Chương 4
I took a step toward her.
"I didn't know."
"You made sure you wouldn't."
"I did not make sure of anything."
"You blocked me for twelve days."
"Because you called me fourteen times in one night."
"My father was in the hospital."
The sentence hit me in the chest.
I blinked.
"What?"
Her mouth opened, then closed.
For a moment the anger left her face and something older took its place.
"That night in March."
I remembered the calls.
I had been at my brother's house, sleeping on a pullout couch with a broken support bar that dug into my back.
My phone kept vibrating on the coffee table.
I saw Alina's name over and over and finally silenced it.
Later, angry and exhausted, I blocked the number.
I told myself boundaries were healthy.
"What happened to him?"
"He had a minor stroke."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"My mother did."
"No, she didn't."
"She left you a voicemail."
I reached automatically for my phone, though again there was nothing there that could rescue me from a mistake made months earlier.
"I never got it."
"You changed numbers."
"I changed work phones."
"She called the old one."
I pressed my tongue against the inside of my cheek.
"Is he okay?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"He has trouble with his left hand."
I sat down again.
The folder rested between my knees.
For years, Alina's father had helped me with anything involving tools because he believed every man should own a level and I had somehow reached adulthood without one.
He had taught me to replace brake pads in his driveway while complaining that modern cars were designed by accountants.
At Thanksgiving, he always cut the turkey too early and then blamed the oven when it dried out.
I had missed his stroke.
Not because nobody tried to tell me.
Because I had made myself unreachable.
"Why didn't you say anything when we started talking through the lawyers again?"
"What was I supposed to say?"
"That your father had a stroke."
"You were asking me to sign refinancing documents."
"That's not an answer."
"No."
She sat beside me again.
"It's not."
We were quiet.
The courthouse noise filled the space around us.
A child somewhere downstairs began crying.
A security guard coughed.
The elevator arrived and released three people who immediately went in different directions.
I stared at the scuffed toe of my shoe.
"When is the genetic test?"
Alina folded the tissue into a smaller square.
"I already did mine."
"When?"
"Two weeks ago."
"What kind?"
"Blood draw."
"And the baby?"
"They can compare fetal DNA from my blood with samples from the stored embryos and from us."
"You gave them permission?"
"Yes."
"Without me?"
"They didn't need your permission for my blood."
"You know what I mean."
"I know."
I breathed through my nose.
"When do they get results?"
"They said another week, maybe two."
"Maybe."
"That's what they said."
"Because apparently precision isn't their specialty."
She flinched.
I regretted it immediately, not because the clinic didn't deserve anger but because the sarcasm had landed on her.
"Sorry."
She looked at me.
It was the first apology I had offered her directly in months.
Neither of us seemed to know where to put it.
"So what exactly are they testing?" I asked.
"They're first trying to establish whether the baby is genetically related to me and to you."
"And if the baby is ours?"
"Then the pregnancy was natural."
I nodded slowly.
"And if the baby isn't related to either of us?"
"Then the transferred embryo was not ours."
The words sounded impossible even after she said them.
"What if the baby is related to you but not me?"
Alina's forehead creased.
"They said that's extremely unlikely given how the embryos were created, but they're checking all possibilities."
"Meaning somebody could have mixed up sperm samples."
"I don't know."
"Or eggs."
"I don't know, Marcus."
"How do you not know?"
"Because every time I ask them a question, they tell me the investigation is ongoing."
Her voice rose on the last word.
A man at the far end of the hallway looked over.
Alina lowered her voice again.
"They have lawyers in every meeting now."
That told me more than anything else she had said.
"Of course they do."
"They offered to pay for independent testing."
"How generous."
"They also offered counseling."
I looked at her.
She gave a humorless little shrug.
"I haven't gone."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to sit in a room with somebody paid by the clinic and explain why the clinic has ruined my sleep."
"Independent counseling?"
"Supposedly."
"Still."
"Exactly."
I rubbed both hands over my face.
The smell of disinfectant on the courthouse floor suddenly reminded me of the fertility clinic years earlier.
Same artificial lemon scent.
Same bright hallways.
Same feeling that important things were happening behind closed doors while we sat holding numbered forms.
We had spent almost three years trying to have a child.
At first it had been almost funny.
Calendars.
Temperature tracking.
A drawer full of ovulation kits.
Alina teasing me that scheduled intimacy was the least romantic invention since fluorescent lighting.
Then months accumulated.
The jokes became thinner.
Doctor visits multiplied.
Sex became something measured, timed, discussed.
I learned words I had never expected to know.
Morphology.
Follicles.
Blastocyst.
Endometrial lining.
We had one pregnancy at ten weeks.
Then we didn't.
Afterward, Alina packed the ultrasound picture into a small white envelope and put it in the bottom drawer of her nightstand.
I never asked where it went after we moved.
I had told myself not asking was kindness.
Maybe silence had been my favorite disguise for cowardice long before the divorce.
"Why did you do the transfer?" I asked.
Her gaze shifted to me.
"After I left."
"Yes."
"Why go through with it?"
She leaned back against the wall.
"For the same reason we scheduled it."
May you like
"We scheduled it before everything fell apart."
"Everything had been falling apart for a while."
