The pregnancy tests

The pregnancy tests are three ordinary diagnostic objects that become the center of a private crisis in Tuscany and, later, a lasting image in Poppy Wright’s memory. Their negative results settle the immediate question of whether she is pregnant; the scene surrounding them also exposes how closely Poppy’s imagined future is bound to Alex Nilsen and how much she depends on his presence.

The tests and their circumstances

Poppy’s alarm begins with a delayed period and nausea after drinking a large amount of red wine. She knows that a delay of two days can happen and that the nausea could have another explanation, especially given her migraines, but that knowledge does not stop her panic. The tests therefore enter a space between what she can reason through and what she feels compelled to know. Before dawn, she takes the rental-car keys, drives thirty-eight minutes to the nearest twenty-four-hour grocery store, and returns to the villa with three pregnancy tests.

At first, the most expensive test is the one she holds. On the terrace, she paces with it clenched in one hand and tries to steady her breathing. The object is small enough to grip, but in this moment it concentrates a question that she cannot answer by thinking alone. When Alex appears at the open door, dressed for an early run, Poppy turns back toward the valley. She starts crying without looking at him; he takes her hand and opens it to see the test. Its visible presence makes the fear she has been carrying private no longer: Alex can now respond to the possibility alongside her.

Taking the tests

Alex is silent for ten seconds before asking whether Poppy has taken one. Their silence gives the test’s result a weight neither of them can resolve in advance. Poppy raises the prospect of what a pregnancy would mean in practical terms, including moving to Indiana and living near Alex and Sarah Torval. Alex does not offer a settled plan. He says he is there and that they can work out what happens after she takes the test, leaving the decision about what she wants with Poppy.

Poppy goes inside with the bag she had set down and the single test she is still gripping. She urinates on all three tests at once, then brings them back outside. The change from one test held alone to three laid in a row turns the moment into a shared wait: Alex sets a timer on his watch, and they stand beside the low stone wall surrounding the terrace without speaking. The watch’s beep marks the end of waiting, while the tests provide the answers in sequence. Each is negative.

Results and relationship

The negative results resolve the immediate uncertainty, but they do not produce uncomplicated relief. Poppy cries again and cannot tell whether she is relieved or experiencing something more complicated. Alex pulls her against his chest and rocks her gently from side to side while she regains her composure. The tests can establish that the feared pregnancy is not present; they cannot settle what the fear has revealed about their relationship or what Poppy wants from the future.

Afterward, Poppy tells Alex that she cannot keep doing this to him. Her words connect the crisis to a recurring dependence: the tests have made visible not only a possible pregnancy but also the fact that, in a moment of fear, she needs Alex beside her. Their conversation about a hypothetical future—one in which she might move near him and Sarah—has not produced a solution. Instead, the scene ends with Poppy naming the strain she believes her need places on him.

The recalled image

Three years later, Poppy remembers the episode with the tests as a sharply preserved scene. She recalls the terrace before sunrise, her arms crossed tightly and her nails bitten to the quick, with the tests lined up on the stone wall and Alex’s watch sounding the signal to learn what the future held. The remembered objects organize the scene: the row of tests, the wall, and the timer bring back not an abstract fear but the specific ritual through which she and Alex waited together.

That memory changes meaning when Poppy thinks again about what happened on the Tuscany trip. She recalls Alex breaking down after she had gathered herself, lowering his head and crying against her as she told him she could not keep needing him. She now understands the past in the light of the fact that Alex had been going to marry Sarah. The tests themselves have not changed, and their results remain negative; what changes is Poppy’s reading of the intimacy around them. As a recurring image, they hold together the practical outcome of the scare and the more difficult recognition of how much Alex mattered to her.