8. Adrian #2
“That’s a good sign. The doctor said - at my first appointment - she said once you hear a strong heartbeat at eleven weeks, the chances of...” She trails off. Can’t say the word.
“The chances are good,” I finish for her.
“Yeah.” She slides off the table, pulls her shirt down. “The chances are good.”
We walk out together, side by side, not touching. The ultrasound printouts are in her purse. The sound of that heartbeat is still echoing in my head.
***
In the car, she stares out the window at the parking lot.
The engine is running, but I haven’t put the car in gear. I can’t make myself move yet. Can’t break whatever fragile thing is building in the silence between us.
My right hand rests on the gearshift, and it won’t stop remembering. The exact pressure of her fingers. The heat of her palm. The way her pulse hammered against my skin like the heartbeat on the screen had climbed down her arm and into mine.
My hand keeps flexing anyway, open and closed, trying to hold on to something that’s already gone.
“Do you believe me now?” she asks quietly. “About the pregnancy?”
I want to say yes. I want to mean it.
“I believe you’re pregnant,” I say.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t respond. Just keeps staring out the window at the gray November sky.
“I want to believe all of it,” I continue, the words coming slowly. “The pregnancy. Cole. Everything you told me. But-”
“But you don’t.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.” I grip the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.
“I’ve been telling myself one story for weeks.
The story where you’re keeping secrets because you’re having an affair.
The story where I’m the idiot husband who can’t see what’s happening right in front of him.
” I pause. “And now you’re telling me a different story.
And I want it to be true. I want it so badly I can taste it.
But wanting something doesn’t make it real. ”
“No,” she agrees. “It doesn’t.”
“So I’m stuck. Between the story I was telling myself and the story you’re telling me. And I don’t know how to find my way out.”
She turns to look at me finally, and her expression is unreadable.
“What would help?” she asks. “What would make you believe me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would it help to talk to Cole? To hear it from him?”
My jaw tightens. “Maybe.”
“Then talk to him.” She reaches across the console and puts her hand on my arm - brief, careful, the first voluntary touch since the ultrasound room. “Call him. Meet with him. Ask him whatever you need to ask. I have nothing to hide, Adrian. Neither does he.”
“You’d be okay with that?”
“I’d be okay with whatever helps you trust me again.
” Her voice breaks slightly on the last word.
“Because I can’t live like this. In the guest wing.
Passing each other in the hallway like ghosts.
Pretending we’re not married in the middle of our own home.
” She shakes her head. “I can’t do it. I won’t survive it.
Not while I’m pregnant. Not while Cole is-”
She stops. Presses her hand to her mouth.
“Not while Cole is what?” I ask quietly.
“Dying.” The word comes out ragged. “Not while Cole is dying. I can’t lose him and lose you at the same time. I’m not strong enough.”
I stare at her. At the tears she’s trying to hold back. At the trembling in her hands.
She’s telling the truth, something whispers in my head. Look at her. She’s falling apart. No one can fake this.
But I’ve been wrong before. I’ve been wrong about so many things.
“I’ll call him,” I say finally. “Tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
We drive home in silence after that. But something has shifted. The printouts still sit between us on the console, but they feel less like evidence now.
They feel like a promise.
***
That night, I lie in the guest bed and I can’t stop thinking about her hand.
The way it found mine in the ultrasound room. The way her fingers closed around my palm like I was the only solid thing in a world that was spinning out of control. The way her pulse raced against my skin, matching the rhythm of our baby’s heartbeat.
My hand remembers hers.
That’s the only way to describe it. Hours later, lying in the dark, I can still feel the ghost of her grip. The warmth of her palm. The slight callus on her index finger from holding pens too tightly. The smooth band of her wedding ring pressing into my skin.
I flex my fingers in the darkness, and they ache for her.
You have no right, I tell myself. You accused her of cheating. You packed a suitcase. You’ve been sleeping three doors down for almost a week, punishing her for secrets she kept to protect a dying man and an unborn child. You have no right to want her touch.
But I do.
God help me, I do.
I want her hand in mine again. I want to pull her against me and breathe her in and tell her I’m sorry, I was wrong, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I want to go down the hall and knock on our bedroom door and beg her to let me come home.
But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I know - really know - what’s true.
