Another Man's Child

“What about Oliver?” Marcus asked, thinking of his visit to his father-in-law that afternoon. Had Oliver known?

Lisa shook her head. “Only Beth.”

Marcus nodded. He didn’t know what else she wanted from him.

“It’s our baby, Marcus. Yours as much as mine.”

No! his mind screamed. The seed she was carrying had nothing to do with him. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

“You’re as much a part of the reason for this baby’s existence as I am, Marcus.”

She wasn’t going to rationalize this one away with pretty words. There was too much at stake.

He heard her crying again, but he didn’t look at her. He didn’t dare look at her.

“Th-that night I called you home. We made love. That’s when our baby was conceived, Marcus. I know. Until your love was inside me, I couldn’t accept the sperm Beth had given me. My body was rejecting it. Until you.”

More pretty words. Marcus didn’t trust himself to speak. He stared straight ahead, wishing she wouldn’t touch him, wishing she’d leave him to his numbness. He didn’t think he could hold on much longer.

She ran her hand along his forearm. “Eighty percent of women who are artificially inseminated by a donor don’t conceive the first time. But I knew, Marcus. That night I knew we’d made a baby.”

Thinking back to that night, to the intensity with which he’d made love to her, remembering how he’d poured his heart and soul into her, Marcus felt used.

And betrayed.

And jealous.

He stood up abruptly and headed for the door before he gave himself another reason to hate himself. Jealous. What kind of man did that make him, that he was jealous of his own wife’s ability to conceive. Jealous because she was having the baby they’d always wanted, that she wouldn’t have to pretend that she, not someone else, had created their child.

He heard her call after him, but he couldn’t slow down. He had to get out of there before he did something he’d regret.

HE DROVE FOR HOURS with no idea where he was going. He didn’t care. He just kept driving. Thoughts whirled through his mind, torturing him. Lisa’s dream was coming true and his was not, never would. She was moving on without him. They were no longer part of the same whole. He thought he’d prepared himself to face that eventuality. But nothing could have prepared him for the agony that ripped through him now, making him yell out into the silence, bringing tears to his cheeks.

He was surprised to find them there. He hadn’t thought himself capable of tears. Hadn’t cried since he’d been a young boy, forgotten at boarding school during the first two days of summer vacation one year. It had taken the school that long to locate his parents in Europe and for them send someone to pick him up.

Lisa was having a baby. Another man’s baby. A stranger had been able to do for her what he could not. No matter how he looked at it, the fact was like acid, eating him up inside.

He drove faster and faster, until the roads became blurred and he was skidding around corners. Finally he checked himself into a run-down motel for the night. It had everything he needed. Which meant no phone.

LISA SPENT THE NIGHT alone, wandering through the rooms of Marcus’s family home, touching his things, looking at pictures of the many generations of Cartwrights and worrying herself sick about the man she loved more than life itself. She needed desperately to lean on her best friend, to talk to him, to try to make sense of a world spinning too rapidly out of control—but he’d just walked out on her and she didn’t know if he was ever coming back.

When the minutes stretched into hours and it became obvious that Marcus wasn’t coming home for dinner, Lisa showered, changed into a pair of jogging pants and one of his Yale sweatshirts, fixed herself some toast and made herself eat it. She was having Marcus’s baby, and she was going to take care of it for him, even if he didn’t want it. This child would be a Cartwright just like all the other Cartwrights who had left their mark on this town. He would have the same strength of character, the same determination, the same ability to dream. She would make sure of it.

BETH MONTAGUE stayed late at the office on Friday. She always had things she could do, lab reports to go over, dictation to finish, but the work on her desk wasn’t what was keeping her there. Oliver was in a meeting at the hospital. He was lobbying for new dialysis equipment for the ward where Barbara had spent so much time during the last years of her life. Beth wondered if it was wrong of her to hope he was still going to stop by after he was done fighting for his wife’s cause.

And she worried about what he was going to think when he found out what she and Lisa had done. Would he blame her for her part in Lisa’s decision?

The phone on her desk was eerily silent. She’d been waiting all afternoon to see how things had gone between Lisa and Marcus. Why hadn’t Lisa called?

Beth picked up the phone to call her friend, but then put it back down. This was a special time for Lisa and Marcus, to be shared by just the two of them. If things went as well as Lisa had hoped, that was. And if they didn’t…

Beth’s gaze alighted on the picture of her husband. Dear, sweet, absentminded John. How she’d loved him! How she missed him! What would he think of her, interfering like this in her friend’s business? She glanced at her watch and then at the door again. What would he think of her sitting here like an adolescent on the off chance her friend’s father would stop by?

John’s image seemed to be looking at her. She knew he’d say she should have left Lisa and Marcus to deal with their problem on their own. And as usual, he’d have been right. Oliver was going to think the same thing.

John would also consider her kind to befriend his lonely colleague. Though he’d wonder why, if she wanted Oliver to stop by, she hadn’t just asked him to. Funny how much older Oliver had seemed than she and John when John and Barbara had been alive.

Barbara. Lisa’s mother would have been thrilled to learn she was finally going to be a grandmother. She wouldn’t have given the artificial means of conception a thought, other than to be thankful that the option was available. And eventually, with Barbara’s help, Oliver would have seen things that way, as well—