I knew that I could pull the trigger now, let the bullet of the truth that I knew so well fly at Ben. Because I had Holden to run to. I had a man that was going to stand by me even in this horrible scenario. And I was grateful. Because, pregnant with someone else’s child, who was going to want me now?
I would push aside my anger at Lovey because, as Rob so astutely stated, she had given me everything good and true in my life—even if the truth wasn’t exactly as I had seen it. And I understood her better now. A child changes absolutely everything. She would ultimately, I knew, be the one to help me heal, to help me love again, trust again, to lead me through this maze of unanswered questions with the sage wisdom that only a dump truck load of life experience can provide.
I was beginning to feel better, in control again, in charge of my future and my destiny, when I heard the back door close tightly and Ben’s footsteps down the hall.
I slid my toe up to the silver lever on the tub and pushed down, the water beginning to flow out. My body, made buoyant by the gallons surrounding me, was suddenly heavy, the pull of the water on my skin feeling like a man bearing the weight of himself down on top of me. It occurred to me how long it had been since I had given in to the lure of Ben, to the calming, soothing satisfaction of total, blissful, thoughtless freedom. I was already pregnant, after all. What was the worst that could happen?
Pushing the thoughts of her out of my mind, of the other woman whose total demise occupied the vast majority of the spaces that used to be full with loving Ben, I decided that, since I wasn’t completely ready to move on yet, my plan not fully intact, there was no use in him getting so suspicious, of wondering how our love life had gone from full saturation to bone dry in a matter of weeks. And, as the last of the water gurgled its way down the pipes and out to the sewer, I called, “Oh, Ben!”
I had forgotten how easy it could be to completely lose myself, to feel that love well up in my cells and flow in and out of my bone marrow. It must have been the thing that overtook my need to control, that superseded the strategic agonizing. It was like living and breathing itself, the essence of everything good. And, when it was over, when we were both lying there, my head on his beating heart, his fingers trailing lazily down my relaxed back muscles, though I hadn’t planned it, though it hadn’t been plotted down on paper for my ideal timing and my perfect, graceful exit, with my bags packed, in the light of day, trudging home to my future, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Like one thin, straight line out of a fresh Elmer’s bottle, my words marched across the blank expanse of his chest. “I’m leaving you, Ben.”
No emotion, no tears, not even a crack in my voice to indicate the devastation I felt would undoubtedly hide out in the deepest crevices of my ability to love for the rest of my life.
Ben bolted upright, and, in an unlikely response, began to dress. Calmly, evenly, he pulled on his boxers, then his pants, then his shirt. He buckled his belt. And, in the spaces between his silent dressing, I also pulled on my skirt and tied my disheveled hair behind my neck.
As the seconds turned to minutes that felt more like hours, he finally said, “Why would you even joke about something like that?”
“I know, Ben.”
“Know what?”
“About Laura Anne.”
He started stammering, the way that men do when they’ve been caught in the trap and are trying to decide whether to lie down and die or to see if they can chew their leg off without bleeding to death before help arrives. “I . . . I have no idea what you’re . . . what you’re talking about.”
As the tears pooled in his eyes, I have to say that I was surprised. I had become so accustomed to hating him, seething inside with rage that someone I loved and trusted with every cell in my body could betray me so handily, that I guess I only assumed that he felt the same way toward me. And then I knew he had decided to lie down and die after all. “But, TL, you can’t do this to me. You’re the love of my life.”
“Can’t do this to you?” I asked, still calmly, still evenly, still emotionless. “Maybe we should review the facts of the case here. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the one cheating on you with my ex.” I felt a sting of guilt because no one could possibly deny that keeping the knowledge of his child from him was one of the worst things that you could ever do to a person. And then there was the truth that I had my entire life with another man and Ben’s baby planned out. It was harder to be indignant, remembering.
He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no, no. It was stupid. I was feeling sad about not having a baby, but I didn’t want to upset you, so we started talking and it just happened. But I don’t love her. I don’t want her. I never loved her. I only love you.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Ben bordering on hysterical. And I was so happy I almost cried. I hadn’t been wrong all this time. He had truly loved me.
Maybe it was because I had been living with the secret for so long, but I was finally the calm one while he was the one unraveling over the outcome that was now out of his hands. “Everything has changed for me now. There’s no way I can be with you knowing what you’re capable of.”
Ben hugged me and rested his chin on my head. I didn’t hug him back. “We can start over again. We can get out of here, go on tour again, be back to that all-over-each-other couple, me singing to you and you loving me.”
“Yeah, but see, here’s the thing. Now that you’ve been that with her, it’s ruined for me.”
“You can’t leave me, Annie. I’ll be alone forever. I’ll wait for you until I die. You are the only one for me, I swear.”
It scared me how cold I felt toward him now, how quickly that burning passion had dissipated. But it is, after all, fire that forges steel. It made me wish that I had confronted him about it when I first found out, that we could have had a chance to repair it while my insides still felt raw and oozing, before the skin had healed back over and made the body forget that it had ever felt anything to begin with. “Then I guess you should have thought about that before you started carrying your girlfriend down the stairs in a golf bag.”
