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

was taking. Mostly, she hated feeling like she was wholly responsible for their failure to conceive. She hated feeling that this was her fault, her problem, her body gone bad.
    Close to tears again, she waited a minute before speaking. Butthe tears remained, and her thoughts spilled out. “I just need you to understand what I’m feeling. I’m doing everything I can, everything Emily tells me to do. So maybe she’s the problem—”
    “No no no.” That fast, Graham was fired up again. “This is doctor number four. We agreed we liked her.”
    “We do, but she isn’t the one producing eight eggs, and she doesn’t know why all those sperm of yours can’t fertilize a single one.”
    He seemed taken aback. “It isn’t my fault.”
    “I know, but this is hard for me, Gray. It’s hard emotionally, because my hopes soar and plummet, soar and plummet. It’s hard physically, because the medication makes my breasts sore and bloats my stomach and makes me sweat—and don’t say I’d have the same symptoms if I were pregnant, because if I were pregnant, I wouldn’t mind. This is even hard professionally. Half of my referrals lately seem to be pregnant teenagers.”
    Putting his back to the column and his hands in the pockets of his jeans, Graham stretched out his long legs and snorted. “ There’s an irony. They have sex once and—voom—instant baby. We’ve been trying for four years.”
    “Irony” was one word for it. Amanda could think of others, like “unfairness,” even “cruelty.” And while she was on the topic of everyone else having babies but her, she said, “Gretchen’s pregnant.”
    He didn’t seem to hear at first, lost in what well might have been self-pity—which, Lord knew, she was feeling enough of herself. After a minute, though, he looked up, startled. “ Ben’s Gretchen?”
    “I saw her in the garden just now.” Amanda saw the image again, clear as day. “She’s pregnant.”
    Graham made a dismissive face. “I saw her, too. She’s not pregnant.”
    “You didn’t see her in the right light. It had to hit her a certain way.”
    He sighed, closed his eyes, rolled his head on his neck. “Come on, Mandy We’ve talked about this before. You see pregnant women where there aren’t any.”
    “No, I don’t. Now that it’s spring, coats are coming off, and those pregnant bellies are real. I see them in the supermarket, I see them at the mall. I see them at the drugstore, the library, the school.” She heard her voice growing higher, but couldn’t hold it down. “I swear there are times lately when I wonder what God wants. Is He sending us a message? Is He saying this wasn’t meant to be?”
    What she wanted, of course, was for Graham to deny it quickly and vehemently.
    But he didn’t. He just eyed her warily. “What wasn’t meant to be? Us?”
    She felt the same fear then that she had felt lying in that clinic room the last time. She was losing Graham. Life was pulling them apart. “Babies are supposed to be made by love. They’re supposed to be made in the privacy of a bedroom. What we’re doing is a mockery of that. The most precious part of our lives is a mess of doctors’ appointments, pills, charts, and timing. It’s taking a toll on us, Graham. We aren’t. . . fun anymore.”
    She was in tears now, physically shaky and feeling so isolated that Graham wouldn’t have been Graham if he hadn’t been touched. Coming close, he took her in his arms and held her, and for a minute, enveloped by his arms, his earthy scent, his solidity, she remembered what they’d had. She wanted it back. Wanted it back.
    Too soon, he released her. Facing the yard again, he once more slid his hands in his pockets. “About Gretchen?” he said. “You’re wrong. It was a trick of the light. She isn’t pregnant. Her husband’s dead.”
    Amanda wiped tears from her cheeks. “It isn’t always the husband who fathers the child.”
    Graham turned to her. “Are you talking about us, or