“Maybe. If he’s not back by tomorrow. Just for dinner or something,” Lisa conceded. She’d be grateful for her father’s presence.
“You’ll call if you need anything?”
“Of course.”
“So…I’m going to be a grandpa?” Lisa heard the emotion in his voice. At least someone was happy about her news.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re feeling okay?”
“Beth says everything looks great.”
“Congratulations, sweetie.” His soft words brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes.
“Yeah. You, too.”
“Lisa? For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. Marcus had already made up his mind to free you, give you a chance at your dreams. Now you’ve given him a chance to have his, too.”
LISA MADE IT through the second long night comforting herself with her father’s words, but as the weekend wore on with still no sign of Marcus, no word at all, she finally called his office only to find out from security that he hadn’t been in all weekend. She could no longer hold her panic at bay. What if something had happened to him? What if she’d hurt him so badly he’d done something foolish? What if he hated her so much their marriage was over? What if he never came back?
By Sunday afternoon Lisa was sitting on the bathroom floor in their master suite, dressed in a pair of jean shorts and one of Marcus’s old T-shirts, her stomach tormenting her as thoroughly as her rambling thoughts. She prayed she wasn’t going to be sick, not while she was alone. She knew her fear of being sick was irrational, that it was a direct result of the days of her little sister’s illness, the many times she’d watched helplessly as the medicine they’d given Sara had made the four-year-old violently ill.
She’d watched—hiding in the bedroom closet—as her baby sister died. And she’d sworn to herself then that she was going to be a pediatrician when she grew up. She was going to cure little kids like Sara so they didn’t have to suffer so. And she was going to have a house full of children, too, so she could hear Sara’s laughter again.
But as much as she wanted this child, as thrilled as she was every time she thought about the life growing inside her, the pregnancy meant nothing without Marcus….
HE FOUND HER in the bathroom, asleep on the floor, when he finally returned home just after three on Sunday afternoon. She looked so fragile to him, so waiflike, that he knew he’d made the right decision. The only decision.
A stab of guilt shot through him as he realized how exhausted she must have been to have fallen asleep on the cold tiles. He should have phoned.
“Lis?” he said softly.
“Marcus…” She sat up, instantly awake.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m home.”
Her beautiful eyes were shadowed as she stared up at him. “To stay?”
Marcus nodded. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t angry with her anymore, to take away the fear in her eyes, but he couldn’t lie to her.
“You’re sure?” she asked, still sitting on the floor.
He nodded again.
She leapt up and threw herself against him, her arms wrapping around his neck. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Marcus held her close to his heart, where he knew she belonged. She still fit him perfectly, as if the child she carried was nothing more than a bad dream. Then her slender frame began to shudder, and the shudders turned to sobs. His arms tightened. He’d been wrong to leave her hanging all weekend with no word from him. He knew how emotional Lisa was, how deeply she felt everything. How much she’d worry.
But she’d been wrong, too! Even as he held her, he felt the bitterness of her betrayal. The pain of her deception. The jealousy. She’d accepted another man’s seed into her womb.
Anger surged through him anew, and it took everything he had to continue holding her. He tried to concentrate on his love for the woman in his arms, wondering how much time would have to pass before the destructive emotions he felt would be gone, dreading the possibility that he would be living with them for a very long time. Perhaps for the rest of his life.
Surely loneliness and empty walls would be better than that.
He knew why Lisa had turned to artificial insemination, understood that her intentions, if not her actions, were honorable. She’d been trying to save him from himself. He could hardly fault her for that when he’d been presumptuous enough to attempt to do the same thing with his plans to leave her. But his plans would still have left the opportunity for them to live their lives together if she’d ultimately chosen to come back to him. He had been going to free her, yes, for a time. Free her to find out if he was what she still wanted, sterility and all. His plans had left the choice up to her.
But her plans had taken away his choices.
Which was one of the reasons he’d come back to her. She was pregnant. He was her husband. He would stand by her. Because he was an honorable man. Because she needed him. And because he loved her so damn much that, even pregnant with another man’s child, he still wanted her. But he would never accept her baby as his own. He couldn’t. It wasn’t his. Not in thought, and certainly not in deed.
“I did it for you,” she said against his neck, her voice wobbly with her tears.
“I know.”
“I love you so much.”
“I know.”
She pulled away to gaze up at him. “I never meant to hurt you like that, Marcus. Never. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh.” He pulled her close again and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay, Lis. I understand. Everything’s going to be all right.” He wanted it to be. He was going to try his damnedest to make it be. Except that, deep inside, he was afraid nothing was ever going to be right again.
OLIVER HAD IT BAD. He wondered if fifty-three was too old for a midlife crisis. He was thrilled at the thought of being a grandfather, of holding Barbara’s grandchild in his arms. But maybe the fact that he was going to be a grandfather was bothering him, too—subconsciously. Maybe that was why he was suddenly finding himself thinking about the woman across the table from him at odd times during the day.
