The pregnancy test was still in Rachel’s hand when she told me there was a chance the baby belonged to another man. I was standing at the stove making Sunday breakfast, and for several seconds the only sound in our apartment was bacon crackling in the pan while the woman I had planned to marry waited for me to understand that our entire relationship had just split open.
Chapter 1
“I’m pregnant,” she said again.
I turned off the burner. “Okay.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn’t smile. Rachel and I had been together a little more than two years and living together for six months. We had talked about children in the vague someday language couples use when they believe time is on their side, but an unexpected pregnancy wasn’t something I would have considered a disaster.
Then she whispered, “Jake, I don’t know if it’s yours.”
I stared at her.
“Whose else would it be?”
She lowered the test.
“Ryan’s.”
That name landed harder than the pregnancy.
Ryan Mercer worked with Rachel at the marketing firm downtown. He was the guy who sent her good-morning texts before seven, the one who remembered how she took her coffee and always seemed to need her help on projects that required late nights at the office. Three months earlier, I had asked if something was happening between them.
Rachel had laughed.
“He’s just my work friend.”
Now she sat across from me at our kitchen table, crying into both hands.
“How long?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a relationship.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She looked away. “Six weeks ago. Maybe a little longer.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
I waited.
“Maybe twice.”
I folded my arms. “You don’t know whether you slept with somebody once or twice?”
“It all happened during that awful period when you and I were fighting.”
Our “awful period” had lasted roughly three weeks. I had been working sixty-hour weeks while my engineering firm completed a hospital expansion project. Rachel told me I had become emotionally unavailable. I apologized, cut back my weekend hours, and believed we had repaired things.
Apparently, while I was repairing our relationship, she had been sleeping with Ryan.
“So during the same period you suddenly became affectionate with me again,” I said, “you were sleeping with him too?”
She flinched. “It sounds disgusting when you say it like that.”
“How would you prefer I say it?”
Rachel’s face hardened through her tears.
“At least I’m telling you. I could have kept this from you.”
The strange thing was that I didn’t shout.
I wanted to. My chest felt as though someone had poured gasoline into it, but anger wasn’t going to change biology.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll get a prenatal DNA test.”
She blinked. “That’s it?”
“No. That isn’t it. That’s simply the next step.”
“You’re not furious?”
“I’m furious enough that if I start talking right now, I’ll say things neither of us can take back. So we’ll deal with facts first.”
A prenatal blood test could be performed safely after enough fetal DNA entered the mother’s bloodstream. Rachel called a clinic that afternoon and scheduled the earliest appointment they recommended.
Before she left for work Monday morning, she hugged me tightly.
“Whatever happens,” she whispered, “I love you.”
I held her because two years of habit made my arms move before my mind agreed.
Then I went into the bathroom and threw up.
My older brother Ethan was an emergency-room nurse. I called him from the parking garage before work and told him everything.
He was silent for exactly three seconds.
“Leave.”
“I need the DNA result.”
“Why?”
“Because if there’s a child involved, I need to know where I stand.”
“If it’s not yours, leave. If it is yours, still leave. She cheated.”
“Those are two different problems.”
“No, Jake. They’re two consequences of the same problem.”
He wasn’t wrong, but I needed facts.
That evening, Rachel left her iPad on the couch while she showered. A message notification appeared.
Ryan: Thinking about you. Last month was incredible.
I didn’t have to break a password. Their conversation was open.
Nothing in the recent messages explicitly discussed sex, but scrolling back told a different story. Hotel jokes. References to “our secret.” Messages from Rachel saying she wished circumstances were different.
I photographed everything.
Then I called Ryan.
He answered cheerfully until I gave him my name.
“Jake?”
“Rachel’s boyfriend.”
The line went dead.
Five minutes later, he called back.
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
I almost laughed.
“She lives with me.”
“She said you were roommates.”
“Did she mention she’s pregnant?”
Silence.
Then, “What?”
“She says the baby could be yours.”
Ryan started breathing faster.
“No. No way. We used protection.”
“So there was a we.”
He swore under his breath.
“How many times?”
“Look, man, I don’t want trouble.”
“How many?”
“Four. Maybe five.”
Rachel had said once, maybe twice.
Then Ryan said something stranger.
“I can’t have a kid. I’m getting married in four months.”
I gripped the phone tighter.
“You’re engaged?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“Aria.”
“How long?”
“Five years.”
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Rachel had cheated on me with an engaged man who claimed he didn’t know she had a boyfriend, while apparently she hadn’t known—or claimed not to know—that he had a fiancée.
“Does Aria know about Rachel?”
“No.”
“She will.”
“Jake, come on. Don’t destroy my life.”
I looked through our apartment window toward the kitchen where Rachel was setting plates on the table as if we were an ordinary couple.
“You should’ve thought about your life before borrowing mine.”
I ended the call.
That night, Rachel curled against me on the couch and said maybe we didn’t need the test after all.
I turned toward her.
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“Because biology isn’t everything. If it turned out to be Ryan’s, you could still be the baby’s father in every way that matters.”
There it was.
Not remorse.
A backup plan.
I studied the woman beside me and wondered how long she had mistaken my patience for surrender.
“We’re doing the test,” I said.
Her expression changed.
“You really don’t trust me?”
I almost admired the question.
“You told me yourself there’s another possible father.”
She stood abruptly.
“When the results prove you’re the father, you owe me an apology.”
I watched her walk away.
For the first time since she showed me the pregnancy test, I wasn’t wondering whether the baby was mine.
I was wondering how many other things she had lied about.
