Chapter 19
Jackson
The gentle clink of chains reveals Ellary's location as I step out of my car.
With my car parked beside Ellie’s silver Honda, I slam the door shut and pocket my keys, nervous as I round the side of the house to get to the backyard.
The double swing set was a birthday present from Ellie’s parents a few years ago.
Ellie loved the swing set at her parents' house and wanted to push our son or daughter on it, but after she couldn't get pregnant, she stopped using the one in our backyard. This is the first time I’ve seen her on our swing in years.
It’s early evening, with the sun just beginning to set, as I walk up to my beautiful wife. She’s barefoot, her hair is loose, and she’s wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt as she swings back and forth.
“Hey,” she says, slowing her swinging and peering up at me.
“Hey.” I glance at the swing beside her. “Mind if I sit?”
She shakes her head.
As soon as I take a seat, she gets to her feet and says, “The scans are inside. I’ll go get them.”
She doesn’t ask me to come inside. That feels deliberate.
I sit on the swing, not pushing myself back and forth. Just waiting.
She returns in a couple of minutes with two black-and-white scans and hands them to me. “Here. One for you and another for your parents.”
My nerves are bubbling over. I feel sick. My hands are clammy.
I look down and frown. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“Wrong angle.” Leaning over from her swing, she takes the scans from me and turns them ninety-degrees.
Suddenly, everything becomes clear.
“Oh! Oh.” The longer I stare at it, the more my eyes burn. “This is incredible.”
“Yeah,” she says softly, “it kind of is.”
I stare at the small, slightly blurry peanut-sized shape that is my baby. Our baby.
My vision gets blurry, and I drag the back of my hand across my eyes. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t think I’d be this emotional.”
“I cried a lot,” she admits, voice soft.
I glance at her. “Yeah?”
Her fingers wrap around the metal chain of her swing, and I can’t help but notice her naked ring finger.
In my apartment, I have her wedding ring on my nightstand.
It’s the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing before I go to sleep.
A painful, tangible reminder of something precious I lost and I’m desperate to retrieve: my wife.
“I cried myself silly in the doctor’s office, then what little mascara I hadn’t cried off, I lost in the bathroom afterwards.
” She glances at me. “You should have been there for the scan, and you should have had a copy of it before now. I shouldn’t have kept you at a distance throughout that part, even if it hurt to see you.
That wasn’t fair to our baby, and to you, when I know how much you want to be a father. ”
I nod, certain that whatever comes out of my mouth will be inadequate.
But I root around for words that I hope won’t hurt Ellie more than I have already.
“You were putting yourself first, and you needed to. I’d like to be there for the next appointment as long as it won’t make you uncomfortable. If you don’t—”
“It’s okay,” she cuts in, resuming swinging. “You can be there.”
She’s not demanding that I leave, so I carefully tuck the two scans into my suit jacket pocket and swing gently back and forth. “If you text me the appointments you have coming up, I’ll be there.”
“Your boss won’t mind?”
I shake my head. “He knows I have a lot of wrongs to make right with you, and I’m grateful that he’s my godfather. I wouldn’t have had a job after what I did, and I’d have been walking out of his office that day with two black eyes.”
She tilts her head, brown eyes stirring with curiosity.
“It’s why I didn’t come after you straight away that day. Dennis chewed me out, gave me an hour to finish my work, and then he suspended me for two weeks. He figured he would have strangled the need to break my nose by the end of my suspension for what I did to you.”
Her eyes widen. “He said that? But he’s always been so sweet.”
“I’m his godson, but he always liked you. I always suspect he thinks you could have done better.”
We sit in silence for the next several seconds.
If I were a better man, I should be leaving since she didn’t deny that going to the appointment today hadn’t made her uncomfortable, but I’m not ready to walk away yet.
I soak in each precious second in her presence for however long it will last, and I have a feeling it won’t last nearly as long as I need and want it to.
“Is there anything you need for the baby? Or for you?” I keep my focus on the house with its kitchen light on and the back door partially open.
