Chapter 2 - Convenient Timing
Two years after our wedding, Ren became pregnant on a rainy Tuesday in March. She took the test before work and left it on the bathroom counter, though she had never left anything there before. When I woke, she was sitting on the edge of the tub with both hands folded in her lap.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“You’re sitting in the dark.”
“I have news.”
I saw the test beside her. For a moment, I could not make sense of the lines. Then the room seemed to tilt.
“Are you sure?”
“I took three.”
I knelt in front of her. She was laughing and crying at once, and I started crying too. I pressed my forehead to her stomach even though there was nothing to feel yet.
“Hi,” I whispered. “I’m your dad.”
That night, after we called our parents, I sketched nursery ideas at the kitchen table. I could not draw a crib, so it looked like a small wooden boat. Ren sat beside me, eating cereal from a mug.
“Our child will sleep in a boat?”
“A very safe boat.”
“With what appears to be a sail?”
“For dreams.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You’re going to be ridiculous.”
“I’m going to be excellent.”
For three months, we lived inside a secret that grew larger every day. We argued lovingly over names. We read about prenatal vitamins. I learned that babies were compared to fruit in nearly every pregnancy app. Ren kept touching her stomach in grocery-store lines, as if she could protect the tiny person by placing her hand there.
We announced the pregnancy at Sunday dinner.
Colette had prepared roast chicken, glazed carrots, and a cake decorated with sugar flowers. She listened while Ren explained that the baby was due in early spring. Then Colette set down her fork.
“How far along are you?”
“Almost fourteen weeks,” Ren said.
Colette counted backward beneath her breath. Her lips moved. The room went still except for the ticking clock above the pantry door.
“Convenient timing.”
Ren stared at her. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“You counted backward.”
“I was curious.”
“Mom.”
Colette reached for her napkin. “I’m sorry. Pregnancy makes me nervous. I said something thoughtless.”
I felt the old reflex rise in me, the instinct to smooth the tablecloth over the broken glass.
“It’s fine,” I said.
Ren looked at me, hurt and angry. “No, it isn’t.”
Colette’s eyes filled. “I only worry because you are both so young.”
I was thirty-two. Ren was thirty-one. Neither of us was young enough to be mistaken for a runaway teenager, but the facts did not seem relevant.
The following week, Aunt Ranata called Ren. Ranata was Colette’s older sister, a practical woman who spoke quickly and hated awkward silences. She asked whether Ren was doing all right.
“I’m tired,” Ren said. “But happy.”
There was a pause.
“You know, I should have told you,” Ranata said. “Your mother has been talking.”
Ren sat down at the kitchen table. I stopped rinsing a plate.
“Talking about what?”
“About the baby. About your husband.”
“What exactly?”
Ranata exhaled. “She says he planned this. That he trapped you before you could leave. She says he wants access to the family name and money, and the baby is an insurance policy.”
The plate slipped in my hand and struck the sink.
Ren’s face drained of color. “She said that?”
“I heard it from her.”
“To whom?”
“At the garden club, to your cousins, and to me. I thought you knew.”
Ren ended the call without saying goodbye. For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then she called her mother.
Colette answered on the second ring. “Sweetheart.”
“Did you tell people my husband got me pregnant so I couldn’t leave him?”
Silence.
“Ren, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Did you say the baby is an insurance policy?”
“Your aunt has misunderstood me.”
Ranata, sitting across from us now, made a disbelieving sound.
Colette began to cry. She said she was worried. She said she had spoken in confidence. She said Ranata had always resented her. She said that a mother was allowed to have fears without being put on trial.
Ren’s voice shook. “You told people I am being manipulated.”
“I never said that.”
“You said he trapped me.”
“I said you were moving quickly.”
“You said he wants our money.”
“I said he might not understand the responsibilities attached to this family.”
Every denial changed shape but not substance.
I reached for Ren’s hand. She gripped mine until our fingers hurt.
“Mom,” she said, “you owe him an apology.”
“I am your mother. I should not have to apologize for caring about you.”
“That is not what this is.”
Colette cried harder. Her voice became small, wounded, familiar. She reminded Ren of the years she had sacrificed. She asked whether one misunderstood conversation mattered more than their whole relationship.
Ren began to cry too.
“Maybe I came in too angry,” she said.
I turned toward her. “Ren.”
“I’m sorry I attacked you, Mom.”
Colette accepted the apology immediately. “I knew you would understand.”
When the call ended, Ranata stood and gathered her purse.
“That was not an apology,” she said.
Ren wiped her face. “I know.”
“Then why did you apologize?”
Ren looked at the ultrasound photograph on our refrigerator. “Because I don’t know how to make her stop hurting.”
I wanted to tell her that Colette was not hurting. Not in the way Ren meant. She was defending her right to say whatever she wanted and still be called loving.
Instead, I held Ren while the baby moved invisibly between our future and the family we had hoped to build.
May you like
The next morning, Colette sent a bouquet of white roses with a card that read, I love you both more than you know.
There was no apology on it.
