Never Lie (14)

One thing I’m sure of though—Ethan will stop me from listening to these tapes if he finds out they exist.

“And look!” Ethan holds up the bottle of blood-colored wine. “I found something to warm us up in the meantime.”

“Oh?”

He lowers the bottle to read the label. “It’s a Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s from… Stellenbosch, South Africa.”

“A wine from South Africa?”

“Oh yeah. There are a lot of good Cabernets from South Africa.”

Ethan would know. He’s something of a wine expert. He can always tell you what regions are the best for what kinds of wine, what sweet or acidic notes to look for in the wine, and what food pairs best with it. Most of the time, I’m just nodding and pretending to know what he’s talking about.

“So,” I say, “you stole a bottle of wine?”

“It’s not great wine,” he says defensively. I don’t know if that’s true, although Ethan isn’t willing to drink anything cheap so it must be at least something decent. His favorite wine is Cheval Blanc. “And anyway, it’s Judy’s fault for inviting us here in the middle of a blizzard and not even showing up herself. We need something to entertain ourselves.”

“I’m sure Judy didn’t realize there was going to be a blizzard,” I say, but it’s too late. Ethan is already pouring the wine into two glasses he set up on the coffee table in front of the fireplace.

Ethan sits down on the sectional sofa, and I sit down beside him. He picks up one of the wine glasses, filled almost to the brim with dark red liquid, and I reluctantly do the same. He tilts his glass towards mine.

“To our new home,” he says.

Oh God.

Ethan takes a long sip from his wine glass while I contemplate what to do with mine. I can’t drink this. Perhaps a sip or two, but not this entire huge glass of wine or anything close to that. And I can’t tell Ethan why because he doesn’t know that I’m pregnant.

That’s right. I’m knocked up.

It’s been two weeks since I missed my period. Just a little over a week since I peed on a stick and those two pink lines appeared that would change our entire lives.

I’m terrified to tell him my little secret. Before we got married, we both decided we wanted children. I have a sister, but Ethan is an only child and his parents have passed on, so we were both on board with the idea of having a family of our own. But—we agreed—no children in the near future. We’re relatively young, and we wanted a chance to travel together, to enjoy each other for a couple of years before we brought a baby into the mix. Two years minimum before we even start trying—that’s what we decided.

Now here I am, six short months after our wedding. A baby on the way.

It wasn’t my fault. I take my birth control pills religiously. I have a timer set to go off on my phone so I don’t forget to take it. But I had a respiratory infection last month and I took some antibiotics for it that they gave me at urgent care. And apparently, that made my birth control pills stop working. Who knew?

I am absolutely terrified to tell Ethan. Waiting to have children was something he felt strongly about. He wanted us to have this time to ourselves. I have effectively ruined all of his plans. And I’m not sure how he’s going to take it. Not well, I assume.

Ethan has a temper. He has never unleashed it on me, but I have observed it in action. He is the CEO of a small startup company that is taking off, and I overheard him once on the phone after one of his employees had screwed something up. My jaw was hanging open at the way he shouted at that poor man on the phone. I had no idea he had it in him. It was a worrying reminder of the fact that I’ve only known my husband for a little over a year. I don’t know yet exactly what he’s like.

So I’ve been carrying around this secret for the last week and a half. I have to tell him soon, but I’m dreading it with every fiber of my being. I don’t want him to scream at me like he did at that man on the phone. That will be the official end of our honeymoon.

I wonder if now is the right time. When he’s just successfully gotten the heat working, he is excited about the prospect of purchasing this house (even though there’s no way we will actually live here), and he’s got a glass of wine in his hand. And he’s watching me expectantly, to see what I think of the wine.

I should tell him now. It makes sense.

But I don’t.

Instead, I tip the glass of Cabernet back and let it just barely moisten my tongue. Then I lick my lips. “Mmm. Delicious.”

“Can you taste the menthol note?”

“I… can.”

Ethan takes another long gulp from his wine glass while I take another pretend sip from mine. He reaches for my hand and I let him take it. “This is nice,” he sighs.

“Mmm.”

“I can just imagine us living here.” He squeezes my hand as his blue eyes become distant. “The two of us enjoying a bottle of wine together—a good wine—while the fireplace is raging and keeping us warm.”

“And a few kids toddling around,” I add, watching his reaction.

He laughs. “Maybe in a few years.”

Well, at least he didn’t completely freak out at the idea of it. I guess it was too much to hope for that I would mention children, and he would immediately say, Yes! I totally changed my mind! Let’s get you pregnant right now!