“I’m okay.”
“You’re not touching any of the money in our joint checking account.”
I feel her looking at me.
“I check the balance every now and again,” I say. “I’m not keeping track of you or what you spend. That money is ours. Buy what you need.”
“You’ve been paying the mortgage and the bills. What I make at the coffee shop is enough for food. I haven’t wanted to buy anything for the baby.”
“Why not?” I frown.
She lifts her shoulder in a half-shrug. “I wanted to make sure everything was okay with the scan first. Just in case… well, you know.”
Three miscarriages took a toll on her. Devastated, she believed she had done something wrong.
She thought she hadn't been eating well enough, that the bath she took was too hot, and that other small decisions she made led to the miscarriages.
I tried to reassure her that she had done nothing wrong, and so did her OB/GYN, but she still blamed herself.
When I cheated on her, I showed her that she couldn’t trust me. She would have gone to that appointment, terrified of what the scan would show. I hadn’t been there to hold her hand like I should have because she couldn’t bear to look at me after I betrayed her.
Not again.
Not ever again.
“Maybe a teddy bear?” I suggest, adding hopefully, “We can save the big stuff like a crib, dresser, and rocking chair for you to nurse later.”
“I guess.”
“Or baby shoes.”
“Booties.”
I grin. “It even sounds cute.”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice soft with amusement. “Jackson?”
“What is it?” I brace myself to stand up and walk away, even though every part of me wants to stay close to her, breathing in the scent of her skin. And I ache to tuck the strand of hair on her cheek behind her ear.
“What do you talk about in therapy?”
Surprised by her question, I struggle to condense my therapy sessions into a summary for her.
“You sometimes. Mostly it’s me.” I wince when I hear myself.
I glance over at her. “That makes therapy sound self-indulgent. Lynn focuses on why I make the decisions I do and how to make better choices. And how to be a better person. It’s…
painful talking about things I would rather ignore. ”
“Like the cheating?” Her voice is quiet, and she slows her swing to look at me.
“Like the cheating,” I echo. “And about the ways I let you down over the years. How much of myself I made about hockey, the expectation that I would always be a hockey star, and what happened when I fell short of those expectations. The mistakes that I thought were mistakes were deliberate choices I made when I put my wants and needs above yours.”
She nods without looking at me. Her fingers curl around the swing chain. “Did she tell you that? Your therapist.”
I let out a sigh. “Lynn has a way of asking questions that make you confront ugly parts of yourself, and she makes sure you don’t hate yourself in the process.”
From her long silence, she’s thinking of the cheating. So am I.
“Ellie?”
She glances at me. “Yeah?”
Hesitantly, I ask, “Push me off my swing if you think this is a terrible idea, but do you think we could make this a regular thing? Us on the swing, maybe once a week, just talking.”
“About the baby?”
I was hoping for other things as well. Like our future. I want a thing I can never have because I destroyed it: my wife’s love and trust.
I have three months to win my wife back, and even though it’s impossible, I can’t stop wanting and dreaming of it anyway.
“About the baby. We need to figure out a birth plan, right? Some of those leaflets were scary. They led me on an internet search that threw up more questions than I knew what to do with. I could talk about those things with Wade, but I think this is something we need to talk about together.”
“Okay, I’d like that.” She gets to her feet. “I’d better go inside.”
“Same time next week?”
She nods.
I watch her go, then stand up from the swing and head to my car, feeling light. I don’t dare feel hopeful. On my way home, I stop by my parents' to drop off a copy of the baby scan.
Mom takes one look at the scan, immediately bursts into tears as she tugs it out of my hand and pulls me in close for a hug.
Then I remember she didn’t know Ellie was pregnant because I didn’t tell her about seeing Ellie at the grocery store.
Dad looks at Mom and says, “Better sit down, son. I’ll go make us all a drink.”
Yeah. I’ll be here for a while, but for good reason. My mom is crying tears of joy over a grandchild she wondered if she’d ever have, and that’s worth celebrating.