I scheduled my first doctor’s appointment after going through five home pregnancy tests, each one telling me the same thing.
I was definitely pregnant.
Despite the positives, the small changes I began to notice in my body, I was relieved when the doctor confirmed the pregnancy and told me the baby was doing well. My earlier miscarriage was in the back of my mind constantly now, and I was afraid to get too attached to this baby, to go through the same pain. With each day that passed, though, I grew a little more confident, a little more secure, and when the doctor told me he didn’t think there was any reason why I couldn’t have a healthy pregnancy now, I felt a overwhelming sense of relief.
I refrained from buying anything for the baby until I made it through the first trimester, some superstitious part of me wanting to get over that first hurdle, but I occupied my time making lists and planning for what I needed to buy. I checked out a giant stack of books from the library, filling in the gaps in my knowledge that I hadn’t gotten the first time around.
I spoke to the baby constantly, each day falling more in love. I dreamed about it—sometimes a little girl, other times a blond-haired boy with a wobbly smile—imagining this tiny person curled up inside me needing to be kept safe.
During my first pregnancy I’d been sick often, my entire body aching in one way or another. This time around was completely different. I was tired during the day, and my breasts were growing at an alarming rate, but otherwise I felt good. There was no morning sickness, no dramatic mood swings. Despite the circumstances and all the unresolved issues, I was happy. So, so very happy.
“You look like you’re better,” Jordan commented as I stepped over the threshold to her house and gave her a quick hug, wondering if she would notice the differences in my body, the weight I’d put on. I didn’t have a bump yet, but I kept staring at myself in the mirror, wondering when my stomach would pop. Wanting it to.
I grinned. “I am. Thanks.”
“I’m about to put Julie down for her afternoon nap. Do you want to hang out in the nursery for a bit?”
“Sure.”
I sat with Jordan while she fussed with the baby—she really was adorable—watching as she put her in her crib for her nap, the whole time wondering if I would get my stride, if I’d be able to figure out how to be a mom. The books I read all talked about parenting styles, and the importance of getting your kid into the right preschool, and how old was ideal to learn a foreign language, and I was somewhere back at the beginning, still adjusting to this change, still trying to figure out how I would answer some basic questions: Where would we live? Would I end up doing this alone? How would I tell Easy?
I followed Jordan out to the living room when she finally got Julie to go to sleep.
We sat down next to each other on the couch, the ceiling fan whirring to life overhead.
“She’s beautiful.”
Jordan gave me a tired smile. “She is. She’s such a sweet baby, too. Just not a good sleeper.”
“Is it hard to get her to go to sleep?”
“Hard to get her to go to sleep, hard to get her to stay asleep, hard to get her to sleep more than a few hours.” Jordan made a face. “It’s as if she’s afraid that if she does sleep, she’ll miss out on something exciting.”
I laughed. “You can’t argue with that. Well, if you ever need me to help, I’m happy to watch her so you can nap or something.”
“I really appreciate the offer, and I definitely might take you up on it. My mom’s coming to stay with me for a bit next week, but it’s been difficult with Noah gone.”
“How are you doing?”
She shrugged. “In some ways it’s easier than it was before in the sense that it’s not just me; now I have the baby to take care of, so that keeps me focused, distracted. At the same time, now it’s harder because I have the baby to take care of and if I thought I was tired during pregnancy, tired with a baby is a whole other ballgame.”
A thin thread of panic filtered through me as I wondered if that was the future before me—life as a single mom. I wanted to tell myself I could do it and do it well, but I’d also have been lying if I didn’t admit part—most—of me was scared.
“Enough about me, though. What’s going on with you?” Jordan asked. “Anything new?”
Only a secret that was now somewhere between the size of a green olive and a prune.
I opened my mouth to tell her everything was fine, but suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I hadn’t told anyone about this, not my family or friends, and it was this big secret bursting inside me that I didn’t want to keep anymore. Jordan knew us both, and she was one of the least judgmental people I knew. If I could trust anyone to keep my secret, it would be her.
“I need to talk to you.”
Worry clouded her gaze. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t even know where to begin, merely that I wanted to say it, wanted to get her advice on how to handle this. Easy was home in two weeks; I couldn’t put the truth off much longer.
“You know how I was hanging out with Easy a lot before the guys deployed?”
“Yeah. Does this have anything to do with why you guys haven’t talked in a while? And why he was asking about you when I spoke to him a couple weeks ago?”
I nodded. “We got close. I mean, we always were close, but I guess we got closer.”
“Okaaay.” She dragged the word out as though she wasn’t sure what she was going to get when she reached the other side.
