When another week went by with no word from her, he allowed himself to breathe again. He could even laugh again when Charlie showed up for dinner at their house. Charlie had brought along his laundry so they could wash it for him, sparing him the chore. As Jack carried the laundry basket into the house, Charlie followed, holding aloft a bottle of his favorite Lagavulin in one hand and a carton of organic whole milk in the other.

“One drink for us fellas, one drink for the mommy-to-be,” he said.

“Oh, Dad, you know I’ve never been crazy about milk,” said Maggie.

“Better learn to like it, darlin’. That little bump’s counting on the calcium.”

Little Bump was what Charlie had started calling the baby, a far better name than Maggie’s first choice, Taryn. Whether it was a boy or a girl, that was the name she kept returning to, a name straight out of Jack’s nightmares.

“What Little Bump really needs is for Mommy to sit down and take it easy,” Jack said. “Daddy’s got everything under control.”

He was, in fact, happy to leave the two of them alone in the living room. He brought Charlie’s laundry down to the cellar, loaded it into the washing machine, and headed back upstairs to finish cooking dinner. After all, how many months did Maggie have left with her father? They were all painfully aware of the passage of time. As the metastases spread through Charlie’s body, it was a race between the pregnancy and how fast cancer would take him down. But Charlie had always been a fighter, and now he had something to really fight for: a glimpse of his very first grandchild.

That evening, looking at his ruddy, laughing face over the dinner table, Jack had little doubt Charlie would win that fight. He piled pasta onto his plate, poured himself another glass of whiskey, and dived into his meal like a man starved for life. Jack and Maggie exchanged smiles because, at that moment, everything was as right with their world as it could be. Her father might be dying, but a new life was on the way. And they had each other, a blessing that he would never again put at risk.

From the cellar came the buzz of the dryer. Jack stood up. “I’d better get downstairs before everything gets wrinkled.”

“You’ll make someone a very good wife, Jack,” Charlie said.

“Well, you can’t have him, Dad,” said Maggie. “He’s mine.”

All yours, thought Jack as he headed down to the cellar. And I’ll never forget it. While he pulled Charlie’s laundry out of the dryer, he could hear Maggie upstairs in the kitchen, grinding coffee beans and loading the dishwasher. Everyday domestic sounds he’d once taken for granted. He’d come far too close to losing it all. Now, just the act of folding Charlie’s sheets, still warm from the dryer, made him happy. Soon there’d be baby clothes and crib sheets to wash as well, and diapers to change and baby bottles to warm. He looked forward to it all—yes, even the diapers.

He carried the basket of folded laundry upstairs to the kitchen, where Maggie was arranging coffee cups and saucers on a tray. She didn’t hear him and gave a little squeal as he ambushed her from behind, hugging her close.

“Hey, you,” she laughed.

“You smell good.”

“Probably like cheese and tomato sauce.”

“I like cheese and tomato sauce.”

Maggie turned around to face him. “God, I wish we could hold on to this moment. You and me and Dad. I wish we could just freeze it as it is now, before—”

The sound of a throat being cleared made them turn. Charlie stood in the doorway, looking a little sheepish that he’d caught them embracing.

“Everything okay, Dad?” said Maggie.

“It’s starting to rain. I think maybe I should call it a night, before the weather gets worse.”

“You don’t want to stay for coffee and ice cream?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite, anyway. I’ll leave you two lovebirds to have at it.” He picked up the laundry basket from the kitchen table. “Thanks for washing my sheets, Jack. I never could get the hang of folding ’em as nice as you.”

“Your daughter taught me well!” Jack called out as Maggie walked her father to the front door.

When she came back, she looked worried.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s really starting to pour. Maybe we should have driven him home.”

“He’s not an invalid, Maggie.”

“Not yet. I’m dreading the day when that happens.”

“But you saw him go through dinner. It’s hard to believe he’s sick.”

“We can always hope for a miracle.” She turned to the tray of coffee cups.

“Let me carry those. How about you dish out some ice cream?”

Jack brought the tray into the dining room. Just as he set it down, his cell phone rang. He picked it up from the windowsill, where he’d left it earlier, and glanced at the caller ID on the screen: Spam likely.

Of course. Half the damn calls he got at dinnertime were spam. He declined the call and was about to put down the phone again when he saw the text message. It was from Taryn, and it was only two words long.

I’m pregnant.

For a moment he could not move, could not even breathe. His legs suddenly unsteady, he sank into a chair. He was still sitting there when Maggie walked into the dining room carrying dishes of ice cream. She sat down across from him, but he could not bear to look at her. Instead he stared off into the living room, focusing on the fire crackling in the hearth. At that instant he wanted to leap into those flames, let them consume him. It was what he deserved.

“Don’t you want your ice cream?” Maggie said.

“I—I’ll be right back.” He grabbed his phone and lurched to his feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Just a little, uh, stomach thing.”

He bolted upstairs to the bathroom and suddenly felt so light headed he had to steady himself against the sink. He looked at the text message again: I’m pregnant.

He deleted it.

She couldn’t be pregnant. This had to be a lie and one more way of torturing him. Frantic, he thought back to the two times they’d had sex. Neither time had he been wearing a condom. What a fucking idiot he’d been. He’d simply assumed she was on the pill, but what if she hadn’t been? He counted back the weeks and realized that, yes, it had been long enough ago for her to now test positive on a home pregnancy test.

God, it was possible. Very possible.

He dropped to his knees, hung his head over the toilet bowl, and threw up. He flushed away the contents but stayed huddled there, waiting as the nausea passed. But this nightmare would not pass. He was living it, trapped in it. He longed for the coward’s way out: a convenient heart attack that would take him down here, now, before Maggie learned the truth.

I need to find a way out of this, he thought. There has to be a way.

CHAPTER 35

TARYN

The face of Medea glared up at her from the cover of the textbook, the eyes alight with fury, her hair crowned in flames. It was the face of a woman who had been betrayed by the man she loved, a woman who was about to exact a price for that betrayal. Unlike the pitiful Queen Dido, Medea did not ascend her own funeral pyre and plunge a sword into her breast. She did not allow herself to be crushed and defeated when her husband, Jason, abandoned her for another woman. No, Medea embraced her rage. She reveled in it.

She acted upon it.

Taryn set the textbook down on her kitchen counter, where Medea’s fierce image would remind her to stay strong and fight for what should be hers. Tonight she would need that strength, but already she felt her resolve wavering. For an instant the kitchen seemed to tilt, and she reached out to steady herself against the counter. She’d had a glass of Zinfandel, and now her stomach felt unsettled. That was why she was dizzy, of course; alcohol tossed into an empty stomach. She knew she shouldn’t be drinking at all, but tonight she’d needed something to calm her nerves.

She opened the freezer, removed a carton of macaroni and cheese, and put it in the microwave. While it heated up, she thought about what she would say to him when he arrived. She would remind him of all the reasons they belonged together, all the reasons he’d forever regret it if he did not choose her. This was his child growing inside her, and even though it was still too small for her to feel it move, when she pressed her hand to her abdomen, she could almost believe a tiny hand was pressing back, reaching for her. For its mother. She thought of Maggie Dorian, thirty-eight years old and pregnant as well. When a woman was that old, her pregnancy could go wrong. How much simpler it would be for everyone involved if it did. The baby could die. Maggie could die. It happened to other women, didn’t it, so why couldn’t it happen to her? Taryn didn’t hate her, but that wife was the one thing standing between Taryn and her happiness. The one thing that was pulling Jack away from her. The one thing that was making him abandon her, just as her father did. Just as every man in her life did.