Everett didn’t answer her, so she moved quickly toward Christopher’s room, not bothering to turn on the lights as she went. She knew this house in her sleep, could feel her way through the darkness without bumping into furniture or walls. The knot in her throat grew as she thought about leaving it. There was no way she could afford to keep it on her own. All she’d ever wanted was to live in this neighborhood with her own family one day. Her dreams had been relatively small, yet still too big for her to attain.
Christopher’s door was open, the night-light they kept lit for him spilling the tiniest bit of light into the hall. She paused in the doorway when she saw Everett already there, standing beside his toddler bed, Gulliver looking down at the Lilliputian. She stood stone-still, taking in the scene as she waited for the knot in her throat to dissolve. After a few moments, she realized she was holding her breath, and she exhaled. When she did, Everett turned around and saw her. In the darkness, she could barely make out his face, yet she knew instinctively he’d been crying. Just as instinctively, she moved toward him, wanting to hold him, to dry his tears, to make everything OK for him just like she’d always been compelled to do.
But of course that instinct had gotten them where they were today. She kept her arms at her sides and willed herself not to reach for him.
“I thought you were gone,” she whispered.
He shook his head, and there was silence for a few more seconds. “I thought about it,” he finally said. “I even came in here to . . . say goodbye, to tell him I was sorry.”
He went quiet, and she fought the urge to tell him to keep talking. The words were on her lips: “You have nothing to be sorry for.” But she held them in, biting on her bottom lip to refrain from speaking.
“But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell him goodbye.” He turned to look at her again, and she could hear the tears in the thickness of his voice. “He’s so beautiful.”
She nodded as her own eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she said. Below them, Christopher threw his arms over his head, his chin pointed toward the headboard, his little elephant tucked close to him, moonlight highlighting the features she’d searched a thousand times for proof or denial of his parentage. Some days she could see Trent in him as clear as day. Other days she saw Everett, because she wanted to. When he was born, Everett’s mother had marched into the hospital room, clasped her hands to her chest, and exclaimed, “He looks just like his daddy!” Bryte had foolishly hoped that meant she was home free. But she had never truly been home free again.
Everett motioned for her to follow him out into the hall, and with one last glance at Christopher, she did. What she’d done was stupid, but her son’s existence was the opposite of regrettable. She would spend the rest of her life caught in that paradox. She pulled Christopher’s door nearly closed, leaving just a crack between the frame and the door itself, the way she herself had slept as a child.
She followed Everett across the hall and into their bedroom, pausing at the threshold again. He slumped into the overstuffed chair she’d long ago stuck in the corner of the room when her mom was getting rid of it. It had become a repository for discarded items of clothing draped across the back—his and hers—that neither of them ever bothered to look through unless they needed something in particular. She was pretty sure her coat and his thick flannel shirt were still there from winter, waiting to be discovered.
She couldn’t look at him sitting there, his head in his hands. Her eyes moved over to their bed just for somewhere else to look. She wished it was like any other night and she could just crawl into it, could feel Everett’s steady presence beside her, have him tease her with his ongoing accusation that she snored. The little things were what she’d miss. She heard him inhale and steeled herself for whatever he was going to say.
“Do you have feelings for him? Do you want him in Christopher’s life? Is that why you went to see him?”
The words stunned her. “No,” she said, the objection ringing in the silent room. “Nothing like that. I—” She was going to say that she truly went there to talk to him about a job. But as she met his eyes, she knew he saw through that, probably faster than she had. Her voice was softer as she went on to explain. “You wanted another baby so much. And I knew it wasn’t going to happen. And then I found his business card. I’d kept it because . . .” She made herself look at his eyes. “Well, I kept it just in case there was ever something . . . genetic. That came up.”
They blinked at each other for a moment, absorbing the weight of all she’d kept hidden from him.
“And when I saw it again, it just made me think about . . . seeing him again. You kept talking about another baby, and I was feeling pressured to finally tell you the truth, and I guess I wanted to try to remember what could’ve possibly made me think it was the answer.”
There was more silence, more broken gazes. She spoke again to fill the silence, to somehow utter the words that would make him understand.
“I wanted to tell you since the moment it happened. I wanted to look you in the eye and say, ‘We are never having children of our own so let’s figure out how to deal with it.’” As she spoke, she moved toward him, her steps deliberate and certain. She would wrap her arms around him, and if he pulled away, he would be the one to pull away. But she wasn’t going to pull away anymore. She would love him until the last second she had to love him. And if she lost him anyway, well, at least she’d made the most of the time she had with him.
She stopped when she got close to him, her arms hanging limply at her sides. “But then I would see you with him and the two of you would be laughing and talking about what you were going to work on in the yard or what his favorite kind of dinosaur is and I would think, ‘How can I possibly wreck this?’ Why would anyone want to wreck this?” A tear escaped the corner of her eye and traveled the length of her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. It fell off the edge of her face and disappeared into the carpet.
“I love him,” Everett said, his choked voice barely more than a whisper.
“Of course you do.”
“He’s my son.”
She felt some of the tension she’d been holding in her body whoosh out with those three words. “Yes,” she said.
“It’ll take a long time to let it sink in. That he’s not. Technically.”
She bristled but kept quiet.
“And he doesn’t know? Anything?”
This was a different he, but Bryte knew who Everett meant. She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Everett reached up and took her hands, lacing his fingers in hers. She looked at him, surprise evident on her face. But on his face she saw a look she couldn’t ever remember seeing. It was a hard look, a determined look, his jaw like steel, pulsing. “Did he make a play for you when you were with him today?”
Her heart picked up speed. She swallowed as she determined how to answer. Truth. She had promised herself she would tell the truth from now on. “S-sort of. I think . . . he thought perhaps what happened before could h-happen again. He wanted me to stay for dinner.”
“And it would’ve happened again, if it had happened.” He pointed at her stomach. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
She nodded. Of course she’d thought of the timing, how easy it would be—on one level—to let it happen again.
He let go of her hands, and for one desperate moment, she feared she’d given him the wrong answer. But then she saw him glance over at the clock, and she knew. They looked at each other, and for a few moments neither of them spoke as, without words, each took in what was happening.
“I can’t give you a child,” he said.
“I know.”
“Ever.” He leaned over as he said it, as if he’d been punched. “It’s hard to say that out loud.”
She watched as he righted himself to a standing position, trying not to get ahead of what he was saying.
“After you left I thought about it and . . . we can’t have any more kids.” He exhaled loudly. “We’ll have to either adopt or get a donor, and if we do that, then that child will be different from Christopher. It’ll be totally obvious. To him. To everyone.”