Another Man's Child

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “She’s the only one who knows,” Lisa said, her voice contrite.

  “What about Oliver?” Marcus asked, thinking of his visit to his father-in-law that afternoon. Had Oliver known?

  Lisa shook her head. “Only Beth.”

  Marcus nodded. He didn’t know what else she wanted from him.

  “It’s our baby, Marcus. Yours as much as mine.”

  No! his mind screamed. The seed she was carrying had nothing to do with him. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  “You’re as much a part of the reason for this baby’s existence as I am, Marcus.”

  She wasn’t going to rationalize this one away with pretty words. There was too much at stake.

  He heard her crying again, but he didn’t look at her. He didn’t dare look at her.

  “Th-that night I called you home. We made love. That’s when our baby was conceived, Marcus. I know. Until your love was inside me, I couldn’t accept the sperm Beth had given me. My body was rejecting it. Until you.”

  More pretty words. Marcus didn’t trust himself to speak. He stared straight ahead, wishing she wouldn’t touch him, wishing she’d leave him to his numbness. He didn’t think he could hold on much longer.

  She ran her hand along his forearm. “Eighty percent of women who are artificially inseminated by a donor don’t conceive the first time. But I knew, Marcus. That night I knew we’d made a baby.”

  Thinking back to that night, to the intensity with which he’d made love to her, remembering how he’d poured his heart and soul into her, Marcus felt used.

  And betrayed.

  And jealous.

  He stood up abruptly and headed for the door before he gave himself another reason to hate himself. Jealous. What kind of man did that make him, that he was jealous of his own wife’s ability to conceive. Jealous because she was having the baby they’d always wanted, that she wouldn’t have to pretend that she, not someone else, had created their child.

  He heard her call after him, but he couldn’t slow down. He had to get out of there before he did something he’d regret.

  HE DROVE FOR HOURS with no idea where he was going. He didn’t care. He just kept driving. Thoughts whirled through his mind, torturing him. Lisa’s dream was coming true and his was not, never would. She was moving on without him. They were no longer part of the same whole. He thought he’d prepared himself to face that eventuality. But nothing could have prepared him for the agony that ripped through him now, making him yell out into the silence, bringing tears to his cheeks.

  He was surprised to find them there. He hadn’t thought himself capable of tears. Hadn’t cried since he’d been a young boy, forgotten at boarding school during the first two days of summer vacation one year. It had taken the school that long to locate his parents in Europe and for them send someone to pick him up.

  Lisa was having a baby. Another man’s baby. A stranger had been able to do for her what he could not. No matter how he looked at it, the fact was like acid, eating him up inside.

  He drove faster and faster, until the roads became blurred and he was skidding around corners. Finally he checked himself into a run-down motel for the night. It had everything he needed. Which meant no phone.

  LISA SPENT THE NIGHT alone, wandering through the rooms of Marcus’s family home, touching his things, looking at pictures of the many generations of Cartwrights and worrying herself sick about the man she loved more than life itself. She needed desperately to lean on her best friend, to talk to him, to try to make sense of a world spinning too rapidly out of control—but he’d just walked out on her and she didn’t know if he was ever coming back.

  When the minutes stretched into hours and it became obvious that Marcus wasn’t coming home for dinner, Lisa showered, changed into a pair of jogging pants and one of his Yale sweatshirts, fixed herself some toast and made herself eat it. She was having Marcus’s baby, and she was going to take care of it for him, even if he didn’t want it. This child would be a Cartwright just like all the other Cartwrights who had left their mark on this town. He would have the same strength of character, the same determination, the same ability to dream. She would make sure of it.

  BETH MONTAGUE stayed late at the office on Friday. She always had things she could do, lab reports to go over, dictation to finish, but the work on her desk wasn’t what was keeping her there. Oliver was in a meeting at the hospital. He was lobbying for new dialysis equipment for the ward where Barbara had spent so much time during the last years of her life. Beth wondered if it was wrong of her to hope he was still going to stop by after he was done fighting for his wife’s cause.

  And she worried about what he was going to think when he found out what she and Lisa had done. Would he blame her for her part in Lisa’s decision?

  The phone on her desk was eerily silent. She’d been waiting all afternoon to see how things had gone between Lisa and Marcus. Why hadn’t Lisa called?

  Beth picked up the phone to call her friend, but then put it back down. This was a special time for Lisa and Marcus, to be shared by just the two of them. If things went as well as Lisa had hoped, that was. And if they didn’t…

  Beth’s gaze alighted on the picture of her husband. Dear, sweet, absentminded John. How she’d loved him! How she missed him! What would he think of her, interfering like this in her friend’s business? She glanced at her watch and then at the door again. What would he think of her sitting here like an adolescent on the off chance her friend’s father would stop by?

  John’s image seemed to be looking at her. She knew he’d say she should have left Lisa and Marcus to deal with their problem on their own. And as usual, he’d have been right. Oliver was going to think the same thing.

  John would also consider her kind to befriend his lonely colleague. Though he’d wonder why, if she wanted Oliver to stop by, she hadn’t just asked him to. Funny how much older Oliver had seemed than she and John when John and Barbara had been alive.

