She Has Your Eyes by Elisa Lorello Read Free Book Online Page B

bit premature, don’t you think?” he said. “We don’t want to get her hopes up.”
    “We don’t want her to think you blew her off either.”
    “You can call her if you want, but I’m not comfortable doing so. Besides, my lawyer already contacted her, so it’s not like she’s out of the loop.”
    I called Wylie’s cell phone and left a message on voice mail: “This is Andi. I just wanted to let you know that David and I will have new information for you soon. You can call me back if you have any questions.” I recited my cell phone number before hanging up.
    She didn’t return the call, but an hour later I received a text message: Thx.
    It was going to take up to two weeks to get the results back. David had tried to persuade me to take a trip somewhere with him, but with the semester already in full swing I didn’t want to cancel classes. Instead, he went to Bermuda by himself,and I didn’t protest, although I worried about him every day—what if, God forbid, something happened to him and the test turned out to be positive and Wylie wound up never getting to know her biological father? That I put her well-being ahead of my own in this morbid scenario did not escape my attention—wasn’t this the way mothers usually thought?
    I was surprised he didn’t go to Italy, his usual battery recharger. I guess lying on a beach and frying his brain in the sun was less work than taking in the museums and architecture. The latter seemed way more distracting than the former, however, and I had assumed he left in order to be distracted. But what if he’d really left to think things through? What if he was making plans? If so, what kind of plans would they be?
    He returned four days later tanned and seemingly thinner, although I suspected that my eyes were playing tricks on me. No more relaxed, however.
    “I missed you,” he said when I asked why he didn’t stay longer.
    “I missed you too,” I replied.
    He spent the rest of the week painting, reading, and consulting with clients. Every conversation between us seemed forced; David insisted that we not talk about “the situation” until we got the test results. This time it seemed to be more out of strength preservation than denial

    We were dining out with my friends Miranda and Kevin when David’s cell phone vibrated (he usually turned it off in company); he excused himself and made eye contact with me in such a way that communicated it was
the Call
.
    “Is everything OK?” asked Miranda, who must have seen the look on my face that I couldn’t hide. It was a few days shy of the two-week deadline.
    “He’s just been expecting a really important call,” I explained. “One that can’t wait.”
    Ten minutes later—ten
long
minutes—David returned to the table, his casual demeanor gone.
    “So, did you close some big art deal, or what?” asked Kevin.
    I watched David feign casualness as he smiled his most charming smile (“the escort smile,” I secretly called it) and laughed off Kevin’s question, avoiding me this time. “Something like that.” But when he sat down, he took my hand under the table and squeezed it hard, downing his wine in one shot with the other hand.
    I lost my appetite.
    We were silent during the car ride home after dinner. Of course I was dying to know the results, and he was dying to tell me. But who were we kidding? I already knew, and he knew I knew, but it was as if someone had stolen our voices.
    Once we were home and in the house, David went to the living room and put a couple of logs into the fireplace, balancing one on top of the other. It wasn’t yet cold enough outside to warrant a fire, but I knew he’d been trembling ever since the call. At one point during the preparation, he sat on his knees, staring into the hearth as if the fire were already crackling.
    I kicked off my shoes and padded to him, knelt behind him, and kneaded his shoulders as I took a whiff of him and was calmed by his scent. I kissed his cheek,