The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky Read Free Book Online Page A

last month. It’s seven more than most women produce.” Her own frustration caught up with her. “I’d have thought at least one of the eight would be fertilized. My God, it’s our turn.”
    Still staring at the yard, Graham muttered a bleak, “Seems like our turn came and went.” His head came around, beautiful green eyes challenging. “What’s not working?”
    Amanda was heartsick. She hated their being adversaries. She needed Graham with her in this. “I don’t know, Gray. They don’t know. As many as fifteen percent of infertility problems are unexplained. You’ve heard Emily.”
    “Yeah, and she says that as many as sixty percent of those couples will conceive on their own within three years, so what’s our problem?”
    Amanda didn’t know. “I’m doing everything they tell me. You see me taking my temperature, keeping my charts, taking my Clomid. I even had an ultrasound this time to make sure we did the insemination on just the right day.”
    “Then why aren’t you pregnant?”
    She told herself that he was upset with the situation, not with her. Still, she felt she was being attacked. “I don’t know.”
    “We waited too long,” he decided. “You were thirty when we got married. We should have started right away.”
    “And a year would have made the difference? Come on, Graham. That’s unfair.”
    “The older you get, the harder it is. They’ve told us that.”
    “Uh-huh, a million times. What they said, to be exact, was that fertility rates drop dramatically at thirty, then again at thirty-five, and again at forty, so since we got married when I was thirty, maybe it was already too late. And if we’re making accusations, I want to know why you waited so long. Where were you when I was twenty-three?”
    “I was in the Pacific Northwest learning my trade.”
    It was an evasive answer. She knew about those years and pressed on, having a dire need to share the blame. “You were on the rebound from Megan. You were twenty-nine and playing the field. You didn’t want to be tied down. You were off climbing mountains and rushing rapids, having a grand old time with your buddies. Sure, it would have been better if we’d started earlier, but if you and I had met back then, you wouldn’t have been interested in getting married, much less having a baby.”
    He didn’t reply at first. Her argument seemed to have calmed him a little, which was reassuring. One of the first things she had loved about Graham—after the way he looked in that Mustang—was hisability to be reasonable. He could listen and hear. For someone in her profession, that was a must in a mate.
    Reasonably indeed, he said, “We don’t know what would have been if we’d met back then.”
    “Exactly.” She rubbed a burning spot between her breasts, a pain that, were she more of a romantic, she might think was a crack in her heart. “So please don’t say it’s all my fault. This hasn’t been easy for me. There are times when I feel like I’m doing all the work and you’re the one who wants the baby.”
    “Whoa.” He held up a hand. “Are you saying you don’t want one?”
    “You know I do. I want a baby more than anything, but you were the one who was up for it from the day we were married, and I understand that.” How could she not? Graham had grown up thirty miles away. Most of his family still lived in the same town. They got together often. “You have seven siblings, who now have twenty-seven children between them.”
    “I love children,” he said.
    “So do I, but I’m not a brood mare.”
    “Obviously,” he remarked, and suddenly the space between them felt like a chasm.
    “What does that mean?” she cried, and, to his credit, he gentled.
    Bowing his head, he rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes were tired when they met hers again. “This is going nowhere. I don’t want us to fight.”
    Neither did Amanda. She hated that chasm, hated feeling alone. She hated the pressure she felt and the toll it