The Embryo Next Door

• Chapter 1 The Waiting Room
• Chapter 2 Two Pink Lines
• Chapter 3 Moving Day
• Chapter 4 The Couple at Number 42
• Chapter 5 A Familiar Smile
• Chapter 6 The Clinic's Mistake
• Chapter 7 Unspoken Truths
• Chapter 8 Backyard Fences
• Chapter 9 Coffee and Confessions
• Chapter 10 The Ultrasound
• Chapter 11 Dinner Party
• Chapter 12 Echoes of DNA
• Chapter 13 Late Night Cravings
• Chapter 14 A Knock at the Door
• Chapter 15 The Secret Slips
• Chapter 16 Broken Glass
• Chapter 17 Legal Boundaries
• Chapter 18 Labor Pains
• Chapter 19 Delivery Room
• Chapter 20 First Breath
• Chapter 21 Paperwork and Promises
• Chapter 22 The Nursery
• Chapter 23 Across the Lawn
• Chapter 24 Shared Custody of the Heart
• Chapter 25 Thanksgiving
• Chapter 26 Home

The magazines in the waiting room of Oakridge Fertility & Reproductive Medicine were always at least eighteen months out of date, which meant that while Clara waited to have a stranger’s frozen embryo thawed and placed inside her uterus, she could read about which celebrity diets were trending two summers ago. She flipped past a glossy spread on bone broth and landed on a quiz titled Is Your Houseplants’ Feng Shui Blocking Your Abundance?

"I think our ficus is definitely blocking our abundance," Clara murmured, holding the magazine up just enough for Sam to see.

Sam, who was sitting beside her in a chair upholstered in a shade of teal clearly chosen to soothe anxious minds, didn’t look up from his phone. "We don't have a ficus. We have a half-dead pothos in the kitchen that you keep forgetting to water."

"That’s even worse for abundance, isn't it? Dying foliage. Bad chi."

"I'll water it when we get home," Sam said, finally glancing over. He gave her hand a quick squeeze, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. His palm was warm, slightly damp. He was trying to look calm, which meant he was terrified. Clara knew the tell: the tiny, rhythmic clench of his jaw, the way he kept his shoulders squared as if bracing for a physical impact.

"You don't have to pretend you're reading the news," she told him softly. "You've been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes."

"It's a very complex article about municipal bond yields," he said, though he locked the screen and slid the phone into his pocket. "How are you feeling?"

"Full," Clara said. "Mostly full of water. If they don't call us back in the next twelve minutes, I'm going to have to make a run for the bathroom, and then I'll have to start the whole thirty-two-ounce chug all over again."

The full bladder was a requirement for the transfer. Something about tilting the uterus into a better angle for the ultrasound-guided catheter. It was one of the many indignities of assisted reproduction that no one mentioned in the brochures. The brochures showed women in flowing white linen dresses standing in sunlit fields, cradling their bellies with serene, Mona Lisa smiles. They did not show women sitting in climate-controlled waiting rooms, sweating slightly from the sheer volume of tap water sloshing around in their kidneys, trying not to sneeze.

Across the room, a woman in a sharp navy blazer was typing furiously on a laptop, a silver thermos balanced on her knee. Next to her, a man in his late thirties stared blankly at the wall-mounted television, which was playing a muted loop of HGTV’s House Hunters. A young couple in the corner sat with their heads bowed together, whispering. Every few minutes, the door to the clinical wing would swing open, a nurse in patterned scrubs would call a first name—never a last name, for privacy—and one of the couples would stand up with the solemnity of people being summoned to the principal's office.

Clara had been in this waiting room so many times over the past four years that she knew the exact pattern of the carpet. It was a low-pile commercial weave in muted grays and blues, designed to hide coffee spills and, presumably, tears. She had sat in these teal chairs after her first failed IUI, when she had still believed that science was a neat, linear thing. She had sat here after the second, and the third, and then through two rounds of IVF that had yielded a grand total of zero viable embryos.

