Chapter 6 - THE THING SHE THOUGHT I KNEW
I reached St. Joseph’s in twenty-eight minutes.
I do not remember half the drive.
Emma was in obstetric intensive care.
Severe preeclampsia.
Doctors were trying to stabilize her blood pressure long enough to protect the baby.
A nurse blocked me at the doors.
“Immediate family?”
“I’m her husband.”
She checked.
Then hesitated.
“Mrs. Carter requested no visitors.”
That hurt exactly as much as it should have.
“Please tell her I’m here.”
“I can.”
“Tell her I didn’t know.”
The nurse frowned.
“She’ll understand.”
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Mara sat down the hallway.
Dark hair.
Forty.
Exhausted.
I recognized Andrew in her face from old photographs.
I walked toward her.
“You told Emma I knew.”
“No.”
“She believed I did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your father used your name.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
Mara handed me documents.
The payment to Dr. Hall came from a Carter Capital account established in trust for me.
My signature appeared on authorization forms.
I had been nineteen.
Away at college.
I never signed them.
“My father forged my name.”
“Yes.”
Emma found those records eight months ago.
She saw my signature.
Saw my account.
Then looked at the man she had married.
Me.
She did not confront me.
Why?
Mara answered before I asked.
“She was afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of the truth.”
I sat down.
“She thought I knew her before we met?”
“Yes.”
That possibility was monstrous.
That I had sought her out.
Married her.
Controlled her.
All to protect a family secret.
“I met Emma randomly.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Mara investigated me too?”
“Yes.”
She almost smiled.
“Extensively.”
Good.
I deserved that.
“She eventually learned you really did meet by accident.”
“Then why still leave?”
Mara looked toward the ICU doors.
“Because during the eight months she was trying to decide whether to trust you, you disappeared emotionally.”
Rachel.
Work.
Money.
Every conversation I postponed.
Every fear I minimized.
I had not caused the original wound.
I had simply behaved in a way that made the lie believable.
Mara said:
“She was planning to confront you after Christmas.”
“Then why tell me to go to Rachel?”
“She wanted to see whether, for once, you would notice what she was actually asking.”
My eyes burned.
“I didn’t.”
“No.”
She did not soften it.
Then the doctor came out.
“Mr. Carter?”
I stood.
“Your wife is stable for the moment.”
“The baby?”
“Fetal heart rate is reassuring.”
I almost collapsed.
“But?”
There was always a but.
“Her pressures remain dangerously high.”
“What happens?”
“If medication fails, we deliver.”
“She’s only thirty-four weeks.”
“I know.”
Then the doctor hesitated.
“There’s one more complication.”
My heart stopped.
“Her chart shows a previous pregnancy loss with significant uterine injury.”
I stared.
“We didn’t know that.”
“She apparently did.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means delivery may carry additional bleeding risk.”
Mara covered her mouth.
I whispered:
“Can I see her?”
The doctor looked toward the nurse.
“Only if she agrees.”
Five minutes later, the nurse returned.
“She said yes.”
One word.
Not forgiveness.
But a door.
I entered.
Emma looked pale.
Small beneath the blankets despite the enormous curve of pregnancy.
Her eyes found mine.
I stopped several feet away.
“I didn’t know.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I know that now.”
That sentence should have relieved me.
It didn’t.
May you like
Because she continued:
“But I still left.”
