Tina’s heart slowed, and found she couldn’t breathe, much less respond to Liz’ questions.  Tina’s silence bothered her a bit, but Liz continued, “ok, I’ll see you at  8:30, then?… oh, sorry. Can’t chat any longer.  Got to go: one of my kids forgot his backpack, and I can still hear the kids downstairs, heading out the door.  I’ll hang up now, and see you later.”  She clicked the call shut.

Tina sat up in bed, leaned back against the headboard, and then dropped the phone by her side.  She covered her face in her hands, and then ran her hands nervously through her hair.  Pregnant.  She could be pregnant.

She stared out of the window for a while, her mind racing.  In the absence of deliberate thought, her production instincts took over the vacuum in her mind, where shock had settled in.  This was her preferred method of problem–solving, thus mentally, she felt she had to react somehow, and automatically began to consider various scenarios, eliminating several as quickly as they presented themselves in her mind.  Soon, she settled on the few more plausible ones.

Tina took a deep breath in, then breathe out.   No use speculating now.  Think it through again, once you get more information from Liz.

She rose from the bed, and bent to pick up the robe she had tossed to one side of the bed, and then tugged at the ties to secure the robe around her.

As she padded slowly to the kitchen, instead of turning right to the kitchen, she turned left to walk to far side of the living room area, towards the large set of floor-length windows of the apartment that she and Bette enjoyed watching city scenes out of, while drinking coffee in the morning, or before turning in at night.

She contemplated the priceless views of the city, once again, from their window.  Another beautiful dawn in Manhattan, she thought.  The weather man was right – the tiresome winter weather that unexpectedly lingered last week had departed, and the promise of a bright spring was coming ‘round the corner.

She turned to walk towards the kitchen, and stopped in front of the Jay DeFeo painting she had hung on the other big wall of the living area, when Bette had gone on a week-long business trip before Thanksgiving. Bette loved that painting, and when Tina had arranged to have it taken out of storage, and then hung in the apartment they were renting, she was sure it would be a nice surprise for the brunette on her return from her business trip.  Tina had arranged for the art mover to fetch it from storage, getting insurance, and swore him to secrecy, because the man had been used to dealing with Bette, and found it unusual that Bette wasn’t the one arranging for this job.