Telling him was a disaster. She shouldn’t have told anyone, just gone and spread her legs and let the vacuum erase her folly. But she needed the money from him for the abortion—she couldn’t take it from their family funds; Chris would notice a chunk of money missing like that.
Dr. Edwards—God, she didn’t even know his first name—refused to give her money for an abortion. He wanted the child. He’d raise it on his own if she didn’t want to be involved. He’d like for her to be. They had such a connection. Obviously they did—how else would they have made a baby with one brief, sweaty event?
The very idea panicked Daisy. Keeping the child wasn’t an option. She was married, to a man who’d been gone ten weeks. Pretending the child was his would be impossible. She’d have to stage an early delivery and explain away why the child was full term. Chris wasn’t an idiot. He’d put two and two together, and probably kill her. He was a good man, but even honorable men could be pushed beyond their limits when jealousy took the reins.
She didn’t know what to do. She had no idea when Chris was coming back. And day by day, she grew bigger and bigger. She thought she was showing at just over three months. At four she finally started to feel better, not so sick, not so clouded. And by then, it was too late. She was past the time when they would legally abort the child.
Chris came home. She wore the baggiest clothes she could find, mostly his, telling him she’d missed him so much she’d taken to wearing his clothes. He teased her for getting fat while he was gone—she’d only put on a few pounds, but on her frame, it was obvious. But Chris hadn’t ever been up close and personal with a pregnant woman. He had no idea. Though she caught him eyeing her stomach a few times, contemplatively scratching his chin, the excuses about the weight and his clothes were enough. Maybe he just didn’t want to see. She often wondered about that after he was gone, whether he’d had some premonition that he would die and so, despite realizing his wife was pregnant by another man, kept his concerns to himself and gave her a final gift.
When he shipped out again, she was just over five months. She hadn’t known how she was going to keep it a secret much longer, and was so relieved, so relieved, when he got his orders. Two weeks later the news came: Chris had been killed in the line of duty. They wouldn’t give her any more details than that. Words were whispered that he had died in Nicaragua, but she could never get the Navy to admit anything.
At least he hadn’t been publicly shamed. After the funeral, Daisy confined herself for the next several months, comically ballooning. When she needed to see the doctor, she followed her earlier pattern, driving twenty-five miles to Franklin and having the Planned Parenthood people help her. Friends and family assumed she was prostrate with grief. It was better that way.
Dr. Edwards (she found out his name was Michael, though she could never come to think of him that way) waited patiently for her call. He and his wife—yes, of course the jerk was married—were going to raise the child. His biological child. Daisy didn’t know how a woman could agree to raise her husband’s bastard child, and worried that the baby wouldn’t be loved properly. But who was she to think those things? She loved her baby exactly enough not to kill him, and to give him away to a practical stranger.
When the time came, four in the morning on the fifth of March, when she felt like she was being sawed in half from the pain and her bed was drenched in amniotic waters, she didn’t panic. She called Dr. Edwards. He and his wife, a beautiful dark-haired gypsy who seemed thrilled by the blessed event, picked her up in their Volkswagen Beetle. They drove her down to the hospital in Franklin—Daisy refused to have the baby any other place—and once the child was out, they left her there, in pain, throbbing and torn and empty.
She knew it was a boy. That’s all she knew.
A son, who now belonged to someone else.
A husband, dead.
A lover, gone.
Daisy, widowed, childless, alone, and finally in a position to start over. She was free and clear to start her life, yet again.
She had always been a good singer. She could get work in the honky-tonks, singing backup or covers. And that’s just what she did. She lost the baby weight as quickly as possible, sent out some demos and résumés, and landed a job two weeks later. She sang and flirted and had herself a ball, and tried so very hard not to think of the small bundle she’d given away.
Once, when she’d had a great deal to drink and was feeling especially lonely—because while she had a job, and friends, something inside her would never be right again—she tried to call the Edwards house. A recording gave her an immediate three-toned note, then said: “The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.”
Gone. The man, the boy, the woman. All gone. The hole in her, the emptiness, the sneaking suspicion that she’d done the wrong thing, it all came parading back.