How to Keep a Secret

She might be chatty, but even Jenna drew the line at talking about her sex life while browsing the aisles at the local store.

Hi, Mary, good to see you. By the way, how many times did you and Pete have sex before you got pregnant?

Hi, Kelly, I’d love to stop and chat but I’m ovulating and I need to rush home and get naked with Greg. See you soon!

“Jenna?” He rattled the handle. “I know you’re not okay, so open the door and we can talk.”

What was there to talk about?

She was desperate for a baby and talking wasn’t going to fix that.

She opened the door. She was Jolly Jenna. The girl who always smiled. The girl who had always tried to accept things she couldn’t change. She had freckles on her nose, hair that curled no matter what she did to it and a body that refused to make babies.

Greg stood there, wearing what she thought of as his listening face. “Negative?”

She nodded and pressed her face against his chest. He smelled good. Like lemons and fresh air. “Don’t say anything.” Greg was a therapist. He’d always been good with people, but right now there was nothing he could say that would make her feel better and she was afraid sympathy might tip her over the edge.

She felt his arms come round her.

“How about ‘I love you.’”

“That always works.” She loved the way he hugged. Tightly, holding her close, as if he meant it. As if nothing was ever going to come between them.

“We’re young and we haven’t been trying that long, Jenna.”

“Seventeen months, one week and two days. Don’t you think it’s time we talked to a doctor?”

“We don’t need to do that.” He eased away. “Think of all the great sex we can have while we’re making this baby.”

But it’s not working.

“I’d like to talk to someone.”

He sighed. “You’re very tense all the time.”

She couldn’t get pregnant. What did he expect?

“If you’re about to tell me to relax, I’ll injure you.”

He pulled her back into his arms. “You work so hard. You give everything you have to those kids in your class—”

“I love my job.”

“Maybe you could go to yoga or something.”

“I can’t sit still long enough to do yoga.”

“Something else then. I don’t know—”

This time she was the one who pulled away. “Don’t you dare buy me a book on mindfulness.”

“Damn, there goes my Christmas gift.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. “Hang in there, honey.” The look in his eyes made her want to cry.

“We’re going to be late for work.”

Twenty hyperactive six-year-olds were waiting for her. Other people’s six-year-olds. She adjudicated arguments, mopped tears, educated them and tried not to imagine how it would be if one of those kids was hers.

Every day at school she taught the children a new word. Definitions had a way of flashing through her head even when she didn’t want them to. Like now.