The doctor, a brisk, kind-eyed woman named Dr. Patel, had eventually sat them down in her office and used the phrase diminished ovarian reserve with the gentle gravity of someone delivering a weather report about an approaching hurricane. Clara’s eggs, it turned out, were simply not cooperating. They were sluggish, chromosomally messy, and entirely uninterested in becoming people.

It had taken six months of grief, three bottles of overpriced Pinot Noir, and one very long, very honest conversation on their back porch before they had even looked at the binder on embryo donation.

"Adopting an embryo," Sam had said that night, turning the heavy plastic pages. "It sounds like we're picking up a stray cat."

"A very expensive, microscopic stray cat," Clara had replied, resting her head on his shoulder. "With no medical history of fleas."

Now, the stray cat was thawing in a lab thirty feet away.

"Clara?"

The door to the clinical wing had opened. A nurse with a high ponytail and glasses perched on the end of her nose was holding a clipboard, smiling with professional warmth.

Clara stood up carefully, keeping her knees together as if that might help contain the thirty-two ounces of water. Sam was right behind her, his hand hovering at the small of her back.

"Right this way," the nurse said. "How's the bladder?"

"At capacity," Clara said.

"Perfect. Dr. Patel is just finishing up with another patient, so we'll get you settled in Room Four."

Room Four was small, cool, and smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender—an attempt, Clara suspected, to make the stirrups feel less medieval. She changed into the paper gown, leaving her socks on because the linoleum was always freezing, and climbed onto the exam table. Sam sat in the lone plastic chair beside her, his knees nearly touching the edge of the table.

"Do you want me to do anything?" he asked, looking around the room as if there might be a lever he was supposed to pull. "Hold your hand? Tell you a joke?"

"No jokes," Clara said, pulling the thin paper sheet up to her chin. "If I laugh, I will pee on Dr. Patel, and I really like her."

"Fair enough. Hand-holding it is."

They waited another ten minutes. The silence in the exam room was different from the silence in the waiting room. Out there, it was buffered by the hum of the HVAC and the rustle of magazines. In here, it was dense, punctuated only by the occasional muffled footsteps in the hallway and the steady, quiet sound of Sam’s breathing.

Clara stared at the ceiling tile directly above her. Someone had taped a laminated poster of a tropical beach to it, right over the spot where a patient's eyes would naturally fall while lying flat on her back. Palm trees swayed against a ridiculously blue sky. Just Breathe, the caption read in looping cursive script.

She wondered, not for the first time, about the people who had made this embryo.

The clinic’s program was anonymous, though "anonymous" was a relative term in the age of consumer DNA kits. They had been given a profile—a six-page PDF that reduced two entire human beings to bullet points. Mother: five-foot-six, brown hair, hazel eyes, bachelor’s degree in architecture, plays the cello, no history of heart disease. Father: six-foot-one, sandy blond hair, blue eyes, software engineer, allergic to shellfish, enjoys hiking. They had already had two children through IVF and had three embryos remaining in storage. Instead of discarding them or donating them to research, they had chosen to place them in the clinic's adoption pool.

Clara had read that PDF so many times she had the shellfish allergy memorized. She had tried to picture them—an architect and an engineer, probably living in a neat house with good natural light, maybe a dog, two kids running around with sandy hair and hazel eyes. She had felt a strange, quiet gratitude toward them, followed immediately by a sharp pang of inadequacy. They had been so generous, and she was just the recipient, the woman with the empty house and the stubbornly uncooperative ovaries.

A knock at the door broke her train of thought. Dr. Patel stepped in, followed by an embryologist in a full scrub cap and mask.

"Good morning, Clara, Sam," Dr. Patel said, her voice brisk and reassuring. "I hear we have a full bladder."

"I'm practically floating," Clara said.

"Wonderful. That's going to give us a great view." Dr. Patel pulled a rolling stool up to the end of the table and snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. "The embryo thawed beautifully. One hundred percent survival, nice expansion. We're ready whenever you are."

