Firstborn

by Robin Lee Hatcher

  “His temper’s always had a short fuse.”

  Erika took a deep breath and let it out. “I was at that party, too. Dallas decided to leave, and he asked me to go with him, so I did. I was worried about him.” She shook her head. “Neither of us were fit to drive. We’d both been drinking.”

  This bit of news did surprise Steven. He couldn’t imagine Erika defying her father by going to a party where alcohol was served, let alone drinking anything. Unlike many of her high school friends, Erika had always toed the line.

  She sighed, then looked up. As if reading Steven’s mind, she said, ‘There were a lot of things I did that fall that would’ve surprised you. Things I shouldn’t have done. Going to that party was one of them.” She paused for a few heartbeats before adding, “Leaving the party with Dallas was another.”

  November 1979

  Erika leaned against the jamb of the back door as Dallas staggered into the family room, banging his knee on the coffee table on the way. He cursed a blue streak.

  “Where are your parents?” Erika whispered, glancing toward the hallway as she made her way inside.

  “They took Julie to some school thing in Pocatello. Won’t be back ‘til Sunday.” He half sat, half fell onto the oversized sofa, then motioned to Erika. “Come on and sit down. I won’t bite.”

  “Want me to turn on the light?” she asked, still speaking softly.

  “No. Leave it off.”

  She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The floor undulated beneath her feet, and she moved cautiously. Why’d she take that last drink? For that matter, why’d she take the first one? She wondered if she would be sick as she sat on the sofa beside Dallas.

  Don’t let me be sick. Don’t let me be sick.

  She leaned back, closing her eyes—that only made the spinning worse. She groaned.

  “She dumped me,” Dallas muttered. “Do you believe that? She dumped me for that jerk Nelson.”

  Another groan served as her response.

  “I liked her a lot, Erika. I thought I might be falling in love with her.” He leaned sideways until their shoulders met. “You know how that is.”

  “Yeah.” She leaned into him, their heads now touching. “I know how it is.”

  She felt so alone. All she’d wanted was for Steven to write to her once in a while. Was that too much to ask? She felt so alone, so misunderstood, so miserable. No matter what she did, it was wrong. Her father was always scowling at her. Steven had left her. There must be something the matter with her that no one but her grandmother could love her.

  “I’m glad you were there tonight,” Dallas said. “You’re all right. You know that?” He shifted, then draped an arm around her shoulders. “You’re okay.”

  She was tired of being afraid. So tired of feeling like nothing.

  He kissed her.

  Somewhere in the alcohol-muddled recesses of her brain, she knew he shouldn’t be kissing her, and she shouldn’t be kissing him back. But at least she wasn’t alone. For this moment, she wasn’t alone and unwanted and unlovable.

  When it was over, when sanity—however fragile—returned, Erika wept. Not from the pain. From the shame.

  She thought of Steven, of the countless times she’d stopped passion from taking them too far. She loved him, and now she’d let his best friend—

  Her stomach lurched. With a hand over her mouth, she dashed for the bathroom. She reached the toilet just in time. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she clung to the porcelain commode and retched. When at last there was nothing left to throw up, she collapsed on the cool bathroom floor and wept again.

  Dallas tapped on the door. “Hey, kid. Are you okay?”

  “Go away, Dallas.”

  “I’ve always liked you, Erika. I don’t think any less of you ‘cause of this, you know.”

  Maybe not. But she thought less of herself.

  Ten

  Silence chilled the room. Steven’s stomach felt as if it had been through a blender. He wanted to demand she continue. Yet he wanted to tell her to shut up, to not say another word.

  Erika rose from the sofa and walked to the window. “I could blame it on lots of things, Steven. The drinking. The loneliness. Our ages.” After a few moments of silence, she turned to face him again. Tears streaked her cheeks. “Afterward, I tried to pretend we’d fallen in love, but it wasn’t true. The most we’d been was friends, and even that was because of you. Because we both loved you. Within a couple of weeks, we stopped seeing each other altogether.”

  Steven stood. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. He would have known. They couldn’t have kept something like this a secret for all these years.

  “But by then,” she continued in a hoarse whisper, “it was too late.”

  Don’t say it, Erika. Don’t say it. O God, don’t let her say it. “By then I was already pregnant.”

  Erika held her breath. She could see the disbelief in her husband’s eyes turn to confusion, then to denial, then to heartache.

  “Pregnant?” Steven shook his head slowly, as if that alone could change what she’d told him.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have an abortion?” He asked the question in a voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear.

  “No.” She hugged herself more tightly. “I… I couldn’t do that. Grams helped me go away to have the baby.”

  “The boarding school? That’s why you went back East?”

  “Yes.”