“The thing is, the more time we spent together . . .” This was the hard part. I was a thirty-one-year-old woman; sex shouldn’t feel so illicit. But I was a thirty-one-year-old widow, and somehow that seemed to make the quintessential difference.
I swallowed.
“I had sex with Easy.”
Silence descended around us. I stared down at my hands, afraid of what I might see lingering in Jordan’s expression.
“You had sex with Easy?”
I nodded.
“Easy?” Jordan squeaked. “Our Easy?”
My Easy.
“Yeah.”
“Ohmigod.”
“I know.”
“Ohmigod,” she repeated.
I couldn’t tell if it was horror or shock, or some combination of the two; she stared at me as though she didn’t know how to respond to the bomb I’d just dropped. Being a widow meant people handled you as if you had “Fragile” stickers stamped all over you and I could tell that was coming into play here, shaping her responses, making her hold back her words when honestly I wanted the unfiltered response, wanted a glimpse of how everyone would react to this before I had to start telling the people who would really be rocked by the news—my parents, Michael’s parents.
“Are you guys together?”
“No. No. Nothing like that.”
Jordan opened her mouth and then closed it again, clearly grasping for the right thing to say.
“Okay. I’m going to need you to start at the beginning.”
“I had sex with Easy. That is the beginning. And the middle and end.”
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t all of it, but given how blown away she seemed by that fact alone, I wasn’t sure I was ready to give her the rest.
“How? When?”
I shot her a look. “Seriously? How?”
She laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“It was the night after their send-off party. We’d gotten into a fight and I wanted to smooth things over before he deployed so I went to his place to apologize and say good-bye. We were there, and I went to give him a hug, and then somehow the hug changed, and the next thing I knew, we were having sex.”
She stared at me, unblinking.
“It’s bad, right?”
“I don’t think it’s bad.” Comprehension dawned in her eyes. “Oh.”
There it was. It had hit her that having sex with Easy meant I’d screwed my dead husband’s best friend.
“You shouldn’t feel guilty.”
I gave her the look again. “Would you feel guilty?”
She bit her lip. “Okay, yes, I see where you’re coming from, but this is a special circumstance. You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
“Well, I do, but unbelievably, that isn’t even the most complicated thing. It gets worse. Well, not worse, but—”
Her entire expression changed. “Oh God. He told you, didn’t he?”
Huh?
“He didn’t want you to know he loved you. He worried it would make things awkward, and that it was disrespectful . . . And no one else thought it was right to tell you. I mean it wasn’t our secret and . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I didn’t ever think he’d act on it. He said he’d never act on it. I never imagined you’d be interested in him.”
It was the word “love” that did it. It stunned me into silence, drying up all the words inside me, creating a chokehold on my heart, cutting off my breath.
“What are you talking about?” I sputtered.
“Easy.”
What?
“What do you mean he loves me?”
Like a friend.
She had to mean like a friend.
Jordan looked guilty, her voice strained. “He loves you.”
She said it as though it was a commonly accepted truth, when I still wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.
“Easy?”
What?
“Yeah. Isn’t that what you meant when you said things were more complicated?” Her voice rose. “Please tell me that was what you were talking about.”
Nausea rolled around in my stomach. “No. It wasn’t.”
Panic filled her gaze. “Oh, fuck.”
“Jordan—”
“Please don’t tell him I told you. He didn’t want you to know. Ever.”
They’d talked about this? Actually talked about him and me? How did that conversation even go?
How was work today?
Good. I think I’m in love with Dani?!?!
“Easy doesn’t love me. That’s ridiculous,” I sputtered. She had to be mistaken. He’d meant he loved me as a friend, and she’d misunderstood the whole thing. “We had sex. Maybe he’s attracted to me, but that doesn’t mean he loves me. You know how Easy is with women.”
Women who were beautiful and sexy, young and free, not old widows who’d given their heart away nearly a decade ago.
Jordan bit down on her lip.
“What?”
What else could she not possibly be telling me? What else was there to say? I’d thought I had the bomb to drop.
“You don’t get it. He really loves you.”
“I think you’re overstating the sex.”
“I’m not talking about you guys having sex. He told me he loved you. Everyone knows he loves you. This isn’t about you guys having sex one night. This is more.”
I couldn’t feel my legs, couldn’t fucking breathe.
What was she talking about?
“When?”
“When, what?”
“When did Easy tell you he loved me?” My voice rose at the end, hysteria sinking in.
Jordan’s eyes widened. “Last year.”
“Last year?”
This wasn’t happening.
I choked on the words. “As a friend?”
