Delicate Condition, page 27
I remembered, suddenly, how long Dex had been gone that night. So much longer than it usually took to go get the dogs. Had he been looking for her?
That wasn’t the only time he’d disappeared for hours with no explanation. Now, it made sense. I couldn’t believe I’d been so naïve.
My breathing hitched, my eyes clouding. There were things I wanted to ask Cora, of course. There was so much I still wanted to know. How long did it last? How many times were you in my house? Did he tell you he loved you?
But I also wanted to undo this moment. I wanted to go back to two minutes ago, before I picked up my phone and called this woman. But I couldn’t undo it. I would know this for the rest of my life.
I thought about of all those weeks of injections, my hand trembling as I went to jab myself again and again, my belly so bruised and bloated that I couldn’t zip up my pants. I thought of hours spent waiting for the phone to ring, feeling so nervous that I collapsed over the toilet, dry heaving. All the things I’d done to give Dex a baby. All the ways I’d suffered, so that we could build a family together.
And he…he’d done this.
I felt a sinking as I realized why she’d been trying to keep me from getting pregnant. I’d thought she’d been trying to protect me from whatever Dr. Hill was doing to me, but that wasn’t it.
I thought of the message she’d left in my calendar. Are you sure it’s dead? I thought she’d been trying to give me hope, so I’d keep fighting. But she was just making sure it was gone.
“Did you think Dex would leave me for you if I couldn’t get pregnant?” I asked her. “Because it didn’t work. I’m having a baby.”
“You…you are?” Cora breathed, horrified.
“If you ever come near my family again, I’ll kill you.”
I lowered the phone from my ear, my thumb moving automatically over the power button.
She called again, a moment later. I hit Ignore. She called again, right after that. I blocked her number. I was done talking to her. I didn’t want to hear her voice ever again.
The taste of something sour crawled up my throat, leaving a film at the back of my mouth.
I forced myself to breathe and pulled my sleeve over my hand to wipe the fog off the windows. I felt the moment the ground below the car changed from concrete to white gravel, how it crunched under the Range Rover’s tires as we crawled down the straight, tree-lined drive toward Talia’s house. Toward Dex.
I balled a hand near my mouth, my stomach churning. My breaths were shallow, labored. My head felt staticky.
“Ma’am?” Kamal said. “Do you need some help?”
We were parked, I realized. He was waiting for me to get out of the car.
I shook my head and pushed the car door open, my legs buckling when I tried to ease my weight onto them. “You can go, Kamal,”
Kamal frowned. “Ma’am?”
“I’ll be fine on my own now,” I explained. Now that I knew who my “stalker” was and that she wasn’t a threat, I didn’t need Kamal sticking around. And I didn’t want him to see what was coming next.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, ma’am,” Kamal said.
I could see that he wasn’t going to leave quite so easily, and I didn’t want to stretch this out any further than necessary. I pulled out my wallet and shuffled through the bills inside, finding a fifty. I hesitated for just a moment, then grabbed another.
“Really, I insist.” I said, thrusting my hand toward him.
“If you’re sure,” he said, taking the bills.
“I am. Thank you for everything,” I said, smiling weakly. “I won’t forget it.”
I shut the car door and turned toward the house. I wasn’t ready for this. I would never be ready for this. But it didn’t matter. I heard the door slamming open, footsteps on the porch.
“Anna? Anna…oh God…where were you? Is it the baby? Are you okay?” Dex’s voice.
I could feel his hands on me, one braced against my back, the other just below my elbow, helping me up the steps. I pulled away from him.
“I spoke to Cora,” I said.
“What—?” Dex blinked, and then he sucked a breath in through his teeth, steadying himself like he was about to go into battle. “Cora? Why? I mean, what about?”
I closed my eyes. It was the familiarity in his voice when he said her name—not like he was talking about a receptionist he’d said hello to a few times at the clinic, but like he knew her. I felt the sting of it in my cheek, in my eyes, as strongly as if he’d slapped me. Any doubt I had that Cora had been telling me the truth vanished with that one word.
