The Woman Next Door (6 page)

Still staring at the yard, Graham muttered a bleak, “Seems like our turn came and went.” His head came around, beautiful green eyes challenging. “What’s not working?”

Amanda was heartsick. She hated their being adversaries. She needed Graham with her in this. “I don’t know, Gray.
They
don’t know. As many as fifteen percent of infertility problems are unexplained. You’ve heard Emily.”

“Yeah, and she says that as many as sixty percent of those couples will conceive on their own within three years, so what’s our problem?”

Amanda didn’t know. “I’m doing everything they tell me. You see me taking my temperature, keeping my charts, taking my Clomid. I even had an ultrasound this time to make sure we did the insemination on just the right day.”

“Then why aren’t you pregnant?”

She told herself that he was upset with the situation, not with her. Still, she felt she was being attacked. “I don’t
know.”

“We waited too long,” he decided. “You were thirty when we got married. We should have started right away.”

“And a year would have made the difference? Come on, Graham. That’s unfair.”

“The older you get, the harder it is. They’ve told us that.”

“Uh-huh, a million times. What they
said,
to be exact, was that fertility rates drop dramatically at thirty, then again at thirty-five, and again at forty, so since we got married when I was thirty, maybe it was already too late. And if we’re making accusations, I want to know why
you
waited so long. Where were you when I was twenty-three?”

“I was in the Pacific Northwest learning my trade.”

It was an evasive answer. She knew about those years and pressed on, having a dire need to share the blame. “You were on the rebound from Megan. You were twenty-nine and playing the field. You didn’t want to be tied down. You were off climbing mountains and rushing rapids, having a grand old time with your buddies. Sure, it would have been better if we’d started earlier, but if you and I had met back then, you wouldn’t have been interested in getting married, much less having a baby.”

He didn’t reply at first. Her argument seemed to have calmed him a little, which was reassuring. One of the first things she had loved about Graham—after the way he looked in that Mustang—was his
ability to be reasonable. He could listen and hear. For someone in her profession, that was a must in a mate.

Reasonably indeed, he said, “We don’t know what would have been if we’d met back then.”

“Exactly.” She rubbed a burning spot between her breasts, a pain that, were she more of a romantic, she might think was a crack in her heart. “So please don’t say it’s all my fault. This hasn’t been easy for me. There are times when I feel like I’m doing all the work and you’re the one who wants the baby.”

“Whoa.” He held up a hand. “Are you saying you don’t want one?”

“You know I do. I want a baby more than anything, but you were the one who was up for it from the day we were married, and I understand that.” How could she not? Graham had grown up thirty miles away. Most of his family still lived in the same town. They got together often. “You have seven siblings, who now have twenty-seven children between them.”

“I love children,” he said.

“So do I, but I’m not a brood mare.”

“Obviously,” he remarked, and suddenly the space between them felt like a chasm.

“What does that mean?” she cried, and, to his credit, he gentled.

Bowing his head, he rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes were tired when they met hers again. “This is going nowhere. I don’t want us to fight.”

Neither did Amanda. She hated that chasm, hated feeling alone. She hated the pressure she felt and the toll it was taking. Mostly, she hated feeling like she was wholly responsible for their failure to conceive. She hated feeling that this was her fault, her problem, her body gone bad.

Close to tears again, she waited a minute before speaking. But
the tears remained, and her thoughts spilled out. “I just need you to understand what I’m feeling. I’m doing everything I can, everything Emily tells me to do. So maybe she’s the problem—”

“No no no.” That fast, Graham was fired up again. “This is doctor number four. We agreed we liked her.”

“We do, but she isn’t the one producing eight eggs, and she doesn’t know why all those sperm of yours can’t fertilize a single one.”

He seemed taken aback. “It isn’t my fault.”

“I know, but this is hard for me, Gray. It’s hard emotionally, because my hopes soar and plummet, soar and plummet. It’s hard physically, because the medication makes my breasts sore and bloats my stomach and makes me sweat—and don’t say I’d have the same symptoms if I were pregnant, because if I were pregnant, I wouldn’t mind. This is even hard professionally. Half of my referrals lately seem to be pregnant teenagers.”