“No, definitely not as a friend. He’s in love with you.” Her tone gentled, compassion in her eyes. “Dani, he’s been in love with you since the first moment he saw you.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Could.
Not.
Breathe.
All this time. Years. He’d been one of Michael’s closest friends for years. He’d been there for me when I’d lost the baby. Had held me close when Michael died, stood next to me while I struggled to speak at the memorial service, staring out at the sea of people waiting expectantly for me to make some sense of my loss, to put a spin on it, as though Michael’s heroism made the absence of him bearable, when all I’d wanted to do was crawl into a ball and die. But I hadn’t. All the moments in the past two years when I’d struggled, Easy had been there—laughing with me, smiling at me, carrying me through the hard times. And I’d never known, never even suspected.
Memories hit me one by one—the way he looked at me, the sound of his voice saying my name, the touch of his lips against mine. All the little things he noticed about me, the way he made sure I had my favorite things.
Easy loved me.
So much.
So much it terrified me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I was drowning in the memories. “You knew this whole time?”
Tears swam in her eyes. “You were married.”
He’d loved me when I was with Michael. His best friend. I couldn’t breathe.
“You were so happy with Michael,” Jordan continued. “Easy knew you didn’t feel the same way about him. Knew nothing would happen between you guys . . .”
Her voice trailed off and what she didn’t say lingered between us, impossible to ignore.
And then your husband died.
I couldn’t take any more. It was too much, the pieces of my life shifting and rearranging, until suddenly I didn’t recognize anything. Couldn’t recognize myself. All the things I’d known to be true weren’t anymore, and suddenly every memory I had of Easy, of Michael, of me, was tainted by this secret he’d kept and by the night we’d spent together.
“I’m going to be sick.”
I made it to the bathroom before I doubled over, my body heaving. Jordan came behind me, holding my hair away from my face, and then for the second time in our friendship I simply crumpled on the floor, her arms enfolding me as the sobs racked my body.
I wasn’t sure if it was the pregnancy hormones, this latest bomb, or the guilt that battered my body, but I was utterly wrung out. I couldn’t even make sense of what I was feeling, didn’t understand the emotions pummeling me, mixing together to create a giant snarl I couldn’t untangle.
I’d loved my husband. I still loved my husband. My marriage hadn’t been perfect, but we’d been happy. So happy. And somehow this change—the baby, the realization that while I’d been with Michael, Easy had loved me—felt like I’d lost him all over again.
“I’m pregnant.”
I’d envisioned telling Easy first—hell, I still couldn’t quite come to grips with the reality that I was in this position to begin with: unmarried, pregnant, wearing another man’s rings on my finger. Did Easy even want kids? Would he want to be involved? Was that what I wanted?
Jordan froze. “Oh my God.”
I nodded, wiping at my cheeks.
“It’s Easy’s?”
I nodded again.
“Oh my God. Does he know?”
I shook my head. “I need to tell him, but I don’t know how to even start the conversation. Especially when he’s deployed. And after last time . . .” I tried to push the fear out. “Until I’m through with the first trimester . . .” My hand drifted down, settling over the baby.
Jordan squeezed my free hand. “I know.”
“How do you think he’s going to take this?”
She took a deep breath. “I think he’s going to be a little scared at first. And yeah, it’s a complicated situation, but you can’t think he’ll be anything other than thrilled. He’s going to love this baby so much. And for all that he seems like he isn’t ready, he’ll be a great dad.”
“I don’t want to hurt him,” I whispered.
I couldn’t bear it. Now that I knew how he’d felt about me all this time, now that I imagined what he must have gone through . . .
I ached for him.
“I know,” she answered.
I didn’t want to hurt him, and at the same time, I worried it was inevitable. That I couldn’t give him what he wanted from me.
“I don’t know what I feel. What I want. I love him like a friend. He’s one of my closest friends. And yeah, suddenly there’s this chemistry between us I never imagined. And now there’s a baby.”
But I didn’t know if that was enough.
“I still love Michael.”
Jordan’s eyes welled up again. “I know.”
“I’ll never not love Michael.” I clung to those words, both vow and plea.
“I don’t think anyone expects you not to.”
“I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t know how to act around Easy. Should I tell him I know how he felt—feels—about me when I don’t have an answer for how I feel about him? Should we ignore the whole thing and just focus on the baby for now?”
“Well, first off, and most importantly, you have to tell him about the baby.”
“I know.”
