The Baby Agenda. Janice Johnson Kay

Charlotte’s pregnancy, which was starting to show, and some about Charlotte’s twin sister, Faith, who had recently married West Fork Police Chief Ben Wheeler and who was also thinking of starting a family.

      Call her pathetic, but it made Moira feel even lonelier to imagine Charlotte and Faith both pregnant at the same time as she was, but the two of them having men who loved them and worried about them and hovered over them. While all Moira was doing by getting pregnant was screwing up her life.

      Worry about it when you’re sure, she told herself.

      A WEEK LATER, MOIRA BOUGHT a pregnancy test at a pharmacy in Everett where nobody knew her, and decided to wait until after dinner to use it. She should be hungry, but wasn’t. A part of her knew it wasn’t only anxiety, that the lack of appetite and faint queasiness of the past few days shouldn’t come as any surprise.

      She peed on the stick, then sat on the edge of the bathtub waiting, staring at it. Maybe the watched pot wouldn’t boil. If she didn’t take her eyes off it, didn’t blink….

      But she couldn’t help blinking, and the blue color first tinted the slot, then brightened.

      Oh, God. Oh, God.

      All of her fear poured back. She dropped the stick in the wastebasket and bent forward, holding herself as tight as she could as a hundred different emotions eddied and tumbled like flood waters, almost more than her body could contain.

      In the end, all she could think was, I’m pregnant.

      And now she had to live with it.

      “LUNCH?” MOIRA SAID. “Um…sure. Now?”

      Oh, heavens. She’d done her best in the two months since she realized she was pregnant to…not avoid Gray, how could she when they were partners and friends? She saw him every day, and she had dinner with him and Charlotte at least once a week. But she had tried not to spend time alone with him, not to let conversation become really personal. It hadn’t been as hard as she’d have thought. Mostly in the office they talked business, exchanged ideas, looked over each other’s preliminary sketches and made suggestions, offered solutions to jobsite problems. Lunch for Gray was usually fast food or a deli sandwich, snatched between city hall and their architectural office or a job site.

      But today, he’d appeared earlier than she had expected him, and now stood in the doorway waiting.

      “If not now, when?” he asked with his usual good humor.

      She saved her CADD drawing and closed out the program, then took her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. Gray stood back to let her out the door, then flipped the sign to Closed.

      “The Pea Patch?”

      “Fine.” Perfect, in fact. The small vegetarian restaurant used only organic, healthful ingredients, exactly what a pregnant woman should be eating. Gray had probably taken to eating there with Charlotte.

      He didn’t say much during the short drive and found parking right in front. The main street of West Fork probably hadn’t changed much since the 1950s, with false-fronted buildings and small, locally owned businesses. The Pea Patch was relatively new, of course, as was the antiques store beside it, but the barbershop and hardware store could have starred in a Norman Rockwell painting. One of Gray’s goals had been to maintain the old-fashioned atmosphere of downtown and keep people shopping here.

      Moira ordered the day’s special, a bowl of split-pea soup and a half sandwich, Gray a burrito. He glanced at her sidelong when she asked for a juice instead of the latte that had been her habit.

      Once the waitress took the menus and left them alone, he contemplated Moira over the table. Gray was a handsome man with calm gray eyes and sun-streaked light brown hair. They had dated a time or two when they first met, then fell into friendship instead of romance. Gray wasn’t the first or the last guy to see her as buddy material instead of potential girlfriend. In his case, she didn’t regret it. He’d become family to her, a lot more important than the college boyfriend with whom she’d lost touch shortly after graduation.

      “Something’s off with you,” he said bluntly. “Or maybe with us. Have I been unavailable when you needed to talk?”

      Swallowing the lump in her throat, she shook her head.

      “Then what, Moira?” His eyes were kind.

      Her chest hurt. “Oh, Gray.”

      “What?” He leaned forward and reached for her hand.

      “I’ve been dreading telling you.”

      “Telling me what?” His fingers tightened. “You’re not leaving me, are you?”

      Even in her misery, Moira giggled. “Do you know what that sounds like?”

      A grin tugged at his mouth. “Yeah, someone who knows I’m married might wonder.” The smile faded and he repeated, “What, Moira?”

      She had to tell him eventually. Now was as good a time as ever.

      “I’m pregnant.”

      He jerked. “Pregnant?”

      “Jeez, tell the whole town, why don’t you,” she said indignantly.

      He looked around. “There’s nobody close enough to hear.” He paused. “Is it a secret?”

      “No.” Damn it, she felt watery again. “I guess it’ll be obvious anytime.”

      “How far along?”

      “Um…three months.”

      He frowned. “You’ve lost weight instead of gaining, haven’t you?”

      “Didn’t Charlotte?”

      “You’re sick, too?”

      Moira nodded. “Well, not sick. Just…icky feeling. I don’t dare do more than nibble at any one time.”

      He was staring at her. “Pregnant,” he repeated. His expression hardened. “Who’s the father?”

      She gazed steadily back. “No one who is in the picture.”

      “It was that son of a bitch Girard wasn’t it?”

      Moira gave a choked laugh. “He is a son of a bitch, but no. It’s not him, Gray.”

      “Then who?” This man, her best friend, sounded implacable, as if he intended to beat the crap out of the man who’d impregnated and abandoned her.

      She swallowed, the backs of her eyelids burning again. “It really doesn’t matter. He…used a condom. It’s just one of those things. Not his fault. And we didn’t have the kind of relationship that means I’m going to stick him with this.”

      The waitress appeared with their lunches, and Moira sat silent, head bowed, while Gray said the right things. The minute the waitress was gone, he said, “You’re having the baby.” It wasn’t really a question.

      “I’d have done something about it long ago if I wasn’t.”

      He gave a one-sided shrug, as if to say, Oh, yeah. “Why did you dread telling me? You’re not planning to move home?”

      “Home?” She wished she could laugh. “Missoula? Are you kidding? I love my mother, but…no. I’m not going anywhere. It’s just that…”

      Neither of them had reached for a spoon or fork.

      “You’re trying to tell me I’m going to have to start carrying my fair share of the work, aren’t you?”

      “Probably more than your fair share,” she said in a rush.

      “Gray, I’m sorry. We had a deal, and now I’ve blown it.”

      Suddenly he was smiling, so tenderly the tears she’d kept at bay filled her eyes. “Moira, falling in love and having babies are way more important than who does what share of work. You