night dropping quickly. One of her packages had tipped over and the baby gift she’d purchased was spilled on the seat, a bright, whimsical mermaid puppet sewn in silver lamé and pink and green sequins.
That old sadness threatened to overcome her again, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Driving with one hand, she stuffed the puppet back into the shopping bag and headed purposely for the condo she’d once shared with Ben. Now the two-bed-room unit was all hers—all nine hundred square feet of “charming midcentury” architecture, as the literature boasted. In layman’s terms this meant an apartment building constructed in the late fifties and converted to condos with a little updating in the late nineties. But it was home. Even without Ben.
By the time she pulled into her designated slot, Becca had managed to push the damned vision and her own case of the unwanted blues aside, but dusk was gathering quickly and the clouds opened up again.
Rain tossed around her in shivery waves as she headed for the front door, fumbling with her keys. The evening paper was in a plastic sleeve on the stoop and she reached down and grabbed it, juggling it with her packages, as she spilled through the door. She dumped everything she was carrying onto the drop-leaf table that stood in the small foyer, then shrugged out of her dampened coat and hung it in the closet as the ticky-tick of Ringo’s nails across her oak floors heralded her dog’s arrival.
“Hey, bud,” she said as the curly haired black and white mutt furiously waved his tail, gazing at her expectantly. “Look what I got you.”
She held up the blue collar with its little white dog bone motif, but Ringo kept his eyes on hers. If it wasn’t food, he simply wasn’t interested.
“Okay,” Becca relented as she headed to the kitchen. She pulled out a jar of small, dog-shaped treats. Ringo barked twice, happily, as Becca unscrewed the lid and fished out a couple of biscuits, tossing them to the dog, who leaped up and caught them in his jaws, one by one, then raced back to his bed and snuffled and chewed them.
“We’ll go for a walk in a minute,” she said, adding some of his regular dog food to his bowl. Ringo quickly finished his treats and hurried to his bowl, munching on his meal with the same enthusiasm as the biscuits. He was not a picky dog.
She gazed out the kitchen window, which faced the back of another condo across an expanse of grass. She could see right inside to the other kitchen, which was festooned with red and pink foil hearts. A young girl was seated at the table, licking the icing off a cupcake decorated with candy hearts.
She recalled last year’s Valentine’s Day. She’d been waiting for Ben. Though she’d sensed—known, really—that their marriage was in its death throes, she’d spontaneously bought a cake and a bottle of champagne. The cake had been heart shaped with white icing, and in red gel script, it read: Be Mine.
Ben had never come home that night and Becca had opened the champagne alone, drunk half a glass, and poured the rest down the drain in the kitchen sink. Calls to his cell phone and text messages had been left unanswered until late in the night when he’d simply texted back: Something came up. Don’t worry. I’m okay. She would have panicked and called the police, but deep in her heart she’d known what was coming. He’d shown up the next day to break the news that he was in love with someone else, and that the someone else was pregnant.
Despite telling herself that she’d suspected something like this, Becca had tried not to be shocked, hurt, and upset, but she’d failed on all counts.
Suspecting him of having an affair was one thing.
Having that affair and pregnancy confirmed was quite another.
“You told me you never wanted kids,” Becca reminded him, trying to keep from screaming at him at the top of her lungs.
“I guess I changed my mind,” he responded, turning away from her accusing face.
“You guess?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“If you didn’t mean for it to happen, you should have used a condom.”
“Who says I didn’t?”
“Did you?” Becca demanded. Did he think she was a moron?
He almost lied to her. She could see him thinking whether he could make her believe him. But he knew her almost as well as she knew him. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” he mumbled, heading for the bedroom and his suitcase.
She followed him, too betrayed to let him just go. She yanked down another bag and stuffed it full of his clothes. Her outrage, her all-consuming fury, helped her cram his Brooks Brothers button-downs into small wads. “Take everything. Everything. Don’t come back. Ever.”
“Becca, you’re just upset. I’ve gotta come back and get—”
“Don’t be reasonable, Ben. I swear to God. Don’t be reasonable or I’ll scream.” She glared at him, but all she saw was the baby. The one he was having…with someone else. “If you can’t carry it now, it’ll be on the front porch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I’m ridiculous?” she demanded, dropping one of his white shirts onto the bedroom floor.
Ben, the coward, couldn’t hold her gaze. In tense silence he snatched up the shirt, finished packing his bag, and stormed out. She tossed the other suitcase after him, not caring whether he picked it up or not. It sat on the porch for two days while she stacked other items beside it, crowning the pile with his most prized golf trophy. She half expected the homeowner’s association to complain about the mess, but Ben managed to sweep everything up before that happened. He came when Becca was away, so there were no more angry words. In fact, there were no more words at all for several months. Becca had just determined to open the lines of communication again, preparing for the inevitable divorce, when she got a call from Kendra Wallace—the someone else—who between sobs, shrieks, and tears explained that Ben had died in her arms of an apparent heart attack. At forty-two.
For a good ten minutes Becca heard nothing else. Nothing past the fact that Ben was dead. She surfaced to finally understand that Kendra’s wailing was along the “poor me, what am I going to do” line. “The baby,” Becca said, moving from shock back to reality. Ben was going to be a father…
“The baby is mine!” Kendra snapped sharply, as if aware of Becca’s desire to have a child of her own.
“Do you have family?” Someone to help you?
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You need someone—”
“I need Ben and he’s dead!” she said, sniffing and sobbing. “And…and…you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer? Why…” Then it hit her. The divorce wasn’t even final, the arrangement for separating their finances not quite nailed down. Oh, Jesus.
Kendra slammed down the phone.
Becca was left staring into space. She was aware Kendra was going to come after her financially, but if the child was Ben’s, so be it. Then when, after two months, she received no call, she dialed Kendra on the number that Caller ID had coughed up and learned it belonged to Kendra’s mother, who told Becca that Kendra
