The church is filled with the smell of the flowers on the altar, on either side of the podium. I sweep the wooden floors and the stained glass windows illuminate the dust that is rising through the air as I sweep, the sound of the bristles is the only sound. It’s Sunday, very much, after the service, so it's just me. Dad is in his office doing paperwork, keeps him busy. And sweeping the holy dust keeps me busy.

The door softly creeks open, I stop sweeping, and look up from the floor.

“Zig?”

It’s Margaret. I smile, wiping a hand across my forehead to push strays of red hair out of my eyes.

“Hey,” I say, leaning against the broom. She’s holding a basket in her hands, the kind my mom used to take to the neighbors when someone was sick or just had a baby. Margaret is still wearing her sundress from this morning, the pale yellow one that makes her blonde hair shine brighter. She’s walking towards me, with an unusually serious look on her face.

“What’s in the basket?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood. “Some of your mom’s rhubarb pie, maybe?” 

She sets the basket in the pew in between us. The way she is looking at me, though, it’s like she’s not really seeing me. I get that feeling in my stomach that something isn’t right, but I push it down. It’s probably nothing right. 

She doesn’t answer right away, just slowly opens the basket. My stomach twists a little tiger. There’s no food in there, no brownies,pie, or even a sandwich. Instead, I see something soft-two white onesies with little ducks on them. The onesies are folded neatly, but something doesn’t feel right. 

I reach forward, picking one up.

“What’s this?” My voice sounds small, confused. I glance up at her, trying to read her face, but I can’t find an explanation.

She doesn’t speak at first. Instead pulls out an envelope from the basket and holds it out to me. 

“Margaret,-what?” 

I stare at the envelope for a long moment before reaching for it, my fingers trembling as I take it from her. I’m not sure I want to open it. My gut telling me not to. It’s not a feeling I get very often, but I trust it now, I don’t want to look. 

But I open it anyway. 

There’s a black and white photograph inside. At first, I don’t recognize it. It’s blurry, but then it hits me. An ultrasound. My eyes scan the picture, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. The image is unclear, but I can make out two shapes. Two blobs. 

Two blobs.

It doesn’t make sense in my brain at first. My hands start shaking, and I have to sit in the pew, not sure if my legs can hold me up anymore. 

I look up at Margaret. Her face is unreadable, but her eyes-they’re sad. She’s not looking at me. She’s looking down at the floor, like she is waiting for me to say something. 

But what can I say? What do I say to something like this?

“I…I don’t understand,” The words come out in a whisper, like if I say it aloud, it’ll just make it more real. 

She finally looks at me, meeting my eyes. Her lips tremble before she speaks.

“I’m pregnant, Zig,” her voice cracks, and I can see tears forming in her eyes. “We’re…we’re having twins.”

Twins. The word slams into me, knocking the air out of my lungs.

I feel my throat tighten. I look at the onesies and the ultrasound again, and for some reason, I can’t stop thinking about how small they are. How helpless they are.

“How…how long have you known?” 

Margaret looks down, like she is ashamed of something, even though I don’t know what she has to be ashamed of. “A few weeks.” She bites her lip. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but…I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to say.” 

I nod, feeling the knot in my stomach tighten even more. Twins. I don’t know how to wrap my head around it. I’m fifteen, we’re fifteen. 

“Zig,” she says softly, stepping closer to me. “I’m scared.” 

I swallow, trying to calm myself, but the truth is, I’m scared too. Scared of what this means for us. Scared of it means for our future. But I can’t say any of that. I have to be strong for her. I have to be strong for us.

I reach out, taking her hand in mine, squeezing it tight.

“We’ll figure this out,” I say, even if I don’t know if we will. “I’ll be here, Margaret. No matter what.”

She nods, the tears starting to fall, and I pull her into my arms, not knowing how to fix this but knowing we have to try.

I sit there on the pew, holding Margaret’s hand, the onesies still clutched in my other hand. My mind is racing-twins. Twins. The word keeps bouncing around inside my head, echoing like that time we visited a cave when I was younger and me and my siblings would try and see how many times we could make our voices echo back to us. I don’t know what to feel. Scared? Excited? or something in between.

