Chapter 336: The Fear of Knowing the Truth

When Mary got to the supermarket, she tried to act like it was just a normal shopping trip.

First she grabbed the pack of beer her mother liked, something she couldn’t afford to forget if she wanted to avoid trouble once she got home, and then kept walking down the aisles until she gathered enough courage to look for what she actually needed.

After several minutes of wandering around longer than necessary, she finally found it.

A pregnancy test.

Mary picked the cheapest one available, because money was tight and because, she kept telling herself, it was going to come back negative anyway, so there was no point spending extra.

With both items in hand, she headed to the register.

Luckily for her, it was Wednesday night, and the supermarket was practically empty.

No one was in line, which let Mary breathe a little easier.

She could pay quickly and leave without having to deal with awkward looks or stand there with that box visible to half the store.

Or at least that’s what she thought.

But when she set both items on the counter, the cashier, a girl about her own age with a bored expression, frowned.

Her eyes went from the pack of beer, to the pregnancy test, and finally up to Mary’s face.

"Hey, look," the cashier said, resting her chin on one hand. "I know I shouldn’t butt in and it’s none of my business, but..."

She hesitated a moment.

"Are you seriously going to drink that right now? Doesn’t seem like the best idea, considering... well, your situation."

Mary blinked, confused, until suddenly it all clicked.

The blush hit her face instantly as she imagined the scene from the outside. A pregnancy test, a pack of beer, and her standing in the middle of it.

Great.

She looked like a collection of bad decisions in human form.

"N-no, it’s not what it looks like!" Mary rushed to explain, waving her hands. "The beer isn’t mine, it’s for my mom. I... I hate alcohol, seriously. I don’t even touch it. It’s just that she asked me to—"

"Suuuure," the cashier replied, drawing out the word with a little smirk that made it pretty clear she wasn’t buying a single word of it. "Your mom... Of course. Don’t worry, hun, I’m not judging."

"It’s the truth!"

"Yeah, yeah."

Mary opened her mouth to try and explain further, but closed it again almost immediately.

Anything she said at this point would only make her look worse, so she paid with her cheeks burning, quickly bagged everything, and hurried away from the register under the cashier’s not-so-subtle gaze.

But instead of heading for the exit, she changed direction and walked straight into the supermarket bathroom.

Mary locked herself in a stall, opened the box, and read the instructions faster than she probably should have.

It wasn’t complicated, she just had to pee on it and wait a few minutes.

So she did.

But when the moment came to check the result, all the resolve she’d gathered vanished.

Mary held the test between her fingers, not daring to look down.

She’d spent the whole day telling herself she needed to know the truth, but now that the answer was just one glance away, fear had frozen her in place.

The moment she looked at that little window, there would be no more room for guessing, and she’d have to face whatever appeared there.

And she wasn’t ready.

"...Not here," she murmured to herself, keeping her eyes off the result. "I’ll look at it at home."

Careful not to see the result, she wrapped up the test and tucked it into her coat pocket.

Then she took a deep breath, stepped out of the stall, washed her hands, and left the supermarket, grocery bag in one hand, that small object burning a hole in her pocket.

The walk home felt endless.

As Mary walked down the empty streets under the dim glow of the streetlights, anxiety ate away at her from the inside.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the result, about the two possibilities, and above all about what it would mean if that test came back positive.

Because if she really was pregnant, she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do.

For starters, there was the money.

Mary didn’t have a stable job and barely scraped by on the occasional freelance work she did from home.

Some weeks she found data entry jobs, and when she got lucky, she’d land a commission as an illustrator, which was basically the only thing she genuinely enjoyed besides gaming online.

Even combining both, her income barely cleared minimum wage and could vary wildly from month to month.

She had no savings, no kind of stability, and definitely nothing resembling a plan for the future.

The idea of raising a baby under those conditions felt absurd.

But even that seemed like a minor problem compared to her mother.

Just imagining how she’d react sent a chill through Mary.

She knew that woman far too well to fool herself into thinking she’d take the news with any understanding.

At best, she’d try to force her to get rid of the baby, either pressuring her into an abortion or demanding she give it up after it was born.

Thinking about it hurt more than she expected.

Mary didn’t want that for her child. She didn’t want to bring it into the world only for someone else to decide to take it away from her.

She didn’t even know yet if she was pregnant, but the mere possibility of losing the baby that way already felt unbearable.

And yet, raising her child under the same roof as her mother was, if anything, an even worse option.

Because doing so would mean condemning it to the exact same environment she’d grown up in.

Screaming, beatings, contempt, and fear.

Mary knew all too well what it was like to live through a childhood like that, and she had no intention of letting her child go through the same thing.

No child deserved to grow up that way.

"I’m fucked..." Mary muttered under her breath as she started climbing the stairs to her apartment.

She was so caught up in her thoughts, eyes fixed on the ground, her mind spinning, that she wasn’t paying attention to where she was stepping.

And on one of the steps, her foot slipped.

Mary lost her balance and pitched forward, her stomach lurching as she felt herself falling.

But before she could hit the steps, a pair of arms caught her firmly, stopping her fall at the last instant.

"...Huh?"