3 days after I told my roommate I was pregnant, she stood in our kitchen with both hands wrapped around a coffee mug and told me I owed her several thousand dollars for ruining her life.
Chapter 1
At first, I thought Claire was joking. She had always been dramatic in a dry, deadpan way, and pregnancy hormones had already made me slow to catch sarcasm. But there was nothing playful in her expression when she said, “You need to pay the lease termination fee, Megan. All of it.”
I stared at her across the granite island. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I can’t live here anymore.”
The refrigerator hummed behind me, absurdly loud in the silence. It was late March, and our lease on the two-bedroom apartment outside Washington, D.C., ran through June 30. Three months. Ninety-some days. I would barely be four months pregnant when we moved out.
I lowered myself into one of the barstools because nausea had been coming in waves all morning. “Claire, you already said you don’t want to renew the lease. I said that was fine. I’ll move to my parents’ place in July.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
She set down her coffee. “I don’t feel comfortable living with a pregnant person.”
For several seconds, I honestly could not understand the sentence.
Claire was twenty-eight years old, an attorney at a midsize firm downtown, and one of the smartest women I knew. I was thirty-one and also an attorney, though I worked for a state regulatory agency and only had to appear in person twice a week. We had known each other for a year before signing the lease and had considered ourselves close friends.
“You don’t feel comfortable,” I repeated carefully, “living with me because I’m pregnant?”
“I didn’t sign up for this responsibility.”
“What responsibility?”
“What if something happens?”
“To me?”
“To the pregnancy. To you. Anything.”
I blinked. “Then I call my doctor. Or 911. Or my mother. You’re not my caretaker.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No, Claire. It’s not easy. It’s factual.”
Her jaw tightened. “You’re missing the point.”
I had heard that phrase from her before. Usually it meant I had reached a conclusion she didn’t like.
My pregnancy had been unexpected. My boyfriend, Ryan, and I had been together three years, though the last eight months had been long-distance after his job transferred him to North Carolina. He was finishing a master’s program there as well, and neither of us could relocate immediately without losing something essential. We had spent a frightening, emotional week looking at our finances and calendars and licensing requirements before deciding how we would make it work.
Ryan wanted the baby. So did I.
The plan was imperfect, but it was a plan. I would stay in the apartment until the lease ended, move in temporarily with my parents outside Baltimore, and commute farther to work twice a week. By late pregnancy, Ryan expected to have his job and school arranged so we could finally live together. None of that involved Claire.
Originally, before she objected, I had asked whether she might consider going month-to-month for another month or two after June. My parents lived nearly three hours from my office in rush-hour traffic, and avoiding that commute while pregnant would have helped. Claire said no.
I had answered, “Okay.”
That was the entire conversation.
Now she folded her arms. “You should have considered how getting pregnant would affect the person you live with.”
That landed harder than I expected.
“You think I should have consulted you before getting pregnant?”
“I think you should have considered the consequences for everyone involved.”
“This was not planned.”
“That doesn’t change the impact.”
I studied her face, trying to find my friend somewhere in it. Claire knew I had migraines. She knew I sometimes had other health problems. She had never once suggested that sharing an apartment made her responsible for my body.
More importantly, I knew why pregnancy frightened her.
Two years earlier, Claire had ended a pregnancy after leaving a fiancé who had become verbally aggressive and controlling. She had told me the story the day we met, then many times afterward in greater detail. I had sat beside her while she cried. I had listened when anniversaries upset her and changed plans when certain situations made her anxious.
I knew trauma could make ordinary things feel dangerous.
But I also knew trauma did not make another person’s life yours to control.
“I understand this might bring up painful feelings,” I said. “I really do. I’m sorry if my pregnancy triggers something for you. But I’m not asking you to come to appointments. I’m not asking you to help me. I’m not asking you to live with a baby. I’m asking us to finish the lease we both signed.”
Her eyes flashed. “What if your mom comes here to pick you up for an appointment? Then I’m being forced to participate.”
“How?”
“Because it’s happening around me.”
“My mother walking through the front door is making you participate in my pregnancy?”
“You keep minimizing my feelings.”
“I’m trying to understand them.”
“No, you’re trying to make me sound unreasonable.”
I felt the first real spark of anger then. Until that moment I had been too stunned to be angry.
“If you want to move,” I said, “you can talk to the landlord.”
“So you expect me to pay thousands of dollars because you changed our living situation?”
“I didn’t change the lease. I got pregnant.”
“Exactly.”
She said the word with such certainty that a cold feeling crept over me.
I remembered something from the previous fall. Before Claire and I moved in together, I had lost my old golden retriever, Sadie, after fourteen years. I had told Claire I hoped eventually to adopt another dog. She already owned Jasper, a nervous shepherd mix who barked and lunged at unfamiliar animals, but she assured me another dog would be fine after Jasper settled in.
Two months after moving, I brought up adoption.
Claire immediately threatened to leave.
When I offered to pay for professional training for Jasper, she said training would not relieve her anxiety. When I asked whether we could discuss alternatives, she told me that because she struggled to say no, my asking the question itself was manipulative.
So I dropped it.
I had told myself that friendship meant making accommodations.
Now, sitting beneath the pendant lights in our kitchen, I wondered how many accommodations a friendship could survive before only one person was doing the accommodating.
“You’re asking me to spend thousands of dollars,” I said, “because you don’t want to see a pregnant woman in the apartment for three months.”
“I’m asking you to take responsibility for your decision.”
My hand drifted unconsciously toward my abdomen, though there was no bump yet. Nothing anyone could see.
Claire noticed.
Her expression changed.
For one brief second, I saw something beneath the anger. Fear, perhaps. Or grief. Something wounded and old.
Then she said quietly, “You have no idea what you’re forcing me to be part of.”
That night, I called Ryan.
When I finished telling him what had happened, there was a long silence on the phone.
Finally he said, “Meg, don’t agree to anything. Not verbally. Not in writing.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“And from now on, get everything she says in writing.”
I sat on the edge of my bed staring at the wall I shared with Claire.
On the other side, I could hear her talking to someone on speakerphone. Her voice was low, but one sentence came through clearly enough to make my stomach turn.
“She thinks she can just stay.”
