’d had—besides Dan and Elsie—in years.

      And now she was carrying his child.

      “Well, you’re my people now.”

      Meg shook her head, afraid she’d cry harder. “You have so much on your plate already.”

      “That may be true. But if my daughter was crying on some other old, sick woman’s couch, I’d hope she’d do the same. Now, first things first, you should tell the father. Unless he’s not a good sort.”

      “I think he is. Not bad anyway.”

      Elsie nodded. “Then you tell him.”

      “Tell him what?”

      “The truth. Easy as that. You give him a chance to have half a say—half, mind you, as you’re the one doing the carrying and the laboring.”

      Oh. God. Labor. “But...what if I don’t know what I want?”

      “Doesn’t matter, honey. You got a life growing inside you.”

      That she did, and while there were options in that regard, options she’d supported a friend through when they were only teenagers, Meg didn’t think she had that option in her as a solvent adult. A solvent adult who’d always wanted to be a mother someday—in some abstract world when she had it all together. But...maybe she was never going to have it all together. Maybe she had to jump in, not quite ready. More than a little scared that she’d be terrible at it.

      Which meant she had to admit something exceedingly scary for someone who’d failed at almost everything until her farm had come along. She’d have to admit she wanted to do it, and that she was scared of screwing it up. She’d have to admit a lot of things she usually faked her way through.

      “You need to call yourself a doctor, honey, and then the Wainwright boy.”

      Meg jerked her head to face Elsie, who merely shrugged. “Dan’s got no secrets from me.” She then reached over with a frail hand and patted Meg’s knee. “But we’ll keep yours, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about that.”

      Don’t worry. Yeah, she didn’t think she’d be able to follow that advice anytime soon.

CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHARLIE WASN’T HAPPY to be at the market. It wasn’t that he minded helping Dell. Especially after Lainey’s birthday party when things had felt... Well, he’d been a mess, but it had been nice that his family and Dell had voiced some kind of concern over him leaving.

      It was a starting point to this new life he had to figure out. He wanted it to be here. Well, not here here. He could take or leave New Benton and Millertown, but St. Louis and the areas better suited to him were only a forty-five-minute drive from home and these people.

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