The lights were dimmed so the ultrasound screen would be easier to see. Sam leaned forward, his grip tightening on Clara's hand. The embryologist stepped over to a small window in the wall that connected directly to the lab, speaking quietly into an intercom to confirm Clara’s name and date of birth.

"Confirming," Clara said, her voice sounding thin in the darkened room.

The cold gel hit her lower abdomen, and she gasped slightly, her muscles tensing before she forced them to relax. The ultrasound probe pressed down—not painful, just an uncomfortable, insistent pressure against her full bladder. On the glowing gray screen, the fuzzy, ghostly outline of her uterus appeared.

"There we go," Dr. Patel murmured. "Nice, thick lining. Looks like a cozy spot."

Clara watched the screen. She couldn't tell what was what, just a swirl of gray static and a darker shadow in the center, but she trusted the doctor's voice.

"Okay, passing the catheter now," Dr. Patel said. "You might feel a little pinch."

It wasn't even a pinch, really. Just a strange, distant sensation, like someone tapping gently on a closed door from the outside. Clara kept her eyes fixed on the monitor. Sam was staring at it too, his breath held.

The embryologist appeared beside Dr. Patel, holding a long, impossibly thin syringe. "Loaded and ready," she said.

"Go ahead," Dr. Patel said.

Clara watched the screen. For a second, nothing happened. Then, a tiny, bright white flash appeared right in the center of the dark shadow—a comet the size of a grain of sand, trailing a faint tail of air bubbles.

"There it is," Dr. Patel said softly. "Right where it belongs."

Sam let out a long, shaky breath. Clara felt a sudden, unexpected sting behind her eyes. She hadn't expected to cry. She had been through so many procedures, so many prods and pokes, that she thought she had developed a thick, clinical shell. But looking at that tiny white speck on the screen, knowing it was a potential life, knowing it was their potential life—even if its DNA belonged to an architect and an engineer—undid her a little.

"All done," Dr. Patel said, sliding the catheter out and snapping off her gloves. "You can rest here for about ten minutes, and then—yes, Clara, you can finally use the bathroom."

"Thank God," Clara whispered, wiping a stray tear from her temple with her free hand.

"We'll see you back here in twelve days for the blood test," Dr. Patel said, pausing at the door. "In the meantime, take it easy today. No heavy lifting, no hot tubs, and try not to obsess over every little twinge. Easier said than done, I know."

"Thank you, Dr. Patel," Sam said.

The door clicked shut, leaving them alone in the dim room. Sam stood up and leaned over the table, kissing Clara's forehead. His lips were warm.

"We did it," he murmured.

"We're halfway there," Clara corrected gently, though she couldn't stop the small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Now we just have to wait."

The drive home took twenty-five minutes, though it felt longer because Sam drove as if he were transporting nitroglycerin. He took every speed bump at two miles an hour, signaled a full block before every turn, and kept one hand on the gearshift and the other hovering near Clara's knee, as though he might need to steady her if a pothole appeared.

"You know it can't fall out, right?" Clara asked, leaning her head back against the headrest. The afternoon sun was slanting through the windshield, warm against her face.

"I know," Sam said, eyes fixed on the road. "Dr. Patel said it's like a poppy seed in peanut butter. It's not going anywhere. I'm just being cautious."

"You're driving five miles under the speed limit in a school zone when school isn't even in session."

"Safety first," he muttered, though the corner of his mouth twitched.

They turned onto Maple Street, a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac of 1950s colonials and split-levels that they had bought three years ago, back when they had naively assumed they would fill the three bedrooms within eighteen months. The oak trees were just beginning to drop their leaves, scattering dry gold across the lawns.

As Sam pulled into their driveway at Number 40, Clara glanced at the house next door. Number 42 had been empty for nearly two months. The previous owners, an elderly couple named the Hendersons, had finally sold it and moved to a condo in Florida to be closer to their grandchildren. The "For Sale" sign had come down two weeks ago, replaced briefly by a "Sold" banner, and then nothing. The lawn was getting a little shaggy, and the front porch was bare.

