A Little Change Of Plans. Jen Safrey

it was a good idea, but it’s just as well. I’ve heard that you snore.”

      It was a typical Adam comment, but the last word fell a tiny bit flat. “I’d better go,” Molly said. “I’m hungry again, which is not to be believed. And, Adam…thank you.”

      “Don’t say thank you. Saying no to a marriage proposal is one thing. Saying ‘no, thanks’ to a marriage proposal is another.”

      Molly said a hasty goodbye and hung up. She put her head in her hands, and didn’t realize she was crying again until she felt the tears leak out from between her fingers and drip down her wrist. Stupid hormones. If it hadn’t been for all her uncharacteristic boo-hooing, Adam wouldn’t have lost his mind and proposed, she wouldn’t have said no, and things wouldn’t be all strange between them now.

      But she couldn’t do what he was suggesting. Even if it wasn’t really real. Adam was not the man she was supposed to marry. She was supposed to marry a man just like her—ambitious and career-oriented, someone who understood her goals not because she had to explain them, but because he had similar ones. That’s what her parents had in each other. That’s why Molly had been one of the only children in her small, elite private grade school with still-married parents. She’d emulated them in so many ways, so why not this important one?

      “It’s worth waiting for,” she whispered to her baby, but why did it feel as if she were trying to convince herself? Her eyes overflowed again.

      Plunk.

      It was the sound of a large drop hitting the floor. A drop too heavy to be a tear.

      Plunk.

      This time, Molly was looking straight ahead and caught sight of the drop hitting her hardwood floor about six inches in front of her. She got onto her hands and knees, crawled to the spot, looked at the little puddle and sat back on her heels and tilted her head up to peer at the ceiling.

      Plunk.

      This drop didn’t hit the floor. It hit Molly’s large stomach. She stared at the spot on her sweater.

      The ceiling was leaking. Leaking.

      She jumped up awkwardly, scrambled into her office and turned over her wastebasket. Crumpled sticky notes and receipts skittered across the floor as she carried the bucket to the hallway, positioning it under the leak, which had quickened into a more regular plunk-plunk-plunk.

      A freaking ceiling leak. This was going to cost—well, she couldn’t even guess. All she knew was, roof leaks were not cheap. She was really going to call that inspector she’d used and give him a piece of her mind.

      She glanced down again at the wet spot on her shirt, and rubbed it with her hand. Her eyes welled up again.

      No. This was going to be under control. She could do this. She was going to be an excellent mother. She was going to be as good at it as she was at everything else. And she was not going to let it rain on her little baby’s head.

      She would do whatever it took to keep her future, and the future of her child, secure. And dry.

      She snatched the phone off the floor where she’d left it, and hit redial. When Adam answered, she said, “Here’s the thing. If you think you’re going to be entitled to any special, ah, privileges of marriage, you will be mistaken.”

      A beat. “Too bad,” he said. “I was kind of looking forward to complaining about my mother-in-law.”

      “That’s not the privilege I’m referring to and you damn well know it.”

      “Didn’t this conversation end already with you saying no?”

      “I take it back.”

      “Pardon?”

      Molly took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and told her best friend, “It’s a deal. For one year, you’ve got yourself a wife.”