“No.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She paused, the familiar sounds of Good Morning America in the background. I could picture her curled up on our eggshell-colored sectional from Robinsons-May with a cup of coffee before getting ready for work. “I want you to say you’re coming home tonight.”
I inhaled. “I’m coming home, but—”
“Then never mind. It isn’t stupid.” The TV went quiet, as if she’d muted it. “I don’t want to start things off on a bad foot. Come home, and we’ll put all that, we’ll put New York, behind us.”
I sighed longingly at my jeans, which hung on the back of the desk chair with a pack of smokes sticking out of the pocket. “Start what off, Tiffany? I still have to pack. Can I call you from the airport once I’ve woken—”
“Manning, babe, listen.” She took an audible breath and then squealed the way she had when she’d gotten her promotion and slid down our tile hallway in socks. Stunned, I pulled my ear away from the phone at the same moment she said, “I’m pregnant.” The shrieking continued as she teased, “That’s what I’ve been calling to tell you, you big dummy.”
With the phone a safe distance from my ringing ear, I swore I’d misheard her. All the baby talk last night had gone straight to my head. “You’re what?” I asked.
“We’re having a baby, Manning.”
This time, I heard her loud and clear, bolting up so fast, I dropped the receiver and had to chase after it. I nearly tripped over the coiled wire, and as I picked the phone back up she was saying, “. . . believe it? You’re going to be a dad, just like you wanted.”
What hit me first was a sense of pride—my baby, I was going to be a dad—but in the next moment came the crushing realization that this wasn’t right. Tiffany was on the other end of the line, not my Lake, who was in the bathroom, preparing to jump off a cliff into a future with me. It was a baby I’d once wanted, still wanted, a beautiful blessing, a chance to atone for my father’s wrongs—and the one thing that could truly come between Lake and me.
“How . . . how is that possible?” Not only was Tiffany on birth control, but since I’d found out I was coming to New York, we’d hardly been intimate. I lowered my voice as I searched the tangled sheets for my underwear. I couldn’t have this conversation naked. “You can’t be pregnant.”
“I can and I am,” she said, her mood dimming. “Birth control’s not a hundred percent effective. You know that.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” I said. “We’ve been together over four years and suddenly it isn’t effective?”
She went from joyful to distraught in the flip of a switch. Any other time I would’ve rolled my eyes, but I could decipher Tiffany’s fake crying from the real deal, and this was the latter. “You asshole.”
“I’m sorry.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to wrap my head around this. All night I’d talked about wanting to have a kid. I didn’t want one just because it was around the right time in my marriage for that kind of thing. It’d been ingrained in me to take care of others from the time Maddy was born. She’d been six years younger than me, and I’d grown up protecting her—not just in a general sense, but sometimes literally, keeping my dad away from her. Or so I’d thought.
I couldn’t find my underwear, so I pulled on my jeans instead and got my cigarettes from the pocket. “I didn’t mean to curse at you,” I said into the phone. “I’m just . . . shocked.”
“That’s not why I’m crying. You’re whispering,” she accused. “Why? Is someone there?”
Shit. Fuck. I took the phone as far as the cord would allow and leaned back against the windowsill, facing the closed bathroom door. All I could think was fuck fuck fuck. Tiffany wanted to know if there was someone in my hotel room? Damn right there was. Lake, my beautiful, delicate bird, whose hopes and dreams were pinned on me. The love of my life, who I’d probably never deserved, and whom I definitely didn’t now. I was going to be a father. I thought I’d gotten to a place where I could really do that designation justice—but how could I deserve one and not the other? I put the phone between my shoulder and ear and lit my cigarette with an unsteady hand. “Tiff, stop crying.”
“I can’t. I tell you I’m pregnant and you yell at me.”
The more she said pregnant, the more real it felt. The less control I had over the situation. “Have you been to a doctor?”