5. Luisa
— ? —
Luisa
The restaurant was the kind of place that didn’t have prices on the menu.
Soft lighting, white tablecloths, the low murmur of old money talking to old money.
Wade had made the reservation three months ago, our spot, the place he’d taken me on our first real date, the one where he’d talked about hull dynamics for forty-five minutes and then apologized so profusely that I’d laughed until I cried.
He was here. On time. In a suit that fit him perfectly, with his hair actually combed, smiling at me across the table like I was the only person in the room.
For twenty minutes, I had my husband back.
It used to be like this without my having to beg for it.
Not the restaurant, Wade had never cared about restaurants, but the being here.
Present. Mine. On our first anniversary he’d flown us back to Nantucket and we’d eaten fried clams out of paper baskets on the seawall, and when I shivered he’d handed me his jacket, and then, because that wasn’t enough for him, his sweater too, and sat there in a T-shirt in October pretending he wasn’t freezing while I laughed at him.
“Worth it,” he’d said, watching me instead of the water.
That was the man I married, the man I kept setting a place for, night after night, long after I should have known he wasn’t coming.
“So then Hendricks says, completely serious, ‘But what if we made the hull spherical?’” Wade was gesturing with his bread knife, eyes bright with the particular joy he got from mocking bad engineering. “Spherical! Like we’re building a submarine for Willy Wonka!”
“Did you tell him that?”
“I told him the pressure distribution calculations alone would take six months.” He grinned. “He looked at me like I’d insulted his mother.”
I laughed. Real laughter, the kind I hadn’t felt in months. Under the table, his hand found mine, his thumb tracing circles on my palm.
“I missed this,” I said.
“Me too.” His grip tightened. “Lu, I know I’ve been. I know things have been hard. But I’m going to do better. Starting tonight. Starting right now.”
“Promise?”
“On my life, Lu.”
The waiter brought our appetizers. Wade told me about a new project at work, some kind of stealth coating that absorbed sonar, and I watched his face light up the way it used to when he talked about things that excited him.
I told him about my new student, a twelve-year-old with two left feet and more determination than any kid I’d ever taught.
He asked follow-up questions. He listened.
It was good. So good.
He was looking at me the way he used to. Across the candlelight, across the wreckage of the last few months, like I was still the only thing in the room worth looking at.
“Lu,” he said, quieter now. He reached across the table and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and his fingertips grazed my jaw, and everything in me went still and warm at once.
His thumb traced the corner of my mouth.
I forgot the restaurant. I forgot six months of cold silences.
I leaned in, and he leaned in, and for one breathless inch the years fell away and he was just my husband, about to kiss me like he meant it-
His phone buzzed.
I saw it happen in slow motion. The slight vibration against the tablecloth. His eyes flicking down. The shift in his expression, subtle, almost imperceptible, but I’d learned to read him too well.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I should just check-”
“Wade. Don’t do this to me tonight.”
He picked up the phone anyway. Looked at the screen. And I watched his face change, watched the husband I’d had for twenty minutes disappear behind a mask of obligation and guilt.
“It’s Dolores,” he said. “She’s-”
“I don’t care.”
“Lu, she’s alone. Something happened with the estate lawyers and she’s-”
“She’s alone?” I pulled my hand away from his. “I’m alone. I’ve been alone at this table all year. Every dinner you’ve canceled, every Saturday you’ve missed, every single time you’ve chosen her over me, I’ve been alone.”
“This is different.”
“It’s not different. It’s never different.”
He was already pushing back his chair. Already reaching for his jacket. I could see the guilt on his face, but I could also see the decision he’d already made, the one he always made.
“It’s one hour,” he said. “I’ll go, I’ll make sure she’s okay, and I’ll come right back. I promise.”
“It’s always one hour. And then one hour turns into two, and two turns into the whole night, and I’m left sitting here wondering why I’m not enough.”
“Of course you’re enough. Luisa, how many times do I have to-”
“Then stay.” My voice cracked. “Please. Just this once. Stay with me.”
