The Things We Wish Were True (20 page)

EVERETT

Everett had been relieved when Bryte scheduled her meeting for the same afternoon as his appointment, but dismayed when she told him what she was going to meet about. She wouldn’t be home when he got home, which gave him time to think over how he was going to present whatever the doctor said to him. He would have a glass of wine or two, play with his son, and go over the best way to approach her while he waited for her. Trouble was, he now had two challenges: to talk her into whatever the doctor said, and to talk her out of getting a job right now if that meant they would not pursue having a second child. Of course she had the right to go back to work if she wanted. He was just surprised that was what she wanted all of a sudden. Until recently she’d been happy at home. His talk of another child had sent her running in the other direction, and he needed to find out why.

“I’m just covering my bases,” she’d assured him that morning. “Seeing what my options are. It could be good for us.”

The doctor bustled into his office and sat down at his desk, interrupting his thoughts. Dr. Ferguson opened a file folder and looked it over, then looked up. “I’ll say it again that this is quite unusual having a husband come in without his wife.” He gave Everett a conspiratorial smile, as if the two of them were in cahoots. He thought inexplicably of the kids he’d grown up with in the neighborhood, their many games of “boys versus girls.”

“I’m just covering my bases,” Everett said, echoing Bryte. “Seeing what my options are.”

Dr. Ferguson looked down at the chart. He kept his eyes on the words and numbers printed there when he spoke again. “Are you here to discuss a donor?” he asked. “I know some men struggle with that, but it’s done more often than you might think.”

Everett’s heart rate picked up, and he stared at the bald spot on the top of the doctor’s head, as he processed his words. “I—uh, a donor? For, um, what?” he managed to stammer the words out.

The other man raised his head. “A sperm donor,” he said. There was a weariness in his voice, a heaviness that told Everett he hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. No man wanted to tell another man he shot blanks, even if it was part of his job.

The doctor flipped through the file in front of him to avoid his eyes. “That’s really your only option,” he said to the paper.

Everett stood up abruptly, his sudden movement startling the doctor. “You know, you’re probably right,” he said. “I should probably come back another time. With my wife.”

Dr. Ferguson blinked at him a few times. Everett considered just bolting out of the room. In the silence, he was already piecing it together. If he was infertile, if they needed a donor to get pregnant, then where had his son come from?

“You didn’t know,” the doctor said in realization.

Everett considered lying. But how could he lie about this?
Oh, sure, I knew. I just . . . forgot.
He exhaled loudly. “No,” he said. “She never told me and I . . . never asked. When she got pregnant, I was just . . . happy.” He looked up at the doctor and decided he never wanted to see this man again. If it meant they never had another child, so be it. “I was just really happy.”

He started to walk out of the office, but the doctor’s voice stopped him. He stood still but didn’t bother to meet the other man’s eyes this time. “Mr. Lewis,” he said, “you can still be happy.”

Everett nodded once, then fled.

BRYTE

Trent still drank gin and tonics. And he still drank a lot of them. She watched him down the second one just as fast as the first, then raise his hand for another. His tolerance had to be incredible. Her own tolerance had dropped off significantly since she’d become a mother, and six a.m. wake-up calls became de rigueur.

It hadn’t taken him long to suggest they move from the hotel bar to the hotel couches. She stirred her drink, a weak Crown and ginger, and took a polite, dainty sip. The last time she’d matched him, drink for drink. When she’d stood to her feet and swayed upon standing, he’d been quick to offer to help her to her room, extending his arm gallantly. She’d rested her own hand unsteadily in the crook of his elbow and given him a coquettish smile. Tonight she met his eyes and saw not quite the same look she’d gotten that long-ago evening, but a look that was on the verge of that one.

“Stay for dinner,” he said. “We’ll talk more. About the job. And where I could use you.”

She almost said, “Oh, what the hell,” and ordered another drink. For a moment she was tempted to let things go the way they once went. It would work just the way it had before. She knew that in her depths the same way she’d known it back then, the knowledge settling inside her like a stone dropped into water. But Everett’s face filled her mind, edging out any possibility she might’ve been considering. Whatever she’d come here to do wasn’t going to happen. Time had passed. Things were different. She wasn’t a woman who could do that. She never really had been. Though her son wasn’t a mistake, what she’d done had been. She would wrestle with that for the rest of her life.

