4. Adrian #2
The words hang in the air between us, raw and wounded. Nina’s face crumples.
“I know,” she says. “I know you do. And I’m so sorry.”
She pulls away from me, grabs the phone, reads the screen. Whatever she sees makes her go pale.
“I have to go,” she says again. “I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything soon, I promise, I just - I have to go.”
She’s out the door before I can respond, leaving me standing in the kitchen with cold coffee and the distinct feeling that I’ve just watched my marriage walk out the door.
I follow her.
I’m not proud of it. I’m disgusted with myself even as I grab my keys and head for the garage - pulling out of the driveway three minutes after her car disappears, keeping enough distance to stay hidden while close enough to track her silver Audi through the morning traffic.
This is who you are now, a voice in my head whispers. A man who follows his wife like a private investigator. A man who doesn’t trust the woman he swore to love forever.
I tell myself I’ll turn back. I tell myself I just need to see where she goes, just once, and then I’ll know - I’ll know it’s innocent, and I can stop this paranoid spiral that’s eating me alive.
Her car turns onto Broadway. I follow.
She passes the shops she supposedly loves, the boutiques and bookstores and cafés where she claims to spend her afternoons. She doesn’t stop at any of them.
She turns again, heading toward the harbor, toward a part of town I don’t associate with her at all.
And then I lose her.
One moment her silver Audi is three cars ahead; the next, she’s gone - swallowed by the traffic and the rain that’s just started to fall.
I pull over, heart hammering, hands shaking on the steering wheel.
Turn around. Go home. This is insane.
But I don’t turn around. I sit there in my parked car, rain drumming on the roof, and I think about everything I’ve noticed over the past few weeks. The exhaustion. The tears. The nausea. The hand pressed protectively against her stomach.
The way she’s stopped drinking coffee.
She’s pregnant, I think. The certainty settles over me like a weight.
But then the second thought comes, the terrible one, the one I can’t shake:
Is it mine?
I sit in my car for a long time, watching the rain streak down the windshield, and I try to remember the last time Nina and I made love. Really made love, not the distracted, going-through-the-motions sex we’ve had a few times in the past month.
The rain keeps falling. I keep sitting.
And somewhere across town, my wife is with another man, carrying secrets I don’t know how to ask about and answers I’m terrified to hear.
That night, she comes home late.
I’m waiting in the study, pretending to read, when I hear the front door open. Her footsteps are slow on the stairs - tired, I think, or maybe just reluctant to face me.
“Adrian?” Her voice floats up the stairwell. “Are you awake?”
“In here.”
She appears in the doorway of the study, and I catch my breath at the sight of her. She’s been crying - I can see the tracks on her cheeks, the redness around her eyes - but there’s something else too. Something almost peaceful. Like whatever happened today brought her some kind of resolution.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hi.”
She crosses to where I’m sitting, and before I can say anything, she crawls into my lap. Just like she used to, back when we were first married, back when every evening ended with her curled against me like a cat.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into my neck. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
I wrap my arms around her, breathing in the new-familiar scent of her - that softer smell, that pregnancy smell, if that’s what it is.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I say. “Please. I can’t do this anymore.”
She pulls back enough to look at me, and her eyes are bright with tears and something else - fear, maybe, or hope, or some complicated mixture of both.
“Soon,” she says. “I promise. Soon.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“I know. But this time I mean it.” She cups my face in her hands, and I feel the tremble in her fingers. “There are things I need to tell you. Important things. Things that will change everything.”
“Good change or bad change?”
She hesitates. “I don’t know yet. Both, maybe.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I know.” She leans in and kisses me - really kisses me, for the first time in weeks, her mouth soft and desperate against mine. I respond automatically, my hands sliding up her back, pulling her closer, feeling the familiar heat build between us.
Then I feel it.
Her stomach, pressed against mine. Fuller than it should be. Rounder.
I go still.
“Adrian?” She pulls back, looking at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”
You’re pregnant, I want to say. I can feel it. I can see it. Why won’t you tell me?
But the words stick in my throat. Because if I say them out loud, I have to face what comes next. I have to ask the question that’s been burning a hole in my brain for days.
Is it mine?
“Nothing,” I say instead. “Just tired.”
She studies my face, and I see her decide not to push. “Okay. Do you want to come to bed?”
“In a minute.”