Margaret is still looking down, her eyes focused on our intertwined fingers. Her hair falls around her face, hiding her expression. I want to ask her a thousand things, but the words won’t come out. 

Finally, I manage to choke out the question that’s been clawing at me since she told me. 

“So…so when are you due?” 

She glances up at me, her face tight, her eyes red. 

“October, or early November” she says quietly, as if the word itself is heavy. “I’m about three months along. I…I went to the doctor last week. My mom was with me. She knows, Zig.” 

She said it so calmly, like it’s no big deal. But to me, it feels like everything’s changed in the span of a few minutes. 

My mind spins as I try to process everything. October. Three months. It feels like I’ve just stepped into someone else’s life, and I don’t know how to walk through it. 

Before I can think of anything else to say, a door in the back of the church creaks open, and I hear my dad’s heavy footsteps. I turn just in time to see him walking down the aisle from his office. His face lights up when he sees us, but he pauses when he notices the quiet tension in the air. 

“Margaret?” Dad’s voice is warm, like it always is when he speaks to people, but there’s a shift in it now, something unfamiliar in his tone. “Everything alright?”

I feel a cold shiver run down my spine. He doesn’t know what’s happening, what I’m holding in my hand, what Margaret and I are facing.

I stand up quickly, the sudden movement feeling like a jerk of my whole body. My legs are wobbly, my heart racing faster now. 

“Dad,” I say, my voice cracking, “there’s something we need to talk about.”

Margaret stands up straighter, and grabs the picnic basket. Her hands tremble, and I can see the fear in her eyes, but then she looks at me, and I can see something else there too- hope. Like she’s looking for me to be the one that fix this, even though I don’t know how. 

Dad raises an eyebrow, his gaze moving between me and Margaret. He tilts his head slightly, his expression softening as he steps closer. 

“What’s going on, son?”

I open my mouth to speak, but the words get stuck in my throat. I can’t even form a sentence. How do I say this? How do I tell him that his fifteen-year-old son is about to become a father?

Margaret steps forward, her voice barely above a whisper. 

“Mr. Wilde…” She pauses, swallowing hard. “I’m pregnant.”

The words hang in the air like smoke, heavy and thick, and I watch my dad’s expression shift. His face pales, his eyes wide with disbelief. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything, and I think maybe he hasn’t really heard her.

But then he looks at me. And I can see the question in his eyes-What did you do, Zig? What have you done?

“Pregnant?” Dad repeats slowly, as though testing the word out. His voice is tight, strained. He takes a step back, running a hand through his hair. “You’re sure about this?”

Margaret nods, looking down. 

“I’m sure,” she says, her voice trembling. “I went to the doctor. I’m three months along, and..and I’m having twins.”

Dad’s jaw clenches. I can see the muscles in his neck tightening, the veins in his forehead popping out. His face turns a shade of red that makes me want to shrink into the shadows. 

“Twins?” He exhales sharply, his hand gripping the back of the pew as if it’s the only thing keeping him steady. 

I don’t know what to say. 

“Dad,” I say, my voice breaking as I finally find the words. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. But we-we’ll figure it out. We’re gonna make it work. I promise.” 

Dad looks at me, then at Margaret. His gaze softens, just slightly, and then he sighs, his shoulders slumping. 

“You’re still kids. You’re fifteen. What do you know about raising a child, much less two?” His voice is quiet now, like he’s speaking to himself more than to us. 

I step closer, not sure if I should argue with him or if I should just let him be angry. 

“We don’t know everything, Dad,” I say, my voice more confident now. “But we’ll try. I’ll try. I won’t let her do it alone.”

He looks at me for a long moment, like he’s trying to decide something, and then he rubs his temples, his exhaustion spilling out. 

“Zig,” he says quietly, “and I need you to understand this is big. This changes everything.”

I swallow hard. I don’t know how to make this better, how to convince him I’m not some stupid kid who’s made a mistake. But I don’t know if I can convince him. 

Dad turns towards Margaret, his voice softening.

“You’re welcome here, Margaret, You always have been. But there’s going to be a lot of hard things ahead. You two need to think long and hard about what comes next.”

