When Gabe and I are alone again, I dare him to say anything about the name. He’s taken so much of this birth from me. He can’t take this. He can’t take Opal. I won’t let him.
“I’m still waiting for you to explain.”
I can see from his stupefied expression that he’s convinced himself if he evades me for long enough, I’ll let this go. My stare is unwavering as his focus flitters between Opal, his feet, the dark TV, Opal again, anything and everything except me. Finally, he flops onto the couch, resigned.
“It was never going to happen, T.” He braids his fingers and leans toward me, rocking on the edges of his feet. “I wasn’t planning on ... it was only a precaution. After three failed IUIs, I figured I’d have it ready as a backup in case the egg retrieval didn’t work either. I knew how much you wanted to be a mom, and I couldn’t bear the thought that you might not be able to.” The remorse in his voice, the conflict across his face—it isn’t regret. It’s pity. He’s actually pitying me.
“Gabe,” I snap. “Is Jasper mine?”
He repositions the chair the nurse moved to my bedside. This close, I can see the faint scar on his left cheek that he got as a child. The twitch at the right corner of his mouth that only activates when he’s tired. I can see all the ways I know him, my husband. Even the expression on his face, laden with sympathy, is one I recognize and love. I just didn’t understand how rehearsed it was.
“None of your eggs were viable,” he says.
I think back to waking up at Longevity, foggy headed and nauseated, Gabe stroking my hair. He was this close then, his familiar face, that scar,the relief that washed over me when he told me the procedure had been a success.
“You harvested fourteen eggs. Five were fertilized.” I want to prove him wrong with everything I know to be true about my IVF process. “They weren’t my eggs,” I state. “They were Regina’s.”
He’s stroking my hair now too. I want to tell him to stop, but I crave human contact, even if it comes from Gabe.
“I knew it would break your heart. I’d seen it break so many women’s hearts, and I couldn’t do that to you.”
“But you could impregnate me with your girlfriend’s egg?” Aloud, it sounds even more twisted and sordid than it did in my head.
“My girlfriend? You think me and Reggie—Tessa, I would never cheat on you. Come on, you know that.”
But you would violate me.
Before I can respond, he adds, “Besides, Reggie wasn’t exactly interested in men.”
“Or maybe she wasn’t interested in you.”
He scoffs, the idea of any woman not finding him attractive an impossibility, and I wonder how I ever found his arrogance sexy.
“It wasn’t what I wanted for you, for us. I didn’t have a choice. Not if you wanted to be pregnant.”
“No.” I try to sit up. Despite its torrent of anger, my body is still weak. The compression band doesn’t offer enough support for my midsection. I lie back. “Ididn’t have a choice. You took that from me.”
Gabe’s jaw tenses. He remains quiet.
“So she’s his mom.” I can barely form the sentence. That’s why she was watching us, why she had our furniture, my earring. It wasn’t because she was obsessed with me, the wife of her lover. It was because she was obsessed with my son. Her son.
“You grew him, so biologically speaking, he’s yours. Genetically, on a DNA test, he’d show Regina’s—”
“So she’s his mom,” I interrupt, not letting him make this a semantic argument.
“She was never his mom.” His eyes are insistent. And he’s right. She was never Jasper’s mother, not in the ways we think of a mother. Genetically, phenotypically, though, he’s hers. Hers and Gabe’s. Because of course this isn’t about him, the father.
“You let her have a relationship with him?”
Gabe’s still combing his fingers through my hair. I swat him off me. It causes the IV to pull out. Suddenly, blood pours from the back of my hand, pooling in violent red. The insertion point stings. Gabe jumps up and gets a tissue to put pressure on the bleeding. He untapes the IV and starts to fix it.
“Get off me,” I shout, and he darts back. I press the button for the nurse. Gabe hovers against the wall as the nurse comes in and repositions the IV.
Once she’s gone, I tell him, “You can talk to me from over there.”
He cowers in the corner, shocked, refusing to speak.
“Gabe.” I use the remote to put the back of the bed a little higher. “Explain to me how you let this woman have a relationship with our son.”
