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kids next. I just knew it.”
                  “She didn’t have an aneurysm,” Darren pointed out. “She’s sitting right here.”
                  “Then it’s cancer!” Mom bellowed.
    Andrea jumped out of her chair and went to put her arm around my mom’s shoulders. “Shhh, Patsy. Relax. Lexie hasn’t even told us what she went to the doctor for.”
    “Or what kind of a doctor she went to see.” Darren scoffed, grabbing another roll. “She could have gone to a woman doctor or something.”
    My mother yowled. “Ovarian cancer!”
                  My head flopped into my hands and I grit my teeth. “Seriously, Mom. I don’t have cancer, all right? Can you take a breath and let me finish my damn announcement?”
                  Her tears immediately stopped. “There’s no need for language.”
                  “Just… everybody relax, all right?” Corbin touched my arm, offering a one-shouldered shrug, as if to say, our mom…what a looney, right? “Go ahead, Lexie.”
                  Well, here goes nothing , I thought to myself, my hand going into my jeans pocket, and holding the picture underneath the tabletop the same way my brother had tried to hide his phone. “Actually, Darren was right. I went to the woman doctor.”
                  “Really? Gross. Don’t share that with us,” Darren said around a mouthful of roll.
                  “Grow up,” Corbin said in his most fatherly voice, which he’d been perfecting since our own dad’s death thirteen years earlier.
                  “What’s going on?” My mother dissolved into fake tears again. “Ovarian cyst? I’ve had three myself, and they’re horribly painful. Endometriosis? Your Aunt Dory had that. Oh my word, I always knew one of you children would be sick, and I’d have to care for you. Don’t worry, dear, I’ll be here for you. You can move back into your room, and—”
                  I shook my head. “I’m not moving back in. I don’t have an ovarian cyst or endometriosis, either.”
                  “Well, for hell’s sake, what’s going on with you?” she demanded, pushing up her glasses and turning off her tears for a second time.
                  Darren sniggered. “No need for language.”
                  “Hush.” She swatted her napkin at him, and knocked a roll out of his hand.
                  Corbin took off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I think we all just need to calm—”
                  “I’m pregnant.”
    My voice seemed to echo, despite the walls being lined with plush toys. Maybe it just sounded that way in my head. I couldn’t be sure.
                  All sound, all movement, in the house ceased, and every single pair of eyes locked on my face.
    Shakily, I brought the picture of my kidney-bean-like baby out from under the table, and placed it next to the pot of still-hot cheddar ham soup. It felt like my mother’s house had slipped into a time/space continuum. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. I was pretty sure nobody was breathing, either.
                  Darren was the first to break the unbearably uncomfortable silence. “Finally someone else is the family screw up.” And with that, he stood up, tucked his cell phone into his pants pocket, and kissed the top of my mother’s unmoving head. “Thanks for dinner, Ma.”
                  As soon as the backdoor shut behind him, my mother blinked a few times, as if coming out of a trance. Her cheeks were the exact same shade of pink as her circa nineteen eighties glasses lenses, and her forefinger came down onto the tabletop with a definitive thump.
                  “Where did you get this picture?” she asked hoarsely.
                  “My obstetrician. Dr. Haybee.” My eyes flicked over to