We were careful with each other, the way you are around something that could break. Once I caught myself reading the label on a can of paint, wondering whether it was safe for a nursery, and I set it back on the shelf so fast the whole rack rattled. I drove Janet to her checkups. I sat in the waiting room under the humming fluorescent lights, flipping through magazines I didn't read, and I held her bag while she went in. Every time the doctor came out, I searched her face for bad news.
Every time she said the same thing. High risk but healthy, strong heartbeat, everything on track. Once the nurse smiled at us both and said we were doing everything right, and neither of us corrected her about what we were. Nobody knew. Not Wes, not the neighbors, not the ladies who came into the flower shop.
For 2 months, it was a secret small enough to fit inside the two of us. Then Chelsea found out. It happened on a Tuesday afternoon when Janet was 7 months along and her body had begun to say what we hadn't. We had just come out of an appointment at the Greenville Women's Clinic. I was holding the door for her.
She was stepping out into the hallway, one hand resting on her stomach the way women do without thinking. The elevator opened at the far end. Chelsea stepped out. She was there for her annual gynecologist visit. It was pure chance.
The building held the OB office and the gynecologist on the same floor, and Greenville isn't a big town, but Chance doesn't care about timing. She saw her mother first, then her eyes went down to Janet's stomach. Then they came to me standing in the doorway with my hand on the glass, then slowly back to her mother's stomach again. Nobody said anything. The fluorescent light buzzed above us.
The hallway had never felt so long. Chelsea turned around and walked straight back to the elevator, pressing the button hard twice. The doors slid shut with her face still turned away. That night, my phone rang at 9:00. I saw her name and knew before I answered.
She didn't ask a question. She didn't speculate. She made a statement. You slept with my mother. I didn't say anything because it was true.
At the wedding, she said a beat later and I could hear the wheels turning. Wes's wedding. That's the only time you two were in the same place. Am I right? I stayed silent.
She took that as her answer. Wow, Chelsea said quietly and hung up. I sat down on the edge of my workbench and looked at my hands. 10 years in the Corps and I had never felt so completely outflanked by a phone call. There was no move to make.
The truth was already out on the wire and I couldn't call it back. What happened next? I only understood later. Chelsea never had to lie. She never had to invent a single word.