She had to believe that in time, he would be.
“You need to talk?” She prompted what she’d been sitting there dreading. If it had to happen, better for it to take place now, while she had the strength to know that she could deal with whatever it was. That she could get them through it.
“Yes.” Leaning back in his chair, he looked at her like there was nothing else in the room. Not sexually, just like she was all that was there. Her heart skidded, thudded. She reached for the chamomile. Took a hot sip. Felt it go down.
“I need to solidify my role in relation to the child.”
Solidify his role? She almost dropped her cup of tea. He wanted a role! Oh God, the heartbeat that morning had worked! Winston was beginning to feel the reality of being a father. To the point that he had to solidify his role!
Telling herself to calm down, to understand that the current Winston wasn’t going to be comfortable with a rush of emotion, she held her cup with both hands and nodded.
“I will, of course, provide financial support. That’s a given.”
Money was the furthest thing from her mind. Not even at the bottom of the worry list. Clearly it was important to him, though, which made it important to her, too. She nodded again. Waiting. He had things to say. She wanted to hear them.
“I need to know all the facts,” he told her next. “No matter what happens with you and me, I need to know everything pertaining to the child. Every step of the way. It’s the only way to prepare for eventualities.”
No matter what happens with you and me.
Calm down, she told herself as a flood of panic surfaced. This was nothing new...
“Of course you’ll know,” she said, tending to his immediate concern.
“You’ve been completely silent about the child, lately.”
Back to her earlier thought...giving him his space maybe hadn’t been the best way to go. She’d talked it over with the counselor—they’d had several phone sessions—and she’d agreed that it was best to let Winston set their pace.
“I didn’t think you wanted to know about it.” The urge to touch him was so strong, it hurt not to be able to do so.
“I didn’t.”
Oh. Well, then...
“Now I see the necessity.”
Okay. So...that was progress. Time doing its thing. The whole situation was bizarre beyond words, heartbreaking to watch the love of her life struggle so much to reacquaint himself with life. With himself.
And yet...she was so incredibly grateful that they’d been given this chance.
“I’m totally good with that,” she told him.
“Okay. So how did you feel today?”
“Fine.”
“Your appetite is normal.”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
Reaching out a hand to cover his, she said, “I promise, Winston, from now on I’ll tell you everything as it happens.”
He was scared. Of losing her. Or the baby. He’d lost so much. Watched his comrades be brutally murdered in front of him, and who knew what else he’d seen during those two years he’d spent living with the enemy. With clarity came a rush of love. And enough strength to move mountains.
He’d made it back to her. Their connection was that strong.
“We’ll get through this, Win,” she said softly.
Pulling his hand from hers, he nodded and asked for their check.
* * *
“So let me get this straight. You and Emily have been living together, in the home you purchased together, sleeping in the same bed for over two months. You’re having a baby! You’re reaching understandings. And you still plan to divorce her.”
“Yes.” Sitting on that blue tweed couch, Winston held Dr. Adamson’s gaze and nodded. As strict as she looked in those dark-rimmed reading glasses, with her dress whites and big desk, she just didn’t faze him. He was there because he had to be.
Following orders.
He’d made a mistake in telling her about the baby. But with hearing the heartbeat two days before, and then dinner with Emily, he’d figured he should report in, lest she think he was trying to hide things. Or be duplicitous.
“Why?”
It took him a second to get back to their conversation, to know she was referring to the divorce.
“I’m not the man she married.”
“So?” Elbows on her desk, she removed her glasses. “She’s not likely the woman you married, either. People change.”
“I broke our marriage vows.”
Dr. Adamson knew the whole story. She’d had a report from his superiors, he was sure, and he’d told her, too.
“So Emily wants the divorce? Because you were unfaithful to her?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Oh, so you’re just deciding for her that she’d want a divorce because of it?”
If he never heard the woman say “so” again, he’d be quite fine with that.
“I’m saying that I want the divorce.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not who I thought I was. And knowing what I know now, I know I shouldn’t be married.”
Which made it sound all about him and it wasn’t like that.
“I know Emily,” he said, sitting forward, his hands clasped together. “I know what she brings to a relationship. And I know what she looks for in one, too. I know what she needs to be happy. I can’t give her that. This isn’t just a phase I’m going through here, Doctor. This is a well-thought-out, clear choice based on facts.
“They say hard times define you, and I’ve found that to be true. Before Afghanistan, I believed what I believed. I now know that I wasn’t the man I believed myself to be. I’m someone else. Capable of different things. Good things, still, but different. I also know that if I don’t divorce Emily, she will stay tied to me for life. That’s her. And if she does that, she’ll never be happy. I cannot allow myself to rob her of her happiness, to live every day of my life knowing that I’m preventing her from fully living hers, that I’m responsible for her unhappiness.”