  Barbara. Lisa’s mother would have been thrilled to learn she was finally going to be a grandmother. She wouldn’t have given the artificial means of conception a thought, other than to be thankful that the option was available. And eventually, with Barbara’s help, Oliver would have seen things that way, as well—

  “Hi, am I interrupting?”

  Beth jumped guiltily at the sound of Oliver’s voice. “No, of course not. Come on in. How’d the meeting go?”

  Oliver shrugged his broad shoulders. “These things take time. But we’re making progress.”

  He smiled at her and Beth smiled back, telling herself it was natural to feel that little flutter in her stomach. He was an attractive man, that was all. Any woman would find him so. Besides, she was still in love with John.

  “Are you free for dinner?” Oliver asked, coming farther into her office.

  “As a matter of fact I am.” Beth collected her purse, glad to have what time she could with him before he found out about Lisa. She was too keyed up to be alone, in any case. And Oliver was safe. He’d never see her as more than his daughter’s plump cheerful friend.

  “Has Lisa been to see you again?” Oliver asked. He was looking at his daughter’s folder on the top of Beth’s desk. “I thought all that was done.”

  Damn. She’d had the folder by the phone in case Marcus called her. He was bound to have questions once he knew. “Uh, just the usual follow-up,” she said now, grabbing the folder. It wasn’t her place to tell him what was inside. Oliver was as old-fashioned as the tweed jacket he was wearing. She wasn’t sure he’d approve of what his daughter had done or of Beth’s role in it. If she had her way, he’d never have to know—except that, of course he would. Oliver knew Marcus was sterile.

  Oliver frowned. “What follow-up? It’s been more than a year and a half. Is something wrong with her? Something she’s not telling me?”

  “No! She’s fine,” Beth said, speaking with her hands, as well as her voice. And as she did, a single piece of paper, the only one not yet fast
ened in, today’s lab report, slipped out of the folder in her hand and fluttered to the floor.

  She and Oliver both went for the report, their fingers colliding as they reached it at the same time. Startled at the warmth of his touch, at her inappropriate response to it, Beth snatched back her hand. Oliver picked up the report.

  He slumped down in the chair in front of her desk, reading. “Oh, my God.”

  Beth sat down beside him, looking at the paper still in his hands, wishing she’d been more careful. “It looked like their only hope, Oliver. She seemed convinced it was the right thing to do.”

  “You don’t understand,” Oliver said, glancing up at Beth, his brow furrowed. “This makes it all so much worse.” He paused. “Because he’s leaving her.”

  “What?” Beth’s stomach knotted with dread. And guilt.

  “He came to see me this afternoon. He bought a house in Chicago. He wants a divorce. He said he was freeing her to have a family with someone else.” Oliver glanced again at the paper in his hand. “He never said—”

  “When this afternoon?” Beth interrupted.

  “Midafternoon. It was before my three-o’clock class.”

  “He didn’t know.” Sick at heart, she thought of the child she’d helped to create, a third life that was now going to suffer—unless Lisa’s news would be enough to stop Marcus from leaving. Or would it just send him from her faster?

  “He didn’t know?” Oliver frowned down at the report.

  Beth was surprised at the tenderness that welled up inside her as he struggled to assimilate the truth. She reached over and squeezed his free hand. “She came to see me. We did it all right here.”

  “Ah.” Oliver glanced away, obviously embarrassed, but he didn’t look angry. “And it worked?” Was that hope she heard in his voice?

  “It worked the first time. I don’t know which of us was more shocked.”

  “I’m going to be a grandpa”

  Relief flooded Beth as she heard the boyish wonder in his voice. She sent up a silent prayer that Marcus had been even half as glad to hear the news.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LISA WAS AFRAID to leave the house. Afraid she’d miss Marcus, afraid he might clear out his things and be gone when she wasn’t there. But by Saturday noon, after phoning both the police and every hospital she knew of in a two-hundred-mile radius of New Haven and reassuring herself that Marcus hadn’t been in an accident, she was just plain afraid. Where was he? Arid worse, was he going to even come back?

  She didn’t call Cartwright Enterprises. She didn’t want to hunt him down. She also didn’t want to know if he wasn’t there.

  Forcing herself to keep busy, she spent the afternoon baking and decorating sugar cookies, made from her grandmother’s recipe. They were Marcus’s favorite kind, and cookies were one thing Hannah never baked. She took a couple of cuts of beef tenderloin filets out to thaw. Marcus loved her filet mignon.

  And all the while she worked, the vacant look in Marcus’s eyes as he’d sat frozen in their living room the day before haunted her. After more than ten years of loving him, she couldn’t begin to guess what he was going to do. She’d hurt him. In his eyes, she’d betrayed him. She’d hoped his finding out that they were finally going to have a baby would make up for the fact that she’d had herself inseminated without telling him. She’d thought it would make a difference to him once he understood that she’d taken another man’s seed out of her love for him. She’d been wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

  And yet, she couldn’t regret the tiny life that was even now forming in her womb. Because she knew, in the depths of her soul, that this baby was a product of the love she and Marcus shared. That it was their baby, conceived in love.

