What's Left Behind by Lorrie Thomson

stroked his hair, worried the satin-soft strands between her trembling fingers. The yeasty beer aroma hooked in her throat, tugged queasiness from her belly to her mouth.
    Charlie raised his head and offered Abby the open beer. “Maybe,” he said, “we should drink on it.”
    You drank a beer while pregnant if you didn’t give a damn, or worse. If you wanted the pregnancy to end, you drank quite a few.
    Abby took the beer from Charlie, the bottle cold against the web of her hand. The words on the label blurred, and her hand shook. Sometimes stating the obvious wasn’t enough. Sometimes she had to show Charlie their plan.
    “Get off me,” Abby told him, and shoved him from her lap onto the shag rug.
    “What the—?” Charlie said, and then flinched.
    Abby stood and hurled the beer bottle past Charlie and against the far wall, smashing the glass of the Connors family portrait.
     
    The pom-pom throw pillow behind Abby’s head let her know she was lying on the love seat in the entryway of Briar Rose. The bittersweet aftertaste of a memory filled her mouth, and her hands covered her belly. The warmth of someone else’s hands covered hers.
    She opened her eyes, expecting Charlie.
    “Hey, sleepyhead,” Rob said, and everything flooded back. Tessa. The pregnancy. Luke’s baby, but no Luke.
    Luke’s baby.
    “I found some apple juice. But I didn’t see any straws anywhere.” Tessa stood over Abby, one of Abby’s juice glasses in hand. Tessa’s nose was red, as if she’d been crying, but her eyes were dry. She shifted from foot to foot.
    “Put it on the table,” Rob said, his tone sturdy and take-charge above an undercurrent of concern.
    Abby had better get it together before her guests returned to find their innkeeper laid out in the parlor, Rob staring at her as if she’d just woken from the dead. The only time she’d ever fainted before was when she and Celeste had locked themselves in the upstairs bathroom at Celeste’s parents’ house, two eighteen-year-olds cracking up over the absurdity of peeing on a stick. Minutes later, Abby had read two solid pink lines and promptly forgotten how to breathe.
    Rob helped her up, propped the pillow behind her back. Her body moved at half-speed. “I’m fine.” Abby reached for the glass of juice with a trembling hand.
    “She’s a terrible liar,” Rob told Tessa. He held the glass to Abby’s lips, and she bent her head to take a sip. The juice scratched going down. She took another sip, got the same result.
    “Better?” Rob said, and she nodded. “Liar.”
    Abby grinned. “How long was I out?”
    “Couple minutes.”
    “Really? Felt like hours.” Abby sat up the rest of the way herself and turned to Tessa. “So . . . how are you feeling?”
    “Okay, I guess.”
    “Five hours is a long drive.” Abby angled her head toward the door with the pink hand-painted Powder Room sign. “Do you need to use the restroom?”
    “Pretty much all the time,” Tessa said, and they exchanged a brittle smile before Tessa headed across the room. From behind, you couldn’t even tell she was expecting. Abby had carried that way, too. Or so she’d been told. As a pregnant teenager, she’d felt anything but inconspicuous.
    Abby’s smile cracked. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “This is not how I imagined the afternoon. I am so sorry. Mortified, actually.”
    “My fault. I should’ve warned you about my superior kissing skills. Many a woman has swooned.”
    Abby laughed, and Rob pecked her on the cheek. The sweet gesture spoke the language of intimacy. Did Rob feel that way about her? “Kidding,” he said. “You were my first.”
    A balloon of hysteria welled in Abby’s stomach, threatening to burst, and she breathed through it.
    What was it with teenage pregnancies in her family? Lily Beth had warned Abby, to no avail. And Abby had passed along Lily Beth’s admonition to Luke. If you can’t be chaste, for goodness sake be careful. Yet, she’d always imagined