I brought a trembling hand to my mouth. Angry tears filled my eyes. “Oh my God.”
His expression broke. “Anna…please, you have to let me explain.”
I shook my head. I needed a moment to sort out what was happening, to make sense of this new reality. The porch seemed to revolve beneath me, making me dizzy.
“You have to understand,” he was saying. “This all…it started when things were really tense between us…right after The Auteur, when you were so busy with all those meetings and premiers, and the IVF wasn’t working, and we were fighting—”
“Are you trying to say it’s my fault?”
“No.” Dex looked at me, pleading, and I stared back at him hard, trying to get him to flinch. “I–I love you,” he said, faltering. “I broke things off with her as soon as I found out about the baby, I swear.”
“She said she broke things off with you.”
“She’s lying! After we broke up, she went crazy. You can’t believe a word she says.”
I ignored him. All this time I thought we were happy, that we were starting a family together. I thought we were in love.
And then I thought of all the times I’d asked him about Adeline, how he never wanted to tell my why they’d gotten a divorce.
I thought of Talia, standing beside me in the restaurant bathroom, her words careful, cautious. I never talk about their past, not ever… We all deserve a second chance.
Something sick twisted through my stomach. “Oh my God…this is why you and Adeline split up? This is why you never want to talk about her. Did you cheat on her too?”
Dex dragged a hand over his mouth and said nothing. Which, of course, was all the answer I needed. I thought about what Dex said when I found the photograph of them together, how in love they’d seemed, followed by the bitter tone in his voice when he’d said she waited to drop that bomb on me until after we said, I do. And Cora telling me that he’d justified what he was doing by saying the IVF wasn’t working.
“Adeline wouldn’t have a baby with you, so you cheated on her,” I said, the realization settling over me like something heavy. “And then, when I couldn’t have a baby, you cheated on me too.” And there it was. The truth was obvious, once I had the courage to face it. I thought of all the times Dex hadn’t answered his phone in front of me, the late-night phone calls, the nights he’d left without an explanation, disappearing for hours sometimes. The heavy feeling moved to my gut. “Cora wasn’t the last, was she?” I said slowly. It added up, all of it. I was an idiot for not seeing it before. But I supposed I hadn’t wanted to. “There’s someone else, isn’t there? Someone new?”
Dex blinked fast. It looked like he was trying to come up with an explanation. I kept talking, not wanting to give him the time to think of a lie. “Did you start cheating again the day after my miscarriage? Or did you wait a few weeks?”
His expression hardened. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I had to lean against the porch rail to catch my breath. Any second, I was going to start sobbing or screaming, but I couldn’t figure out which. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Do you love me at all? Or am I just a means to an end to you? An incubator for the baby you’re so desperate to have?”
“Anna, of course I love you. I don’t want to lose you,” Dex said. “I know I made mistakes but…you have to believe that I’m sorry. I love you. I want to be with you more than anything.”
I kept my gaze trained straight ahead, at the rain falling on the yard. I tried to breathe, but my blood was racing hard and fast through my veins. It made me feel like a live wire, one spark and I’d explode.
He…he cheated on me. I still couldn’t make myself believe it. My husband cheated on me. He was a cheater. And it wasn’t a one-time thing. He really cheated. He brought her into our home.
And then, when she climbed into bed with me, thinking I was him, when she scared me so badly that I couldn’t walk into my own home again, he let me believe that I had a stalker, that I was being followed, targeted. He let me live in a state of fear for weeks. All because he didn’t want to get caught.
I felt like I was going to be sick.
“Anna?” Dex’s voice is quieter now, desperate. “Come on, say something. Please.”
I blinked a few times, stunned.
Say something?
I remembered the talon I thought had ripped out of my belly, the way it had felt when the skin on my torso split open. I thought of my dream: the baby with the feathered, birdlike body, a beak where its eyes should be. I thought of coughing up teeth.