"I wonder who bought it," Clara said, unbuckling her seatbelt.

"Hopefully someone quiet," Sam said, shutting off the engine. "Someone who doesn't own a leaf blower or a drum set."

"I'd settle for someone who brings their trash cans in on time," Clara said, pushing the car door open.

Inside their house, everything was exactly as they had left it that morning: the half-empty coffee mugs in the sink, the mail stacked neatly on the entryway table, the half-dead pothos drooping dramatically on the kitchen windowsill. Clara walked straight to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and filled it with water to pour over the plant's dry soil.

"There," she said to the leaves. "Abundance restored."

Sam came in behind her, tossing his keys into the ceramic bowl by the door. "Hungry? I can make grilled cheese. Or order Thai."

"Thai," Clara said immediately. "Pad see ew. Extra tofu."

"Coming right up."

While Sam called the restaurant, Clara wandered down the hallway. She paused outside the third bedroom. For the first year they lived here, they had kept the door open, calling it "the guest room," even though they only had a twin bed and a sagging armchair in it. During the second year, after the failed IUIs, Clara had started keeping the door shut. It was easier not to look at the empty space.

She pushed the door open now. The afternoon light filtered through the blinds, casting striped shadows across the hardwood floor. Nothing had changed. The twin bed was still made with a plain gray duvet. The walls were still painted a neutral, builders-grade beige.

She didn't go inside. She just stood on the threshold, resting one hand against the doorframe, and thought about the tiny white flash on the ultrasound screen. A poppy seed in peanut butter.

Twelve days, she thought. Twelve days until the blood test. Twelve days of analyzing every cramp, every wave of fatigue, every phantom symptom her brain could invent.

"Clara?" Sam called from the kitchen. "Spring rolls or dumplings?"

"Dumplings," she called back, pulling the door shut once more. "Definitely dumplings."

She walked back to the living room and curled up on the sofa, pulling a knitted throw blanket over her legs. Sam joined her a few minutes later, dropping onto the cushions with a heavy sigh and propping his feet up on the coffee table.

"Food will be here in forty minutes," he said, reaching for the remote. "What's the verdict? Trashy reality TV or a documentary about something depressing?"

"Trashy reality TV," Clara said, leaning against his shoulder. "My brain cannot handle anything with subtitles or historical significance today."

Sam clicked the television on, scrolling until he found a show about wealthy people arguing over real estate in Los Angeles. Clara didn't really watch it. She let the brightly colored images and the manufactured drama wash over her, listening to the steady, familiar rhythm of Sam's breathing beside her.

For the first time in months, the knot between her shoulder blades had loosened. She didn't know what would happen in twelve days. She knew better than to get her hopes too high; she had fallen from that height too many times to forget how much the landing hurt.

But for today, at least, the waiting was over. And a different kind of waiting had begun.

The first four days after the transfer were easy, mostly because Clara was still riding the quiet, buffered high of having actually made it to the starting line. For four years, she and Sam had been stuck in the locker room, lacing up their shoes, pulling muscles during warm-ups, and watching everyone else jog out onto the field. Now, they were finally in the game. Even if the game consisted entirely of Clara sitting on the sofa, eating saltines, and trying not to sneeze too violently.

By day five, however, the novelty had worn off, and the true nature of the twelve-day wait revealed itself. Time, which usually moved at a brisk, indifferent clip, seemed to have thickened into something resembling cold molasses.

"Did you feel anything today?" Sam asked on the morning of day six, standing in the kitchen in his boxers and a faded college sweatshirt, squinting at the coffee maker as if it had personally offended him.

"I felt a mild cramp on my left side at 2:14 p.m.," Clara said, without looking up from her laptop. She was supposed to be editing a marketing brochure for a local dental practice, but she had spent the last twenty minutes on an internet forum reading a thread from 2014 titled 6dp5dt—no symptoms, BFP?! "And then I realized I had eaten an entire bag of baby carrots for lunch, so it was probably just gas."