Putting his back to the column and his hands in the pockets of his jeans, Graham stretched out his long legs and snorted.
“
There’s
an irony. They have sex once and—voom—instant baby. We’ve been trying for four years.”

“Irony” was one word for it. Amanda could think of others, like “unfairness,” even “cruelty.” And while she was on the topic of everyone else having babies but her, she said, “Gretchen’s pregnant.”

He didn’t seem to hear at first, lost in what well might have been self-pity—which, Lord knew, she was feeling enough of herself. After a minute, though, he looked up, startled.
“
Ben’s
Gretchen?”

“I saw her in the garden just now.” Amanda saw the image again, clear as day. “She’s pregnant.”

Graham made a dismissive face. “I saw her, too. She’s not pregnant.”

“You didn’t see her in the right light. It had to hit her a certain way.”

He sighed, closed his eyes, rolled his head on his neck. “Come on, Mandy We’ve talked about this before. You see pregnant women where there aren’t any.”

“No, I don’t. Now that it’s spring, coats are coming off, and those pregnant bellies are real. I see them in the supermarket, I see them at the mall. I see them at the drugstore, the library, the school.” She heard her voice growing higher, but couldn’t hold it down. “I swear there are times lately when I wonder what God wants. Is He sending us a message? Is He saying this wasn’t meant to be?”

What she wanted, of course, was for Graham to deny it quickly and vehemently.

But he didn’t. He just eyed her warily. “What wasn’t meant to be? Us?”

She felt the same fear then that she had felt lying in that clinic room the last time. She was losing Graham. Life was pulling them apart. “Babies are supposed to be made by love. They’re supposed to be made in the privacy of a bedroom. What we’re doing is a mockery of that. The most precious part of our lives is a mess of doctors’ appointments, pills, charts, and timing. It’s taking a toll on us, Graham. We aren’t. .
.
fun
anymore.”

She was in tears now, physically shaky and feeling so isolated that Graham wouldn’t have been Graham if he hadn’t been touched. Coming close, he took her in his arms and held her, and for a minute, enveloped by his arms, his earthy scent, his solidity, she remembered what they’d had. She wanted it back. Wanted it
back.

Too soon, he released her. Facing the yard again, he once more slid his hands in his pockets. “About Gretchen?” he said. “You’re wrong. It was a trick of the light. She isn’t pregnant. Her husband’s dead.”

Amanda wiped tears from her cheeks. “It isn’t always the husband who fathers the child.”

Graham turned to her. “Are you talking about us, or her?”

“Her.
Her.”

“So if she’s pregnant, who’s the father?”

“I don’t know. But I know what I saw.” Needing to be right about this—more, needing to escape what was happening between Graham and her—she went down the back stairs and onto the flagstone path.

Graham’s voice followed her. “Did you call the doctor?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Do we try it again?” he called.

She called back without missing a step, “I don’t know.”

“Where are you going?” he shouted, sounding annoyed now.

“Next door,” she shouted back. “I’m asking Russ about Gretchen. He’s around during the day. He’ll know if she has a guy.”

***

Leaving the flagstones, Amanda crossed a carpet of grass, slipped between bristly arms of junipers and yews, then cut through the pine grove that separated the Langes’ house from hers. The scent of moist earth and pine sap, so strong here, was a natural sedative. Or maybe it was the physical movement—or the distance from home—that eased the ache in her belly. Whatever, she was calmer by the time she reached her neighbors’ back steps.

She started up, stepping quickly aside when the door flew open. Allison Lange, newly fourteen, passed her in a blur of long dark hair and gangly limbs.

“Sorry,” the girl said with a breathless laugh.

Amanda caught the door in her wake. “Everything okay?”

Already down the steps, Allison jogged backward across the
lawn. “Fine, but I can’t talk now. Jordie needs algebra help.” Turning, she ran off into the Cotters’ yard.

Jordie Cotter was Karen and Lee’s oldest son. He and Allison had been best friends since grade school. They were freshmen in high school now, and though Allison was a year younger, an inch taller, and more academically inclined than Jordie, they were as close as ever.

Amanda loved Allison, who was warm and decidedly open for a girl her age. Jordie was a tougher nut to crack.

