I practice smiling in my rearview mirror. Smiling used to come naturally to me, but almost every smile that appears on my face nowadays is a façade.
When I reach the front door, I don’t know whether to ring the bell or just walk in. If the baby or Caroline are sleeping, I’d feel terrible for waking them up. I push open the door and the front of the house is quiet. No one is seated in the living room, although there are unwrapped gifts lining the sofa. I walk to the living room and place Graham’s and my gift on the coffee table next to the couch.
I make my way through a quiet kitchen and toward the den where Caroline and her family spend most of their time. It was an add-on they completed right after Gwenn was born. Half of the room serves as a living room and the other half serves as a playroom for the girls.
I’m almost to the den, but I pause just outside the door when I see Graham. His back is to me and he’s standing near the couch, holding his new nephew. He’s swaying from side to side with the newborn cocooned in a blanket in his arms. I suppose if our situation were different, this would be a moment where I would have nothing but pure adoration for my husband—watching him hold his newborn nephew. Instead, I ache inside. It makes me question the thoughts that might be going through his head right now. Does a small part of him resent that I haven’t been able to create a moment like this for him?
No one can see me from where I’m standing since Graham has his back to me and I’m out of the line of sight of his sister, who is probably seated on the sofa. I hear her voice when she says, “You’re such a natural.”
I watch Graham’s reaction to her words, but he has none. He just continues staring down at his nephew.
And then Caroline says something that makes me grip the wall behind me. “You would make such a good father, Graham.” Her words fly through the air and reach me all the way in the next room.
I’m convinced she wouldn’t have said what she said if she knew I could hear her. I wait for Graham’s response, curious if he’ll even have one.
He does.
“I know,” he says quietly, looking over at Caroline. “It devastates me that it still hasn’t happened yet.”
I slip my hand over my mouth because I’m scared of what might happen if I don’t. I might gasp, or cry, or vomit.
I’m in my car now.
Driving.
I couldn’t face him after that. Those few sentences confirmed all of my fears. Why would Caroline bring it up? Why would he respond to her with such bluntness, but never tell me the truth about how he feels?
This is the first moment I’ve felt like I’m disappointing his family. What do his sisters say to him? What does his mother say? Do they wish he could have children more than they wish he would stay married to me?
I’ve never thought about this from their perspective. I don’t like how these thoughts are making me feel. Ashamed. Like maybe I’m not only preventing Graham from ever having a child, but I’m preventing his family from being able to love a child that Graham would be perfectly capable of creating if not for me.
I pull into a parking lot to gather myself. I wipe my tears and tell myself to forget I ever heard that. I pull my phone out of my purse to text Graham.
Traffic is terrible. Tell Caroline I won’t be able to stop by until tomorrow.
I hit send and lean back in my seat, trying so hard to get their conversation out of my head, but it plays over and over again.
“You would make such a good father, Graham.”
“I know. It devastates me that it still hasn’t happened yet.”
* * *
I’m standing at the refrigerator two hours later when Graham finally returns home from Caroline’s. I know I’m stressed when I clean out the refrigerator and that’s exactly what I’ve spent the last half hour doing. He lays his things on the kitchen counter. His keys, his briefcase, a bottle of water. He walks over to me and leans in, kissing me on the cheek. I force a smile and when I do, I notice this is the hardest I’ve ever had to force a smile.
“How was the visit?” I ask him.
He reaches around me into the refrigerator. “Good.” He grabs a soda. “The baby is cute.”
He’s acting so casual about it all, like he didn’t admit out loud today that he’s devastated he isn’t a father.
“Did you get to hold him?”
“No,” Graham says. “He was sleeping the whole time I was there.”
I snap my eyes back to his. Why did he just lie to me?
It feels like the inside walls of my chest are being torched as I try to keep my emotions from surfacing but I can’t let go of his admission that he’s devastated he hasn’t become a father yet. Why does he stay?
I close the refrigerator door even though I haven’t cleaned out the side drawers. I need to get out of this room. I feel too much guilt when I look at him. “I’ll be up late tonight. I have a lot of work to catch up on in my office. Dinner’s in the microwave if you’re hungry.” I walk toward my office. Before I close the door all the way, I glance back into the kitchen.
Graham’s hands are pressed against the counter and his head is hanging between his shoulders. He stays like this for almost an entire minute, but then he pushes off the bar with force, as if he’s angry at something. Or someone.
Before I can close the door to my office, he looks in my direction. Our eyes meet. We stare at each other for a few seconds and it’s the first time I’ve ever felt like he was a complete stranger. I have absolutely no clue what he’s thinking right now.
This is the moment when I know I should ask him what he’s thinking. This is the moment when I should tell him what I’m thinking. This is the moment I should be honest with him and admit that maybe we should open that box.
But instead of being brave and finally speaking truth, I choke on my inner coward. I look away from him and close the door.
We resume the dance.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Then
Every minute I’ve spent with him today surprises me more than the last.
Every time he opens his mouth or smiles or touches me, all I can think is, “What would possess Sasha to cheat on this man with Ethan?”
Her trash, my treasure.
His childhood home is everything I imagined it would be. Full of laughter and stories and parents who look at him like he was sent straight from heaven. He’s the youngest of four kids and the only boy. I didn’t get to meet any of his sisters today because two of them live out of state and one of them had to cancel dinner.
Graham gets his looks from his father. His father is a solid man with sad eyes and a happy soul. His mother is petite. Shorter than me, but carries herself with a confidence even bigger than Graham’s.
She’s cautious of me. I can tell she wants to like me, but I can also tell she doesn’t want to see her son get his heart broken again. She must have liked Sasha at one point. She tries to pry about our “relationship” but Graham feeds her nothing but fiction.
“How long have you two been seeing each other?”
He puts his arm around my shoulders and says, “A while.”
A day.