"Right," Sam said, pouring himself a mug of coffee. "Gas. Good. Or implantation?"

"Or gas," Clara repeated firmly. "Stop looking at me like I'm a shaken snow globe. Nothing is happening yet. Even if it is happening, it's microscopic. It doesn't have a voice. It's not knocking on the door."

"I'm just asking," Sam said, walking over to kiss the top of her head. "How's the hip?"

Clara winced, shifting her weight on the kitchen stool. "Bruised. You hit a nerve last night."

"I'm sorry," he said immediately, his face falling into the familiar mask of guilt he wore every evening at eight o'clock.

Every night, Sam had to inject two milliliters of progesterone-in-oil into Clara’s upper glute using a needle that looked like it belonged in a veterinary clinic. The oil was thick, like warm syrup, and required a heating pad beforehand and a vigorous massage afterward to keep it from forming hard, painful knots under the skin. It was a ritual that had stripped away whatever remaining shreds of mystery or romance their marriage possessed. Nothing said we are creating a miracle quite like standing bent over the bathroom counter while your husband jabbed a piece of medical hardware into your backside and muttered, Okay, one, two, three, breathe.

"It's fine," Clara said, softening her tone. "You're doing great. Better than the nurse at the clinic, honestly. At least you warm the vial up first."

"I have a system," Sam said, puffing his chest out slightly. "I'm a professional."

He left for his job at the logistics firm twenty minutes later, leaving Clara alone in the quiet house. She closed the laptop—the dental brochure could wait—and carried her decaf tea to the living room window.

Across the narrow strip of grass that separated their driveways, Number 42 sat silent and still. The grass on the Hendersons' front lawn was ankle-high now, dotted with dandelions that had gone to seed. A few flyers for local lawn care services and pizza places had been wedged into the storm door, fluttering slightly in the autumn breeze.

Clara wondered, for the third time that week, when the new owners would show up. Whoever they were, they had closed on the house a week ago, according to the real estate app Clara had obsessively checked. Maybe they were renovating before moving in. Maybe they were waiting for their lease to end. She hoped they were nice. More than that, she hoped they didn't have three screaming toddlers or a passion for revving motorcycles at six in the morning. Though, if she was honest with herself, she would have welcomed a screaming toddler or two if it meant the neighborhood felt a little more alive.

She turned away from the window and went back to the kitchen. If she stared at Number 42 any longer, she was going to start inventing elaborate backstories for the strangers who bought it, and she already had enough imaginary people living in her head.

By day eight, the symptom-spotting had reached a fever pitch.

Clara knew, intellectually, that every single sensation she was experiencing was caused by the synthetic hormones coursing through her bloodstream. The progesterone made her breasts ache so badly that taking off her bra at night felt like lowering two bags of wet sand onto her chest. The estrogen patches stuck to her lower abdomen made her vaguely nauseous every afternoon around three o'clock. She was exhausted by eight, wide awake at two in the morning, and prone to crying at commercials for paper towels.

None of it meant she was pregnant. It just meant she was medicated.

Still, when she woke up on the morning of day nine with a metallic taste in her mouth, she immediately grabbed her phone off the nightstand and typed metallic taste 9dp5dt into the search bar.

It's called dysgeusia, a stranger named MamaBear88 informed her from the depths of a 2018 message board. Totally normal early pregnancy sign! My mouth tasted like pennies for three weeks!

Could also just be the progesterone, another user countered. Don't get your hopes up.

Clara locked her phone and threw it onto the foot of the bed. "Stop it," she told herself aloud.

She got up, pulled on a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater, and walked downstairs. Sam was already in the kitchen, blending something violently green in the Vitamix.

"What is that?" Clara asked, eyeing the pitcher suspiciously.