She smiled without showing any teeth and looked back down at her drink. “Can’t,” she said.

“Oh, yeah. The kid.” He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, there’s dinner and bath time and story and . . .” She looked up at him as Christopher’s face filled her mind. She held up her hands. “It’s quite a production.”

He received a fresh drink from the bartender and gave it a vigorous stir. “Sounds like it.” He took a greedy gulp and leered at her. “If I were you, I’d welcome a break from it.”

The words were on the tip of her tongue:
Well, you’re not me.
But there was no point in being contentious. She needed to get out of there, as politely and quickly as she could. He was still a good business contact. Someone she might need someday. No sense making things weird between them. Weirder.

“Actually, I enjoy it, as strange as that sounds.” She made a production of checking her phone for the time. “In fact, I better be going.” She pulled her wallet from her purse to pay for her drink, but he held up his hand. “I’ve got this. Business expense.” She’d always been business to him, and that was good. That was what she needed him to think. She didn’t need his affection, his emotion, his reminiscences of that night. He’d served his purpose when she’d needed him. She cringed internally at the thought of what Trent Miller had been to her.

She put her wallet away and gave him what she hoped passed for a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said. She made sure she looked him in the eye when she thanked him, held his gaze.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, leaving the faintest imprint of her lips behind as she pulled away. “It was so good to see you again.”

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows, his expression reminding her of Christopher. “Call me if you ever need . . . anything,” he said. He gave her that captain-of-industry grin and turned back to his drink. She rose from the bar and left him behind.

Bryte slid into her car, pulse racing as though she’d just escaped from a crazed killer instead of a handsome man who’d been interested in more than just her résumé. She closed the car door harder than necessary, the slamming sound reverberating in the mostly empty parking garage.

She turned the key in the ignition, and the radio came on loud, blasting an oldies station she’d played on the drive over. She reached for the knob and turned it down. She just wanted silence.

At the same moment that her hand touched the knob, the sound of the singing voices registered in her head, making a kind of unexpected sense. Heart singing, Ann and Nancy’s voices blending. She turned down the volume and leaned back against the seat with a sigh, the fingers of a headache beginning to massage her brain. It had been that damn Heart song that had started everything.

She recalled the image of sliding into the rental car that afternoon nearly four years ago, her heart heavy with what she’d just learned from the doctor. Heart was singing then, too, a “lost hit” that she’d forgotten all about until she heard it that day. As she listened to the words, the kernel of an idea took root in her mind, a vague what-if she never intended to go through with, until that very night, she did.

She shook her head to dislodge the memory and put the car into reverse, easing out of the parking space and pointing herself in the direction of home. She couldn’t get there fast enough. Once she got home, she could stop thinking of all this nonsense, immerse herself in her husband and child, in dinner and bath and story and bed, in the familiarity of a home she didn’t deserve but was desperate to hang on to. Her mistake was in the past, and with any luck, she would keep it there forever.

The noise of the television playing cartoons was the first thing she heard when she stepped inside the house. Bryte let the sound of normality wash over her as she stepped into the kitchen, already looking toward opening the refrigerator and what she would pull out to cook, just to keep busy.

But when she turned and saw Everett sitting at the kitchen table, she knew instinctively it wasn’t going to be that simple. His eyes, as they met hers, told her that something had happened while she was away. Something terrible. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her insides turning to jelly. She stepped toward him, but he put up his hand like a traffic cop. Don’t come any closer, he was saying. She stopped moving, her hand resting on the kitchen island.

“I saw Dr. Ferguson today,” he said.

No, no, no, no, no!
her mind screamed. This can’t be happening. Not now. She blinked at him and said nothing.

“I’d intended it to be a surprise for you. Instead I got the surprise,” Everett added. He gave a little bitter laugh.

She nodded once and closed her eyes to block the vision of his mournful face. Her stomach twisted in on itself, and she gripped the island harder.

“He’s not—” His voice gave out, and he swallowed, cleared his throat, a choking sound. He tried his voice again. “He’s not mine.”

She understood that he wasn’t asking a question, that he’d drawn his own conclusion with no help or explanation. She nodded again and looked down, studying her white knuckles. She was hanging on to this island, and suddenly the name of this kitchen fixture had taken on a whole new meaning.

“Who?” he asked. The word felt like a slap, and she felt the impact of it reverberate through her. She’d been waiting for this moment—dreading that one word—for a long time.

