Chapter 6—Christa #2
The urgency in his voice catches my attention. I straighten. “Why are you panicking?” He certainly doesn’t care that much about me.
“I’m not panicking. My wife just had me served with divorce papers at my office.”
“That explains being upset.” I watch one of my conservators wheel a padded cart across the room below. “It doesn’t explain why you’re immediately demanding that I withdraw them.”
“Because this is insane.”
I almost smile. “Excellent argument.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I turn away from the window and walk back toward my desk.
A chair scrapes on his end, followed by the muffled sound of a door closing. When Tate speaks again, his voice is lower. “We can fix this.”
I stop beside my chair. That’s new. “What?”
“Our marriage. Don’t act like that’s ridiculous.”
I roll my eyes again though he can’t see. “You’ve spent months treating me like an inconvenience.”
“I have not.”
I sit and stare at the petition. “You told me to stop trying for a baby until I figure out what’s wrong with me.”
“I shouldn’t have said it that way.”
The distinction makes me straighten. He still hasn’t apologized for saying it, only for his phrasing. “How should you have said it?”
“Christa.”
“I’m curious.”
“I’m not doing semantics with you. We both said things.”
I search my memory and come up with one contribution worth mentioning. “I told you to get a semen analysis.”
“Exactly.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it, and I cover my mouth for a second.
Tate doesn’t share the humor. “This isn’t funny.”
“No, but that was.”
“You know what I mean.”
I lower my hand and stare at the phone. “I really don’t.”
Faint voices carry through his end from somewhere beyond his office. Tate waits until they fade before speaking again. “The baby thing doesn’t matter. We don’t need to decide anything about children right now.”
I stop moving.
For almost three years, children have mattered to Tate, Judith, Bernard, the family trust, and every Meade gathering where someone found a tactful new way to ask whether my body had produced the correct result yet.
Two days ago, Tate let his entire family discuss my fertility over dinner. Now he’s dismissing the whole subject.
I push my chair away from the desk again. “Since when?”
“It’s become too much pressure.”
“On whom?”
“Both of us.”
I pace toward the bookcase. “That’s not what you said Saturday.”
“I was angry.”
“You keep using that excuse.”
“People say things when they’re angry.”
I think of Celeste asking whether anybody wanted to discuss her uterus next and trace one finger over the cover of a conservation manual. At least someone at that table understood how absurd the evening had become. “I’m not withdrawing the petition.”
Tate doesn’t hesitate. “Don’t make that decision today.”
“I made it six weeks ago.”
“No, you didn’t. You were angry and hired an attorney.”
I turn away from the bookcase. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
There’s a longer pause before Tate says, “Give me a month. Thirty days. We go to counseling, and we figure this out.”
The specificity makes me stop beside the guest chair. “Why thirty?”
“It’s a reasonable amount of time.”
The back of my neck prickles. “For what?”
“For us.”
I lower myself into the chair instead of returning behind my desk. Tate hasn’t suggested counseling once in our entire marriage. Saturday, he cared more about being embarrassed in front of his family than about why I was miserable, but now he needs exactly thirty days. “I don’t want thirty days.”
“Christa, be reasonable.”
“I’ve been reasonable for years.”
“Then be reasonable now.”
I stare at the empty desk chair across from me, imagining Tate sitting there and telling me exactly how reasonable I’m required to be. “You mean do what you want.”
“I mean don’t blow up our lives over one bad stretch.”
I snort. “Our bad stretch has lasted years.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Angry Tate is easier to recognize than the pleading version. I get to my feet and return to the desk because I really do have work waiting. “I have to go.”
“You’re seriously going to hang up on me?”
“Yes.”
“Christa, don’t.”
Something in his voice keeps me from ending the call immediately. I stand with one hand resting on the back of my chair, listening.
He sounds afraid, which is new enough to unsettle me. I don’t know whether he’s afraid of losing me, being divorced, or whatever else comes with those court papers, but I don’t need to solve that for him. “I’ll have Jai send you her contact information.” It’s in the petition, of course.
“I don’t want to talk to your damn lawyer.”
I pull my chair out. “Then hire your own.”
I end the call and sit behind my desk for a moment, letting the quiet return. My treatment report is still open to the same page, and my coffee has gone cold beside it. I screenshot the call log, send Jai a short summary, then force myself to read the paragraph I’d abandoned before Tate called.
Her response arrives two minutes later.
Jai: Thirty days is oddly specific. Did he say why?
I type back.
Christa: No.
Three dots appear.
Jai: Don’t agree to anything.
Christa: Wasn’t planning to.
Her answer is immediate.
Jai: You’re a smart cookie.