My stomach roiled. I thought I might throw up. “B-but I have to know what happened. Everyone will want to know what happened—our parents and grandparents and the children... everyone.”
He sank his head in his hands.
Fear gripped me so hard I shook. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
“Boy.”
“So... where... where is he?”
“No more questions!” he bellowed.
I stared at him, trying to make sense of the situation.Oh, Charlie—what have you done?
“Don’ you worry about it. Just get your stuff together. We’re going back.”
“Now?”
“Later today.”
“But...”
“No buts.” His voice had that old, ugly, mean tone. “You should be happy about this, Addie.”
Happy?
“You’re off the hook. You don’t have to raise a bastard.”
“But, Charlie... after all this, I wanted...” Hysteria was building in my chest. My gaze went to the empty bassinet in the corner of the room. “What did you do, Charlie?”
“Nothin’ that concerns you.”
“But it does! Of course it does! Our family... everyone... I was...” My gaze went to the hated padding at the end of sofa.Expecting.That’s what I’d become in the course of wearing it.Expecting a baby.Wanting, longing for a baby. And over the last two weeks, when I’d finally felt happy in my marriage, I’d been wanting, longing for a new beginning with Charlie, as well.
He misread my anguish. “I’ll do all the explaining. We’ll say the baby was born dead last week. You’ve been sedated, too upset to talk about it. The doctor advised waiting until you were over the worst of it before we told family, because you’d had a nervous breakdown. You’ll take it easy at home for a couple of days, and in a couple of weeks, you’ll carry on as if nothing happened.”
“But what...”
“No more questions!” he thundered. “That’s it.”
But of course, the “no questions” rule didn’t apply to family. Charlie called home later that morning and talked to his mother, who then put my mother on the phone. When we arrived home that evening, both sets of parents were waiting for us at our house, their faces gray and grim and worried.
Charlie carried me out of the car and into the bedroom, tucked me in, and sat on the edge of the bed, a physical barrier between my mother and me. “What happened?” Mother’s eyes were so shadowed and sad that mine welled with tears just looking at her. “When did you know there was a problem?”
“She hadn’t felt the baby move for several days,” Charlie said. “We went to the doctor, and he said there was no heartbeat.”
He hovered beside me, his eyes a dark warning glower.
“Why didn’t you call and tell me?” Mother asked.
“I—I wanted to, but...” I stammered.
“She couldn’t,” Charlie cut in. “The doctor kept her knocked out.”
God, how I wish that part was true.
“You should have called,” said Charlie’s mother from the doorway.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I decided to wait until she was better. The news was bad enough without worrying you all the more about Addie.”