"Spinach, avocado, pineapple core, and almond milk," Sam said, shouting slightly over the roar of the blender. He hit the off switch and smiled brightly. "I read online that pineapple core has bromelain, which helps with implantation."

Clara stared at him. "Sam. Where did you read that?"

"A blog," he said, pouring the thick, sludgy liquid into a tall glass and sliding it across the counter toward her. "A very reputable blog. Written by a woman who got pregnant on her fourth try."

"First of all, if implantation hasn't happened by day nine, a smoothie isn't going to fix it," Clara said, though she picked up the glass anyway. "Second of all, this looks like pond water."

"Drink it," he said, leaning his elbows on the counter and watching her with desperate, hopeful eyes. "For the bromelain."

She took a cautious sip. It tasted aggressively of raw spinach and faintly of dirt, with a sharp, fibrous sting at the back of her throat from the pineapple core. She swallowed it without grimacing, mostly because she didn't have the heart to tell him she'd rather eat glass.

"Delicious," she lied. "You're a culinary genius."

"I'm just trying to help," he said, his shoulders dropping an inch. "I feel useless. You're doing all the work. You're taking the shots, you're wearing the patches, you're carrying the... the thing. All I do is drive slowly over speed bumps and make smoothies."

Clara set the glass down and walked around the counter to wrap her arms around his waist. He smelled like cedarwood soap and coffee. She rested her cheek against his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.

"You're not useless," she murmured. "You're keeping me sane. Mostly."

"Only three more days," he said, his hand resting on the back of her head. "Three more days until the blood test."

"Three more days," Clara echoed.

It sounded like an eternity.

The stash of pregnancy tests lived in the back of the bathroom vanity, tucked behind a half-empty bottle of self-tanner and a box of bandages. They were cheap paper strips—the kind you bought in bulk online, fifty for twelve dollars, because when you spent four years trying to get pregnant, paying fifteen dollars for a plastic wand at the pharmacy felt like lighting money on fire.

Clara had promised Sam, and herself, that she wouldn't touch them.

Home pregnancy tests were notoriously unreliable after a medicated transfer, or at least, that was what she told herself. If it was negative, she would spiral into a dark hole of despair, even though it might just be too early. If it was positive, she would spend the next forty-eight hours terrified that it was a chemical pregnancy, a cruel mirage that would vanish the moment Dr. Patel’s nurse read the blood work. Better to wait for the science. Better to wait for the phone call.

She lasted until day eleven.

It was six-thirty in the morning. Sam was still asleep, snoring softly into his pillow, one arm flung across Clara’s side of the bed. Clara had been awake since five, staring at the ceiling fan, her bladder full and her mind racing.

She slipped out from under the covers as quietly as she could, padded into the master bathroom, and shut the door. She didn't turn on the overhead light; the pale gray dawn filtering through the frosted window was enough.

She knelt on the cold tile floor, reached behind the self-tanner, and pulled out a single foil packet.

Her hands were shaking slightly as she tore it open. This is stupid, she thought. You're going to ruin your whole day. You're going to ruin Sam's whole day. Just put it back.

Instead, she peed into a small plastic cup she kept under the sink for this exact purpose, dipped the paper strip in up to the max line for five seconds, and laid it flat on the edge of the counter.

She set the timer on her phone for three minutes.

The first minute was agonizing. She paced the length of the small bathroom—three steps to the shower, three steps back to the toilet. She washed her hands, dried them, and then washed them again just to have something to do with her fingers. She refused to look at the strip while the dye was still running across the window. Watching the pink wave wash over the paper was a special kind of torture; she had stared at enough stark white windows over the years to last a lifetime.

Two minutes left.

She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, loud enough that she worried it might wake Sam up.

What would she do if it was negative? She knew the drill. She would throw the strip in the bottom of the trash can, bury it under a wad of toilet paper, crawl back into bed, and pretend she hadn't looked. She would go to the clinic tomorrow, let them draw her blood, and brace herself for the gentle, sympathetic voice on the other end of the line saying, I'm so sorry, Clara. The test was negative. You can stop your medications tonight.

