Her voice reverberated through his chest, and Clay expected her to cry or something. But she didn’t. Despite the wet heat of the air around them, she sounded dry, her throat clicking as she swallowed. “Not to mention, we… I… God, I got so many bills. Medical bills, every month. Constantly. I paid what I could, selectively, you know? I threw them into the pile and didn’t look at the bills until they were yellow or red with these big Overdue stamps on the outside. So, at some point, I finally opened the one from the lab, thinking it was just another stupid company asking me to pay for something that hadn’t saved my husband’s life…but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. It took a while for it to sink in when I saw it, but I…I’ll never forget that. That moment of hope. I’d been such an idiot as a kid. Gotten pregnant, had an abortion. Then, Tom and I never got the chance, and I thought… I was sure it was my just deserts.”
“How so?”
“Punishment, you know? For ruining the one opportunity I’d had.”
“How old were you?”
“When I had the abortion?” He nodded. “Fifteen.”
“Jesus, George. You still beating yourself up over that?”
Even in the dark, Clay could see how big her eyes were when she turned them on him, how unnaturally bright and hollow. She didn’t answer.
“Anyway, when that bill came, from the lab, I paid it right away, and then I…I slept with it.” She laughed, the sound a little bitter. “Under my pillow. For days, I think. Maybe longer. Okay, definitely longer. I talked to the lab and read the fine print, and apparently, he’d checked the box that said his sperm could be used posthumously.” After another pause, she went on. “This was for him. And for his parents. And me too, because I wanted a baby. I want a baby. I couldn’t afford it, with all the bills and then med school and…things kept getting in the way, and the time was never right. I kept putting it off. Career, house…chickens. I never felt ready, and then, a few months ago, the lab called and told me time was up, and I went right into treatment. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. You can’t take these things for granted, right?”
“Could you still go in? For your IUI thing?”
She seemed to consider. “I could. I could, but it might not be his baby. My body might already be… The baby could be…” The words spun between them. Yours. It could be yours.
“Oh,” said Clay, his skin prickling. “Do you miss him?”
“Miss him?” She seemed to consider. “Not anymore. Not really. I mean, I think about him, but I don’t like…talk to him or anything.”
“Did you? Before?”
“I might have. A time or two.”
A dark shape flew by overhead, and Clay asked, breaking the intensity of the moment, “What are those things?”
“What?”
“The crazy dive-bombers.”
“What? Oh…bats.”
“Bats?”
“Bats are good. They eat the bugs.”
He watched the creatures swoop for a while, crisscrossing the night sky. He took in the tiny insects, flashing like scattered Christmas lights. It was weird how calm he felt in the face of all the sights and sounds. In the face of her news. Of her.
“You’re the first one,” George said, lifting her head from the hollow of his arm.
“Hmm?”
“You’re the first man I’ve been with. Since Tom.”
He managed a calm, “Oh,” but inside, things weren’t so smooth. Ten fucking years? he thought. And then other questions he couldn’t ask because he’d come off as a supreme asshole, but fuck if he didn’t want to know. How was I? How did I measure up?
Instead, he sat there, let her lead.
“And I feel, on so many levels, that I’ve betrayed him.” Her face, that perfect, calm, beautiful face was tortured when she met his eyes. “I’ve betrayed him.”
“Should we…?” Clay swallowed, shame and nerves roiling in his gut like a hangover from the best sex of his life. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to finish this bottle of wine and go to bed.” Her neck convulsed, pale and delicate against the dark, wooded backdrop. “Alone,” she finished, turning away. “I’m sorry.”
Clay rose, slugged back the contents of his glass to cover the prick of actual tears. He stood there, towering above her but about as low and inconsequential as one of those empty bug shells he crunched with every footfall.