  Steven rubbed the palms of his hands over his face. “I can’t believe Dallas refused to marry you. He was kind of wild in high school, but I never thought—”

  Her vision blurred. “Dallas never knew I was pregnant. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t make myself call him. We both felt so guilty about what happened between us that we couldn’t stand the sight of each other by the time I knew I was pregnant.” The words tumbled out, faster and faster. She wanted to get them said. Now that she’d begun, she needed to confess it all. “I didn’t want to marry Dallas, and I couldn’t let my dad know I was having a baby, let alone bring her home to raise on my own.” She stretched a hand toward him, begging him to understand and forgive. “I was sixteen and scared and… and I was still in love with you.”

  “Strange way to show love.”

  She bit the inside of her mouth. What, after all, could she say in her defense?

  “It’s almost funny, you know?” There was no humor in Steven’s voice nor in the slight upward curve at one corner of his mouth. “Here Dallas was worried there was something wrong with him, and it turns out he got you pregnant after only one night.”

  Erika felt the blood drain from her head. “Steven…” The truth. O Jesus, how can I say it? But she had to tell the truth. The whole truth. “Steven, it—” she leaned against the windowsill for support—“wasn’t only one night.”

  “But you said—”

  “I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t something sordid, like a one-night stand. I wanted to pretend we felt more for each other than we did. I had to pretend for as long as I could. And that meant, when we were together…” She let her words drift into a guilty silence.

  After several agonizing minutes, Steven said, “Our wedding night was all an act for you.”

  She felt sick.

  “You pretended you were shy and unsure. I thought it was because you were innocent, and all the while—” his eyes narrowed in disgust—“you were playing me like a cheap guitar.”

  “No. I never… I didn’t mean… Please, Steven, I need you to understand. I never meant to—”

  He turned and strode out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” she called, panic in her voice.

  “Out.”

  She wanted to run after him. She wanted to grab him by the arm and force him to talk to her, force him to understand, force him to forgive her. But she didn’t move. Perhaps she couldn’t move. A strange lethargy stole over her, a feeling of emptiness, hopelessness.

  “Why, God?” she w
hispered. “Why now?”

  She moved to the sofa and sat down, hiding her face in her hands.

  He doesn’t know Kirsten’s coming to Boise. I didn’t get a chance to tell him.

  Kirsten.

  Her daughter.

  Hers and Dallas’s.

  A groan tore from her throat. She hugged her arms over her abdomen and leaned forward from the waist.

  Memories flew at her from every direction.

  She remembered how she’d hated Dallas for getting her pregnant, hated him for being Steven’s best friend. She remembered how frightened she’d been in Boston, so far from home, how alone and unloved she’d felt. She remembered the pain that had torn through her seventeen-year-old body on the night she went into labor, and she remembered that wrenching moment when the nurse had asked if she wanted to see her daughter before they took her away.

  And yes, she remembered her wedding night, remembered wondering if Steven would guess the truth, would know that her body had brought forth another man’s child.

  O God, what am I to do?

  There was a verse in the Bible that said something like, You may be sure that your sin will find you out, and another that said Everything now hidden or secret will eventually be brought to light.

  Both verses seemed to have been written with Erika in mind, and surely both of them had come true today.

  Steven got on the freeway and drove, not caring what direction he headed. He rolled the windows down, letting in the fresh air as he barreled down I-84 at seventy-five miles per hour. He needed the cool morning wind to slap against his face. He wished it would slap him harder.

  His whole life had been a lie. Everything he believed about himself and his family was a figment of his imagination. What an idiot! As though it were yesterday, he remembered his bride’s shy glances on their wedding night, her tentative gestures, her tears. He’d thought her pure and innocent, but she’d duped him. Duped him completely.

  And Dallas, the best man at his wedding…

  Steven set his jaw and gripped the steering wheel as if trying to break it in two.

  Dallas was Ethan’s godfather, the man who’d promised to look after the boy should anything happen to Steven. Dallas had been privy to all of Steven’s hopes and dreams, successes and disappointments.

  The lying, stinking cheat.

  It had all been an act. A pretense. Dallas had stolen something precious from Steven, and Steven had been too trusting to realize it.

  For once in his life, he wished he were a violent man. He wished he could take out his rage on something—or on someone. He wanted to share this pain.

  Why had this happened? Hadn’t he been honest and upright in the way he lived his life? Hadn’t he been a good husband to Erika? Hadn’t he treated her with gentleness and love and respect? Hadn’t he been faithful to her, even before he knew the Lord? It wasn’t as if he’d never had the opportunity to be unfaithful. There were plenty of single moms who passed through his office, and more than one who’d sent out vibes that said, I’m available.

  But no, that would have been against his marriage vows. It would have been against his values to even think of such a thing. Yet his wife had not only been unfaithful to the man she professed to love, but she had lied to him.

  She wasn’t your wife back then.

  As good as, he argued. She claimed she loved me.

  She was sixteen.

  She lied.

  She did something stupid.

  She betrayed me.

  She loves you.

  She lied, she lied, she lied.

  The car sped past the freeway exits to the towns of Nampa and Caldwell.

  She had a baby. Before Ethan, she had another baby. One that isn’t mine.

  His heart was breaking in two.

