Becca's Baby

Hoped she wouldn’t be up, Becca translated.

“I made dinner,” she said, as if that explained why she was still sitting, in her flowing white gown, at a dinner she’d put on the table hours before.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his glance brushing the laden table. “I should’ve called.”

Where were you? she yearned to holler at him. But somehow she’d lost that right. She wasn’t sure how or when. She hadn’t been unfaithful to him. But she knew right then that if she acted like a wife, he was going to walk out on her.

“Did you have dinner?” she asked, instead.

He shook his head. “I had a late lunch.”

Oh? With whom? She knew better than to ask the question that would have been natural a week ago. What she didn’t know was how to find her husband inside the stranger he’d become. She desperately needed to talk to her best friend. To lean on him. To gather strength from his strength.

She needed to be held.

“Would you like me to fix you something?” she asked.

Neither of them had moved since the moment she’d first spoken. They remained in the dark, barely able to see each other. And maybe that was best. Becca was afraid to see in Will’s eyes the death of all she held dear.

“That’s not necessary,” he said, his voice weary.

She expected him to walk away from her, hole up in his study until he was sure she’d gone to bed, as he’d been doing all week. But he didn’t move. He simply stood there, almost as though he didn’t know what to do. Becca’s heart went out to him. She longed to reassure him, to comfort him, to hold him and love him as she alone had ever done.

But she could no more approach this man than she could a stranger on the street.

“You went to Tucson?” The words, when he finally spoke again, were clipped.

Filled with a resurgence of the panic that had beset her on and off all afternoon, Becca swallowed. “Yes,” she whispered.

His head fell, and then he raised it.

“You’re okay?”

Depends on how you define okay.

Her body was fine. For now, anyway.

Looking up at him in the darkness, Becca wished he’d look back at her. Wished he’d take her hand, pull her into his arms. Love away the horror of the past week so recovery could begin.

She had to tell him.

She hadn’t planned to do it like this. She’d had hopes of starting over. Of playing this out the way she’d always dreamed she would when she told Will the news they’d been waiting for all of their adult lives. She’d planned steak and candlelight, a negligee, soft smiles—love.

“I didn’t do it, Will,” she blurted to the stranger in her kitchen.

“You rescheduled?” He sounded almost angry. Fool that she was, Becca was thankful for that. She was desperately relieved to see any emotion in him at all.

“I called and cancelled. I decided to have the baby.”

r /> That, too, got a reaction—of sorts. He sank into the chair at the end of the table. A chair normally reserved for guests.

Unable to stand his silence, afraid of what might be going on in his mind, terrified that he’d continue to reject her even now, Becca filled the silence with babbling. “I never wanted to go at all, but I felt I had no choice, so I made myself make the appointment, made myself drive down there. I saw the little Roberts boy at day care yesterday and I told myself I was doing the right thing, sparing a child a cruel life like that and…and sparing us the possible heartbreak of having a handicapped child.”

Becca paused, but Will didn’t speak. Didn’t move a muscle.

“On my way down there today, I started thinking about him again. And you know, the only thing I could remember was how happy he is. And how much his parents love him, how much joy he’s added to their lives, how much they’ve grown from having him. And I thought about how he makes me smile and how fond all of the day-care workers are of him, and suddenly saw a great purpose in his life.”

She fell silent. She could hear every breath Will took in the darkened kitchen, reminding her of the hundreds of nights she’d lain awake over the years, mourning the child she couldn’t have, listening to Will breathe. The nights she’d spent crying over the way her body was failing him.