“These things about you that aren’t what you thought...what are you capable of now?”
“Duty, loyalty and protection. Those are the things that have always been there.”
“All good husbandly character traits.”
The woman couldn’t force him to stay married. Even admirals divorced now and then. He wasn’t going to engage further on the subject.
“So, Petty Officer Hannigan...tell me what your version of the future with you and Emily and your baby looks like.”
In the first place, it was Emily’s baby. He didn’t choose it. The man who’d made the choice to have a child with her had died in the desert.
The child...biologically was his. He’d take full responsibility for that.
That wasn’t what she’d asked. And the brunette barracuda would sit there and stare at him for the last half of their hour, without a word, if he didn’t answer her question.
He knew this from experience. One he preferred not to repeat.
The future. Other than Emily apart from him and happy, and him in the naval police, being financially responsible for the child, he hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
She was asking beyond his end goal.
He glanced at the clock. Twenty-nine minutes left on his hour.
Then twenty-five. Twenty.
“I hope we’ll be on friendly terms,” he nearly blurted. So unlike him, that awkward delivery. “I’m supposing we’ll be in contact regarding the child. Frequent contact. I’d prefer that to be between the two of us, and I’d think she would like that, too. So, yeah, friendly. Easy. Pick up the phone and call without having to think about it. Or worrying that there’d be
tension on the other end.”
“And this friendliness...would that only encompass the child? Or could she call you if, say, she had a bad day at work and just needed to tell someone who’d understand?”
“Of course she could. She’d know that.”
“What about if there was a death in her family? Could she call you then?”
Was the woman deliberately trying to get his goat?
“She could call me any time she damn well pleases, day or night, about anything she wants to talk about,” he said, to make his meaning clear and end the ludicrous line of questioning.
Adamson nodded, her chin pursed in that way that set him on edge. Like Mrs. Kelly, the English teacher he and Emily had had in tenth grade. The thought had him wishing for a second that Emily was there, seeing what he was seeing, because she’d look at him and they’d both laugh.
Except that if he was still the guy who laughed with Emily, he wouldn’t be here with Adamson.
“Why haven’t you told Emily about the woman in the desert?”
“Because it would hurt her needlessly. She can see enough change in me to end the marriage without bringing that into it. I already feel her pulling away. Where’s the harm in letting her go of her own accord, because it’s what she wants, without forever bludgeoning her belief in love everlasting? Let her blame it on war and leave the rest out of it.”
“You’re sure you aren’t holding back so she won’t hate you?”
“I am absolutely positive about that one. I do not want to hurt her unnecessarily, and that’s the only reason I’m not telling her.”
Adamson glanced out the window, then back at him and stood. “I think we’re done here for the day.” They still had eleven minutes. “You’re a good man, Petty Officer Hannigan.”
Winston had no idea what to make of that.
Chapter Sixteen
Emily drove home Friday night, still energized by Wednesday’s after-dinner conversation with Winston. She wasn’t going to just sit back and wait for him to come to her.
He’d expressed interest in the baby. More than that. He’d insisted on being a day-to-day, minute-to-minute part of things.
So what if his delivery had been odd. His word choices and body language standoffish. He was there. It was a key she’d been missing. He was there. He was asking.
He was trying to find his way back to her. He needed her to lead the way. She got it now.
She had to engage him.
“Now that we’re having weekends to ourselves, I thought we’d start on the nursery tomorrow,” she said as they worked together in the kitchen that night, chopping on separate counters while they prepared the stir-fry they’d decided on for dinner.
She was doing all of the grocery shopping, just as she had through all of their years of living together, and cooking together was just as it had always been, too. The activity was part of life. Normal life. Great life.
She chopped onion. He did the peppers and leftover grilled chicken breasts.
“The nursery.”
“We’ll need to turn the spare bedroom into a nursery,” she explained. “Obviously we can’t give up the office.”
She reminded herself that his silence then didn’t mean what it would have meant two years before—that he wasn’t on board.
“Where will guests stay when they come to visit?”
“For now, we can keep the double bed set up in there against one wall. Maybe the baby can use it later. We can put a pack-and-play in our room, for the first few months, and keep it afterward, packed away, for the baby to use when we have guests.”
“You plan to sleep in the same room as the child for the first few months?”
He didn’t like the idea? She could reconsider. But... “I figured with breastfeeding, it would just be easier. We’ve already got Grandma’s rocker in the corner.” She could move that to the nursery, though.
The onions were ready. He’d stopped chopping.
“Emily...”
His look was firm. “Yeah?” She looked right back.
“This is important to you?”