“I’d greet you at the door,” Russell Lange called from inside the kitchen, “but this sauce needs stirring.” Russ, a tall, lanky guy with auburn hair that was rumpled, if sparse, was at the stove, his small, round, rimless glasses perched halfway down his nose. He wore an apron over his T-shirt and shorts, and nothing at all on his feet, which was largely how he went about his day, regardless of the temperature outside. He liked to say that living barefoot was a major perk of being a househusband, but Amanda had always suspected that he simply hated caging his feet, which were huge.

Russ was a journalist. The better part of his income came as a book reviewer, but his joy was writing a weekly column on parenting. His wife, Georgia, was the CEO of her own company, an operation that required she be on the road several days a week. That made Russ the children’s major caretaker. From what Amanda had observed, he had become a commendable parent. He had also become a marvelous cook.

“Something smells wonderful,” she remarked.

“It’s veal marsala, light on the vino given the presence of these two kiddos, though I think I just lost the girl.”

Eleven-year-old Tommy, who had the same thick black hair as his mother and his sister, put in his two bits from the table, where
he was doing homework. “Allie said if you added more wine she’d be back.”

Amanda squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “What do you know about wine?”

“Just that Allie likes to drink it.”

“And where does she do that?”

“Right here,” Tommy said with an innocent look. “She sips from Mom’s glass.”

“How is your mom?”

“She’s cool. She’ll call later.”

Amanda amended the question.
“
Where
is your mom?”

“San Antonio. She’ll be back tomorrow.” The boy slipped from his chair. “I have to go in the other room, Dad.”

Russ aimed his long wooden spoon toward the den. “If it’s to chat on-line with Trevor and John, forget it.”

“It’s to pee.”

“Ah.” Russ shot Amanda a dry look. “I asked for that. Okay, pal. But come right back. You need to finish your essay.” He watched until the boy disappeared. Stirring his sauce again, he gave Amanda a questioning smile. “How are you?”

“I’ve been better.” She went to his side and peered into the saucepan. What simmered there looked every bit as wonderful as the veal that waited, lightly browned, in a pan on the next burner, and suddenly she felt guilty about this, too. She never cooked anything fancy. Graham was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, an easily pleased, grilled-whatever kind of guy. When they ate at home, they cooked together, but they went out as often as not.

This night she wasn’t sure she could eat at all. “I need your help. Gray and I are having an argument. I say Gretchen’s pregnant. He says no. What do you say?”

She would have sworn Russ went red. Then it occurred to her that it was heat from the stove.

“Pregnant?” he echoed. “Wow. I don’t know anything about that.”

“You haven’t noticed her shape?”

His color deepened. No cooking heat this time. His glasses weren’t steamed in the least. “Her shape?”

Of
course
he had noticed her shape. He, Graham, and Lee were
abundantly
aware of her shape. “Her stomach?” Amanda prodded. “You haven’t seen the change?”

“No. I haven’t noticed anything.” But he didn’t tell her she was imagining things. “Pregnant? How could that happen?”

Amanda would have laughed had her life been different. “The normal way, I assume. I told Gray you’d have seen if someone had been coming around to visit.”

Russ stirred diligently. “Not me. I’m glued to my computer all day.”

“Wouldn’t you notice if a car came down the street?”

“I used to, but the parade got boring—mailman, exterminator, UPS guy. I don’t bother looking anymore.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek, pondering something.

“What?”

“Just thinking about Ben. He’d have loved fathering a child at his age.”

Amanda suspected that men loved fathering children at
any
age. It was a sign of virility. She wondered how much that bothered Graham.

“Ben’s kids wouldn’t have liked it much,” she said. “They had enough trouble accepting Gretchen. A baby would pour salt on the wound. But this can’t be Ben’s. The timing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure she’s pregnant?”

“She sure looked it.”

“How far along?”

“Five months, maybe six.” Amanda paused. “Just a guess. I’m not exactly an expert.”

Russ was silent. Softly then, he asked, “Anything doing with you?”

Amanda studied his sauce. “No. Maybe I need cooking lessons. I’ve never made anything like this. Maybe cooking is the key to fertility.”