And then they would start over. Or maybe they wouldn't. They had two more embryos in storage at Oakridge, frozen in liquid nitrogen, waiting their turn. They could try again.

One minute left.

Her throat felt dry. She swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the glowing numbers of her phone screen.

Ten seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two.

The timer chimed—a soft, cheerful marimba melody that seemed wildly inappropriate for the moment. Clara silenced it with a thumb that felt numb.

She turned around and walked to the counter.

She didn't lean in right away. She stood a foot back, squinting in the dim morning light, preparing herself for the familiar, devastating emptiness of a single control line.

There was the control line, dark and crisp.

And right next to it, a fraction of an inch to the left, was a second line.

It wasn't dark. It wasn't bold. It was a pale, delicate, unmistakable shade of pink.

Clara’s breath caught in her throat. She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the marble vanity so hard her knuckles turned white. She picked the strip up and held it closer to the frosted window, tilting it toward the gray light to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, to make sure it wasn't an evaporation line or a trick of the shadows.

It wasn't a shadow. It had color. It had edges.

Two pink lines.

She stood there for a long time, holding a piece of cardboard soaked in her own urine, feeling completely, utterly weightless. Four years. Three failed IUIs. Two failed rounds of IVF. Countless tears, endless needles, a mountain of medical debt, and a quiet, creeping grief that had settled into the corners of her house like dust.

And now, two pink lines.

"Clara?"

Sam’s voice came through the closed door, thick with sleep. "You okay in there? You've been in there for a while."

Clara looked at the strip in her hand, then at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a mess, her face was pale, and she had a faint crease on her cheek from her pillowcase. She looked entirely ordinary, and yet nothing would ever be ordinary again.

She opened the door.

Sam was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking up at a comical angle on one side. He blinked at her, taking in the way she was standing in the doorway, one hand hidden behind her back.

"What's wrong?" he asked, instantly alert, his posture stiffening. "Are you bleeding? Did something happen?"

"No," Clara said. Her voice came out as a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. "No. Nothing's wrong."

She walked slowly toward the bed, her bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. She stopped beside him and held out her hand.

Sam looked down at the tiny paper strip. He squinted, leaning in, then looked up at her face, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Is that..." He stopped, his eyes dropping back to the strip. "I thought we weren't testing until tomorrow."

"I couldn't wait," she whispered.

"There are two lines," he said, his voice flat, as if he were reading a weather report. "Wait. What does two lines mean? Does two lines mean..."

"It means yes, Sam."

He stared at the strip for another five seconds. Clara watched his brain process the information—watched the skepticism, the fear, the sheer, terrifying disbelief flicker across his face—before his mouth parted slightly and he let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.

"Are you serious?" he asked, looking up at her, his eyes suddenly bright with unshed tears. "Is this real? Can it be wrong?"

"It's not wrong," Clara said, though her own voice was trembling now. "It's faint, because it's still early. We still have to do the blood test tomorrow to make sure the numbers are good. A lot can still happen. We have to be careful."

"We're pregnant," Sam whispered, ignoring every word of her disclaimer. He reached out, his large hands gently taking her hips and pulling her down onto the edge of the mattress beside him. He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, and held on so tight she could barely breathe.

"We're pregnant," he repeated, his voice muffled against her sweater.

Clara closed her eyes, resting her chin on his shoulder, and finally let herself cry.

The next twenty-four hours were a blur of cautious, whispered excitement.

Neither of them slept much that night. They lay awake in the dark, holding hands over the duvet, talking in low voices as if speaking too loudly might break the spell. They didn't talk about names, or nurseries, or strollers. It felt too dangerous to reach that far into the future. Instead, they talked about the drive to the clinic the next morning. They talked about what they would eat for dinner. Sam asked, twice, if she needed him to make another pineapple smoothie, and Clara told him, very gently, that if he ever put spinach and pineapple in a blender again, she would divorce him.

