The first time my mother congratulated me on my wedding, I was standing beside the loading dock at work with a clipboard in one hand and absolutely no idea what she was talking about. She sounded breathless, almost tearful, and before I could get a word in, she said, “Michael, whatever happened between you and Rachel, you need to do the right thing now. That baby deserves a father.” I nearly dropped the phone.
Chapter 2
For several seconds, I sat in my parked car watching traffic pass on Broad Street while Dana cried into the phone. A week earlier, I had considered Rachel’s behavior desperate and irrational. Now she had crossed into someone else’s life and threatened another person’s livelihood.
“Did your boss believe it?” I asked.
“No, but that’s not the point.” Dana sniffed. “She sent it to twelve people, Mike. People I supervise. People I have to look in the face tomorrow morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t send it.”
“No, but she did it because of me.”
Dana was quiet. Then she said, “Don’t take responsibility for choices you didn’t make.”
My company had taught supervisors to document everything, so for once my boring workplace habits were useful. I saved Rachel’s texts, took screenshots, printed emails, and wrote down dates and times. Dana forwarded me the message Rachel had sent her coworkers. Reading it made me feel physically ill.
Rachel described herself as my fiancée. She referred to “our unborn child.” She accused Dana of preying on a vulnerable family and asked Dana’s coworkers to encourage her to “respect a pregnant woman’s home.”
None of it was true.
Dana’s employer did not discipline her, but humiliation can hurt without leaving a mark on a personnel file. She told me later that one younger employee stopped talking when she entered the break room. Another awkwardly assured her that “everybody has complicated lives.”
I called Rachel.
Then I stopped myself before the call connected.
Anger was exactly what she seemed to want.
Instead, I texted: We need to meet in person. Public place. I want to discuss your pregnancy and the doctor’s appointment. Nothing else.
She replied within thirty seconds.
I knew you’d come around.
That sentence disturbed me more than I expected.
We met Saturday morning at a diner near Westerville. I arrived early and chose a booth where other customers were nearby. Rachel came in wearing a pale blue sweater I had bought her the previous Christmas, and for one confusing second she looked like the woman I had loved.
She smiled as she sat down.
“I knew you’d calm down.”
“I’m calm.”
“Good. Because we need to start planning.”
“No. We need to talk about the pregnancy.”
Her smile tightened.
I asked how far along she was.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“When was your last period?”
She looked away. “Why are you interrogating me?”
“I’m asking because you’re telling everyone I’m the father.”
“You are.”
“Then let’s go to an OB.”
“I told you. They won’t see me yet.”
“When will they?”
“Three months.”
I frowned. “Rachel, that doesn’t make sense. You can at least confirm the pregnancy before then.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
The waitress approached, and Rachel instantly changed. She smiled, ordered coffee, and thanked the woman sweetly. The moment the waitress left, Rachel leaned across the table.
“You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel crazy.”
“I’m asking to see a doctor.”
“You’re making everything about proof and tests and paperwork instead of how I feel.”
“How you feel doesn’t tell me whether there’s a baby.”
Her face changed.
For the first time that morning, I saw fear beneath the anger.
I softened my voice. “Rachel, what is going on?”
She looked toward the window.
I waited.
“You ruined everything,” she finally said.
“How?”
“You and Dana and everybody.”
“Dana has nothing to do with this.”
“I hate hearing her name.”
“You contacted her workplace.”
“Because she needed to understand that we’re supposed to be together.”
I stared at her. “We’re not together.”
“We could be.”
“You broke up with me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Because I thought—”
She stopped.
“Thought what?”
Rachel covered her face.
I felt something inside me tighten.
“Rachel.”
She whispered a name.
“Josh.”
I leaned forward. “Who is Josh?”
For several seconds she refused to look at me. Then the truth came out in fragments.
Josh worked in accounting at the property management company where Rachel was an office administrator. They had grown close around Christmas, nearly four months before our breakup. It began with lunches, then drinks after work, then hotel rooms when I believed Rachel was attending late staff meetings.
My hands went numb on the tabletop.
“You were having an affair?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You were sleeping with another man while living half the week at my house.”
She started crying.
“It was on and off.”
“How long?”
“Since December.”
I remembered wrapping her Christmas gift while she sat ten feet away texting somebody and smiling at her phone. I remembered asking what was funny. She had said her sister sent her a joke.
I felt stupid, but more than that, I felt strangely calm.
“So why did you leave me?”
Rachel wiped her eyes. “I thought Josh and I were going to be together.”
“And?”
“He didn’t want that.”
The diner suddenly seemed very loud. Plates clattered in the kitchen. An old country song played quietly through ceiling speakers. Two elderly men at the counter laughed about something completely ordinary.
Rachel reached for my hand.
I pulled it away.
“He said it was just fun,” she continued. “He never promised anything. After I left you, I told him we were finally free to be together, and he said I had misunderstood.”
“So you came back to me.”
“I realized what I had.”
“No. You realized what you lost.”
Her chin trembled.
I asked the question I already knew I had to ask.
“Are you pregnant?”
Rachel said nothing.
“Rachel, are you pregnant?”
She stared down at her coffee.
Then her entire expression twisted with frustration.
“No!”
Several people turned.
She lowered her voice, furious now. “No, I’m not pregnant. Are you happy?”
I leaned back.
For all the suspicion I had carried, hearing the words still felt like a blow.
She had lied to my mother. My siblings. My friends. Dana’s employer.
She had invented a child.
“But didn’t you hear anything else I said?” Rachel demanded. “I said I still love you.”
I looked at the woman across from me and realized I no longer knew who she was.
