Read Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) for Free Online

— okay. It’s your decision. You’re going to tell him, right?”
    “Why should I?”
    “Because — it’s his baby, too.”
    “So? Obviously he doesn’t care enough to have even tried to contact me once during the past few months, so why should I bother?”
    Rubbing the side of her head as if it suddenly pained her, she was quiet for a moment. Finally, she dropped her hand by her side and began, “Look, Ange, I watch a lot of reality shows — ”
    “And that qualifies you to give me advice here?”
    “Well, yeah, it kind of does.”
    I crossed my arms and gave her a skeptical look.
    Undeterred, she went on, “Anyway, what I was about to say was the only thing worse than telling a guy you’re pregnant is not telling him you’re pregnant. You can’t hide this from Connor, Angela. You just can’t. Sooner or later he’d find out, and he’d never forgive you. Or at least, he’d find it a lot harder to forgive you.”
    Oh, deep down I knew she was right. I just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him again…or worse, asking to see him and having him refuse to do so. What then? Would I still have the responsibility of telling him about the baby if he wouldn’t even meet with me?
    But that, as my aunt liked to say, was just borrowing trouble. I hadn’t reached out to him, so I had no idea whether I’d get shot down unmercifully or not. I looked away from Sydney, stared up at the deep black sky, watched the stars twinkling there. I could see the Big Dipper just above the heavy shoulders of Mingus Mountain, which was a deeper black against the velvet sky.
    “I know,” I said at last, my voice sounding defeated even to myself. “I guess I just wanted to…I don’t know…have it confirmed independently before I tried to contact him. I mean, those tests aren’t foolproof.”
    For a few seconds she didn’t say anything. Maybe she was thinking the same thing I was. True, those tests weren’t completely accurate, but a ninety-eight-percent chance was still pretty good odds.
    “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked then. “I mean, to your doctor or Planned Parenthood or whatever?”
    “Would you?” It wasn’t until she offered that I realized how much I’d been dreading going alone. With Sydney at my side, maybe it wouldn’t be quite as bad.
    “Absolutely,” she responded immediately. “Like you even have to ask.”
    “Thank you,” I told her. Simple words, but I could only hope she’d hear the sincerity in them, know how much this meant to me. “I’ll call PP tomorrow and see when they can fit me in. I feel…weird…about going to my own doctor.”
    “I totally get it.” She hesitated, then looked over her shoulder and up the steep street to the corner where the Spirit Room stood. “You going to come back inside?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t — I can’t do that right now. Tell Anthony I’m sorry, okay?”
    “No worries. He knows you’ve been through a lot. And I won’t say anything else. I mean, no one will know until you’re ready to let them know.”
    Thanking her again seemed redundant, so I gave her a quick hug before I made my way back up to Main Street, passing the open door of the bar and hearing the music drift out from within, then heading on up the hill to my house. Sydney’s offer had both touched me and reminded me of something very important.
    I might think I was alone in this, but I really wasn’t.
----
    T wo days later we drove to Prescott to the Planned Parenthood office there. Everything was very new, clean, and modern; it seemed clear to me that the facility hadn’t been open for very long. I peed in a cup and had them check my blood and all my other vitals.
    “You’re definitely pregnant,” the doctor told me. “Looks like around nine weeks. I’d like to schedule an ultrasound in the next week or so, just to fine-tune things. Do you have a doctor closer to home you’d like to see, or do you want to come back here?”
    “I — I’m not