She looked so cute in her short-sleeved red dress, like a juicy ripe tomato.
“Lisa was in today. It’s great to see her so happy,” Beth said, devouring her salad.
“It is,” he agreed, though he suspected his daughter had some rough times ahead of her yet. “I haven’t seen much of Marcus, though, have you?”
“No.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, the last couple of times I stopped over, he was nowhere around.”
Oliver’s heart sank as he nodded. He’d noticed the same thing. He’d just been hoping it had been coincidental, a matter of bad timing. “Has she said anything to you about him?”
Beth put her fork down. “No. Why? Is something wrong? I thought he was happy about the baby.”
“Well, he left her when she first told him she was pregnant.” The confidence just slipped out naturally, as if he were sitting here with Barbara and they were discussing their daughter, just as they’d done through every other crisis in Lisa’s life. Except that he knew full well that the woman across from him wasn’t Barbara. And he wanted to confide in her, anyway.
“He what?” Beth said, her eyes wide with shock.
“He was only gone for a weekend, and according to Lisa, everything’s been fine since he came home. But I know my son-in-law. He’s honorable, he loves my daughter, and he’s also one of the most stubborn individuals I’ve ever met. And if he’s still got it in his head he isn’t meant to be a father…”
Beth paled. “He doesn’t want to be a father? Then why did he put himself through all those tests?”
“It’s because of the tests. The results, I mean. Men like Marcus tend to approach the crises in their lives logically, and he’s determined that maybe he wasn’t meant to be a father at all, that perhaps it’s best he’s sterile because he may be inadvertently saving a kid from an unhappy childhood.”
Oliver put down his fork. “I knew nothing of this.”
“I don’t think Lisa knew, either, until I asked Marcus if he ever remembered having a high fever. He made it sound like it was no big deal.”
“I suspect that my son-in-law learned very early on not to expect much from his parents.”
They were both silent for a minute, and Oliver wondered why it was that some parents never understood that children were gifts to be cherished, not brushed aside. And why some people who were meant to be parents had that chance snatched away. He thought of his little Sara, of the few precious years they’d had with her, and couldn’t imagine having missed a single moment of her life. How he still ached for a glimpse of her laughing eyes.
Beth touched his hand, bringing him back to her. “You think Marcus is still working himself to the bone?”
His hand tingled where she’d touched it. “Probably.”
“So the baby hasn’t helped their problem at all.”
Oliver hated to hear her sounding so despondent. “It’s helped. It’s helped Lisa. She’s smiling again, dreaming again. And if nothing else, seeing Lisa happy will help Marcus.”
“But how long is she going to be happy if he isn’t?” Beth asked.
That was a question Oliver couldn’t answer.
“I SAW THE GREATEST MOVIE over the weekend,” Beth said later, over dessert. By some unspoken understanding, they’d steered away from the conversation of Lisa and Marcus through the rest of dinner.
“What’d you see?” he asked, pushing aside the guilt that accompanied his thoughts of Beth more and more these days, guilt that grew with his eagerness to hear whatever details of her life she wanted to give him.
But all the while she told him about the movie, Oliver was wondering who she saw it with and then wondering why it mattered to him. He must be crazy. Beth Montague was almost young enough to be his daughter. She was the wife of his dead colleague. His daughter’s best friend. She hadn’t even had children yet, and he was going to be a grandfather. And she wasn’t Barbara.
So why, when she smiled at him, did he feel like kissing her?
BETH SHOWED UP at Lisa’s office the next afternoon, interrupting Lisa’s dictation.
“I thought Wednesday was your early day,” she said, propping her hip on the edge of Lisa’s desk.
Lisa put down the mike from her dictaphone and shut off the machine. “It is, but Marcus is working late tonight, so I’m taking the time to get caught up on all this.” She motioned toward the charts and correspondence littering the top of her desk.
“He’s working late again? He was working on Friday night when we went looking for baby cribs. I thought the idea was that you’d both stop working yourselves to death.”
Lisa shrugged. “I have. And he will. Just as soon as he gets this Blake deal done.”
“I don’t know, Lis.” Beth frowned. “There will always be other deals.”
“Of course there will, but this one is far more than just business to Marcus. He really cares about the old guy.” She filled Beth in on the difficulties Marcus was having with George Blake.
“You sure that’s all it is?” Beth asked.
Lisa loved her friend, and she was glad Beth cared, but sometimes she wished she didn’t care quite so much. “He just needs time, Beth. I knew it would take him a while to come to grips with the baby, and I’m willing to wait. I had a chance to prepare, but it came as a complete shock to him.”
“I kind of expected to hear from him.”
Lisa, too, had hoped that Marcus would contact Beth. He usually liked to have a handle on everything. She sighed. “He doesn’t say much about the baby yet, but he’s fine with it.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. Marcus never said anything about the baby. And he hadn’t completely forgiven her yet for her duplicity in conceiving it. He also hadn’t made love to her since she’d told him she was pregnant. But she was completely certain that he was as committed to their life together as she was. The rest would come with time, just like her father said. It had to.
