No answer.
I drove toward our house twice and lost my nerve both times.
I wrote messages and deleted them.
Every explanation looked absurd on a screen.
Sorry, I accused you of adultery because a clinic mixed up my fertility results with another man’s.
It sounded insane.
Because it was insane.
By the end of that week, I knew I had to tell her in person.
I waited outside her obstetrician’s office because an old calendar reminder gave me a rough idea of when one of her appointments would be.
Laura walked out holding a folder in one hand, while her other palm rested beneath her belly.
She stopped as soon as she saw me leaning against her car.
I had imagined that reunion a hundred different ways.
None of them included the expression on her face.
She looked exhausted.
And furious.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Please just hear me out.”
“No.”
“Laura.”
She headed toward her car.
“You don’t get to disappear for seven months and ambush me at a hospital parking lot.”
I pulled the envelope containing the medical records from my jacket.
“I know. I know that. But I have proof.”
She froze.
“Proof of what?”
“That I was wrong.”
She shook her head.
“I knew that from the start. If that’s what you came to tell me, please go back to wherever you have been.”
I begged her for ten minutes.
She refused twice.
Finally, she got into the driver’s seat and unlocked the passenger door without saying a word.
We sat beside each other without looking at one another.
Then I told her everything.
The old fertility test.
The result I had hidden.
Why I had kept it from her.
Why I believed the pregnancy couldn’t be mine.
How I returned to the clinic.
The new test.
The switched records.
The nearly identical patient names.
Everything.
I handed her the documents.
When I finished, her expression was almost impossible to read.
“So let me understand this,” she said. “You thought I cheated because of a medical result you kept secret from me for years.”
“Yes.”
“But when I told you I didn’t, over and over, you still walked away.”
I lowered my eyes.
“Yes.”
She gave a short laugh without any humor in it.
“You didn’t even ask for a DNA test. You outrightly believed that I cheated.”
There was nothing I could say.
“I know.”
“No, Richard. Say it properly.”
I looked at her swollen belly.
Then at her hands, tightly clenched in her lap.
“I did not trust you.”
Tears filled her eyes.
Her voice remained steady.
“I was pregnant with the baby we wanted more than anything. I was terrified, sick, exhausted, and instead of being happy, my husband looked at me like I was a filthy liar.”
I closed my eyes.