She took a deep breath before answering. “Someone from work.” She paused. “It doesn’t matter.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, leaned forward as if he was trying to get a good look at her. “Doesn’t matter?” His voice was incredulous. “Of course it does.”

She looked toward the den, where Christopher was watching TV. She shushed him, turning to him with fire in her eyes. He leaned back, chastised. “You’re his father,” she said, keeping her voice even and calm with something inside her she didn’t know she possessed.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought until this afternoon. And you let me think that. Like an idiot.”

“You are his father,” she said again. “In every way that counts.” She thought of Christopher’s biological father tossing back gin and tonics like water, loving the sound of his own voice, reeking of a confidence that—in a weak moment years ago—had seemed like a good quality. She wanted no part of Trent except the part that had been invisible to the naked eye, the part that had enabled her to become a mother. She’d absconded with that part, and he’d never missed it, sleeping oblivious, his arms thrown over his head while she crept out of his hotel room as light dawned in the window over the bed.

Everett sighed, a long exhalation that sounded like it was coming from the huge crack in his chest, a crack she’d created just the same as if she’d swung a hatchet and lodged it there. She crossed over to him and knelt in front of him, her words tumbling out. “The words ‘I’m sorry’ fall so short, but . . . I was crazed over what I’d learned about you—about us—and I thought, I thought it would be a way that we could still have the family we wanted and—” She stopped, knowing how stupid this would sound but also knowing she had to admit to it. “I thought no one ever had to know and no one would get hurt. I was so, so stupid.” She tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look back at her. He kept his gaze just over the top of her head, looking instead at the refrigerator just behind her, papered with photos and reminders of the life they had together, their little family of three. He’d wanted nothing but that, and she’d been determined to give it to him.

A long silence passed. Her knees ached from stooping in front of him, but she didn’t dare move. She kept her posture penitent, staying as close as he would allow. “Is that who you met today? The ‘guy from work.’” He gave a little ironic laugh. “I thought it was weird that you suddenly wanted to go back to work.” He shook his finger at her. “But I believed you.” He put his hand back in his lap and kept his gaze there. “I always believed you.”

Her knees throbbing, she eased out of the position she was in and slumped into the chair next to his. She let the silence stretch between them for a few minutes as she gathered her words. She kept her gaze on the top of his head, willing him to look up even though she knew it was futile. She began to speak.

“You got called into that big meeting that day, and you couldn’t go to the doctor with me. You told me to tell you what I found out, and you said it so flippantly as you walked out the door. You said, ‘You tell the doc we’re up for the challenge.’ You kissed my forehead and sauntered out the door, and I so envied you, your ability to always expect the best. I’d lost that more and more with each passing month we didn’t get pregnant.”

She paused for him to speak, but he didn’t, so she continued. “So after the doctor told me what he found, I walked around numb for a while, just trying to figure out how to tell you. And what it meant. And I decided exactly what to say, had this whole rousing speech ready to give you. But when you walked in and asked how it went, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that it was you. That no amount of trying was going to fix what was wrong.”

“So you lied to me,” he said.

She started to tell him it wasn’t a lie, but he was right. It was. “Yes,” she said. “I told you that we’d just have to try harder. And that night we did try. And all I could think while it was happening was, I’m probably ovulating and it doesn’t even matter.” She caught his eye, finally, and held his gaze. “It was never going to matter,” she said without flinching.

“So you got back at me?” He gave her a challenging look. “Because I couldn’t get you pregnant? Found someone who could?”

She shook her head, leaned toward him imploringly. “No,” she said, the word emphatic. “Getting back at you never entered my mind.
Keeping
you did.” She tried to catch his eye again, but he wouldn’t look at her. “You wanted a child, a family, so much. We were so close to having everything we talked about. I couldn’t face what might happen if we couldn’t.”

“What might happen?” he asked.

Her voice was very quiet, barely more than a whisper. “You might stop loving me.”

She watched as the words sank in, hopeful that they might change the direction of the conversation. But when he spoke, it was clear he wanted to keep fighting—if only, she knew, to keep the pain at bay for a bit longer.

“So you just took matters into your own hands.” He gestured toward the den and the cartoons and the little boy watching them in rapt attention. She was grateful Christopher loved TV the way he did at that moment.