“And he’s going to want to be involved, so you’ll need to figure out a way to make it work for both of you. You’ll need to figure out how you’re going to include him and what sort of relationship you want to have with him.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re right; I would wait to tell him until he gets back from Afghanistan. It’s not a conversation you want to have in a letter or e-mail. And the guys have enough on their minds. Wait until he gets back, until he’s safe, and then tell him about the baby. It’s only a few more weeks.”
“And the rest?”
“How do you feel about the rest?” Jordan asked.
“Confused. Really confused. I don’t know what I want or what I’m capable of, especially with another fighter pilot after everything I went through with Michael. And I don’t want to lead him on or complicate things for the baby. I owe it to both of them to do the right thing. It isn’t about me anymore.”
“Then take the time you need. Don’t rush it. You have a few weeks until they’re back. Use that time to think about the kind of relationship you want to have with Easy. Use that time to adjust to this new change in your life, to the baby coming.”
I nodded.
“You have to stop beating yourself up about this. I understand why you feel guilty, why you’re confused, but considering everything you’ve been through, you really need to cut yourself a break.”
I’d taken so much pride in my marriage; thanks to the frequent moving, and our inability to have kids, most of my adult life had been defined by being a wife. And I’d honestly been okay with it. It had been my job to support my husband, to serve in my own way. I worried I was abandoning that responsibility now.
“Do you think Michael would . . .”
I couldn’t finish the question, wasn’t even sure why I was asking it. I’d been his wife, had known him better than anyone, yet I needed someone else to say it, needed to hear something to absolve me of the guilt I choked on.
Jordan squeezed my hand again. “He would want you to be happy more than anything. You were an amazing wife to him; he would want you to move on with your life. Isn’t that what love is? Wanting the best for the other person?”
“Even if that person is Easy? They were friends. Brothers. He was there when Michael died.”
My heart hurt as I remembered the guilt on Easy’s face when he’d landed, when the squadron had returned from the TDY in Alaska minus Michael. I’d known then that he would have traded places with Michael if he could have, but now I really understood what that must have meant for him, imagined how much he’d struggled over the past year.
“Michael would have wanted a good guy for you. Someone who would treat you the way you deserve to be treated. That’s definitely Easy.”
I couldn’t disagree.
“He’s always been there for me.”
Jordan smiled. “Yeah, he has. And he’ll be there for you now.”
God, I hoped so.
Jordan’s smile grew. “I can’t believe you’re going to be a mom.”
I laughed through the remaining tears. “I’m so happy. And absolutely terrified.”
“I promise you—we all are. You’ll be amazing. And Easy will be a great dad. Really.”
The crazy thing was, even as I was scared to hope this would somehow turn out okay, I could see him with our baby. Our baby.
“So you’re what, two months along?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you feel?”
I made a face. “My boobs are ginormous. I’m struggling to button my jeans and every day at five o’clock I have an overwhelming desire to take a nap.”
Jordan laughed. “That’s pretty much it. Have you been to the doctor?”
“Yeah, I had an ultrasound. Since I miscarried last time, they wanted to check and see if everything was okay with the baby.”
“And everything looks good?”
I nodded.
“Did you go by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“You could have told me. I would have been happy to go with you. You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”
“I know you would have. I just didn’t know how to say it.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No.”
“You haven’t told your family?”
“No. It’s awkward enough to admit I’m pregnant.” I stared down at the diamond bands on my left hand. “Even worse, I don’t know what to say when they ask me who the father is.” I swallowed. “I don’t want people to think there was anything going on before . . . when Michael was alive. I guess I’m not ready to deal with the questions or the whispers. It’s bad enough that I feel as if I’ve cheated on him, even though he’s gone, but I don’t want his parents—anyone—to think there was something between me and Easy while Michael was alive.”
Compassion filled her voice. “No one who knows you would think that.”
“Yeah, but it looks bad.”
“You shouldn’t worry. It isn’t anyone’s business. You know the truth. The people who love you know the truth.”
“I’m still worried it’s going to hurt people. His parents lost a grandchild and a son, and now I’m pregnant with someone else’s child. And one of their son’s closest friends is the father.”
“Yeah and you lost a child. And a husband. You deserve to be happy, Dani.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “You have to let this stuff go, okay? Trust me, it’s hard enough to go through a pregnancy. You don’t need the added stress. The baby doesn’t need the added stress. Take care of yourself and the baby. The rest of it will work itself out.”
She was right.
“I will.”
“When are you going to tell Easy?”
“When he gets back from the deployment, I guess.”
“I would tell him right away. It isn’t something you can keep a secret for very long since you’re going to start showing soon, and he deserves to hear it from you. He’s going to be hurt if you keep it from him for much longer.”
“I know. I will.”
“It’ll be okay.”
God, I hoped so.