Updated Nov 25, 2025 • ~9 min read
Three weeks before we were supposed to disappear, I missed my period.
I didn’t tell Leander immediately. Told myself it was stress. The documentary tour. The constant travel. Bodies do weird things under pressure.
But when I missed the second week, I had to face reality.
I might be pregnant.
I took three tests. All positive.
I sat on the bathroom floor. Staring at pink lines that changed everything.
We’d talked about kids. Vaguely. In the someday-maybe-future kind of way. Not in the right-now-while-we’re-barely-holding-our-marriage-together way.
“Morgana?” Leander knocked. “You’ve been in there twenty minutes. Everything okay?”
I opened the door. Showed him the tests.
“Oh,” he said. Then: “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you—how do you feel?”
“Terrified. Confused. Uncertain. You?”
“Same. But also—” He paused. “—kind of excited? Is that weird?”
“Everything about us is weird. Why should pregnancy be different?”
We sat on the bathroom floor together. Processing.
“We just decided to disappear,” I said. “Start over. Be normal. A baby complicates that.”
“Or clarifies it. Gives us a reason to choose normal. To build something real.”
“We don’t know how to be normal. We’ve spent six months performing or recovering from performing. How do we raise a child?”
“Carefully? With lots of therapy? I don’t know. But Morgana, people messier than us have kids all the time.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s honest.”
I laughed despite everything. “We’re going to be terrible parents.”
“Probably. But we’ll be terrible together. That counts for something.”
“Does it though? Or are we just traumatizing another generation?”
“You want to keep it?”
Did I? I wasn’t sure. I’d never imagined being a mother. Definitely never imagined being a mother with a man I’d met by accidentally slapping him at a wedding.
“I think so? Maybe? Ask me tomorrow when I’m less terrified.”
“Fair.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Kept thinking about timelines. About bringing a child into our chaos. About whether we were ready.
Spoiler: we weren’t.
“I need to tell you something,” I said in the dark.
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure I want to be a mother. I never have been. I’ve spent my whole life building a career, exposing corruption, being independent. A child changes everything. Takes away that independence. And I don’t know if I’m ready to give that up.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Just okay?”
“What else should I say? It’s your body. Your choice. Whatever you decide, I support.”
“But you want it. The baby. I saw your face when you said you were excited.”
“I am excited. But I’m more committed to you. If you don’t want this, we don’t do it. That’s non-negotiable.”
“You’d really be okay with that?”
“I’d be sad. But I’d understand. And I’d still choose you. Every time. Baby or no baby.”
I cried. Hormones maybe. Or relief. Or fear. Probably all three.
“I don’t know what I want,” I admitted. “I think I want it. But I’m scared. What if we’re terrible parents? What if our kid ends up in therapy talking about how we met by accident and built everything on lies?”
“Our kid will definitely be in therapy. But Morgana, every parent messes up. At least we’re going in knowing we’re flawed. That’s better than pretending we’re not.”
“Is it?”
“I think so. I hope so. Ask me in eighteen years.”
The next day, we saw a doctor. Confirmed the pregnancy. Eight weeks along.
“You’re due in November,” the doctor said. “Congratulations. Do you have any questions?”
A million questions. But none I could articulate.
Walking out of the office, Leander said, “We need to tell people. Family. Friends. The press will find out eventually.”
“The press. God. Can you imagine the headlines? ‘Wedding Crashers Expecting: Is It Real or Another Contract?'”
“People are terrible.”
“People are people. Terrible is baseline.”
We told Paisley first. She cried. Happy tears.
“I’m going to be an aunt! Morgana, this is wonderful!”
“Is it? We’re a disaster. We’re barely functional adults.”
“So? Your kid will be a disaster too. It’ll be fine.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s realistic. Children survive imperfect parents all the time. You’ll be great. Or adequate. Adequacy is underrated.”
We told Atkins next. Her response: “Holy shit. You’re keeping it?”
“I think so? Still deciding.”
“Can I be the cool godmother who teaches them to swear?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Worth a shot.”
But then the news leaked. Before we could control the narrative. Before we were ready.
“Wedding Crasher Morgana Duffy Pregnant with Billionaire Leander Cork’s Child: Planned or Accident?”
The comments were vicious:
“She baby-trapped him. Classic gold digger move.”
“This is just another storyline for their documentary. Nothing with them is real.”
“That poor child. Born to parents who can’t tell truth from performance.”
I read them until Leander took my phone away.
“Stop. They don’t know us. They don’t matter.”
“They’re saying I trapped you. That the baby is a scheme.”
“People said we were con artists too. Didn’t make it true. Ignore them.”
“I can’t. They’re talking about our child. About whether they should exist. That’s not ignorable.”
“Then we tell our truth. Again. One more time. Make it clear this wasn’t planned but it’s wanted.”
