Becca's Baby

“On what grounds?”

Will could almost see his thoughts spinning.

“You’ve been seen coming and going from her apartment. I’ve been told there are pictures.”

Todd swore, the way they’d done as boys first testing their manhood. It sounded a lot worse at forty-two than it had at fourteen.

“I haven’t seen any photos,” Will told him. “They may not exist.” Until half an hour ago, he’d been certain they hadn’t. Damn.

“Where do we go from here?” Todd asked.

Good question. Will knew what he was required to do—but Todd was his friend and deserved whatever help Will could give him.

“Let me do some discreet checking, find out about this alleged proof.” Will stood. “Why don’t we meet again, in my office, next Tuesday morning?”

Todd nodded. He didn’t rise.

He was still sitting exactly as Will had left him, arms on the table in front of him, head bent, when Will drove by the diner five minutes later.

Stepping on the gas, Will wished, for the first time in his life, that he could just keep going, drive down Main Street to the freeway and out of this town. Shelter Valley didn’t have any shelter to offer him anymore. Everything was changing. The people he’d always trusted and loved weren’t the people he’d thought they were at all.

He didn’t know who was to blame. If anyone was to blame. He just knew that all in all, it had been one hell of a bad week.

THE HUM of the Thunderbird speeding along the highway sounded like an impending death sentence, pronounced over and over, drawing her closer and closer to the chamber that would irrevocably end everything. Each breath a conscious struggle, Becca finally had to pull off the freeway, stopping the car on the shoulder of the road.

How could she do this?

Cradling her flat stomach with both hands, she stared down at it, confused to see it looking exactly the same as it had the year before. And the year before that. But it wasn’t the same. A new life was growing in there now.

A direct product of the love she shared with Will.

How could she not do everything in her power to help that life?

Becca started to shiver. She stared out the windshield, at the unending expanse of brown landscape, dotted with pale green saguaro and desert brush and suddenly something became very clear. If she terminated this pregnancy, her own life would be exactly like that barren landscape. Alive, but solitary, dry. Existence without joy. Survival without meaning.

Without Will?

She was afraid of dying. Afraid this pregnancy could kill her. But what would her life be worth if she preserved it by killing the baby she carried? The baby she’d always wanted.

Once she saw it in such basic terms—that she had to choose between her own life and her baby’s—there was no longer a choice.

There were other risks, other things to consider, but when compared to the ultimate question of life and death, they, too, paled in significance.

Her head seemed too heavy for her neck to support; it dropped to the steering wheel. Her entire body trembling, Becca hugged her arms around her middle and burst into tears.

She was going to have a baby.

WILL DIDN’T COME HOME for dinner Friday night. The steaks Becca had bought and grilled were like leather by the time she finally heard his car pull into the garage well after midnight. The candles she’d lit were wax puddles in their holders. The chilled wine had long since lost its chill.

Shoulders hunched, he walked slowly, quietly, into the darkened kitchen, setting his briefcase on the counter in its usual spot. He didn’t notice her sitting there.

“Hi.” It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say or had planned to say, but at the moment it was all she could manage.

He jumped, turned around. “I was trying not to wake you.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t think you’d still be up.”