Another Man's Child

“I bought a house in Chicago,” he said. “I can move in anytime.”

“What?” she cried, her expression shocked. He had her full attention now. “You’re moving? You can’t move.”

“I thought you’d want this house, but if not, we’ll get you another. You can have whatever you want, Lis. What’s mine will always be yours. The divorce won’t change that.” Even as he said the words he wondered if he was trying to hold her with the one thing he’d always known people wanted from him—his money. “Unless you want it to, that is,” he added. Smooth, Cartwright, real smooth.

“Divorce?” The blood drained from her face. “You’re asking for a divorce?”

She wasn’t supposed to take it so hard. He wanted her to be thankful for her freedom, to make this just a little bit easy on him. “It’s the only answer, Lis.”

She jumped up from the couch. “It’s no answer at all! You can’t divorce me now. I’m pregnant!” she hollered, throwing the pillow she’d been holding at him.

The pillow hit Marcus in the face and dropped into his lap. Did she say pregnant? Lisa was pregnant? He saw the confirmation in the still way she held herself, the strained look in her face. Relief rushed through him. Profound relief, leaving him weak. He didn’t have to leave.

And then it hit him. The baby wasn’t his. Couldn’t possibly be his. Nor could it be some anonymous donor’s; he knew he had to sign a waiver for that to happen, and he hadn’t, had he? Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if he’d make it to the bathroom in time to be sick. He’d known Lisa wasn’t happy. And he’d have bet his life on her fidelity. Who the hell is this man who’d laid his hands on my wife? He’d not only lost Lisa’s friendship, he’d lost her loyalty. And suddenly nothing mattered. Nothing.

“Who’s the father?” he asked, because it seemed like something he should say, not because he ever wanted to know. The deed was done. The whos and whys no longer mattered.

The part of him that was outside the entire scene, watching dispassionately as his life crumbled around him, saw Lisa fall to her knees in front of him. And that same part felt her clutch desperately at his hand with both of hers. It saw the pain in her eyes and wanted to reach out to her, make her pain go away.

But he sat frozen. His love for Lisa, his marriage of ten years, had been a mockery. He’d thought these last couple of weeks of living with Lisa and knowing he was losing her had cost him more emotionally than anything else in his entire life. He’d been wrong.

“Oh, Marcus, I’m so sorry,” Lisa was saying. She was crying, too. His slacks were becoming damp with her tears.

He watched her silently, saw her wrenching display of emotion, afraid of how much he was going to feel if he allowed himself to feel.

“I…I didn’t mean for you to find out this way,” she said brokenly. “I had everything all planned. Oh, Marcus, I did it for you. I love you so much. Please believe me—the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.”

“I’m not hurt,” Marcus said. It was true. He wasn’t feeling anything at all.

“When you said that about a divorce, the news just came tumbling out. I’m so sorry, honey. There is no father other than you. I haven’t been with anybody but you.” She looked up, and her big brown eyes, so full of love, implored him to understand. “I was artificially inseminated, Marcus.”

He didn’t react. All he felt was confusion. She did this without his knowledge or agreement? Or had he…Numb, Marcus just stared at her.

“After my birthd

ay and that horrible conversation we had about knowing when it was over,” Lisa went on, “I knew it was only a matter of time before you convinced yourself I’d be happier without you. But you’re wrong, Marcus. You’re the other half of myself, and no other man, and no baby, either, is ever going to complete me the way you do.”

She paused, still gazing up at him, as if waiting for his reaction. When Marcus continued to stare at her silently, she started to speak again, but had to pause when fresh tears choked her. Marcus watched as she blinked them away, swallowed and began again. “I also know that if you left, you’d never be happy again, either.”

Marcus flinched, almost overwhelmed by a pain that was frightening in its split-second intensity. And then it was gone. His happiness wasn’t her problem.

“I know you, Marcus,” she said, her voice firm for the first time since he’d walked in the door. “You’d have lived out the rest of your life alone, never knowing the greatest of joys, only the greatest of sorrows. And I love you too much to see that happen. So I went to see Beth.”

He said nothing.

“I chose a specimen that matched you completely—brown hair, blue eyes, six-one, 186 pounds—”

“I weigh 180,” Marcus said. It mattered somehow.

“—even the same blood type,” she continued, as if he hadn’t interrupted. “It was just one little vial in a bank, Marcus, sort of like blood in a blood bank…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes still pleading with him to understand.

Rage consumed Marcus, blurring the sight of his wife on her knees in front of his chair. She had another man’s seed in her womb. She was his wife, but she had another man’s child growing inside of her. He clenched every muscle in his body, willing himself to remain controlled, to keep a hold on the violence shuddering inside of him.

“Say something, Marcus. Please say something.” She was crying again. And begging. And no matter what she’d done, he couldn’t bear to see her like that.

“You went to Beth,” he said, concentrating on that piece of information. His wife had betrayed him, but he was apparently still the only one who knew the delights of her body. At the moment, that small victory hardly seemed to matter.

“She’s the only one who knows,” Lisa said, her voice contrite.