I felt a shift in my belly, a quick twitch like an animal suddenly jerking awake, and I glanced down. But for the first time since this all started, I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t afraid of what the thing inside of me might do, what it might make me do. I wanted something to happen, I realized.
I wanted the monster inside me to devour him.
32
I was done talking. I’d heard all I could stand, and now the only thing I wanted to do was get as far away from Dex as possible. His voice, his face, everything about him made me want to scream. If I stayed with him for even one more second, I didn’t know what I would do to him.
I left him standing on the porch and stumbled inside. Dimly, I had the thought that I would throw my things into a duffel bag and head to some hotel. Anywhere but this house.
I made it to our bedroom and locked the door, and I’d just pulled the duffel out of my closet when the muscles in my uterus tightened, pain rising inside me like a wave. I doubled over, gasping, tears gathering in my eyes.
The feeling was just like menstrual cramps, and it reminded me, horrifyingly, of my miscarriage. I had to remind myself to breathe. The edges of my eyesight pulsed sickeningly in time with my heart.
The tightening only lasted for a few seconds, and then, slowly, slowly, it faded away. It was gone.
Gradually, I became aware that I was kneeling on the floor and I was drenched with sweat, and that my heart was beating so fast I could actually see it vibrating beneath my T-shirt, causing the fabric on my chest to flutter. There was a sound like wind in my ears, like static. I couldn’t hear anything outside of my own head.
This pain… I knew this pain. I knew it down in my muscles, instinctively, like it was lodged in some primitive, long-forgotten part of my brain.
It was a contraction.
* * *
Real labor doesn’t happen like it does in the movies. For one thing, it takes so much longer than you think it will. You don’t rush to the hospital the moment you feel your first contraction, already pushing, screaming for drugs while an angry nurse tells you it’s too late, the baby’s already coming. That’s all fiction. In reality, there are hours of prelabor that come before that—sometimes even days. When you hear stories of women laboring for thirty-six or forty-seven or fifty-three hours, this is often what they’re talking about. The dark, long, confusing hours before you even go to the hospital.
A month ago, Dr. Hill and I had talked through my birth plan, figuring out which hospital she was going to meet me at, and what music I wanted playing, whether or not I would use drugs. Dex and I were supposed to pack a go bag, we were supposed to plan a route. But we hadn’t done any of that yet. In fact, no part of the birth plan we’d so carefully designed was possible anymore. I couldn’t call Dr. Hill or my husband, and I didn’t want to go to any hospital where Dr. Hill might be able to find me.
Even after all I’d been through, I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than giving birth without my husband, without my doctor. The fear was so strong it felt like nothing, like going numb, and for a moment, I wanted nothing more than to give up, to lay my head down in my hands and quit. But there wasn’t any way to quit. I’d never felt so lonely in my life.
I tried to breathe and a sob escaped, sounding wretched in the quiet. I clenched my hands into fists, fighting hard against the fear. I had to do this, even I had to do it alone.
I got my purse and shuffled through my wallet until I found the scrap of paper Gracie had given me months ago.
I found it next to her cell phone… Could it have been for you?
It was Siobhan’s handwriting: Call Olympia. And below, there was a phone number. I got my phone out and dialed, feeling a rush of warmth so strong it brought tears to my eyes. It was as though Siobhan had known I would need this. My friend was still taking care of me, even though she couldn’t do it physically.
“Anna?” Olympia said when I told her who I was. She sounded astonished. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for months!”
Of course they had. That was the kind of person Siobhan was. It made sense that she would’ve told the other women from the birth center about me, that she would’ve asked them to check in on me if I lost my nerve, but I didn’t have time to explain to Olympia about the burner phone and the stalker, how I’d had to live in near isolation for the last eight months.
“I’m in labor,” I told her instead. I waited for her disbelief, waited for her to ask if I was sure.
But she just said, “What do you need, honey? Can I call someone? Your husband or your doctor?”
“No,” I said, breathing hard. “I don’t trust anyone anymore. Please, can you come get me?”
