Ben bolted upright, and, in an unlikely response, began to dress. Calmly, evenly, he pulled on his boxers, then his pants, then his shirt. He buckled his belt. And, in the spaces between his silent dressing, I also pulled on my skirt and tied my disheveled hair behind my neck.
As the seconds turned to minutes that felt more like hours, he finally said, “Why would you even joke about something like that?”
“I know, Ben.”
“Know what?”
“About Laura Anne.”
He started stammering, the way that men do when they’ve been caught in the trap and are trying to decide whether to lie down and die or to see if they can chew their leg off without bleeding to death before help arrives. “I... I have no idea what you’re... what you’re talking about.”
As the tears pooled in his eyes, I have to say that I was surprised. I had become so accustomed to hating him, seething inside with rage that someone I loved and trusted with every cell in my body could betray me so handily, that I guess I only assumed that he felt the same way toward me. And then I knew he had decided to lie down and die after all. “But, TL, you can’t do this to me. You’re the love of my life.”
“Can’t do this to you?” I asked, still calmly, still evenly, still emotionless. “Maybe we should review the facts of the case here. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the one cheating on you with my ex.” I felt a sting of guilt because no one could possibly deny that keeping the knowledge of his child from him was one of the worst things that you could ever do to a person. And then there was the truth that I had my entire life with another man and Ben’s baby planned out. It was harder to be indignant, remembering.
He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no, no. It was stupid. I was feeling sad about not having a baby, but I didn’t want to upset you, so we started talking and it just happened. But I don’t love her. I don’t want her. I never loved her. I only love you.”
It was the first time I had ever seen Ben bordering on hysterical. And I was so happy I almost cried. I hadn’t been wrong all this time. He had truly loved me.
Maybe it was because I had been living with the secret for so long, but I was finally the calm one while he was the one unraveling over the outcome that was now out of his hands. “Everything haschanged for me now. There’s no way I can be with you knowing what you’re capable of.”
Ben hugged me and rested his chin on my head. I didn’t hug him back. “We can start over again. We can get out of here, go on tour again, be back to that all-over-each-other couple, me singing to you and you loving me.”
“Yeah, but see, here’s the thing. Now that you’ve been that withher, it’s ruined for me.”
“You can’t leave me, Annie. I’ll be alone forever. I’ll wait for you until I die. You are the only one for me, I swear.”
It scared me how cold I felt toward him now, how quickly that burning passion had dissipated. But it is, after all, fire that forges steel. It made me wish that I had confronted him about it when I first found out, that we could have had a chance to repair it while my insides still felt raw and oozing, before the skin had healed back over and made the body forget that it had ever felt anything to begin with. “Then I guess you should have thought about that before you started carrying your girlfriend down the stairs in a golf bag.”
I could see his eyes widen a fraction. I knew he didn’t want to give himself away, to let me see his shock. “That long?”
I nodded. It was stunning even to me that I had known for weeks without cracking. Although, clearly, he knew the wind had shifted.
I was getting ready to walk away when I felt something trickling down my leg. I looked down and saw a line of red making its way from my thigh to my ankle, a kindergarten teacher’s perfect mark on the blackboard. “No!” I said. “No, no, no!”
I looked up at Ben, wishing that anyone was there but him. “You have to drive me to the hospital!”
I was frantic, marching out the door ahead of him, not even worried about the trail of red that I was leaving on the white carpet.
He grabbed my arm. “What is going on, Annabelle?”
“I’m pregnant!” I shouted.
His eyes widened. “Mine?”
“Who else’s would it possibly be? You’re the cheater. Not me.”
We rode to the hospital in silence, and I already knew before the ER doctor said, “I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”
“Oh my God,” I said, choking back my tears. “Is it because I took a bath?”
He gave me a puzzled look and patted my hand like I had totally lost my mind. “No, sweetheart. It wasn’t anything you did. And everything with you looks perfect on the ultrasound. This is just nature’s way of taking its course. Sometimes it isn’t meant to be. But you shouldn’t have any problem with pregnancy in the future.”
I should have been relieved. I should have been able to breathe now that my ties to Ben were gone. That I didn’t have to choose between telling the complicated truth and living a lie, that I didn’t have to be an unwed mother, that I could move on now, be free.
But I didn’t. I felt devastated. Minutes earlier, there had been a living thing inside of me, and, now, with a swoosh of blood and little fanfare, it was just gone. It was one of the only things I could think of that could actually supersede my anger at Ben. And we cried together, for all that we had had, and the even more that we had lost.
I let him hold my hand on the way to the car, and he said shakily, “Annabelle, we can try again. We can start over. I’m still me. I’m still that same man that you fell in love with.”