I could see his eyes widen a fraction. I knew he didn’t want to give himself away, to let me see his shock. “That long?”
I nodded. It was stunning even to me that I had known for weeks without cracking. Although, clearly, he knew the wind had shifted.
I was getting ready to walk away when I felt something trickling down my leg. I looked down and saw a line of red making its way from my thigh to my ankle, a kindergarten teacher’s perfect mark on the blackboard. “No!” I said. “No, no, no!”
I looked up at Ben, wishing that anyone was there but him. “You have to drive me to the hospital!”
I was frantic, marching out the door ahead of him, not even worried about the trail of red that I was leaving on the white carpet.
He grabbed my arm. “What is going on, Annabelle?”
“I’m pregnant!” I shouted.
His eyes widened. “Mine?”
“Who else’s would it possibly be? You’re the cheater. Not me.”
We rode to the hospital in silence, and I already knew before the ER doctor said, “I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”
“Oh my God,” I said, choking back my tears. “Is it because I took a bath?”
He gave me a puzzled look and patted my hand like I had totally lost my mind. “No, sweetheart. It wasn’t anything you did. And everything with you looks perfect on the ultrasound. This is just nature’s way of taking its course. Sometimes it isn’t meant to be. But you shouldn’t have any problem with pregnancy in the future.”
I should have been relieved. I should have been able to breathe now that my ties to Ben were gone. That I didn’t have to choose between telling the complicated truth and living a lie, that I didn’t have to be an unwed mother, that I could move on now, be free.
But I didn’t. I felt devastated. Min
utes earlier, there had been a living thing inside of me, and, now, with a swoosh of blood and little fanfare, it was just gone. It was one of the only things I could think of that could actually supersede my anger at Ben. And we cried together, for all that we had had, and the even more that we had lost.
I let him hold my hand on the way to the car, and he said shakily, “Annabelle, we can try again. We can start over. I’m still me. I’m still that same man that you fell in love with.”
Before I could even get out of the car or answer, Emily was rushing down the driveway. She was the last person I wanted to see, another reminder of how the life I had led was going to be gone, the rug pulled out from under me with all these people that I had loved riding away on it. Her face was ashen as she hugged me. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m assuming you knew the whole time?” I asked it like a question, but I knew that not much got past Emily, especially when it was happening under her roof.
She shook her head. “I had no idea you were pregnant.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
She opened her mouth, and I could tell she was going to lie, but then her expression shifted, and her eyes filled with tears too. “Please, Ann, you are my daughter. You mean everything to all of us.”
I put my hands on my hips. “So you’re going to stand there and tell me that you believe that I mean everything to your son?” I paused and gave her my most sarcastic look. “I guess I always just assumed a man I meant everything to wouldn’t screw his girlfriend when he was supposed to be committed to me.”
She shrugged. “But he never cared for her. Sometimes sex is just sex.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Well, I’m glad you feel that way. You two can just take your free-love, no-consequences, no-apologies selves and do whatever the hell you want to. I, for one, am out of here.”
Ben grabbed my arm, and I couldn’t help but say, “I thought this was the thing you hated most about your dad, the one thing that you would never do.”
He looked down at his feet and back up at me. “Sometimes we become what we hate.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but see my own hypocrisy. I had thought about letting Holden be the father of my child. I had considered never even telling Ben. The very thing I hated most about Lovey. Sometimes we become what we hate.
As I slammed the door behind me, I planned to go straight to Holden. I would be back in his house like I had never left, back to my safe, stale, contrived life. I sat in the car at the stop sign for a long time, willing myself to pull off toward the highway, to drive toward the life that felt like it had all but been prearranged for me, like Ben was the rest stop I had pulled into on a detour toward my fate. But, as cold and closed off as I felt in that moment, I still knew what it was to be truly loved. I knew what it was to feel like one lifetime wasn’t enough. And I knew I’d never have that with Holden. But maybe someone else would. I heard the engine turn over as if I hadn’t been the one to turn the key. And when my car started down the road, I realized that I had no idea where I was going to go.
I couldn’t go home. I wasn’t ready to ruin my parents’ lives just yet by telling them that they had, in fact, been right about Ben—and everything else, really. We had gotten married too fast. We hadn’t known each other well enough. It was all just a fairy tale, minus the happy ending. I thought back to that night in the bar, to those days following, to how exuberant I had been, how certain that Ben was what I had been waiting for. And, in a lot of ways, he had been. What we had shared was incredible and passionate, the kind of love that romance novels were written about. Romance novels, the steamy kind. Not epic love stories. I was relieved when the tears finally came, when I could cry for what I had lost. Ben called and called and texted and texted, but I didn’t have to answer him anymore. It was over. We were over. And I didn’t owe him anything. He deserved to wonder where I was, to wonder if I was okay. And he should have known by now that I wasn’t.
