Carol Moncado

Just me again today :). Mostly because I needed motivation to get moving on the sequel to Unbreak Her Heart. Ugh. I’ve been stumped [though I have written almost 8K on book 4 in the series… what can I say? Inspiration struck… 3500 or so is backstory type stuff that won’t ever see the light of day, but that’s all right. It’s necessary…] So I wrote the first sentence of the segment I needed to write. That became my prompt and away I went.

I’m at 25736 for NovelTrack. I may or may not make my goal of 50K. More days like yesterday [4600] would sure help. I do know I’m not going to get both rough drafts done like I wanted, but one is theoretically possible.

Without further ado…

“What time is everybody going to be here?” Nate stood on a chair and taped the last streamer into place.

“About one. I just invited family and a few friends. I hope that’s okay.” I had done most of the planning for Maddie’s first birthday party, but that was fine with me. They lived in Kansas City after all and all of the family was here. All I’d really done was invite our families over and a couple of couples from church with kids about the same age. Voila. Instant guest list. Of course, I’d ordered a cake, but was asked to get Disney princesses. So all I had to do was pick which princess cake and an adorable outfit for the birthday girl.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except that I was nauseated constantly. I was exhausted and sick and running ragged without having even the simplest of parties to plan. I should have just told Nate and everyone else that I was pregnant. Then no one would have expected me to do so much work. But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for that and I wouldn’t be. My mom knew. I suspected Bev suspected, but I didn’t let on to anyone else.

“Thank you again for doing all of this. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“No problem. It’s what I’m here for.”

The talk remained on the mundane, never turning to the one topic we all wanted to avoid on Maddie’s first birthday. I was glad it was a Saturday. That way the party could be on the actual day rather than the day after. Tomorrow was going to be too hard to put on a happy face and pretend everything was okay.