Two Pink Lines After Two Years of One

I know the exact shade of every pregnancy test sold in my area. I had bought them in bulk, hidden them in my old handbags, and learned to read them in the bad bathroom light at 5 a.m. before my husband woke up. For two years, the answer was always the same. One line. Quiet, polite, final.

The waiting was the hardest part. Every month had a rhythm I hated. The first half was full of hope, where I read meaning into every twinge and stayed off coffee just in case. The second half was a slow deflation. By the time my period came, I had already cried about it in my head three times.

My mother-in-law was kind, but she counted. "It's been a while now, beta," she would say softly while serving dinner, as if I had forgotten. My own mother sent me articles. A cousin who married after me announced her pregnancy at a family function, and I smiled so hard my face hurt, then cried in the car.

We did the tests. We did the talking. We did the temple visits my aunt insisted on, because at some point you stop arguing and just go. Nothing was very wrong with us, the doctor said, which somehow felt worse than a clear reason.

Then one ordinary Tuesday, I almost didn't bother testing. I had stopped expecting anything. But I peed on the stick out of habit and went to brush my teeth. When I came back, there were two lines. I had stared at so many single lines that when the second one appeared, I genuinely thought my eyes were playing a trick on me.

I made my husband look. He held it up to three different lights. We didn't celebrate loudly. We just sat on the bathroom floor, the same floor where I had cried so many times, and held hands like two people who couldn't quite believe their luck.

If you are still in your two years, I won't tell you to relax. I'll just tell you that the woman buying tests in bulk and reading them in bad light is braver than she knows.