MARCUS WAS HOME for dinner the very next night. Hannah had left a casserole in the oven, and Lisa served it in the kitchen. She and Marcus had been eating in there for years, preferring its homier atmosphere to the formal dining room Marcus’s parents had insisted on using for every meal when they were home.
“Do you remember Sue Carrin, that ditsy blonde who pledged my sorority our senior year?” Lisa asked Marcus over dinner.
“The one with the big—”
“Marcus!” Lisa laughed, cutting him off.
Marcus looked up from buttering his roll to grin at her. “Well, if she was going to make out with her boyfriend where someone could trip over them, she should have kept her top on.”
“And if you were going to try to sneak in my window after curfew, you should have been watching where you were stepping.”
“How was I supposed to see them? She and Skinny were behind the bushes! He was panting so hard the lenses in his glasses were all steamed up. Poor Skinny, it was probably his first real kiss, and I had to go and ruin it for him. I wonder what ever happened to him.”
“He married Sue. I ran into her at the hospital today. She was bringing her mother in for cataract surgery.”
“I’ll be damned. Little Skinny Whitehall married Big Bazookas—”
“Stop it!” Lisa said in mock outrage. “Sue’s a very nice woman. You’re just mad because you got caught trying to besmirch my virtue. And I guess Skinny’s not so little anymore. He’s made quite a name for himself as a computer-systems consultant, with a couple of nationwide firms on his client list.”
“I ought to put him in touch with George Blake,” Marcus said, no longer smiling.
Lisa pushed her plate aside. “George is still holding things up?”
“Yeah, but I don’t blame him, Lis. I’d do the same thing if our positions were reversed. Still, he questions every move we make. It’s so damned frustrating. A merger that was supposed to take weeks is taking months.”
Lisa reached across the table to lay her hand over his. “George Blake is lucky he found you.”
“I’m not sure he’d agree with you, but it’s too late to pull out now. So, what’s for dessert?”
They had their choice of chocolate cake or apple pie. Neither sounded good to Lisa, but she sat with Marcus while he had a piece of each. She wanted to ask him which one of them was eating for two, but wasn’t sure he’d see the humor.
“By the way, our two-month obstetrical appointment is next Thursday morning at ten o’clock,” Lisa said as she cleared the table after dinner. “Is that okay with you?”
Marcus was rinsing dishes at the sink where they’d leave them for Hannah to do in the morning. He stopped and turned to look at Lisa, his expression blank.
“I just…” she said hesitantly, “that is, you always said you wanted to be a part of things…”
Marcus turned back to the dishes. “That was a long time ago, Lisa. I’m not a part of what’s going on with you now.”
Lisa’s stomach knotted. “’What’s going on with me?’ I’m having a baby, Marcus. Our baby.”
He turned off the water with such force Lisa was surprised the faucet didn’t break off in his hand. “We need to get something straight here,” he said, facing her again.
Lisa backed up a step. She’d never seen him this angry.
“The child you are carrying is not, and never will be, ours,” he said through clenched teeth.
Lisa stared at him, her world teetering dangerously.
“When I said I wanted to be a part of every aspect of our child’s birth, that included the concept
ion.”
She fell back another step. He hadn’t forgiven her. He wasn’t ever going to forgive her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, anyway, feeling his pain, as well as her own.
“I spent the first twenty years of my life pretending that I had a father, Lisa. I cannot spend the next fifty pretending that I am one.”
“What’re you saying?” she asked, feeling a chill, afraid for the baby growing inside her.
“The child you’re carrying is yours. I want no part of it.”
He couldn’t mean that! “Then why are you here? Why’d you come back? What have these past weeks been?” she cried.
“I’m here because you are my wife, and because, in spite of everything, I find that I still love you as much as ever.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. This couldn’t be happening. Never in her worst nightmares had she considered that Marcus would want her but not their baby. That he would continue to live with her, love her, but reject the child she was carrying.
“You’re his father,” she whispered, still not quite believing that she wasn’t misunderstanding Marcus somehow.
His eyes filled with a pain so intense Lisa felt it clear to her soul. “No, Lis, I’m not,” he said, his shoulders slumping as he turned and walked out of the room.
Lisa sank into a chair at the kitchen table, cradling her stomach, and the tiny life it harbored. It would have been better if Marcus had left her. Because as long as he was coming home to her, caring about her, she didn’t think she could leave him. But neither could she bring her baby into a home where he wasn’t wanted, where his own father could ignore him as if he didn’t exist.
“It’s okay, little one,” she whispered, rubbing her stomach soothingly. “Your daddy’ll come around.” Please God. “He’ll love you more than any daddy ever loved a child.” He will. I know he will. “See, there’s something about your daddy I haven’t told you yet. He’s never had much love in his life, so the one thing he’s always wanted more than anything is a family to love. And you’re it, little one. So hang in there. And don’t worry, your daddy never stays angry for long.”
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