Page 20 of The Baby
It would have been easy to do that. To justify those early days as a whole lot of build up. On her part and mine. Except it kept getting stronger and deeper. I started to realize trust had a lot to dowithit.
I trusted Ellie implicitly. With my body, but maybe more importantly my fantasies. Things I might never have shared. Ellie called that prudishness, but it wasn’t. I just didn’t care to lay bare the things I thought about. Sex to me was private.Intimate.
With Ellie though, there were no restraints. There was no hesitation. We talked about what we liked, what we liked more, and we tried everything. (Okay, not anal, but NOT because I was afraid of it. I just couldn’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t hurt her. That’s not bragging bytheway.)
Only now, even though we were both sexually satisfied, practically every day… something wasmissing.
The connection. The penetration of one body intoanother.
She said she was afraid of a miscarriage, even though she was five months pregnant at this point. (Don’t ask me to follow that whole forty-week shit… it’s too confusing. She took the test in June and now it wasOctober.)
Five months pregnant, carrying a still relatively small bump, although I could tell just from handling them that her breasts were getting larger. She didn’t let me linger on her belly either. I wasn’t often allowed to kiss or touch. Only when I surprised her with it. I wasn’t sure if that was vanity or… another roadblock she was putting up. More distance between me and the baby. I knew it wasn’t meant to be cruel. She didn’t realize she was hurting mewithit.
In fact I think in her mind she thought she was protecting me. As if the more distance I maintained between me and the baby, if something horrible happened I would be less crushed. Which was ridiculous. Ellie and the baby growing inside her were my life at thispoint.
She didn’t even want to know the sex of the baby when we could find out. Another layer of distance, or wanting to besurprised?
Yes, in hindsight I should have been paying closer attention. That her fear went deeper than a miscarriage. Because if I knew anything about Ellie since she’d been my wife the first time around, is that when she thought something was important she acted. I wasn’t always included in those plans, despite it having a major impact onmylife.
Which always resulted in pissingmeoff.
It was like there was still this part of her, this girl who’d been orphaned by her father and mother, who could never let herself forget she was on her own in thisworld.
Even though I had spent every minute since Sam died trying to prove to her that wasn’tthecase.
So yeah, in hindsight, I should have been prepared for it, but Iwasn’t.
* * *
Ican’t even rememberwhy I needed to go in there. The study was Ellie’s domain. She handled the books for the ranch. All our income and expenses. Our family budget. All our ordering. The vendors in Montana knew Ellie to be cutthroat when it came to negotiating for the best prices on feed, hay—younameit.
She was both tenacious and hard not to like, so she tended to get her way almosteverytime.
I kept to the outside duties, and lately she bunkered inside with the books and itworked.
I might have been going in there to look for a receipt. Trying to get a sense of how big the hay order had been last time. There were papers scattered along her desk and I remembered thinking I should just ask her, because there was no way I was going to find it among the clutter, when an envelope stood out asdifferent.
Brown, addressed directly to Ellie rather than the Talleys or Long Valley Ranch. The return address was Seattle,Washington.
Just that address was enough to make my heart thud in my chest. My mother had been from Seattle. But I didn’t think about her, or talk about her, or discuss her with Ellie, ever. That wasourrule.
I’d told her my story, I’d told her how my mother had left me, and that should have been enough. Which is why when Ellie brought it up last month, I shot it down hard. That woman gave birth to me, that was all. She was not mymother.
I opened the letter, with no guilt even though my name wasn’t on it, because something wastellingme…
Dear Mrs.Talley,
Enclosed is the final invoice for the investigation work into the person(s) of Adele Miller, aka Adele Talley. Currently AdeleSmithson.
I hope the information I was able to provide is helpfultoyou.
Respectfully,
RiverHatch
PrivateInvestigator.
It was such a strange sensation.Because while I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, I didn’t see how that was possible when it had just beenrippedout.
