Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
PAIGE
My stomach looks unchanged.
It’s still a little plump, and it’s still pale.
There’s still a little mole to the right of my still oddly deep belly button.
My hand runs across the landscape of my belly, marking all of the details that make it uniquely mine.
Then I reach the jagged edge of my scar.
My finger glides along the uneven line that spans the length of my lower abdomen.
The scar serves as a reminder that my body was not a safe space for my baby.
While everything appears to remain the same, nobody would be able to tell that there’s a new life stirring beneath my palm.
My baby.
Our baby.
The room is dark. The house is quiet. The brilliant flashes and echoing crashes of the grand fireworks show have long since faded away. No sounds of laughter, cheers, or chatter remain in our home. There’s nothing except for the odd creak and scrape you never want to think too closely about.
This is where I sit. Alone in the silence, charting my belly and watching the door a few hours after everyone left. A few hours after, a number of people stayed back to help clean up the food and trash, namely Carter and Becky.
I tilt my head and slide the pendant on my favorite necklace back and forth, slipping it into my mouth for the 18000th time.
My push present from so many years ago is a simple chain and a metal work of a kangaroo.
I was obsessed with the concept of wearing our baby and was looking at pictures online, following women on YouTube who made it look so effortless.
When I showed Trevor the picture of a specific brand, he laughed at me and said that I was his adorable little pregnant kangaroo.
The idea stuck, and we used a lot of Kanga and Roo items in our first little apartment. Even as we struggled in our Suburban, he found a way to include my obsession with a small stuffed animal he found at a secondhand store.
I cried when he gave it to me. I cried again when I opened the wrap and necklace. “My little kangaroo,” Trevor whispered and kissed my cheek.
Currently, our boy is upstairs, sleeping soundly in his bed. He’s unaware of what has happened, and for that, I’m grateful. I pull my legs up and wrap my arms around them, resting my head on my knees in a pose I won’t be able to sit in soon enough.
Why is it that, sometimes, silence can echo? That it can be so loud?
As these thoughts drift through my mind until the roar of Trevor’s car cuts through the night and jars me out of the place of contemplation I was in. My fist crumples the note I found beside our bed not long after the fireworks finished.
My world, I gotta take care of something. I couldn’t find you and I ran out of time. I’ll explain everything when I get home. I’ll probably be late, so don’t wait up. I love you.
— Your Star
If only I knew what I was going to say to the man who metaphorically punched me in the throat with his actions today. Checking my watch, I adjust my thoughts. It was actually yesterday that he left—with Krista.
The click of the door shutting, the jingle of him placing the keys on the table, and the thumps of him removing his shoes are a familiar cadence of his return home, but this time, the old comfort adds weight to my chest, and my breathing picks up.
His quiet steps drift toward me, and my knees drop over the edge of the couch, my hands clutching the frayed hem of my shorts.
My mind drifts back to the sex-on-legs that my husband spent his evening with, and I tug my sweatshirt more securely over the same belly I was studying to intently only moments ago, draping it to hang loose over my frame.
A bang and a loud curse reach my ear. While I would normally mock him for his ridiculousness in insisting on walking in the dark and make sure he’s alright, I remain quiet, my mouth firmly shut, my mind racing.
Why would you leave and not give me a way to stay in contact?
Why would you be late to our own party?
Why were you with her, even after you promised you would do better?
Why would you leave without talking to me first?
Am I supposed to share these expectations? Shouldn’t he know? He also has no idea that I’m pregnant. My head falls into my hands, and I let out a long, low groan.
“Paige? Is that you?” His voice moves closer with the question, but I’m still. I’m quiet. His outline is faint in the cloudy night until a flash of lightning fills the room, illuminating his ragged form in the middle of the room.
“Yes.”
He’s already seen me. We made eye contact the moment that lightning forked across the sky. Thunder rumbles, loud and quick.
“Where were you, Trevor?”
He runs his hand through his wet hair and huffs out a breath. “Why are you still up? It’s late.”
His deflection makes my chest hurt. “Where were you after you left tonight, Trevor?”
He walks closer to me, but freezes only a few steps away. “Do we need to do this right now, hun? I’m tired, and I’m sure that you are—”
“Jesus! Where the fuck were you?”
I keep my shaking hands shoved in my lap and watch him. His indrawn breath before he releases it and reaches out for me. Whatever he was going to say is lost, then his scent hits me. Or her scent.
My stomach rolls the second it hits me. “Don’t.” My voice is a low hiss. I can’t yell. I know that my voice carries, and the last thing I need is for Jacob to hear us arguing at two in the morning after his father just arrived home with the scent of another woman on him. Rotting fucking roses.
My hand goes to my bile-filled mouth, and I leap up and run from him, carried by pure instinct and desperation to reach the nearest bathroom, where I stop to kneel at the porcelain throne.
