Lymber craft's Arc

Chapter 9 of 70

Lymber read the post three times before she moved. The screenshot of her chart sat next to a photo of her at the dance, gold gown pulled tight over her stomach. The caption said do the math. She scrolled the comments. A girl from her chemistry class had written that due dates lie. Two people had argued back with weeks and months. Lymber sat up against the headboard and opened a blank post. Her mother had told her the story was hers now. She decided to defend it. She typed slowly. She wrote that due dates are estimates and can shift by two weeks in either direction. She wrote that a person can be intimate more than once in a cycle and the earliest date is not always the one that takes. She wrote that the doctor had confirmed her timeline and that was the end of it. She read it twice. She hit post before her mother could come downstairs and stop her. The replies came fast. A few classmates wrote that they had not thought of that. A nurse in town wrote that the two-week window was true. The chemistry girl deleted her comment. The share count on the original post slowed and then stalled at two hundred and eleven. Lymber watched the number sit there for an hour. Her chest loosened for the second time that week. She went downstairs and told her mother what she had done. Polly read the post on her own phone and set it face down on the counter. She said it was a good move. She said the town would still count, but slower now. A week later Paul pulled up in a borrowed truck with two duffel bags and a box of shoes. Lymber watched from the front window of the six-bedroom house as he carried the bags up the walk. He wore the same navy jacket he always wore. He set the bags down inside the door and looked at her stomach before he looked at her face. He said his mother had cried when he left. He said his best friend had watched from the driveway and not waved. He did not say more. Polly came down the stairs with a set of keys and handed them over without speaking. She pointed him to the guest room. That night Lymber sat on her bed with the strip still on the nightstand where she had left it weeks ago. Across the hall she heard Paul unzip a bag and set something heavy on the floor. She heard him sit down on the mattress. She heard him stay. The post was holding. The boy was in the house. She put a hand on her stomach and felt nothing yet, but she knew he was one wall away, and that was new.