It had taken Angie the full four hours until their appointment to choose the outfit and do her makeup. When she and Conlan finally met Sarah Dekker in the lawyer’s office, the three of them had bonded instantly. We’ll love your child, Angie had promised the girl. You can trust us.
For six wonderful months Angie and Conlan had given up trying to get pregnant. Sex had become fun again; they’d fallen effortlessly back in love. Life had been good. There had been hope in this house. They’d celebrated with their families. They’d brought Sarah into their home and shared their hearts with her. They’d accompanied her to every OB appointment. Two weeks before her due date, Sarah had come home with some stencils and paint. She and Angie had decorated this room. A sky blue ceiling and walls, crowded by puffy white clouds. White picket fencing entwined with bright flowers, their colorful faces attended to by bees and butterflies and fairies.
The first sign of disaster had come on the day Sarah went into labor. Angie and Conlan had been at work. They’d come home to an empty, too-quiet house, with no message on the answering machine and no note on the kitchen table. They’d been home less than an hour when the phone rang.
They’d huddled by the phone together, holding hands, crying with happiness when they heard of the birth. It had taken a moment for the other words to register. Even now, Angie only remembered bits and pieces of the conversation.
I’m sorry—
changed her mind
back with her boyfriend
keeping the baby
They’d shut the door to this room and kept it closed. Once a week, their cleaning woman ventured inside, but Angie and Conlan never did. For well over a year, this room had stood empty, a shrine to their dream of someday. They’d given up on all of it—the doctors, the treatments, the injections, and the procedures. Then, miraculously, Angie had conceived again. By the time she was five months pregnant, they’d dared once more to enter this room and fill it with their dreams. They should have known better.
She went to the closet and pulled out a big cardboard box. One by one, she began to put things into it, trying not to attach memories to every piece she touched.
“Hey.”
She hadn’t even heard the door open, and yet here he was, in the room with her.
She knew how crazy it must seem to him, to find his wife sitting in the middle of the room, with a big cardboard box beside her. Inside it were all of her precious knickknacks—the Winnie-the-Pooh bedside lamp, the Aladdin picture frame, the crisp new collection of Dr. Seuss books. The only piece of furniture left was the crib. The bedding was on the floor beside it, a neat little stack of pale pink flannel.
She turned to look up at him. There were tears in her eyes, blurring her vision, but she hadn’t noticed until now. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was; it had all gone wrong between them. She picked up a small pink stack of sheets, stroking the fabric. “It made me crazy” was all she could say.
He sat down beside her.
She waited for him to speak, but he just sat there, watching her. She understood. The past had taught him caution. He was like an animal that had adapted to its dangerous environment by being still and quiet. Between the fertility drugs and the broken dreams, Angie’s emotions were unpredictable. “I forgot about us,” she said.
“There is no us, Angie.” The gentle way he said it broke her heart.
Finally. One of them had dared to say it. “I know.”
“I wanted a baby, too.”
She swallowed hard, trying to keep her tears under control. She’d forgotten that in the last few years; Conlan had dreamed of fatherhood just as she wanted motherhood. Somewhere along the way, it had all become about her. She’d focused so much on her own grief that his had become incidental. It was one of those realizations that would haunt her, she knew. She had always been dedicated to success in her life—her family called her obsessive—and becoming a mother had been one more goal to attain. She should have remembered that it was a team sport.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kind of kiss they hadn’t shared in years.
They sat that way, entwined, for a long time.
She wished his love could have been enough for her. It should have been. But her need for a child had been like a high tide, an overwhelming force that had drowned them. Maybe a year ago she could have kicked to the surface. Not now. “I loved you.…”
“I know.”
“We should have been more careful.”
Later that night, when she was alone in the bed they’d bought together, she tried to remember the hows and whys of it, the things they’d said to each other at the end of their love, but none of it came back to her. All she could really remember was the smell of baby powder and the sound of his voice when he said good-bye.
TWO