The Good Widow(43)
I keep quiet because obviously I can’t say dead. And I realize the news of their accident must not have caught the attention of many people. That saddens me for a moment. I wonder what the first bartender we talked to saw in the paper. A paragraph? A couple of sentences? A few words? Was that all they got? All they deserved?
“Why do you ask?” Nick says.
Nick told me that we should always deflect when asked a question we can’t answer, but I’m not quick enough on my feet to do that.
“She was feeling pretty sick when she was here. Did she find out yet?” Our matching blank stares must trigger something with the bartender. “Oh, shit. You didn’t know?”
My head gets heavy, and I instinctively grip the edge of my stool for support, hoping that I’ve misunderstood him.
I watch a waitress deliver a hamburger with bright-orange melted cheese slipping out of the bun to a man sitting across the bar; I feel the vibration of a buzzer, then see its lights shining bright red as a young couple giddily jumps up to claim their table. Then two women laugh and proclaim their luck as they slide into the stools that were just abandoned.
“What are you saying? Did she tell you she was—” Nick stops, and out of the corner of my eye, I see his shoulders slump.
Please, God, don’t let the bartender say the word.
I can’t look at Nick. I’m afraid he’ll confirm my fears.
The bartender leans in, oblivious. “Pregnant,” he says easily, oblivious to the impact of his words.
Nick’s head moves slowly up and down, and my insides are twisting so tight I can barely breathe.
“You didn’t hear this from me, okay? But when her husband got up to use the bathroom, she told me the smell of the shrimp he ordered was making her sick. So of course, I asked what was up with that. Like were they bad? Because we make an amazing shrimp cocktail here!” He waves his arm covered in hemp bracelets behind him, where the kitchen presumably is.
I nod to encourage him to keep going, because I have to hear every word of what he has to say. If I don’t, I know I’ll talk myself out of believing it. And as much as it hurts—as in, feels like someone is punching me in the stomach over and over again—these are things I need to hear. I came here for the truth, no matter how much it might tear me apart.
“She tells me she’d been feeling sick to her stomach and had already made up enough excuses for why she’d been so nauseated. I remember thinking that was weird. That she couldn’t tell her husband what was up, but I didn’t say that. You know, a bartender’s job is to listen. So I quickly pulled the shrimp cocktail away, offering to replace it with something else. Her big eyes filled with tears when I did that, which totally tripped me out. I was like, what is going on with this chick? Then she asked me where the nearest drugstore was, and I was like, whoa, now I know.”
“You think she wanted to get some Tums?” I ask, although I’m quite sure that’s not what Dylan wanted.
“Nah, dude. You can buy those next door at the gift shop. Which is what I told her. That’s when she told me she was worried she might be pregnant. But then her dude came back, and she acted like nothing had happened. It was a trip.”
“My God,” Nick says.
I watch the man across the bar eat a bite of his cheeseburger, lick his fingertips, and take a long drink of his beer. I hear the bleached-blonde woman with the worn face snarkily remark from the stool beside me that there are cuter men at Duke’s. I look up, and our bartender has moved on to take someone’s order. As if he hasn’t just wrecked me.
But really, how could he know that I couldn’t give my husband a child, so he found someone who could? That the wound inside of me has never had a chance to heal because it has been ripped open again and again with each negative pregnancy test, with every fight between James and me, and now with the words, she might be pregnant? On the outside, I give nothing away. But inside I scream and I cry and I pound my fists. Like the baby I could never give him.
The bartender walks back over to us and picks up right where he left off. “So crazy, right? But we hear it all, man,” he says, then turns to make a drink, still having no idea of the bomb he’s just dropped on us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JACKS—AFTER
“Jacks! Wait!”
I sprint away from the sound of Nick’s voice, my feet cutting through the sand, my sandals dangling precariously from my hand. The thing is, I can’t wait. I need to get as far away as possible from the news I’ve just heard. Maybe, if I keep moving, I can outrun the truth. Dylan had been pregnant. I can’t deny the possibility that James might have been the father. And my biggest fear has been confirmed: my own omission may have been the glue that bound their relationship.
I trip over a pile of flip-flops that lie in the sand awaiting their owners—the sunset booze cruises just docked on shore. My right knee slides into the sand, and I quickly manage to heave myself back up.
It’s amazing how agile desperation can make you.
I glance back to see Nick jogging behind me. There’s no doubt his pace is deliberately slow, that his strong legs barely feel the burn that mine already do. But, wisely, he keeps his distance as I barrel toward the black rocks on the north end of Ka‘anapali Beach. We both know I’m running myself into a corner. That he will catch up to me.