“Is it wanted?”
He looked at me. “Do you want it?”
“I’m scared of it. That’s different from not wanting it.”
“Okay. Then we want it. And we tell people that. Scared but committed.”
We did another interview. This time with Helena Drake again. She’d become our de facto truth-teller.
“The pregnancy,” she said. “Planned?”
“No,” I answered. “Accidental. We were supposed to disappear. Start over. A baby wasn’t in the plan.”
“But you’re keeping it?”
“We are. Not because we’re ready. We’re not. But because we’ve learned that planning is overrated. Life happens. You adapt.”
“Some people think you’re using the pregnancy for publicity.”
“Some people think the earth is flat. Can’t control what people think. Can only be honest about what’s true.”
“And the truth is?”
“We’re terrified. Unprepared. Probably going to make every mistake in the parenting book. But we’re trying. That’s all anyone can do.”
Leander added, “I spent years calculating every move. Trying to control outcomes. It never worked. Life is chaotic. Our marriage is chaotic. Now our family will be chaotic. We’re making peace with that.”
The interview helped. Slightly. The trolls still trolled. But we got messages from other people—other couples who’d had unexpected pregnancies, other parents who felt unprepared.
“You’re giving me hope that imperfect people can still be good parents.”
“Thank you for being honest about being scared. I’m pregnant too and terrified. This helps.”
Maybe our chaos could help people. Maybe that was worth something.
But then complications started.
Spotting at ten weeks. I panicked. Rushed to the hospital.
“It’s common,” the doctor said. “But we’ll monitor you closely. You need to reduce stress. No travel. No press tours. Rest.”
“I have contractual obligations—”
“You have a pregnancy to maintain. That’s your priority now. Everything else can wait.”
I canceled the rest of the documentary tour. Declined interviews. Focused on staying pregnant.
But staying still gave me too much time to think.
About whether we could really do this. About bringing a child into our mess. About whether love was enough when everything else was chaos.
“I’m scared we’re making a mistake,” I told Leander one night.
“We probably are. But it’s our mistake. Our choice. That matters.”
“Does it? Or are we just being selfish? Bringing a kid into our disaster because we want to feel normal?”
“Maybe. But Morgana, there’s no perfect time. No perfect parents. Just people trying their best. We can do that. Maybe barely. But we can.”
At twelve weeks, the spotting stopped. The baby was stable.
“You’re out of the danger zone,” the doctor said. “But still—take it easy. This pregnancy is high-risk given your stress levels.”
High-risk. Like everything else in our lives.
But the baby held on. Stubborn. Like me.
“It’s fighter,” Leander said, looking at the ultrasound. “Already dealing with our chaos.”
“Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Or stands the best chance. Chaos survival skills from birth. That’s useful.”
At sixteen weeks, we found out the sex.
“Do you want to know?” the technician asked.
We looked at each other.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re done with surprises. Tell us everything.”
“It’s a girl.”
A girl.
I’d been so focused on whether I could handle pregnancy, I hadn’t thought about who this baby would become.
But a girl. A daughter.
“We’re having a daughter,” Leander said, voice thick.
“A girl who’ll grow up knowing her parents met because I slapped her father at a wedding I crashed. That’s quite an origin story.”
“She’ll be tough. Have to be, with us as parents.”
That night, we talked about names. About nurseries. About the future we hadn’t planned but were building anyway.
“I want to name her something strong,” I said. “Something that means fighter. She’ll need that with our genetics.”
We looked through name books. Debated. Disagreed. Finally compromised.
“Briony,” Leander suggested. “Means strong. Plus it’s Irish, like your grandmother.”
“Briony Cork. It works.”
“Briony Cork-Duffy. If you want to hyphenate.”
“I do. Let her have both our chaos. Equal opportunity disaster.”
“Briony Cork-Duffy. Our daughter.”
Saying it made it real. We were having a daughter. Briony. Who’d inherit our mess and hopefully our resilience.
“She’s going to hate us,” I said.
“Probably. All teenagers hate their parents. We’ll just give her better reasons.”
“That’s terrible parenting philosophy.”
“We contain multitudes. Including terrible philosophy.”
But lying in bed that night, Leander’s hand on my growing belly, I felt something unexpected:
Hope.
Not that we’d be perfect. We wouldn’t.
Not that everything would work out. It might not.
But hope that we could do this. Build a family. Give Briony a home—chaotic, honest, real.
“I love you,” I said. “Even though you’re impossible.”
“I love you. Even though you crashed a wedding and destroyed my life.”
“Best thing I ever did.”
“Worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Same thing.”
“Exactly.”
We fell asleep. Parents-to-be. Unprepared. Terrified. Committed.
Building something new from our disaster.
One stubborn day at a time.
Just like everything else.
Together.
Always together.
Even when it scared us.
Especially then.
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