He looked at me. I looked at him. The restaurant hummed around us, other couples having the dinners we were supposed to be having, and I watched my husband weigh me against another woman and find me wanting.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He kissed my forehead. His lips were warm and familiar and felt like goodbye.
“I love you,” he said. “I’ll be back before dessert.”
And then he was gone.
I sat at the table for a long time after he left. The waiter came by twice, asking if everything was all right. I smiled and said I was waiting for my husband. The lie tasted like ashes.
The dessert arrived, chocolate soufflé for two, the one I’d ordered because it was his favorite, and I stared at it until it collapsed in on itself, deflating slowly like it had given up too.
My stomach turned.
At first I thought it was emotional. The grief, the anger, the slow-motion implosion of my marriage, all of it churning together until it felt like nausea.
But then it got worse, and I was pushing back from the table, mumbling an excuse to the waiter about the restroom, walking as fast as I could without running.
I made it to the bathroom just in time.
The tile was cold under my knees. The stall smelled like expensive soap and industrial cleaner. I threw up until there was nothing left, and then I stayed there, forehead pressed against my arm, trying to remember how to breathe.
Eventually I pulled myself up. Washed my face at the sink. Tried to make myself look like someone who hadn’t just lost everything on what was supposed to be a celebration.
The door opened. An elderly woman walked in, silver hair, elegant dress, the kind of posture that suggested decades of finishing schools and high society. She moved to the sink next to mine, washing her hands with precise, economical movements.
Our eyes met in the mirror.
“Morning sickness doesn’t stick to morning anymore, huh?” she said, matter-of-fact.
I stared at her. “What?”
“My daughter was the same way. Sick as a dog at all hours.” She dried her hands on a paper towel, still watching me in the mirror. “A few weeks along, if I had to guess. Something about the way you’re holding yourself.”
She left before I could respond.
I gripped the edge of the sink and looked at my reflection. Pale. Hollow-eyed. A woman whose husband had just walked out on their anniversary dinner.
When was my last period?
I tried to think. Counted backward. Counted again.
Six weeks. Maybe seven.
No. That couldn’t be right. I was on birth control. Careful, always. There was no way-
But I’d been so distracted lately. So tired. So busy watching my marriage fall apart that I hadn’t noticed the things I should have noticed.
I left the restaurant without going back to the table. Found a pharmacy three blocks away, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the aisles too bright and too clean. I grabbed a test, the expensive kind, the one that promised 99.9% accuracy, and paid in cash because I didn’t want a record.
This is insane. You’re being insane. It’s stress. It’s emotion. It’s anything but this.
The apartment was dark when I got home. Wade wasn’t back yet. Of course he wasn’t.
I locked myself in the bathroom. Sat on the edge of the tub. Read the instructions three times even though I knew how it worked, because reading them gave my hands a job.
Three minutes.
I took the test. Set it on the counter. Slid down to the floor with my back against the bathtub, hugging my knees to my chest.
The ceiling had a crack in it. I’d never noticed before. A thin line running from the light fixture to the corner, like the house was slowly pulling itself apart.
I thought about Wade’s face when I’d asked him to stay. The way he’d kissed my forehead instead of my mouth. The sound of his car starting in the restaurant parking lot.
And the burgundy dress in our closet, size two.
I thought about a boathouse in Nantucket, salt air and summer light, a man who promised to find me in every life.
Three minutes.
I reached for the test.
Positive.
Two pink lines, clear as day, impossible to misread.
I was pregnant. With Wade’s baby. On the anniversary he’d walked out on.
And I smiled.
This should wake him up. This would cut through the fog of obligation and guilt and whatever hold Dolores had on him. This was us, me and him and the life we’d made together, and it would remind him who he married, what we’d built, why we’d promised forever in the first place.
He wanted a family. He’d told me that on our honeymoon, lying in bed in some overwater bungalow, his hand on my stomach like he was imagining this exact moment. Someday, Lu. Two kids, maybe three. A house with a yard. Soccer games and dance recitals and all of it.
I pressed my palm flat against my belly and thought: Someday is now.