How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author Name: Grady Hendrix
- Book Genre:
- ISBN # 1443470147
- Edition Language: English
- Date of Publication: January 17, 2023
- File Format: PDF / EPUB
- PDF / EPUB File Size: 9 MB
Louise thought it might not go well, so she told her parents she was
pregnant over the phone, from three thousand miles away, in San
Francisco. It wasn’t that she had a single doubt about her decision.
When those two parallel pink lines had ghosted into view, all her panic
dissolved and she heard a clear, certain voice inside her head say:
I’m a mother now.
But even in the twenty-first century it was hard to predict how a pair of
Southern parents would react to the news that their thirty-four-year-old
unmarried daughter was pregnant. Louise spent all day rehearsing different
scripts that would ease them into it, but the minute her mom answered and
her dad picked up the kitchen extension, her mind went blank and she
blurted out:
“I’m pregnant.”
She braced herself for the barrage of questions.
Are you sure? Does Ian know? Are you going to keep it? Have you
thought about moving back to Charleston? Are you certain this is the best
thing? Do you have any idea how hard this will be alone? How are you
going to manage?
In the long silence, she prepared her answers: Yes, not yet, of course,
God no, no but I’m doing it anyway, yes, I’ll manage.
Over the phone she heard someone inhale through what sounded like a
mouthful of water and realized her mom was crying.
“Oh, Louise,” her mother said in a thick voice, and Louise prepared
herself for the worst. “I’m so happy. You’re going to be the mother I
wasn’t.”
Her dad only had one question: her exact street address.
“I don’t want any confusion with the cab driver when we land.”
“Dad,” Louise said, “you don’t have to come right now.”
“Of course we do,” he said. “You’re our Louise.”
She waited for them on the sidewalk, her heart pounding every time a
car turned the corner, until finally a dark blue Nissan slowed to a stop in
front of her building and her dad helped her mom out of the back seat, and
she couldn’t wait—she threw herself into her mom’s arms like she was a
little kid again.
They took her crib shopping and stroller shopping and told Louise she
was crazy to even consider a cloth diaper service, and discussed feeding
techniques and vaccinations and a million decisions Louise would have to
make, and bought snot suckers and diapers and onesies, and receiving
blankets and changing pads and wipes, and rash cream and burp cloths and
rattles and night-lights, and Louise would’ve thought they’d bought way too
much if her mother hadn’t said, “You’ve hardly bought anything at all.”
She couldn’t even blame them for having a hard time with the whole Ian
issue.
“Married or not, we have to meet his family,” her mom said. “We’re
going to be co-grandparents.”
“I haven’t told him yet,” Louise said. “I’m barely eleven weeks.”
“Well, you’re not getting any less pregnant,” her mom pointed out.
“There are tangible financial benefits to marriage,” her dad added.
“You’re sure you don’t want to reconsider?”
Louise did not want to reconsider.
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