“Since when?” he asked calmly. His calmness frightened me more than any shouting would have.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed and knelt down in front of him. “I was wrong.”
“I asked since when.”
“Three months,” I whispered. “At first there was nothing between us, we just talked.”
“Enough,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “There are two options. We get divorced, you leave with nothing, and everyone finds out why. Or we stay married, but from now on we’ll just be roommates. Nothing more.”
I just stared at him.
“Jake has his whole life ahead of him,” he continued. “I won’t let this destroy that. Divorce wouldn’t help your career either. So, the second option?”
“Okay,” I said quietly.
He grabbed his pillow and blanket. He made his bed in the living room, on the sofa.
“I’ll sleep here from now on. And in public, you’ll behave like a proper wife.”
That night, I lay alone in the bedroom, listening to the creaking of the sofa in the other room. I expected anger. Instead, he deleted me.
I ended the affair immediately. I wrote to Ethan: it’s over. He replied with just one word: okay.
The years passed in cold politeness. Michael put my coffee out in the morning but barely spoke to me. We went to events, smiling arm in arm like two actors in a long, boring play.
Now, sitting in Dr. Evans’ office, the whole story came back to me.
“So there’s no intimacy,” he said cautiously. “Am I right?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Eighteen years. Is that what’s causing the problem?”
“Not exactly,” he replied, then turned the monitor toward me. “I see significant scarring in the uterus. This suggests surgical intervention.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “I’ve never had surgery.”
“The image is clear,” he replied. “It looks like a curettage, sometime in the past. Are you sure you don’t remember?”
Curettage. Termination of pregnancy.
I went home in a daze. Then a memory came back to me, one I had locked away for a long time. 2008, a week after I was caught. I slipped up. I took too many sleeping pills. Darkness, then waking up in the hospital. Dull pain in my lower abdomen. Michael said it was because of the stomach pump.
That night, I confronted him.
“Michael,” I said, trembling. “Did I have surgery in 2008?”
Her face immediately turned pale. The newspaper fell from her hands.
“What surgery?” I asked. “Why don’t I remember?”
“Do you really want to know?” she looked at me.
“Yes.”
“When you overdosed, they did a lab test,” she said. “You were pregnant.”
I felt dizzy. “Pregnant?”
“Three months,” he added bitterly. “We haven’t been together for six months.”
The child was Ethan’s.
“What happened?”
“I authorized the termination,” he said. “You were unconscious. I signed as your husband.”
“You took my baby away?”
“There was evidence!” he exploded. “What was I supposed to do, carry another man’s child?”
“You had no right!”
“I was protecting the family!”
“I hate you,” I cried.
“Now you know how I felt for eighteen years.”
Then the phone rang. Jake had been in a serious car accident.
The hospital was in chaos. Jake was in critical condition and needed blood.
“I’m O positive,” Michael said.
“Me too,” I replied.
The surgeon furrowed his brow. “Your son is B negative. If both parents are O, it’s genetically impossible.”
The air in the hallway stood still.
Sarah, Jake’s wife, was B negative. She gave blood immediately.
Hours later, Jake’s condition stabilized. In the intensive care unit, Michael turned to me. His eyes were empty, as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“Is he my son?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, too quickly.
“The blood says otherwise.”
Jake came to later. He spoke softly, as if afraid of breaking something.
He said he had known since he was seventeen. He had a DNA test done. Michael remained his father because he raised him, stood by him, was always there for him.
Michael looked at me.
“Who?” he asked.
Memories came flooding back, even before Ethan. My bachelorette party. I was drunk. Mark Peterson, Michael’s best friend, took me home. Mark, who moved away shortly after. Mark, who had type B blood.
“Mark,” I whispered.
Michael’s world fell apart right then and there.
“I didn’t know,” I began. “I was drunk. I thought I passed out.”
“Get out,” he said.
I lived in a motel for a week while Jake recovered. Then we were back under the same roof, but there was still an infinite distance between Michael and me.
One sleepless night, I found him out on the terrace.
“I’m flying to Oregon next week,” he said. “Years ago, I bought a cabin there for our retirement.”
“Take me with you,” I begged. “We could start over.”
He looked at me, tired, as if he had suddenly aged.
“Start over?” he repeated. “I terminated your pregnancy. You let me raise another man’s child. The foundation is rotten.”
“But there was love between us,” I said.
“There was,” he replied. “That’s why it hurts so much.”
Three days later, he left. He didn’t say goodbye to me. He said goodbye to Jake and our grandson.
Now I live alone in the house where we once had a family. Sometimes I can still smell the tobacco in his study. Sometimes I even miss the roommate who at least breathed the same air.
For a long time, I thought my punishment was not being touched. I thought it was silence.
I was wrong.
My punishment is knowing that I built this loneliness myself. Two children, one never born, the other not biologically ours, and a husband who loved a version of me that wasn’t real.
Jake calls often. He travels to Oregon twice a year to see Michael.
“Did he ask about me?” I usually ask.
There is always a short pause.
“No, Mom,” Jake says quietly. “He didn’t ask.”
And I sit in the fading light and listen to the clock ticking away the rest of my life, which I must now finish alone.