At seven-thirty the next morning, they were back in the waiting room of Oakridge Fertility.

It looked exactly the same as it had twelve days ago. The same teal chairs, the same muted HGTV loop, the same out-of-date magazines. Clara didn't pick one up this time. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching the door to the clinical wing.

When the nurse called her name, Clara didn't need Sam to hold her hand. She walked back to the blood-draw station, rolled up her sleeve, and watched the dark red blood fill the vial. It took less than two minutes.

"We'll call you this afternoon with the results," the phlebotomist said, slapping a bright pink bandage over the crook of Clara's elbow. "Good luck!"

"Thank you," Clara said.

The wait between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon was, without question, the longest five hours of Clara’s life.

Sam went to work, though he texted her every forty-five minutes to ask if the phone had rung yet. Clara tried to work, failed miserably, and ended up cleaning the entire kitchen from top to bottom. She scrubbed the microwave. She reorganized the spice rack alphabetically. She wiped down the baseboards with a damp rag, her mind entirely elsewhere, replaying the image of the two pink lines over and over again.

At 2:18 p.m., her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.

The caller ID read Oakridge Fertility.

Clara stared at it for two rings before she picked it up. Her heart was in her throat.

"Hello?" she said.

"Hi, Clara! It's Maya, Dr. Patel's nurse." The nurse’s voice was bright, upbeat—a good sign, though nurses were trained to sound professional no matter what. Clara gripped the edge of the counter.

"Hi, Maya."

"I'm calling with your beta results from this morning," Maya said. "Your hCG level is 245, and your progesterone is looking great at 32. Congratulations, Clara. You're pregnant."

Clara let out a breath she felt like she had been holding for four years. "245?" she asked, just to hear the number again. "That's good?"

"That's wonderful," Maya said warmly. "We like to see anything over 50 at this stage, so 245 is fantastic. We'll have you come back in two days for a repeat blood draw just to make sure that number is doubling nicely, and then we'll schedule your first ultrasound for six weeks. Keep doing everything you're doing—keep up with the progesterone shots and the patches."

"I will," Clara said, a smile breaking across her face, wide and unstoppable. "Thank you, Maya. Thank you so much."

She hung up the phone and stood in the middle of her spotless kitchen, staring at the half-dead pothos on the windowsill—which, thanks to Sam's overzealous watering, was actually starting to sprout a tiny, bright green new leaf.

She called Sam. He answered on the first ring.

"Well?" he demanded, his voice tight.

"245," Clara said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by the sound of a chair scraping back and a door shutting. "245," Sam repeated, his voice dropping to a stunned whisper. "Is that good? That sounds good. That's a big number, right?"

"Maya said they like to see anything over 50."

"Jesus," Sam breathed. "245. Okay. Okay, I'm coming home. I'm leaving work early. Don't move. Actually, you can move, just don't lift anything heavy. I'll pick up Thai food."

"Sam, we had Thai food twelve days ago."

"It's our lucky food now," he said. "Pad see ew, extra tofu, and dumplings. I'll be home in thirty minutes."

Clara laughed, wiping a stray tear from her cheek as she ended the call.

She walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, stopping once more in front of the third bedroom. She pushed the door open. The afternoon sun was slanting through the blinds, just as it had twelve days ago, casting striped shadows across the beige carpet and the plain gray duvet on the twin bed.

This time, she didn't stay on the threshold. She stepped inside, walked over to the window, and twisted the wand to open the blinds all the way. Sunlight flooded the room, warm and bright and unforgiving of the dust motes dancing in the air.

"Okay," she said softly to the empty space. "Let's get you ready."

She stood there for a moment, soaking in the warmth, before a sudden flash of movement outside caught her eye.

Down below, on the street, a massive white moving truck was backing slowly into the driveway of Number 42.

Clara leaned closer to the glass, watching as the truck’s brakes hissed and the hazard lights blinked on. Behind it, a silver SUV pulled up to the curb, and the doors swung open.

The new neighbors had arrived.