It should be important to him, too. She had to believe it would be. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll help you.”
She didn’t want his “help.” She wanted his involvement, his input. She wanted him to care.
She was being a selfish twit.
He was there.
And that was enough.
* * *
Chauffeuring Emily around on Saturday wasn’t such a bad deal. Time was passing, bringing him closer to the culmination of the plan, and he wasn’t forced to spend full days alone with her in the intimacy of her home.
The whole intimacy thing in general... His body hadn’t changed as much as the rest of him had. It wanted to sink itself inside the woman who’d first shown it carnal delights. The only woman it was ever supposed to know.
That night she’d come on to him, when he’d willed himself not to respond, he’d been fairly certain that his body was as enlightened as he was.
A miscalculation on his part.
Following her around in stores, lifting boxes into carts, and then, after paying for them, into the trunk of his car, unloading them, fitting pieces into proper places—it all fit his parameters.
“We really need some paint on these walls,” Emily said as he finished putting the crib together without mentioning at all that it seemed a bit premature to build a bed for someone who wouldn’t be there for months and months. “I just think we should wait until we know if it’s a boy or a girl before we do that,” she added. The same thing she’d said when she looked at, and then passed by, sheets and other crib paraphernalia that afternoon.
She was standing there in a short black T-shirt dress, her long legs tanned and perfect as they’d always been, her stomach still looking the same to him.
The same being...rather delicious. And her breasts... He knew them up close and personal and kept picturing the view from the night he’d walked in on her looking at herself in the mirror.
It occurred to him then that painting would be a good activity for the next day. And getting it all done would free him up to be gone as soon as Time convinced Emily that she wanted a divorce.
“There was that one design,” he said, willing his body to stay down while sharing that suddenly-too-intimate space with her. “A version of it everywhere,” he added, and took a breath as she frowned, watching him like she was concerned.
He didn’t need her concern.
“The jungle animals, in shades of green and yellow.” The way became clear to him, as it always did. “You could do the walls in those colors, and buy that motif for everything else. It would work for either gender. We can paint tomorrow.”
There. He got to the goal. Painting. The next day. So it would be done.
So he’d be busy all day.
So, so, so. Just like Adamson.
What did so have to do with anything?
And when would Time get its butt in gear and get this job done?
* * *
He wanted jungle animals. Green and yellow! Lying in bed that night, Emily smiled into the darkness. More and more he was showing himself to her. Oddly, yes. Not like Winston used to. But he was emerging.
She’d been thinking more of pastel rainbows, with an emphasis on blue or pink depending on whether they were having a girl or a boy, but she’d take puce gorillas if it was what Winston wanted.
He wanted them.
That was all that mattered.
Which was what she kept telling herself the next day as he acted more like hired help than the man of the house. Her husband. Or the father of her child.
He’d suggested the motif. The colors. And then had stood back and refused to take part in any of the actual choices. And back home, with plastic covering the carpet,
he had waited for her to make all of the decisions in terms of what walls were green, which were yellow—she ended up with three a pale yellow and one a bolder green, and then when she wondered about the trim, she had had to decide that, too. She wanted to change it up, do some in green and some in yellow, but hadn’t been sure. He gave her nothing.
She figured she’d make the decision when they got to that stage in the painting.
“We need to tell our parents about the baby,” she said as they began rolling paint on opposite sides of the room.
He didn’t respond. Because he wasn’t ready to deal with grandparents? Or just because mute seemed to be his volume of choice these days?
“They’re going to know the next time they visit,” she said, pointing out the obvious. Besides the new decor for what used to be their spare room, her stomach was already starting to paunch a tiny bit. Her mother would wonder about that.
“That might not be for a while.”
True. After the initial flurry of visits, things were settling back down. Before Afghanistan they’d go three months without visits. Everyone was busy, had their own lives. They talked often and that was sufficient.
Painting continued silently, save for the music she’d put on, a streaming station that played songs from their high school days.
“I want to go this week to have the NIPT test,” she offered twenty minutes later. He’d said he wanted to know everything.
“That was the one to determine Down syndrome,” he said.
Among other things.
“The child’s bone measurements didn’t indicate a need.”
So he had paid attention. In the olden days he’d have talked to her about everything he was thinking. Noticing. Wondering about. So this was a new day. What mattered was that he was there. And he cared.
“The test also tells you the sex of the baby,” she told him. “I really want to know. And I think it would be cool to know before we tell the parents, too, so we can give it to them all at once.”
She was going to tell Steve in the morning—just so they could plan maternity time for her into the ad campaigns they were developing. Her clients weren’t going to feel a blip. She was determined about that. She could work from home as she needed to. And hopefully Steve would step up for the rest.
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