Chapter 8: What We Said When We Were Finally Alone
We drove home the next morning.
Two hours on the motorway, mostly quiet.
Dave kept both hands on the wheel.
I watched the fields go by.
Halfway home, he said: "I don't know how to fix this."
"I know," I said.
"Tell me what you need."
I thought about it for a while before I answered.
"I need you to understand what you actually did," I said.
"Not the broad version — not 'I kept a secret' or 'I was a coward.' The specific version.
What it cost me."
He was quiet.
"The appointment in February," I said.
"Two years ago.
When the doctor said there was no clinical reason we weren't conceiving and suggested we consider that the issue might be stress-related.
Do you remember what I said in the car on the way home?"
His hands tightened on the wheel.
"You said you were sorry."
"I apologized to you," I said.
"For my body.
For what I thought was my failure." I looked at him.
"You sat there and let me apologize."
The motorway went by.
"I know," he said.
It came out rough.
"That's what I need you to understand.
Not that you had a daughter.
Not even that you hid it.
I need you to understand that you sat there while I apologized for something that was never my fault, and you said nothing."
Dave pulled off at the next exit.
Not our junction — just a layby, a strip of gravel beside a hedge.
He put the car in park and sat there with his hands in his lap.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I know you are."
"That's not enough."
"No," I said.
"It's not.
But it's the start of something, if you mean it."
He turned to look at me.
His eyes were red at the rims.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked.
"You can tell me.
I won't—" He stopped.
"I just need to know what I'm fighting for."
I looked at him for a long time.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"That's the honest answer.
I love you.
I'm also furious with you.
Both of those things are true at the same time."
"Okay."
"What I do know is that Ava is going to be in our lives.
And Lauren, for as long as she needs to be.
And I'm not going to punish a child for her father's choices." I looked out at the hedge, the flat grey sky beyond it.
"So whatever happens between you and me, that part is decided."
"I don't deserve you," he said.
"No," I said.
"You don't.
But deserving isn't really the point, is it."
He almost smiled.
It didn't quite make it.
I reached over and put my hand on his.
Not forgiveness — not yet.
Just contact.
Just the acknowledgment that we were two people in a car on the side of a road with a long way still to go.
May you like
"Drive," I said.
He drove.
