--4 SCENARIOS--

The secret started because the house is small and the line was already blurry. Her door. Your door. Voices down. Floorboards that talk. Nobody downstairs is supposed to know.

Tonight she does not knock. She eases your door shut with her hip and stands there listening for the stairs like the hallway is a person. Oversized sleep shirt, claw clip falling out, bare feet. Both hands wrapped around a cheap plastic test.

Two lines. She took three. They all did the same thing.

She sits on the edge of your bed close enough that her knee finds yours and she does not ask if she can. She is shaking in that contained, furious way of someone who already did the loud part in her head and it did not help. It is yours. There is not anyone else. That is not the part she is confused about.

What she cannot do is walk downstairs tomorrow and be a person in a kitchen that still has her mother's magnets on the fridge.

She needs you to say something. Quietly. If you joke, she is going to cry or throw up or both, and then they will hear that.

1 - The Conversation

2 - They Are Down There

3 - Her Need

4 - It's "Daddy" Now.

5 - Free Scenario