* * *
It took hours for her headlights to appear in the driveway. The clock on Talia’s table said 8:42 p.m. when I finally jerked to the window, a bright light flashing behind the curtains. Blood pounded in my ears. Thank God she’s here.
I stood. Everything ached, but I somehow managed to pull my legs underneath my body and push myself off the bed.
I opened the door, waddling, clutching my belly so tightly you’d think my hands were the only things holding it up. It was getting hard to breathe again, but I had to keep going. Down the hall and around the corner. Through the living rooms. I spotted Dex in the dining room, crouched over Talia’s massive table, his head resting on folded arms. A drink sat on the table beside him, brown liquid in a cut crystal tumbler. If I listened, I could hear the soft sound of snoring.
I held my breath as I crept past him. If he woke up, he would have questions about where I was going, and I couldn’t stand the thought of trying to explain that I wanted to have this baby without him. It was better if he stayed sleeping. I would call him later. After.
It took every bit of strength I had left to ignore the ache in my back, the creaky feeling in my knees and my ankles, the weight of my belly pulling me down. Everything in me rusting and breaking. One foot in front of the other until I stepped onto the cold black and white tile in the entryway. I grasped the front door latch, fumbled with the lock.
Dex’s groggy voice followed me down the hall, “Anna? That you?”
I flinched but didn’t answer him. There was a click as the lock slid open. I turned the knob and a gust of cold winter air blew into the house, nearly knocking me over. I stepped outside and the door fell shut behind me.
I didn’t know what kind of car Olympia drove. I’d expected to see a taxi or an Uber waiting in the driveway, the back door swinging open as she climbed out to help me down the stairs. But the woman climbing out of the back seat wasn’t Olympia—
It was Cora.
I stiffened. “What are you doing here?”
Cora slammed the cab door shut and started toward me, her eyes lowering to my belly. “I tried to call you, but you weren’t answering your phone.”
I could hear Dex’s voice echoing through the house behind me, shouting for me, but I ignored it. “I blocked your number.”
“I need to talk to you.” Cora looked desperate, panicky. “I have to warn you. I owe you that much after…after everything I did. Please.”
I cringed and doubled over, bracing myself as another contraction started. It was a pressure, a wave of nausea. I made myself breathe.
“Oh God…you should sit down.” Cora hurried to my side and reached for my arm. I felt a sick twist of disgust where she’d touched me and jerked away.
“Please,” she said, “please…just sit down, and I swear I’ll tell you everything.”
This time, when she reached for my arm, I let her take it and lead me to the top of the stairs. My legs burned as I crouched down.
The pain was fading now, easing back like the tide drawing away from the beach. I looked at her and, breathing deep, said, “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“I didn’t realize you were still pregnant. Dr. Hill—she didn’t tell anyone at the clinic exactly what happened. I thought you’d miscarried and then, the next morning, you called Dr. Hill, you wanted to know if there was a chance the baby was still okay, remember? That’s why I sent that message asking if it was gone, because I had to be sure. And you said someone killed your baby. I thought this was all over.”
“No.” I frowned, my brain struggling to catch up with what she was saying. “No, that can’t be right. You’ve been following me.”
“I haven’t been following you, Anna. I had to break into Dr. Hill’s office and go through her files just to find your address so I could come here now.”
Something strange was happening to my breath. “I don’t understand. You sent me all those warnings.”
Cora closed her eyes for a moment. In the moonlight, her skin looked impossibly pale, deeply shadowed bags under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept for weeks. “There’s a woman who calls the office sometimes. She’s been calling since before I started. I don’t know her name. She always says for me to tell Dr. Hill that her old friend is on the phone, and then Dr. Hill takes the call in her office with the door closed.” Cora blinked twice. “She doesn’t do that with anyone else—just her. But the thing is, the phone at the receptionist’s desk is connected to the line in her office, so it’s really easy to listen in to calls. All you have to do is hit the mute button.”
