Even Steven by John Gilstrap Read Free Book Online Page B

never be until they added the sound of a child’s laugh and the sight of fingerprints on the wall; until she could sit down with all her friends and participate in the conversations about what the little darlings were learning, and what mistakes they were making. As it was now, the Martins’ rambling brick colonial—their dream home, set in the woods of Clinton, Virginia—stood merely as a shrine to what might have been; to what nearly was.
    Susan had known grief in her time, from the death of her mother just a few years ago, to every one of the three miscarriages that had plagued the early years of their marriage. She thought she could be strong, that she could handle grief as it came her way. But then when Steven died, she learned that what she’d thought was grief was really just meaningless discomfort, disjointed training-pain that made you feel depressed for a few days, but then faded away.
    To lose Steven, though—to lose him the way they had—was a sharp, enduring, Technicolor kind of pain that just never dimmed. With each passing moment, in fact, the grief only deepened and widened, to the point where sometimes she wondered if she could possibly haul herself through another day.
    They’d taken all the usual precautions, refusing to tell anyone about the pregnancy for the first four and a half months—until, in fact, her belly was so obvious that people had begun to troll for hints. “Have you been gaining a little weight?” was the standard from family members, but less intimate contacts would use the more subdued approach: “Do you have any news for us?”
    In the past, the miscarriages had all occurred during the first trimester, right in step with all of the predictions from the doctors and the baby books. The first time it had happened, Bobby and Susan had both cried, and they had both felt a sense of loss, but they’d been able to rationalize it away.
    It’s God’s way of making sure our baby is perfect.
    The second time around was many times more traumatic, the baby hanging on until the end of the eleventh week before the bleeding started, and the cramping and the anguish. She’d seen the hurt in Bobby’s eyes that time, and the look continued to haunt her to this very day. It was as if someone had betrayed him, as if some invisible force were conspiring to hurt his family. With the third pregnancy, Bobby had refused to get his hopes up. He’d steeled himself against the bad news that he knew was inevitable, and which ultimately proved itself to be true. He held her hand through it all, and he said all the right words as their third attempt at parenthood leaked from her body onto the ambulance sheets, but his eyes never so much as moistened. He knew this was going to happen, so it had just been a matter of time.
    Then along came Steven. The first trimester was a breeze, without so much as a bout of morning sickness, and as they passed that magical third month, they celebrated with a bottle of sparkling cider. Everything felt so right. They dared to dream again; to think the thoughts of expectant parents, rather than expectant mourners. Eventually, even Bobby’s skepticism turned to optimism. They bought furniture, they attended showers, they even established a savings account for the college fund. Listening to the experts, you couldn’t start saving too early these days.
    Because of Susan’s history, that pregnancy was monitored more closely than a moon shot. She visited her OB/gyn every week for a while there, and she endured every test known to God or babies. Over the months, they’d assembled an entire album of sonogram photos, none of which were legible to her, but that didn’t really matter. They were finally, finally going to be parents. All systems go. Everything A-OK.
    The only real crisis they faced during those wonderful weeks was whether to learn the baby’s sex. Deep down inside, everybody loves the mystery, but on a more practical level, why not know when the answer is already