  He remembered again the day Ethan was born, remembered that terrifying moment when they’d thought they would lose Erika on the delivery table as her life’s blood drained away. He remembered the doctor telling him that there was no possibility of more children. Steven would never have another son or daughter. The large family both he and Erika dreamed of had disappeared in that delivery room. Ethan would never have any brothers or sisters.

  Only Ethan did have a brother or sister.

  Which is it?

  Steven couldn’t remember if Erika had said what the baby was, a boy or a girl. For that matter, he didn’t know why she’d told him the truth after all these years of silence. What did it have to do with that letter?

  Steven wouldn’t know the answers until he returned home. He wouldn’t know until he let Erika finish her confession.

  But maybe he didn’t want to know.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Steven had crossed into Oregon before he reached the end of his rage. He pulled into a rest stop, cut the engine, and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel.

  His mind replayed the years of his marriage to Erika, the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs. She was his wife, his lover, his friend, and at times, his conscience. She was the mother of his son, his encourager, his cheerleader, his inspiration. She was everything a wife was supposed to be…

  Except the woman he’d thought she was.

  How could he forgive her for this? How?

  Forgive, the Bible told him, and he would be forgiven. He’d never found that an onerous task. He’d never been the sort of man who held a grudge.

  But this…

  He didn’t know if he could forgive this. He didn’t know if he had it in him.

  Eleven

  After Steven missed their scheduled lunch on Wednesday, Dallas called the school twice, leaving messages with the secretary. He called the Welby home three times and left messages on the answering machine. When Steven still hadn’t returned his calls by that evening, Dallas started to worry. It wasn’t like Steven to miss an appointment or ignore phone calls.

  At nine-thirty, he called again. This time he didn’t get the machine.

  “Hey, Ethan,” Dallas said, relieved. “Is your dad around?”

  “No. Don’t know where he is. I just got home from work, and his car’s not in the garage. Mom’s already in bed.”

  “Is there something going on there?”

  “I wish I knew,” the boy answered softly. “Mom’s been acting kinda funny since Sunday, but Dad’s seemed okay, if you don’t count his worrying about Mom.”

  “Yeah, he told me yesterday that she was upset, and he didn’t know why.”

  “Want me to have Dad call you when he gets in?”

  “Please. Tell him I’ll be up late so it’s okay to call any time before midnight.”

  “If he doesn’t get home soon, I’ll leave him a note. Cammi and I are going out.”

  “Okay. Just put it where he’ll be sure to see it. Thanks, Ethan.”

  “Sure thing. So long.”

  Dallas hung up the phone.

  “If that frown gets any deeper,” Paula said, “it’s going to carve a permanent groove in your forehead.”

  He glanced across the kitchen. His wife stood in the patio doorway, her skin glittering with water after a swim in the pool. She looked—what did his secretary call that delivery boy this afternoon?—luscious. It wasn’t a word he would normally think of, but it seemed to apply to Paula at the moment.

  Paula asked, “When did you get home?”

  “Just a short while ago. The meeting ran long.” He walked across the kitchen and gathered her into his embrace. “Sorry for missing dinner.” He nuzzled her neck.

  “Oh, Dallas. You’re getting your clothes wet.” She gently pushed him away with the heels of her hands.

  That wasn’t exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for.

  She stepped around him and headed for the refrigerator. “I didn’t eat anything myself,” she said. “I had work to go over before tomorrow. Warren Carmichael seems very interested in the proposal we presented to him. If Henry & Associates gets to develop their new business complex, we’ll be up to our ears
in work for the next three or four years.”

  “That’s great,” he answered, although Dallas couldn’t care less about Warren Carmichael or any of her other clients, not with the way she looked in that green bathing suit.

  Paula filled a glass with water, then turned to face him. “I think I’m going to turn in now. I’m beat.”

  “Turning in sounds like a good idea.” He smiled, hoping she’d catch his drift.

  Giving her head a tiny shake, she said, “Not tonight, Dallas. I really am worn out.”

  Getting shut down so quickly didn’t put him in a good mood. “Did you call and make your doctor appointment today?”

  “No.” She set the glass on the counter. “I forgot.”

  “Come on, Paula. How can we find out about why we aren’t pregnant yet if you don’t go see your doctor?”

  “I told you. I had a busy day. I forgot.”

  “Well, I had a busy day, too, but I still managed to do the things that were important to me.”

  “If looks could kill” was the perfect description for the glance she sent his way before she whirled and headed out of the room.

  Dallas cursed. Maybe a swim would be a good idea. He needed cooling off.

  It was midnight before Steven finally returned home. He’d waited until he thought Erika would be asleep. He didn’t want to talk to her. Not yet. He wasn’t ready yet.

  Of course, he knew they needed to talk. Nothing would be resolved by throwing up a wall of silence and recrimination. Yes, he knew that. But he felt like a bystander at one of those deadly traffic accidents. He couldn’t seem to control what was happening— he could only stand and watch helplessly.

  Erika and Dallas.

  The words taunted him.

  Erika and Dallas together.

  The images haunted him.

  Has she been tempted to be with him again? Is that why she never told me?