I’m immediately and violently ill. I heave and lose track of everything around me except for the cramping of my stomach, the nausea, and the sweat that lines my forehead and above my lip.
Cool hands hold my hair back and soothe my neck. I shake him off in revulsion when his smell permeates my daze. “Get away from me.”
“What, Paige? I—”
I gag. “Seriously. Now. Get the hell away from me. You smell horrible.”
“I smell—”
The rest of his words are cut off by my second round of aggressive retching. I swat at him behind me, hoping that he takes it as the extremely obvious instruction that it is. Get out.
He listens, and the dichotomy of disappointment and relief is an uncomfortable truth that sits heavily on my mind.
I’m not sure how long I’m sitting here before the fresh scent of his shower gel overtakes the other smells of the room.
“Paige—”
“Don’t.”
“Baby, what—”
“Just leave me alone, Trevor. I don’t want you here right now.” I do. I want him here, but I don’t.
He leaves, and I lean toward the toilet for what I hope is my final bout of sickness before picking myself up and trudging back to the bedroom.
The room is quiet, the heavy rain a melancholy backdrop to our silent standoff.
The bedside light glows, casting Trevor in a warm light where he sits at the edge of the bed.
I resign myself to the conversation we finally need to have.
“You left me today.”
“Let me explain—”
“No. Let me finish, Trevor.”
My husband jerks his head in a nod, but he avoids meeting my eyes. His strong hands clutch our bedspread tightly, his knuckles turning white with the pressure.
“First of all, I misspoke. You left me yesterday.” He flinches at my tone, but I truck through it.
“Everyone was coupled up except the couple hosting the damn party. Instead—” I scoff, an ugly sound.
“Instead, my partner was gone. Left early with somebody else.” I close my eyes and block out the dejected slump of his form.
“I just—it was humiliating,” I whisper those last few words, the emotion flowing through me starting to overwhelm my ability to speak.
“The fireworks were going off, and I—I—” I choke back a sob, my body remembering my frantic search and my heart remembering the crippling disappointment.
I was so excited. I wipe my tears with a vicious swipe of my arm.
“I was looking everywhere for you. I looked like such an idiot.” Movement on the bed pulls my attention to Trevor, where something like devastation moves across his face.
But he remains on the bed—a few steps away.
Only, it feels like he is so much further.
“Baby, please. I—it—” His words fall flat, his thoughts remaining unspoken but not misunderstood.
My husband’s body telegraphs everything.
His hands twitch and move like he’s going to reach for me, but then he threads his fingers and leans against his knees, fingers tapping.
His shoulders are slumped, and he still remains away from me when he should have remained here.
Here. With me.
A ragged laugh leaves me. “I’ve always been able to rely on you, my husband.
I’ve always been able to—to—” I blink, and another tear breaks away without permission and falls to drip silently onto my hand.
Stupid tears. I smear it while I finish my thought.
Clearing the sadness clogging my throat, I push to get the rest out.
“To count on you. But not tonight—last night.”
I stand in our room, in the silence after I finish speaking, and Trevor doesn’t move.
A wave of exhaustion, so profound in all it encompasses, pushes me to finally tell him.
I take a deep breath and push down all of my disappointment, worries, and suspicions.
I push them down until I’m numb, and then I share the most beautiful news.
“I’m pregnant.”
The weight of those words falls heavily in the silence that follows. The shape of my husband jolts on the bed, and I feel rather than see his eyes bore into me.
“Wha—what did you just say?”
I can’t read the emotion in his voice, and my heart twists in my chest with my uncertainty.
This is not the moment I’ve imagined for the last five years of trying.
I envisioned him lifting me into the air, spinning me around, laughing with me, crying with me, celebrating, dancing, screaming, cheering—anything.
Instead, it’s this. Silence, disconnect, hurt, confusion, anger, disappointment.
How is it that I feel so alone?
“I’m pregnant, Trevor. We—I went to the doctor to get it confirmed. Our last round worked. Jacob is going to be an older brother.” I force a smile but feel it crack along the edges. He’s still in bed. I’m still across the room.
I blink, and he’s reaching for me in two strides. Hands grip my sides, and a face is buried into my lower stomach.
He’s talking, but it’s a quiet whisper. I have to strain my ears to hear him.
“I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of your momma. I’ve got you. I’ve got this. Everything is going to be fine this time. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make sure of it.”
He keeps up this litany of promises, his lips moving against me with his words, and I feel … unmoved.
The Trevor I thought I knew wouldn’t have to make these promises—he lived them.
I don’t know this man kneeling in front of me.
My hands, normally running through his hair, scratching along his scalp or his sharp, unshaven jaw, remain clutched at my sides.
I remain still and allow my child’s father his moment.
Just a moment.
But then I push him away. I push him away from me, and I go to bed and shut off the light, leaving him kneeling in the middle of the floor, alone and in the dark.