Chapter 9 #2
Isabelle pressed both hands over her mouth.
The tears came instantly, hot and uncontrollable.
She heard herself make a sound that wasn't a word, wasn't a sob, was something more elemental than either.
The last time there'd been a heartbeat it had stopped.
She'd heard it, then she'd lost it and the silence afterward had lived inside her for years.
And now there was another one, rapid and certain, filling the room.
She looked at Xavier.
He was standing by the wall. His eyes were fixed on the monitor and his face was wet.
Tears were running down his cheeks and he wasn't wiping them away, wasn't hiding them, wasn't doing any of the things that Xavier usually did with vulnerability, which was to redirect it and turn it into charm.
He was just standing there, crying, looking at the screen.
His hands were at his sides and he looked demolished.
"Bella," he whispered.
Isabelle turned away from him. She had to.
If she kept looking at his face she'd reach for him, and if she reached for him she'd forgive him, and she wasn't ready to forgive him.
She wasn't anywhere close. The heartbeat on the monitor was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard and it was also the sound of everything Xavier had tried to take from her when he'd stood in the kitchen and asked if this baby was his.
Dr. Levine printed two copies of the image. She handed one to Isabelle and one to Xavier before excusing herself.
The door closed. Isabelle sat on the exam table in the paper gown with the ultrasound image in her hand. Xavier stood by the wall with his copy, his eyes still wet, and the silence between them was massive.
"Bella," he said again. "I need to..."
"Stop."
He stopped.
"I'm going to talk now," she said. "And you're going to listen. You don't get to respond. You don't get to explain. You just listen."
He nodded. His jaw was working but he kept his mouth closed.
"You heard that heartbeat," she said. "Our baby.
Yours and mine. The baby I've been carrying for seven weeks, the baby I was afraid to tell you about because I've lost two pregnancies and I didn't know if I could survive losing another one.
I told you when I was ready. And you took that moment, Xavier.
You took the most sacred thing I've ever given you, and within days you turned it into evidence of something ugly.
" Her voice broke. “You accused me of sleeping with Douglas.
You built a case against me. You used our fertility history, the worst years of my life, as data points.
You ran the numbers on our marriage like it was a term sheet. "
"Isabelle..."
"I said listen." Her voice was shaking but it held. "I asked you to look at me and say you believed me. I gave you the chance. And you couldn't. You told me to leave."
The ultrasound image was trembling in her hand. She steadied it.
"I know that you now know Douglas is gay.
You know there was never anything. And I need you to hear this: that doesn't fix it.
That changes nothing. Because the problem was never Douglas.
The problem was that I told you the truth and you chose not to believe me.
You had years of evidence that I love you, that I've given you everything I have. "
Her voice broke. She made herself stop and breath.
The ultrasound image in her hand showed a blurred oval with a flicker at the center.
She looked at it and then at Xavier, who was standing against the wall with tears still on his face, his hands at his sides and his whole body so still he might have stopped breathing.
"I'm going to include you," she said. "In the appointments.
In the birth. In everything that involves this baby.
Because you're the father. I've never questioned that, even when you questioned it, and I won't punish our child because you broke something between us.
But I'm not including you in me. We need time apart, Xavier.
Real time. I need to figure out who I am when I'm not your wife, because I've been your wife since I was twenty years old and I don't know anymore.
I don't know who I am outside of you. And the fact that I don't know is part of the problem, because you loved keeping it that way, and I let you. "
His face crumpled. She watched it happen and made herself stay. Made herself not cross the room.
"How long?" he whispered.
"I don't know."
"Weeks? Months?"
"I don't know, Xavier. I don't have a timeline for you. I can't give you dates and benchmarks so you can put it in your calendar and manage it. This isn't a deal. This is my life."
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were red and raw. "I love you," he said. "I know that doesn't mean what it should mean right now. But I love you."
"I know you love me. I've never doubted that. But love without trust is just surveillance. Ownership. And I can't live inside that anymore."
She let the words sit between them in the room with the ultrasound monitor and the sound of their baby's heartbeat still echoing in the silence.
"I'm going to get dressed now," she said. "I'd like you to wait outside."
Xavier nodded and walked to the door. He stopped with his hand on the handle and turned back and looked at her one more time. She looked at him, and for a moment they were just two people who loved each other and had no idea how to carry that love across the distance that had opened between them.
He left. The door closed. Isabelle sat on the exam table, pressed the ultrasound image against her chest and cried.
She cried until the paper gown was wet, her ribs ached and the tears ran out.
Then she got dressed, washed her face and walked out of the office and past the waiting room where Xavier was sitting with the ultrasound image in his hands, staring at it, and she didn't stop.
She walked to her car and drove back to Cole Valley.
She parked in Margaret's driveway and sat behind the wheel for a long time with her hands on her stomach and the ultrasound image on the passenger seat.
A hundred and forty-two beats per minute.
Their baby. Alive. Present. Real. Steady and certain, a hundred and forty-two times a minute, asking nothing of her but to keep going.