  She talked to Beth on the phone, assuring her friend that everything was fine. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that Marcus was gone. That she had no idea when or even if he’d be back. But she couldn’t keep up her pretense for long, so she told Beth she’d call her on Monday. Beth sounded delighted for Lisa and Marcus, eager to let her friend go, obviously believing that Lisa and Marcus wanted to be alone. And they were. Just not together.

  Oliver called her early Saturday evening, just as she sat back down on the couch after looking out the window, watching for Marcus, for the hundredth time that day.

  “Everything okay there?” he asked.

  “No.” She’d eaten the filet herself, although she’d had to struggle to swallow every bite. “But it will be.” It had to be.

  “Marcus came to see me yesterday, Lisa.”

  “He did? When? What did he say?” Did her father know where Marcus was?

  “That he’d bought a house in Chicago. That he was leaving you to find someone else, someone who could make your dreams come true.”

  Oh. Tears blurred Lisa’s eyes. “I’m already pregnant, Dad.”

  The silence on the other end of the line was unnerving, but Lisa pushed on, anyway, telling her father about the artificial insemination and that she’d had the procedure without her husband’s consent.

  “Don’t you think he had a right to know beforehand?” She hadn’t heard reprimand in her father’s voice since she’d been a teenager.

  “Of course he did.” She held back her tears, afraid that once they started falling, they’d never stop. “I can’t believe what a mess I’ve made of everything. But I knew he was thinking about leaving. He’d convinced himself it was the honorable thing to do, to free me to have the life I always wanted. I tried to talk to him about artificial insemination before, several times. He wouldn’t even discuss it.” Suddenly all the frustration from her unsuccessful attempts to convince her husband of the truth, that he gave her the life she’d always wanted, came pouring out.

  Her father listened to her silently.

  “Marcus is a proud man, honey,” he said when she’d finally emptied herself of pent-up anguish. “A man used to providing whatever is needed. He’s having to take a whole new look at himself, at who and what he is—and what he isn’t. He’s doing what he thinks is best.”

  “So you think he’s right to leave?” Lisa asked, incredulous.

  “No, honey, I don’t. That man loves you to distraction, and I know how happy he makes you.”

  “Happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Which is why I went to see Beth. I had to do something, and that seemed like the only answer left. This way Marcus wouldn’t feel as if he was cheating me out of anything, and he could still have the child he’s always wanted.”

  “I take it he didn’t see it that way.”

  “He didn’t really say how he saw it. He just got up and walked out.” She twisted the phone cord around her finger, watching her fingertip turn red.

  “So what happened when he cooled down and came home?”

  “He hasn’t come back yet.”

  Lisa heard her father take a deep breath. “Lisa, are you certain Marcus wanted to have children, that he wasn’t just trying to have a family for your sake, to please you?”

  “I’m positive.” She unraveled the cord from her finger. “Marcus talked about wanting children almost from the time I met him. He’s a Cartwright, Dad. He feels it’s his duty to have children. But it’s also something he wants very badly. He needs to fill this house with the laughter he never heard growing up here. Which is why I know he’ll be a wonderful father.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  Lisa sat up straight, suddenly cold. “What? Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “He told me so himself yesterday. His sterility has left him feeling inadequate, maybe even a little insecure. And the way he’s compensating for that is to assume that perhaps he wouldn’t have been any good as a father. This way, by his not having children, he’s saving some poor kid from an unhappy childhood.”

  “But that’s ludicrous!” She felt sick to her stomach, and it had nothing to do with morning sickness.

  “Sterility can do strange things to a man, honey. Especially a man as proud as Marcus. In order t
o accept it, he needs to understand why this has happened, and the only conclusion he’s been able to reach thus far is that he isn’t father material.”

  “Oh, my God!” Lisa gasped, reeling from the ramifications of her father’s news. What have I done?

  “Marcus is strong, Lis. He’ll come around. Give him some time.”

  “I never would have had the insemination if I’d known that. Never. I did this for him, Dad. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving me to have my wonderful life with someone else while he sentenced himself to a life of loneliness. But now it sounds like all I’ve done is sentence him myself.” She wiped at the tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t stop them now.

  “Did you tell Marcus all that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “It didn’t seem to make any difference.”

  “What did he say, honey?”

  “Nothing.” Lisa’s voice broke. “I explained everything. I told him how much I loved him, and he walked out, anyway. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “And you’ve been there all alone since yesterday?”

  “I don’t know when he’ll be back, and I don’t want to miss him.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I’m just glad I’m not on call.” For the first time in years, Lisa hadn’t even been thinking about her job.

  “I’m coming over,” Oliver said, sounding the way he had when she was a kid.

  Lisa smiled in spite of her tears. “It’s okay, Dad. I’m a big girl now. I made this mess, and somehow I’m going to have to live with it. Besides, I’d rather be here alone when he comes back. I might only get this one chance to turn him around. But thanks.”

  Oliver harumphed and then fell silent for a few moments. “He’ll be back, you know,” he finally said.

  “I know.”

  “But I can still come over and stay with you until he gets there. Lord knows you have enough rooms in that house of his.”