He stood and raked his hands through his hair before he started pacing around his living room. His brow furrowed, but I honestly wasn’t sure if he was confused or upset.
“Look, before you get angry with me, let me tell you what happened,” I said.
He kept his back to me and nodded, but he didn’t turn around. Nor did he say anything. So, I cleared my throat.
“A few weeks after you deployed for that tour, I found out I was pregnant. And for a little while, I was in shock. I didn’t think it was possible. You know, because of the shape of my uterus. That’s what every doctor up until that point had told us, and my fear was that if I revealed anything too soon, I’d miscarry, and then we’d both be in pain.”
He snickered. “Well, obviously you didn’t.”
I stood to my feet. “No, Dean, I didn’t. And I had plans to tell you the first day of my second trimester. See, I talked to the doctor about my worries and the doctor on base informed me that sometimes, pregnancies could put undue pressure on deployed soldiers. So--.”
He whipped around. “So, you just kept it hidden from me? It was that easy for you?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You have no leg to stand on in this argument. You abandoned me to go chase child killers, and I took enough of my pain and stuffed it down so I could try to understand. I expect, at the very least, the same courtesy from you right now.”
He clenched his jaw. “I know.”
“Good. Now, the doctor told me that once I ticked over into my second trimester, the rate of miscarriage drops by seventy-two percent. Seventy-two, Dean. The pregnancy would’ve been practically guaranteed, in my eyes. So, I decided to wait. I took it easy. I did everything the doctor asked me to do. And then, the day rolled around where I was going to tell you. I had a sign made and a present sent to you overseas and everything.”
He blinked. “I never got it.”
I nodded. “I know. The day you went missing was the day I was supposed to tell you. The package was returned back to me a couple of weeks later.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “Fucking hell, god damn it!”
“Dean, I tried to find you. I really did. It’s why I tracked so many people down. It’s why I went onto base and begged--I mean, really begged--people to tell me what the hell was going on. You were supposed to know. You were supposed to find out that day. But, after hitting roadblock after roadblock, there was nothing. After your deployment came back and you didn’t show up at home, there was nothing.”
He slid his hands down his face. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.”
I walked up to him and placed a hand on his arm. “By the time I was six months pregnant, I had convinced myself that you died. You died, and they put you in the ground somewhere, or maybe your body wasn’t even retrievable. So, I’d go to the cemetery on base and sit with the faceless--and sometimes, nameless--headstones, figuring you were among them somewhere. I grieved your death, Dean. And then, I had to pick up and move on because I had a child to bring into this world who deserved a fair shot at a decent life.”
“You could’ve looked up military records.”
I tilted my head. “And you think that with me being in my last trimester, spending my afternoons after work sitting in a cemetery with tears streaming down my face, that I wanted to sit there and stare at your death certificate?”
“You would’ve seen that there wasn’t one.”
I threw my hands into the air. “And then what, Dean? I got back to hoping that you stop forgetting about me long enough to come home? What kind of good would that have done?”
He shook his head mindlessly. “I don’t know, Lexi.”
“Exactly. It was a lose-lose situation either way. So, I chose the one that hurt just a little bit less so that when our little girl came into the world, I could talk to her about her father--when the time came--with a smile on my face instead of tears in my eyes. I did what I needed to in order to survive the decisions you made. Just like you did everything you could to track down those assholes who murdered those children in cold blood.”
His eyes met mine and I couldn’t read them. I had always been able to read Dean, but the blank look on his face left me nothing to cling to for my assumptions. I knew that, logically, he had no right to be upset with me. However, that didn’t dismiss the fact that we were human, and he had a right to his emotions even if they didn’t make sense.
“Please, say something,” I said softly.
And that’s when he walked up to me and cupped my cheeks. “How the hell did our lives get to be so fucked up?”
I snickered breathlessly. “I ask myself that question more times than not.”
His forehead touched down against my own. “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to your life. I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
I let my palms rest on his chest. “You brought so much beauty into my world, Dean. You focus on the bad, but you brought me so much good. You taught me how to love in a world that never loved me. You gave me Natasha, which I’ll never be able to thank you for. She’s a smart girl. Very mature for her age. She loves water balloon fights and coloring with markers and putting stickers on her furniture. She’s almost seven years old, but she talks as if she’s in her teenage years. Her teachers think she’s far more advanced for a second grader, and they’ve even been thinking about bumping her up a grade or two.”
He chuckled. “She didn’t get that shit from me.”
“Oh, Dean,” I said softly, “she got so much more from you. She got your eyes, and your strength. She’s got your spindly little chicken legs and your--.”
