During the next few weeks, I felt like an alien had invaded my body. One day, after a miserable hour of vomiting, I called a woman’s clinic. That afternoon, I went in, and the nurse assured me these predicaments happen all the time. “You don’t want to bring an unwanted child into the world, do you?” she asked. No, I didn’t want the baby. I’d been stupid, I was losing Phil, but I could set things right again. I made an appointment to go in the next day to eradicate my horrible mistake.
The next day as I dressed to go to the clinic, I listened to my clock ticking, and it occurred to me that the unborn fetus’s heart was also beating. I stood paralyzed by indecision. Was I doing the right thing? Was there another way out of the nightmare? Then I felt nausea churning through my gut like the onset of food poisoning. I raced to the bathroom. Leaning over the toilet, I lost the only meal I’d eaten in twenty-four hours.
As I was getting in my car, Phil raced up in his old Volkswagen van. “Stop,” he said. “Don’t do it. It’s my child too.” He wept, tears streaming from his eyes. “Okay, you win. We’ll get married.”
Seven months later, Rob was born, yellowed with jaundice. He remained a sickly baby who suffered from eczema and colic. I remembered his legs kicking frantically as he screamed through the night. I tried to breast-feed him, but I developed one breast infection after another. Feeding time was a painful ordeal for both of us. Several months into Rob’s life, I felt depleted and resented my infant son. Days passed when my staggering depression drove me to consider giving him up for adoption. Wouldn’t Rob be better off in a real family with a mother who didn’t cry all the time and a father who wasn’t a drunk? I reasoned.
Now Rob and Andrea stood in the same boat. Maybe it would be better if Andrea … “No.”
I clutched my chest and imagined myself cradling my new grandchild. Andrea didn’t have the right to steal that baby from me.
Later that afternoon I sat at my desk in the office. I’d just spoken to Sherry Henrick and had encouraged her to drive by a fixer-upper the couple had looked at several months earlier but thought needed too much work.
“The listing agent said the sellers are desperate,” I told her. “They’ll consider any offer. With the money you save, you can paint the interior and install new carpet. Remember, the house has a cute breakfast nook and is within walking distance of the elementary school.” Sherry, speaking in monotone, said she would think about it.
I opened the Basetti file and called the listing agent for the home Mr. Basetti and his wife wanted, only to find I was too late. “We accepted an offer last night,” the agent said. “But there’s a contingency. The buyers are waiting for the sale of a piece of vacation property that’s supposed to close in a few days. We’ll look at your client’s offer as a backup—as long as it’s full price.”
I cracked another of Lois’s files and called the young man who hadn’t given the lender verification of his income. He owned his own business—some sort of a consulting firm—and said he resented the bank treating him like a liar. “I’ve never needed verification before,” he told me. “I took out a loan for a new car last month, and that bank was thrilled to lend me money.”
I explained that any mortgage company would require copies of his income-tax forms as proof of earnings. “It’s a matter of policy,” I said. “I’d have to do the same thing.”
As I hung up, Laurie straggled in unannounced. I’d left her a recorded message several hours earlier saying, “My dear friend, we need to talk.”
Laurie collapsed onto the chair next to my desk. She looked bedraggled. Limp bangs hung across her eyes, and she wasn’t wearing lipstick. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen her without lipstick. Once, I recalled, when she was in the hospital after giving birth, and once when she had strep throat.
“Something wrong?” I asked, pushing my paperwork aside.
“Dave was badgering me so much last night, I told him everything.” She whispered so my coworker sitting on the other side of the partition wouldn’t hear. “That I was attracted to a guy and had lunch with him, but nothing happened. That was a big mistake. Dave went ballistic and threatened to hire a private detective to follow me, get copies of my cell phone bills, and find out who I’ve been calling.”
I heard voices approaching and glanced up to see two agents wandering past.
“Let’s go somewhere more private,” I said, getting to my feet. I led Laurie down a short hallway to the conference room. I scanned the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows to make sure no one was sitting at the hefty table that dominated the small space. On one wall hung a print of Mount Rainier, and crushed in a corner stood an artificial ficus tree. Once inside I closed the door, then swiveled two chairs so they faced each other.
“Did you two get a chance to speak again this morning?” I asked as we sat down. I knew Laurie wasn’t the type to come groveling with an apology. She and I had suffered a spat several years before, and I’d been the one to call and patch things up.
“No. Dave slept on the couch.” The corners of her mouth dragged down. “When I got up this morning, he was gone.”
“Maybe this is a good time to make an appointment with a marriage counselor. Dave’s feeling crushed, but I’m sure you two can resolve this issue.”
She raked her fingers through her bangs, but they flopped back across her forehead. “I guess, but I don’t know if Dave would go. He’s acting so high and
