[COMPLETE]
When Hanna Haddad embarks on what's supposed to be another uneventful summer as a lifeguard on Cape Cod, a trip to the past comes as an unnerving surprise. The discovery of her estranged mother's journal opens up the world of tragedy and...
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January 7, 1996
9:44 p.m.
It's taken me four months to fully come to terms with the fact that I'm pregnant.
There is no denying it at this point. Unlike Samantha, I've been showing since three months, earning me newfound seat offers on the T and a few extra hands to hold doors open for me when I walk into a restaurant. I think a small part of me just doesn't want to admit that I'm milking this pregnancy thing a bit too much and eating anything and everything my body craves.
I just wish Nicolas would stop touting the fact that I'm pregnant to all his friends and coworkers. I'm not any more special just because I'm carrying a child. I'm doing what almost every woman has done since the dawn of civilization, in a far easier time, in fact. After all, what did women do without drive-thrus and primetime sitcoms?Or even ultrasound?
Because of it, I know that I'm carrying a baby girl, and she looks kinda cute in her grainy-gray form on the images I've been collecting. It's hard to tell, but at the risk of tooting my horn, two attractive parents can't make an ugly baby.
Samantha has been trying to increase my pregnancy enthusiasm by bringing baby Jesse over every other weekend.
"Annie, just look at him." She held out her chunky eighteen-month-old in front of me. She gripped him under his armpits, dangling him over the mattress. "This will be the sight you wake up to every day in only a year or so. How could you not be thrilled?"
"I am happy," I mumbled, scooping him up in my arms. He rested his tiny hands on my round belly, barely peeking out of my pajama top. "I'm just not Nicolas."
Jesse climbed up on the wrinkled sheets in a struggle and wrapped his arms around me. My heart melted into a puddle of mush on the ground at the way his little legs gave way and he fell in a heap. He babbled some gibberish into the air, even though his vocabulary was usually impressive for a child his age.
"Oh, you are just so stinking cute." I leaned back and let him climb all over me, showering his fat cheeks with kisses. He giggled and grabbed my hair, yanking at a chunk. I yelped in pain but found myself laughing as he stared at his mom with a look far too cunning for a boy his age.
"You know what the funniest thing would be?" Samantha asked, taking back her rogue child. "What if one day our kids fall in love?"
"Fat chance," I scoffed, rolling my eyes at her naïve optimism. "With those huge blue eyes, he's definitely going to be a heartbreaker."
"He has his daddy's eyes," she gushed, gazing at her son's face. "He'll be anything but, Annie."
