Chapter 3
I stood in the hallway with my shoes half on and the pregnancy test zipped into the side pocket of my bag. My white robe was gone, replaced with jeans and a sweater I'd grabbed from the bedroom floor, but my hair was still pulled back and my cheeks still felt hot from crying. He hadn't let me close the bathroom door to change. He'd turned his back, hands in the pockets of his black suit jacket, and waited by the open apartment door while I pulled clothes on fast, breathing hard.
We stepped out together. He didn't touch me, but he stayed close enough that I felt his shoulder near mine. The hallway was quiet, that clean, carpeted quiet of our building on the twelfth floor, with soft daylight coming off the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end. Someone's dog barked once behind a door.
He pressed the call button for the elevator. I stared at the brushed metal doors.
"Bag's open," he said.
I glanced down. The zipper on the side pocket had snagged open half an inch, the white plastic edge of the test visible. I zipped it the rest of the way. My fingers were shaking.
The doors opened. We got in. It was just us. He hit P1 for the parking garage and then stepped back against the mirrored wall. I stood opposite him, my bag clutched against my stomach. The elevator hummed and started down. I watched the numbers tick — 12, 11, 10 — in the reflection over his shoulder. In the mirror I could see his dark wavy hair, the line of his stubble, the black shirt under his blazer. His eyes met mine in the glass. He didn't look away.
Being that close to him in that small box brought it all back. Two weeks earlier, same elevator, alone. It had been a Tuesday morning, I remembered, and I'd come back from the drugstore on the corner with the test in a brown paper bag, my heart hammering so loud I thought the cashier had heard it. I'd locked the apartment door, knelt on the cold tile in that same white robe, and waited the three minutes on the box instructions. When the second pink line bled in, faint then absolute, I'd pressed my hand over my mouth so no one would hear me. There was no one to hear me. He'd been gone three nights that week for work, and his side of the closet had been half empty. I'd sat on that floor a long time, breathing in and out, and then I'd slid the test into my underwear drawer because I couldn't figure out what it meant to tell him and have him look at me the way he'd been looking at me then — like I was already a problem he hadn't solved.
"You found it in the drawer," I said. My voice was low. The elevator passed 7.
He nodded once. "Yesterday. I was looking for a checkbook."
He hadn't been snooping, not exactly. That made it worse somehow.
"I moved your things looking for an envelope," he said. "It was underneath."
"How long did you know before you said anything?"
He let out a slow breath. "A day. I kept thinking you'd tell me. I waited last night. You made dinner. You didn't say anything."
The numbers kept falling. 5, 4. I watched his hands. He wasn't holding the test now. I was.
"I wasn't going to keep it from you forever," I said. It was the same line I'd said in the apartment, and it sounded thinner here, under the fluorescent light.
"Then why?" he asked. He wasn't raising his voice. That was his way. Quiet, intense, his gaze steady on my face. "Where did you learn to do that? Hide things in our own place."
I swallowed. The air felt tight.
"Because last time I told you something that mattered, you left," I said. The words came out short, before I could soften them. "You stayed late at the office for two weeks. You answered my texts hours later. You came home and didn't touch me. I thought —" I stopped, my throat tight. "I thought if I told you I was pregnant, you'd decide I was trying to trap you. Or you'd tell me to handle it alone again. So I hid it until I knew what I wanted."
He flinched, just barely, a tightening around his eyes. He didn't interrupt.
The elevator dinged. Lobby. The doors opened onto the bright atrium, marble floors, the front desk where the daytime concierge was sorting packages. Light poured in from the glass entrance. We didn't get off.
He leaned forward and pressed door close. The doors slid shut again and we kept going down. P1.
"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "That's why I said you're coming with me. We can't do this here."
I looked down at my bag, at my hand white-knuckled around the strap. "Where?"
"My car. We talk without the whole building listening," he said. "That's all."
May you like
The elevator settled with a soft jolt. The doors opened to the concrete parking garage, cool air and the smell of gas and tires, the low hum of fluorescent lights. His black car was three spots down, unlocked with a flash of its lights when he hit the fob. He looked at me and waited, not blocking the door, not pulling me, just holding it open with his hand.
I stepped out first.
