Becca's Baby

Becca shook her head. She couldn’t look at him. This was so humiliating. Here she was, in bed with her husband, wanting him. And there he was, in the same bed, not wanting her.

“You had a bad dream?” he asked.

She shook her head again. She felt so helpless, so hopeless, as though nothing mattered. And yet everything did.

Pulling her up against his body, clothed only in a pair of cotton boxers, Will spoke to her softly, offering one meaningless reassurance after another. He shifted, bringing his lower body into contact with her—and Becca began to cry again.

“It’s about this afternoon, isn’t it,” he said.

She knew immediately what he meant. That mostly wordless conversation over the rocking chair. His confusion over who they were, who they were going to be. The day had been ruined after that. Luckily all they’d had left to do was pay the bill and make arrangements for everything to be delivered the following week.

“I’m not going to desert you, Bec. You know that, don’t you?” he asked.

She shrugged, her shoulders moving against his bare chest. His arms were around her, his hands clasped across her stomach. His chin rested on the top of her head.

“It’s not really even about you, not completely,” he said. “It’s about me—about being blind and shallow. It’s like I went to sleep at twenty and woke up and I was forty-two.”

So who was the man she’d shared those twenty years with, if not him? Becca wouldn’t ask him, wasn’t sure it even mattered.

“Talk to me, Bec,” he pleaded.

And because she didn’t know what else to do, because he’d always b

een the one she went to when the world rocked too far on its axis, she did.

“Will, if I ask you something, do you promise to answer honestly, no matter how painful that answer might be?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“Have you ever slept with anyone else?”

“No.” He waited a moment, while the silence in the room filled with tension. “Have you?”

“Of course not.” Becca licked her lips, tasting the salt of her tears. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that?” He’d never lied to her before.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had fantasies of being with someone else?”

“Of course,” he answered, still holding her.

“Every man does. I kind of figured every woman does, too.” His voice was calm, comforting. But she was beyond comfort. “Don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Becca said. She couldn’t think about that now. “Probably.”

He grew still. “Do you want to sleep with someone else, Bec?”

The tears started again, welling silently. “No.”

She could feel the sudden tension drain out of him. And hated his being so sure of her when she was sure of nothing at all.

The room was so quiet she could hear Will’s breathing. And her own. Until she thought she was going to scream. Or lose her mind. She’d never known anything could hurt this much.

She had to ask. “Do you?”