Because if I go to her now, if I let myself believe and then find out I was wrong...
I won’t survive that. Neither will she.
So I lie in the guest bed with my hand curled into a fist, remembering the shape of her fingers, and I hate myself for wanting my wife’s touch inside the wreckage I built.
***
The phone rings long after the house has gone dark.
I’m not asleep - haven’t been able to sleep properly since I moved into the guest wing - so I grab it on the second ring, squinting at the screen in the darkness.
The caller ID makes my blood run cold.
Cole Reeves.
I stare at it for three rings. Four. My heart is pounding so hard it’s the only thing I can hear.
On the fifth ring, I answer.
“What do you want?”
Silence on the other end. Then a breath - ragged, exhausted.
“We need to talk.” Cole’s voice is wrong. Rough and tired in a way I’ve never heard before, even at dinner when he looked like death warmed over. This is worse. This is someone who’s been crying. “In person. Not like this.”
“So talk.”
“I can’t. Not over the phone.” Another breath, steadier this time. “Meet me tomorrow morning. Thames Street, the café on the corner. The one with the blue awning.”
“Why should I?”
A long pause. I can hear him breathing, can almost hear him choosing his words.
“Because you owe her that much,” he says finally.
“Because she’s pregnant with your baby and terrified she’s losing you.
Because I’m dying, Adrian, and I don’t have the energy to play games.
” His voice cracks. “Because you need to hear the truth from someone other than Nina, or you’re going to destroy your marriage.
And I won’t let that happen. Not when it’s my fault. ”
“Your fault?”
“Meet me tomorrow. First thing. And then decide what you believe.”
The call ends.
I sit in the dark with the phone in my hand, staring at the screen, trying to understand what just happened.
Cole calling me. Cole telling me I owe her. Cole sounding like death warmed over.
Because I’m dying, Adrian, and I don’t have the energy to play games.
None of it fits the story I’ve been telling myself. None of it matches the villain I’ve constructed in my head - the old flame who swept back into town to steal my wife, the other man lurking at the edges of my marriage.
But then again, nothing has fit that story for weeks.
I set the phone on the nightstand and stare at the ceiling until dawn, replaying Cole’s words over and over.
You need to hear the truth from someone other than Nina, or you’re going to destroy your marriage.
Maybe he’s right.
Maybe it’s time to stop telling myself stories and start listening to someone else’s.
***
In the morning, I get dressed in the guest room - one of the shirts Betty hung in the closet, pressed and ready - and I go downstairs.
Nina is in the kitchen, same as always. Same position. Same straight spine. Same careful distance.
“I’m meeting Cole this morning,” I say.
She turns. Her eyes are wide.
“You called him?”
“He called me. Last night.”
“What did he say?”
“That we need to talk.” I pour myself coffee I don’t want, just to have something to do with my hands. “He said I need to hear the truth from someone other than you.”
“And you’re going?”
“Yes.”
She’s quiet. Then she crosses the kitchen and stops in front of me - close enough to touch, closer than we’ve been in days.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t decided anything.”
“I know. But you’re trying.” She reaches up and straightens my collar - automatic, wifely, the kind of gesture she’s made a thousand times. Her fingers brush my neck, and I feel it like electricity. “That’s more than I had yesterday.”
I catch her hand before she can pull away. Hold it there, against my chest, feeling her pulse jump.
“I want to believe you,” I say. “I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“I know.”
“I just need-”
“Proof.” She nods. “I understand. Go talk to Cole. Hear what he has to say.” She pulls her hand free - gently, reluctantly. “And then decide what you believe.”
“Decide how?”
“I don’t know.” Her arms wrap around herself, and for a moment she looks small in our enormous kitchen. “I don’t know anything anymore, Adrian. Just - hear him out.”
I look at her - at my wife, standing in our kitchen, asking me to trust her one more time.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay.”
I finish my coffee. Grab my keys. Head for the door.
“Adrian?”
I turn back.
She’s standing where I left her, arms wrapped around herself, looking smaller than I’ve ever seen her.
“Whatever Cole tells you,” she says, “remember that I love you. That hasn’t changed. That’s never going to change.”
I nod. I can’t speak.
Then I walk out the door and drive toward Thames Street, toward Cole, toward a truth I’m terrified to hear.