Run Away Baby

“Or maybe you’re sad?” he said.

“No. I’m really happy,” she said.

“Then say it like you mean it,” he whispered.

“I’m happy,” she repeated.

“If you’re not, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.”

The door opened and the UPS guy walked in.

“Hello, Yellow!” he said to Abby. “You look like sunshine today!”

Charlie stepped back, nodding at him. He couldn’t hide his annoyance at the intrusion.

“Hi, Dave,” said Abby.

“It’s Grand Central Station around here today,” said Dave. “The Fed Ex guy’s right behind me. Sign here, Abby. Do you want these in the breakroom?”

“Sure,” she said, just as the Fed Ex guy walked in.

“See you soon,” said Charlie, leaving without taking her stack of mail.

Abby scribbled her name on the Fed Ex guy’s tablet and ran after Charlie with the mail. He hadn’t gotten far. She suspected he’d left the mail there on purpose.

“Charlie! Wait up! You forgot these,” she said.

“Oh. Sorry about that.” He took them from her, making a point to let his hand linger on hers.

She yanked her hand away. “Okay. See ya,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he called after her.

She shook her head. If this guy didn’t tone it down, he was going to get her in trouble.

Chapter 10

People assumed Abby was a second or third wife, that she broke up something sacred and more real than what she and Randall now had. She was, however, his first wife. His one and only. She could see the irony in something so bad having had an honest start.

Her first year with Randall wasn’t that awful. They traveled more back then, six or eight trips a year, and he worked less, distracted enough by the newness of her to take a hiatus from being a workaholic.

She’d thought having children was part of why he’d married her, until the day she checked the messages on their answering machine and heard a confirmation from the doctor’s office for his upcoming vasectomy appointment. They’d discussed starting a family two weeks earlier while lazing on a beach in Hawaii. She had thought it had been a discussion, anyhow. She’d told Randall that she would like to have a baby and he’d told her that she would be cute when she was pregnant. She had felt like she was beautiful to him that day. Not in a trophy kind of way, but in some softer, sweeter way. It had been an actual aphrodisiac; they’d gone inside their hotel room and had not-even-that-bad sex. “Maybe I should go off the pill?” she’d asked him and he’d said, “Maybe.”

That trip was the happiest Abby had ever been with Randall. She had resigned herself to this being her life, and she’d realized it wasn’t all bad. The vasectomy call was a total blindside. It was the first time Randall’s rampant selfishness and dishonesty had been directed toward her. She was convinced the call was a mistake. When he got home that night she asked him about it and he didn’t even deny it.

“I thought it was for the best. I’m too old to be a father, and you’re too young and beautiful to be a mother. Don’t you think we’ve got a good thing going here just like it is?”

“This isn’t the kind of thing you decide without talking to me.”

“It’s my body,” he said.

“What about that talk we were having in Hawaii?”

“What talk?”

“We were talking about maybe starting a family.”

“I don’t remember that.”