Chapter 286

VOLUME NINE: SHIELD MY HEART

Mandy Walker held her breath as tightly as she held the cell phone in her hand. Hours ago she'd texted her boyfriend, Dalton, telling him she'd just found out she was pregnant with their child—four weeks along to be exact. What she had assumed was a lingering case of the stomach flu would instead result in a living, breathing human in thirty-six weeks if the doctor was to be believed. And today, Mandy believed it. She'd been sick since she lifted her head off her pillow that morning. With clarity, she remembered how her mom had been when pregnant with Tatum and offered up a small prayer that she wouldn't be as sick as that for the whole pregnancy. There had been a few ER visits and plenty days where Denise couldn't function except to be sick and then go back to sleep.

In her other hand, she held the prescription the doctor had given her to ward off some of the nausea. She was going to take it when she got home, and the warning on it said she might get s