“I wanted to avoid what I knew would happen if I stayed,” she said. “What is happening right now—you having one more gigantic problem to deal with.”
“I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to have to. Not when I had the power to do something about it.”
“Did you consider abortion?” he asked, then quickly shook his head and placed the tips of his fingers on her lips before she could respond. “I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t, and I understand that, Jo. I do. I’m sorry.”
He was so contrite that she felt sympathy for him.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Listen, I don’t want you to move away on my account, all right? Please. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll help you however I can, short of…”
“Short of admitting that it’s yours?” she asked.
“Let me think about it, please. I can’t make a decision about that right now.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I didn’t plan on letting anyone know, either. I’m just as much in the wrong as you are, you know, and I don’t want people watching us, judging us.”
“I’m afraid you’re already being judged,” he said.
“But people know I wanted a baby,” she reasoned, “and that I might have gone to extraordinary lengths to have one.”
He nodded. “We’ll talk more about it later, when you’re not groggy from anesthetic. And I’m not still in shock. Okay?” He took her hand. “When you’re up to it, and if you still want to,” he said, “you’re welcome to bring Carlynn Shire back to see Mara. Not that I believe for a minute she can heal her, but it’s not fair for me to stop you. Mara was your best friend, too.”
“Thank you. And will you be there?”
“If you insist.” He smiled at her, but there was a deep sadness in his eyes. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it. “I care about you, Jo,” he said. “You know that. But I’m married, and as long as Mara is alive, I’m her husband. I love her.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“I’ll be there for you in whatever way I can. But…we can’t get that close again.”
“I know.” She nodded.
“I’ll help you support the baby financially, of course.”
“You’re having a hard enough time with money as it is,” she said. “I don’t expect Sheila to pay child support for my baby.”
He said nothing, and she knew she had bruised his ego. She said the word, “Sorry,” but it came out as a whisper, and she wasn’t certain if he’d heard her or not.
“Do your parents know?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. They don’t know I’ve had surgery, either.”
“Would you like me to call them for you?”
“Would you, please? But don’t tell them about the pregnancy, okay? I’d rather do that myself. Tell them I’m fine, not to come down, not to worry, not to—”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
He bent over to kiss her on the forehead, and the gesture reminded her of all the times she’d seen him bend over to kiss Mara in her bed at the nursing home. Mara, though, he would have kissed on the lips.
Liam called her parents from his office. He knew John and Ellen, having spent time with them over the years, when they came down to visit Joelle. They had even come to his wedding, the only guests who took to heart his and Mara’s request for no gifts.
It was John who answered the phone, and Liam told him about the appendectomy, feeling as though he was lying because of what he was omitting from the story.
“We’re on our way,” Joelle’s father said after Liam had delivered the news.
“No, don’t come,” Liam said. “She asked me specifically to tell you not to come. Right now she’s well taken care of. Everyone here knows her and will keep an eye on her.” He recalled one of the nurses telling him that Joelle might be out of work for six weeks. “I’m not sure what her recovery will be like, though,” he said to John. “She’ll probably need some help when she gets home. That might be a better time to come down.”
“Will you keep us posted?” John asked.
“Yes, and she should have a phone in her room later,” Liam said. “I’ll call you when I get the number.”
That seemed to satisfy her father. Liam hung up the phone and sat staring at his blank computer screen.
Why hadn’t they used a condom? Two social workers, two intelligent people in their thirties. Two idiots. Yet, she had been so famously infertile, and they both knew the other was disease-free. A condom, had they stopped to think about using one, would have seemed superfluous. But if they
He’d needed Joelle so badly that night. He’d needed to know he was still a man, just like that sixty-year-old man he’d seen who had the wife with Alzheimer’s.
He would visit Mara that afternoon. She would make her puppy-dog squeals when he walked into the room, and he knew exactly what she would be saying with those sounds.