She nods, looking up at him with gratitude in her eyes.

“I know, Mr. Wilde, I know.”

The ride home is quiet.

Dad hasn’t said much since we left the church. He just told me to get in the truck, and I did, heart pounding the whole way. The radio’s off. His hands grip the wheel like it’s trying to run away from him. I stare out the window, watching the Georgia pines blur past, stomach twisting up tighter with every mile.

I don’t know what I expected—yelling maybe, or silence so sharp it cuts. But this is worse. This… quiet.

We pull into the driveway just as the sun dips behind the trees, casting everything in that deep, golden light that makes even our rusty swing set look like something out of a picture book. Mom’s car is already here. The lights are on inside the house. Someone’s laughing—Eve, probably. She always laughs before dinner.

Dad cuts the engine and turns to me, his face still as stone.

“You’re gonna tell ‘em.”

I blink. “Tell who?”

He raises one eyebrow, like I should already know. “Everyone.”

I swallow. My throat’s dry again. “You mean… Mama and them?”

He nods once. “You made this decision, Ezekiel. You’re not gonna hide from it.”

“I’m not—” I start, but the words die halfway out.

He opens his door. “Come on.”

The screen door slaps shut behind us as we step into the kitchen. The smell of fried chicken hits me first—Mama must be off tonight, which means she’s cooking, not working late at the hospital like usual. Eden’s at the stove, hair piled on top of her head, turning cornbread in a cast iron pan like she owns the place.

Elijah’s in the corner, flipping through a Sports Illustrated (he isn’t supposed to have). Elizabeth and Ester are setting the table, arguing quietly over forks. Earnest is on the floor with his G.I. Joes, making explosion sounds. Eve’s chasing the cat under the table.

Normal.

This moment is the last normal one we’ll have.

Mama looks up first, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes find Dad’s, then mine, and she freezes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, straight to the point like always.

Dad doesn’t answer. He just nods at me.

Mama’s eyes narrow slightly, reading him like a chart. She turns to me. “Zig?”

I feel the weight of their eyes. All of them. One by one, my siblings quiet. Elijah lowers his magazine. Elizabeth stops mid-step with a stack of napkins. Even the cat seems to pause.

I clear my throat.

“There’s something I gotta tell y’all,” I say, voice shaking a little more than I want it to.

Eden arches an eyebrow. “What’d you do? Crash the truck?”

“No,” I mutter. 

I take a deep breath, staring at the tile floor like it’ll open up and swallow me. When I look up again, Mama’s staring at me real hard—like she already knows, like she’s just waiting for me to say it out loud.

“Margaret’s pregnant,” I say.

The room goes still.

Dead still.

“Twins,” I add, like that somehow makes it better. Or worse. I don’t even know.

Eve drops her spoon.

Elizabeth gasps.

Eden lets out a low whistle and leans back against the counter like she just heard someone say the world’s ending.

Mama doesn’t move. She doesn’t blink. She just stares at me, one hand still on the edge of the kitchen table, knuckles white.

Then, soft but sharp, she says, “How far along?”

“Almost three months,” I whisper.

Elijah mutters something I can’t hear.

Eden says, “Holy hell,” and Dad snaps, “Watch your mouth.”

But she’s not wrong. That’s what this feels like.

Hell.

Mama walks over to me slowly. She’s still in her scrubs, pale blue with little ducks on the pocket. Her hands smell like soap and garlic and hand sanitizer. She stands in front of me, looking straight into my eyes. I brace myself for yelling. For tears.

Instead, she reaches up and cups my face like she used to when I was little and sick with a fever.

“You’re still my boy,” she says. “But you’re gonna be somebody’s daddy now. Two somebodies. And that means you better start acting like one.”

I nod, because it’s all I can do.

Dad clears his throat behind her. “We’re not sweeping this under the rug,” he says to the room. “Our name is Wilde, and we carry it with truth. We’ll face this as a family.”

There’s a silence, and then Elizabeth speaks up, voice small.

“What’re their names gonna be?”

I blink. “I… I don’t know yet.”

And I don’t.

I don’t know anything except that everything’s different now.

And there's no going back.