Chapter 3 What the Hell!

LORA

One month after my mystery man vanished into thin air, two pink lines stared back at me from a pregnancy test. I sat on my bathroom floor in my bear pajamas, holding a plastic stick that had just blown up my entire life.

"Well crap," I whispered to my reflection in the toilet bowl. "This is not happening."

But it was happening. The morning sickness that I had blamed on stress was actually morning sickness. The exhaustion was not from crying myself to sleep every night. And the weird food cravings were not just emotional eating.

I was pregnant with a ghost baby.

Maya found me there two hours later, still sitting on the cold tile, staring at the test like it might change its mind.

"Honey, what are you-" She stopped dead when she saw the test in my hands. "Oh my God. Is that what I think it is?"

"Depends. Do you think it is a pregnancy test that just told me I am having a baby with a man who does not exist?"

Maya sank down beside me. For once in her life, she was speechless. That lasted about ten seconds.

"Okay. We can handle this. First things first-are you sure he does not exist? Because I saw you leave with him, and last I checked, you cannot get pregnant from a figment of your imagination."

"He was real that night. But Maya, I have been thinking about it for months. No one at the hotel remembered him. Security footage shows me going into an empty suite. There is no record of anyone staying in that room." I laughed, but it sounded more like crying. "I literally had a one-night stand with a ghost."

"Or a very rich man who knows how to cover his tracks." Maya took the test from my hands and studied it like it might reveal the mysteries of the universe. "Rich guys are weird about privacy, Lora. They have people who clean up after them."

"Clean up what? Evidence of their existence?"

"Evidence of their mistakes."

The words hit like a slap. Mistake. That was what I was. What this baby was. A mistake that someone with money and power had decided to erase.

"I cannot do this here," I said suddenly. The walls of my apartment felt like they were closing in. "I cannot have this baby in Seattle. Everyone will know. They will count backwards and figure out it happened right after Mark's engagement party. They will think I got pregnant to get back at him or something equally pathetic."

Maya was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "Where do you want to go?"

"Portland. I have that connection at the design firm there, remember? Tom Bradley said he could throw me some freelance work if I ever wanted to relocate." I stood up, energy flooding through me for the first time in months. "I could start over. Be someone new."

"You want to run away."

"I want to run toward something better."

Two weeks later, I was loading my entire life into a U-Haul truck. My parents cried. Maya cried. I pretended not to cry and failed spectacularly.

"You call me the second that baby decides to make an appearance," Maya ordered, hugging me so tight I could barely breathe. "I do not care if it is three in the morning on Christmas Day. I will get on the first plane to Portland."

"I will. I promise."

My parents were harder to leave. Mom kept trying to pack more food into my car like I was moving to Antarctica instead of three hours south. Dad just kept hugging me and telling me I was the bravest person he knew.

"I do not feel brave," I admitted. "I feel terrified."

"Brave people are always terrified," he said. "That is what makes them brave."

Portland in the rain was exactly what I needed. Gray skies, constant drizzle, and a city full of people who minded their own business. I found a tiny studio apartment in a building full of artists and grad students. It was not much, but it was mine.

The design work came slowly at first. Tom Bradley was as good as his word, throwing me small projects that kept me fed and housed. I learned to work around morning sickness, designing logos between trips to the bathroom and creating websites while eating saltine crackers.

Slowly, I started to build something. Not just a business, but a life. A new version of myself who did not apologize for taking up space or ask permission to exist.

The baby kicked for the first time while I was working on a logo for a local coffee shop. I stopped what I was doing and put my hand on my belly, feeling this tiny person doing gymnastics inside me.

"Hey there, little one," I whispered. "Just you and me against the world, huh?"

I thought about the mystery man sometimes. Wondered if he ever thought about that night. If he had any idea what we had created together. But mostly, I tried not to think about him at all. This baby was mine. My responsibility, my joy, my everything.

Portland suited me. I joined a prenatal yoga class full of other single moms and women whose partners traveled for work. Nobody asked too many questions about my situation. They just accepted that sometimes life was complicated and messy and beautiful all at the same time.

Eight months pregnant, I waddled into the hospital on a rainy Tuesday night with contractions that felt like someone was trying to rearrange my internal organs. Maya flew in just in time to hold my hand while I screamed creative combinations of curse words that would have made my mother faint.

Alexander Robert Blake came into the world at 3:47 AM, weighing six pounds and two ounces of pure perfection. He had my nose and mouth, but his eyes were the strangest shade of gold I had ever seen. The doctor said some babies were born with unusual eye colors that changed as they got older.

But Alex's eyes never changed. They stayed that impossible golden color, like liquid sunlight. Sometimes I caught him staring at me with those eyes, and I swore he understood more than any baby should.

"He is going to be trouble," Maya said, holding him while I tried to figure out how to breastfeed without feeling like I was being attacked by a very small, very hungry vampire. "Look at those eyes. He is going to break hearts."

"He better not," I said firmly. "I am raising him to be one of the good ones."

The first two years were a blur of sleepless nights, endless laundry, and learning that I was stronger than I had ever imagined. Alex was an easy baby, but he was also strange in ways I could not quite put my finger on. He never cried when strangers held him, but he would get fussy around certain people for no reason I could understand. He learned to walk early and seemed to have an uncanny ability to find trouble.

When he was eighteen months old, I found him having a full conversation with a stray dog in the park. Not baby babble-actual conversation. The dog was sitting perfectly still, like it was listening to every word.

"That is weird, right?" I asked Maya over the phone that night.

"Kids talk to animals all the time, Lora. It is normal."

"But the dog was talking back."

"Dogs do not talk back."

"This one did. I swear it nodded at him."

Maya was quiet for a moment. "Maybe you need more sleep."

Maybe I did. Single motherhood was exhausting in ways no one had prepared me for. But I was happy. Happier than I had been in years. Alex and I had our little routines, our inside jokes, our perfect imperfect life.

My freelance business was thriving. I had steady clients and a waiting list. Word of mouth in Portland was everything, and apparently, I had developed a reputation as the designer who could make any business look good.

Which was how I ended up getting the call that changed everything.

"Lora Blake Design?" I answered, bouncing Alex on my hip while trying to finish a logo mockup.

"Ms Blake? This is Janet Morrison from Marrock Industries. We are interested in discussing a potential contract with you."

I almost dropped the phone. Marrock Industries was huge. Like, Fortune 500, an international corporation, huge. They did not hire freelancers from Portland to design their coffee shop logos.

"I think you might have the wrong person," I said carefully.

"Are you Lora Blake, graphic designer, specializing in corporate rebranding?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then I have the right person. Mr Marrock would like to meet with you to discuss a complete corporate rebrand. Are you available to fly to New York next week?"

"Can I think about it?"

"Of course. But Ms Blake? This is a seven-figure contract. I would not think too long."

Seven figures. Enough money to secure Alex's future. Enough to buy a house, start a college fund, maybe even take a vacation that did not involve camping in my parents' backyard.

"I will call you back tomorrow," I said.

After I hung up, I stared at Alex, who was trying to eat his own foot with the dedication of a world-class athlete.

"What do you think, baby boy? Ready for an adventure?"

He looked up at me with those impossible golden eyes and smiled. For just a second, I could have sworn I saw something wild and knowing in that smile. Something that reminded me of a night three years ago and a man who might have been a ghost.

But that was impossible.

Right?