Chapter Sixty-Eight Dottie
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Dottie
But instead of going to bed I crawled under the bed, under Peggy’s bed, in the guest room.
I wriggled under the dust ruffle and lay there, awaiting the creak of bedsprings, the sound of voices.
My mind drifted and wandered in those long dark hours as I waited to find out if my husband had really moved his pregnant mistress into my home. To find out if she carried his child in her swollen belly.
I was about to drift off when a noise stirred my consciousness. Hushed voices, muffled footsteps on the carpet, the mattress sagging as two people climbed onto the bed.
They made love inches above me. Each soft grunt and quiet sigh carved a new channel of pain through my heart.
When they finished, the whispers came, indistinct and muffled, occasionally punctuated by soft laughter.
I caught the word “baseball,” and Dickie’s name.
I caught my own name once or twice, and the word “baby.” After a few minutes they became bolder, louder and then she admonished, “Shh . . . she’ll hear us. ”
The voices lowered again, then lengthened into silence, followed by the sound of Dickie snoring. I stared into the empty blackness for a long time, begging God to strike me dead as I contemplated my life with no baby, no husband, no future.
But God didn’t take me.
So I crawled out and returned to the room I share with my husband and sank into our bed, alone.