Stranger in the Lake(5)
And, as corny as it sounds, love.
I smile over our hands at my husband. “I do have one more request.”
“For the love of my life? The mother of my child?” He lifts my hand to his lips, presses a frosty kiss to my knuckle. “Absolutely anything.”
“When it’s time, you get to tell your mother.”
3
When I wake up the next morning, I’m alone.
I stare at the black sky pouring through the bedroom window and listen for the sounds of Paul, pulling on clothes in the closet or banging around in the kitchen downstairs. There’s nothing but silence. An empty house, holding its breath.
Already left for his daily morning run, a six-mile trek around the hills to the west of our house, which means there must not be much snow on the ground. When we went to bed last night, it was really coming down, but the ground was probably too warm still for it to stick.
The clock on the nightstand reads 6:04, earlier than usual for Paul, but not unheard of, though I wouldn’t have expected it today. Not after the glass of red he downed with dinner, followed by a gold-labeled bottle he pulled from the wine fridge, champagne that costs as much as a month’s worth of groceries.
Paul’s not normally much of a drinker, but yesterday’s news sent him sailing far past his tipping point. I picture him huffing up Suicide Hill, cursing himself for that last glass, and maybe the one before. Poor guy must really be hurting.
My untouched flute stands full on the nightstand—“for toasting,” Paul said as he poured, “not drinking.” The last of the carbonation clings in tiny bubbles to the glass, next to Paul’s empty one. I eye the liquid in the bottle, only a few inches or so. Paul is the only person I know who recuperates from a hangover with an early-morning run. One good hill, and his metabolism will have burned through the alcohol like propane, which, now that I think about it, is probably why he looks so good.
But all last night, he googled and drank, googled and drank.
“It says here there’s only one percent chance of getting pregnant on the pill,” he’d said, looking up from his laptop.
We were in bed, our backs propped up by pillows and the headboard, our bare feet tangled on top of the comforter.
He grinned, his eyes shining with pride and champagne. “One point three, to be exact. That’s some pretty shitty odds, but I really cracked that nut, didn’t I? I really got in there.”
I laughed. “You really did.”
He reached for the bottle and topped off his glass—his third by my count—then plunked it back to the nightstand. “Apparently, you calculate the due date by the first day of your last period. When was that?”
I shrugged, not considering my calendar but whether or not I should suggest going easy on the booze. My father used to drink like that, in greedy pulls that turned his words mushy around the edges and sent Chet and me skittering for the opposite end of the trailer. He was a mean drunk, but a lazy one, too. The trick was to stay out of range.
Paul frowned. “You don’t know, or you don’t remember?”
“My periods have always been wonky. But I can figure out when it was supposed to be if I count the pills left in the pack.”
He read aloud a long, boring article about folic acid, and how I should be taking it to prevent birth defects. He searched out every local ob-gyn and settled on one in nearby Highlands with a degree from Johns Hopkins and a five-star rating on healthgrades.com. He declared ginger tea the best remedy for morning sickness and that it’s important to hydrate, even though one of the symptoms of early pregnancy is more trips than usual to the bathroom. He claimed sex was allowed and so was cheese, as long as it’s pasteurized, but no more sushi for me.
By eleven, he’d passed out, smiling.
I push back the comforter and step out of bed, padding naked across the plush carpet. Paul designed every room in this house to showcase natural light and killer views, which means one entire wall of our bedroom is shiny black glass—the glossy blackness another sign we didn’t get much snow. A solid coating on the ground would lighten things up to a foggy gray, even though the sun won’t rise for another half hour.
I press my face to the glass, gazing out on woods that are still dark and raw. A ghostly steam hangs over the water like smoke, creepy and picture-perfect.
But I was right about the snow; we only got a light dusting.
I grab my robe from a hook in the closet, wrap it around me and head downstairs.
Another sign Paul drank too much—the normally pristine kitchen is a disaster. Dirty dishes, crumpled napkins, food wrappers and a forgotten carton of milk on the counter. I pour it down the drain and straighten the mess while I wait for the espresso machine to warm up. It’s Paul’s prize possession, a complicated Italian gadget that cost more than a normal person pays for their whole kitchen. But I’ve got to give it to him—the coffee is divine.
While the machine spits out a foamy dark stream, I lean a hip against the counter and think through my day. Paul should be back soon, and then he’ll need a ride to town to pick up the replacement car, which should be waiting in the office lot. On the way back, I can drop off the drawings for the Curtis Cottage at the client’s current home.
And that’s when it occurs to me. The drawings are still in the boat. Right where I chucked them, along with my cell phone, in the cubby under my seat. In our hurry to get up the hill and into the house so we could start the celebrating in earnest, I left them there.