Driving down the tree-lined streets of Salisbury’s historic district, the setting sun reflecting off of its beautiful, oldest homes, pulling into one and then knocking on the door of The Oaks Bed & Breakfast, is perhaps one of the lowest points of my life. But I didn’t have anywhere to go. Rob was my only real friend in town, and I certainly couldn’t stay with him. And I wasn’t ready for the humiliation of admitting what had happened to anyone, not even the priest.
Lucky for me, the room was warm, the bed was soft, and, despite the pain in my stomach and the even stronger one in my heart, I awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking, which meant that, against all odds, I had fallen asleep. I realized that I had been dreaming of Paris, of strolling down the riverbank and laughing, sitting at corner cafés and eating baguettes and cheese. I had been totally, utterly alone in a foreign country, and I had been as happy as could be. It was as comforting as the incredible breakfast I gorged myself on. Physically, I was feeling a little better. Less pained, though still very, very empty.
It wasn’t terribly surprising that I was the only person in the restaurant that morning. And, knowing that I couldn’t face the truth for a little bit longer, I asked the slender, aging woman who brought my plate, “If I stay here for two weeks, could I get a special rate?”
She smiled. “Of course. Are you here for a special occasion?”
I laughed ironically. “Well, I’m not sure that being too afraid to tell your family and friends that you’re divorcing your husband is a special occasion, but, unfortunately, that’s why I’m here.”
She patted my hand, sat down across from me and said, “That’s how I got here too. You just stay as long as you like.”
It may not have been Paris, but the bread was almost as good. And the airfare didn’t cost me a dime.
• • •
There’s no such thing as “out of the blue,” and surprises are very rare. Because, if we fine-tune that voice in our heads, that one that’s talking to us all the time, we already know what we thought we didn’t. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Ben sitting on a bench in the garden of the Saint Catherine House, where my office was, that morning when I got to work. In the shade of the ancient trees, surrounded by cheerful flowers and chirping birds, Ben seemed almost innocent, like maybe we could start all over again, go back to that dark bar that night and rekindle what might have been.
But then he said, “Annabelle, you can’t just freeze me out like this. We’re madly in love with each other. Don’t throw it away on something stupid.”
It made me realize the wide and gaping sinkhole that stood between what he thought was stupid and what I thought was stupid. Lying in bed at The Oaks the night before, I thought I could get over it. I thought that maybe Ben and I would have a chance to pick up the pieces and move on. But seeing him sitting on the front lawn, as handsome as he’d ever looked, the devastation rimming his eyes, I knew that time could never heal this wound, that I could never move forward in good conscience and have a family with a man that I didn’t trust.
“I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t have a child together,” I said, unable to catch the tears from streaming down my cheeks.
Ben shook his head. “Don’t say that! I wish we had. You know I wanted this baby more than anything.” He looked down at his hands. “We still can. You heard the doctor. We can get pregnant again. Then maybe you would be willing to fight for this. For us. Why aren’t you willing to fight for us?”
I crossed my arms. “Ben, this is crazy. You’re standing here acting like I did something to you. I’m not the one that cheated. I’m not the one that couldn’t make it two years without sleeping with someone else.”
I could see the tears filling his eyes. “But you have to forgive me, Annabelle. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. You know I don’t love her. You know this wasn’t about love.”
I shook my head, feeling the anger rise up in me. �
�No, Ben. No, actually. I don’t know it’s not about love. I don’t know what it was about, but, whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t devotion to me.” I paused and took a deep breath. “And, furthermore, if you can’t talk to me about what’s bothering you, and you’re going to run off to Laura Anne every time you’re upset, then we don’t have a marriage at all.”
He reached out and took my hand. “But we can work on that. We can go to therapy. Build our communication skills.”
I thought about Lovey, Mom, my great-grandmother and my great-aunt, those pillars of strength and stability, the women who would fight through anything to make good on their promises, the women who would do whatever it took to keep their families together. Lovey had made some mistakes, sure. We all do. But she had kept her family together. Holding Ben’s hand, standing across from him on the lawn, it made me sad to know that I wasn’t the woman that they were. I wasn’t as strong or determined. I wasn’t going to ride out the hurricane and see what happened on the other side. Because, right now, at this point, I had very little skin in the game. No children. No joint property. No retirement funds. No complications. I could get out now and never have to regret, years down the road, when the bomb eventually went off again—and it would; you could just see it in my family members’ faces—that I had stayed and made a life with a man who couldn’t give me what I really needed.
I sat down beside Ben on the bench and, with a final surge of love, kissed him for the last time. I rested my head on his shoulder, the sore space in my abdomen making me tired, the anger I felt toward Ben floating off into the sky like the seeds of a wish flower. “I just can’t, Ben. It’s not going to work.”
He put his head in his hands, and you could tell by the way his back moved that he was crying again. “Oh, God. I can’t believe that I made the one woman I have ever loved hate me so much.”
Lies and Other Acts of Love Page 24