Rachel's Hope. Carole Page Gift
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it. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Rachel. I could have lied. I started to! You know I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said, not looking at him, not seeing anything, still dazed, groping with a blizzard of conflicting thoughts whirling in her own head.
“Hang it all anyway,” David said, his brows knitting over dark flashing eyes. “This whole world is going down the drain, you know that? I’m going down the drain, and the whole world, too. What’s the use of anything?”
Hearing this new torment in David’s voice, Rachel snapped out of her own preoccupation. Her mind was clearing fast. “David,” she said, “talk to me. We’ve got to talk about this. I have to understand what’s happening.”
“What’s the use? I mean, really, what’s the use of anything?”
“I have to understand this, David.” She felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch him but she held back. Instead, she got up from the floor and went over to the sofa and sat down. It was a lovely sofa, the color of spring roses, but there were crumbs from potato chips on it, and she brushed them off. Certainly, she thought, some of these things that had happened could be undone, brushed aside like crumbs, forgotten. She had to find out where she and David stood. “David,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm, “tell me what’s going on.”
He had the newspaper again, rolling it up, twisting and turning it, unaware that he was destroying it with his very hands. “I don’t know what to say, Rachel,” he said, his hands busy with the paper. “What can I say? I mean, Kit and I have gotten to be good friends. We didn’t plan anything. We just hit it off, you know. Things sort of clicked…”
“When was this?”
“A couple of months ago, I guess. Late in the summer.”
Rachel forced herself to ask the question that seared her heart. “Are you having an affair, David?”
A flash of surprise and indignation crossed David’s face. “No. No, Rachel. Believe me, it hasn’t gone that far. I wouldn’t. We’re friends. Special friends, I guess. We see each other now and then, for lunch. This was the first time we’ve ever met after work, but I guess you won’t believe that.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” Rachel replied in a flat tone.
Suddenly he slammed the paper down on the table, jarring a crystal dish that sat on its polished surface. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said. “I must be crazy saying anything at all. I must be crazy.”
Rachel’s heart hammered. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. “I need to know, David,” said Rachel. “Everything. It’s only fair…”
Her husband grew quiet, apparently gathering his thoughts. He leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders slumping, round and heavy, his eyes focused somewhere in space. He massaged his knuckles. “You know yourself, Rachel,” he said in a small, tight voice, “things haven’t been good between us for a long time. You know that.”
Tears glazed her eyes. “We’ve had our problems, yes…”
He looked at her, his eyes glinting with fire. “Problems? Problems? You bet we’ve had problems. I’m not excusing myself, believe me, I’m not, but…I guess it seemed like an escape to be interested in someone else for a while. It was harmless, Rachel, really.”
“But you said—” Her tongue felt thick, pasty, her voice a whisper. “You said you don’t know if you love this girl, this Kit. You said you don’t know.”
He shook his head. “I—I don’t know.”
Rachel inhaled sharply. She couldn’t hear her own voice over her thundering heart. “But you might…you might love her?”
David stared hard at his hands. “I just don’t know,” he said.
“Hey, Dad, when did you get home?”
It was Brian, bounding into the living room full of a boy’s endless energy, grinning broadly at his dad, his enthusiasm noisy. Lately, it seemed Brian was often this way around his dad, almost joyous, sharing something private, something Rachel couldn’t quite touch. But why did he have to come in now?
Dear God, why now?
“Hey, man! How’s it going?” David responded brightly, obviously glad to be off the hook with Rachel for a moment. “I got home a while ago. How about you? What’s the word?”
“Nothing, Dad. Hitting the books is all. Doing some research on the Internet. History report. No big deal.”
“School’s always a big deal.”
“Sure, if you say so.”
David chuckled. “You’ll change your tune one of these days.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But, hey, how about you? Mom tell you the news?”
Rachel saw David flinch slightly. His smile froze on his lips. “What do you mean, Brian? Tell me what?”
The words burst from Brian’s lips. “About the baby. You told him, Mom, didn’t you?”
Rachel scarcely breathed. “No, Brian.” She was losing the modicum of control she had over this situation. She didn’t want it to be like this. Everything was collapsing around her. “I haven’t had a chance, Brian. I was going to—”
David pulled himself out of his recliner and stood in the middle of the room as if he were not sure what he should do next. “What is this?” he said. “Rachel, tell me what’s going on.”
She glared at her son. “Brian, go to your room and let me talk to Daddy, would you please?”
“Okay, Mom.” He looked at both of them apologetically. “I’m sorry if I spoiled the surprise. I mean, I figured you already told him.”
As Brian left the room, Rachel steeled herself. It was her trump card, this baby, but she didn’t want to play it now. She didn’t want to hold on to David this way, if there was anything left of their marriage to hold together.
David stood across from her, his body steeled, too, and minced no words. “Rachel, are you pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“In the name of heaven, why didn’t you tell me? What kind of game are you playing?”
“You’re a good one to talk about playing games,” she countered, wishing immediately she hadn’t retaliated.
“Oh, we’re back to that, are we?” David made a helpless gesture with his hands and sat down. “Rachel,” he said solemnly, “what do you want me to do?”
Rachel stared down at her hands. “I don’t know, David. You tell me. What do you want to do?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do, what to think. I suppose we have to go on from here, from this moment. We’ve got to pull things together, you and I. Especially now.”
She spoke with a bitter irony. “You mean, for the baby?”
“Yes, I mean for the baby. For Brian, too. For all of us.”
It was not in Rachel now to respond coolly, to debate and discuss their lives with objectivity. She resented David’s attempt to settle their lives by logic. Didn’t he understand, couldn’t he see, that she was coming apart inside? He wanted to talk about tangible things, about plans, about doing this or that. Rachel was concerned with only one intangible, terribly important fact: David evidently no longer loved her, and he might love—actually might love—somebody else.
“Are you listening to me, Rachel? Didn’t