It's One of Us(14)
She didn’t want someone else’s kid. She wanted her own. Their own. She was torturing herself for him, damn it, so he could have a child to call his.
The irony of this moment is not lost on him.
He starts to dial her, again. Puts the phone down, again.
He just doesn’t know what to say to the stranger who is his wife. To the crying, desperate, unhappy woman he saw earlier. He will never forget her face when she heard the news. The betrayal he’s done to her. To them.
Again.
7
THE WIFE
Olivia manages to swim deep in her work and avoid Park until dinnertime. He’s called several times, each message progressively more intense.
“Please come home. Please.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“I have to explain.”
“Please, Olivia, let me explain.”
“Damn it, quit ignoring me or I’ll come to the build, and we’ll talk this out in front of the crew.”
With every call, it sounded more and more like he’d figured out who the mother of his mysterious son was.
You can’t ignore him forever, Olivia.
She is tired, hungry, crampy, and sad. So sad. She’d managed to keep things together until the call to the clinic to let them know about the baby. The nurse who answered had burst into tears, a very unprofessional but entirely human response, and that had set Olivia off, too. They’d cried together, two women separated by a few miles and an unbreachable gulf. The nurse, a sweet lady named Brigit Blessing, had suffered her own trauma, her own loss, a few years before Olivia and Park started working with the clinic. A child born who lived for only a few hours. That loss, Olivia felt, was a thousand times harder than anything she had faced. The needles, the pills, the terrible side effects, the days she had to lie in bed before and after the harvesting while her ovaries filled with blood and fluid, swelling her belly to comical proportions and making her incredibly sick, the blood in the toilet, again, and again. No. It didn’t compare. There had been no breaths. No opening of eyes, no flexing of limbs, no touching of fragile, translucent skin. Olivia’s tragedies are amorphous blobs, swept away on a current. If she’d held one in her arms and watched them die? No. She would not be able to go on. That Brigit was able to continue working with young mothers and their own many disappointments was a testament to her strength.
Olivia felt a measure of peace when they hung up. No one but another woman who’s lost a child can truly understand. Even Lindsey’s unflagging grace isn’t quite enough.
She needs a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep. Maybe some Ativan, after all. She wants to check out for a little while. And she must face Park, and his terrible secret, and try not to blow up her marriage.
Kill him with kindness, her mother always says. Olivia misses her. Her parents are on a monthlong sailing cruise at the moment. They should be rounding Cape Horn and off into the seas to Antarctica this week. A lifelong dream to see the South Shetland Islands. They’re relatively unreachable, or Olivia would have been on the phone to her all day, asking for advice.
She’s rather proud of herself for weathering the storm without her mother or her husband. She tends to want to fix Park’s emotions, to make him feel like things are okay when inside she is tearing apart, but today, she decided to allow herself a few hours of genuine self-pity without worrying for him.
She calls ahead to their favorite restaurant and orders dinner to go. Steak frites for him, halibut for her, some prosciutto and figs to start, crème br?lée to finish. A celebration meal. For some reason, it feels appropriate to have something delicious in her stomach that she hasn’t made herself to tackle the evening’s conversation. It is not a reward for bad behavior, it is a bolster.
Traffic is light, and she pulls into the parking lot of 360 Bistro before the meal is ready. No problem. She’ll have a glass of wine at the bar while she waits.
She’s greeted and seated, and accepts a luscious, minerally cab franc and a glass of water. The restaurant is dark and quiet. Service has just begun. They’ll hit their stride later; right now, it’s only two tables in the back, the four-top at the door, and her. The television is showing a golf match, but the sound is off, and she can hear the conversation from the four-top easily.
The older couple are regulars. She’s seen them in here before. They’re joined tonight by a younger couple who’ve apparently recently married. The young bride is wearing a massive diamond that shines brilliantly in the dim light. Paterfamilias calls for a bottle of champagne, and when the waiter pours out, the young woman coyly puts her hand over her glass. A moment of shock—“We could have wine instead, or a cocktail,” he says—but the girl continues her silent Madonna smile and shakes her head. Then the table erupts in congratulations.
“Oh, my goodness, a baby! When are you due?”
“April,” she crows, grinning at her husband, clearly thrilled at their surprise. She has a small strip of paper in her hand. “We had the first ultrasound this morning. Here, you can see—”
“Olivia? Dinner, hon.”
She drags her attention back, and the bartender hands her the brown bag and the check. Olivia’s hands are shaking. She signs her name in an untidy scrawl and downs the wine.
“You okay, hon?”
“Fine,” she says, her voice unnatural, high. There is a steak knife in the place setting next to her, a beautiful piece of metal, flowing lines and wicked sharp edges. She could plant it in the back of the girl’s neck as she passes. It would take no effort at all to—