“Seriously?” he asked, gesturing at the sign for the doctor’s office, which very clearly had the words obstetrician-gynecologist on it. “What areyoudoing here? Is something wrong? Why are you seeing an OB/GYN here in Chicago?”
He knelt down in front of me, looking up into my eyes with concern and love. My defenses were down. I didn’t have the energy to lie anymore.
I took Ford’s face in my hands, inhaling deeply.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
Ford
Chapter 16
Emzee was pregnant.
My wife was fucking pregnant!
Joy surged through me.
“We’re going to have a baby?”
“I am,” she said softly.
Wrapping my arms around her, I murmured, “My God. When? How far along are you?”
“About two months.”
“Two months!” I yelled. I was fucking ecstatic.
Until I did the math. And then suddenly, the reality of our situation sunk in.
I pulled away. “Why didn’t you tell me you suspected something? I would’ve come to the appointment too, been with you when you found out.”
Her silence said it all. This hadn’t been a confirmation. She’d already known.
“Jesus Emzee, how long have you known for?”
She just shrugged, looking down at the ground, which only served to piss me off more. What the hell was going on? Had she known about the baby when she ran away to New York? What about every time she harassed me to sign the divorce papers—had she known then, too?
Frustrated, I started pacing the sidewalk outside the doctor’s office. It was a warm day, and I was sweating in my blazer. “When were you planning on telling me about this? Or were you not?”
“Ford,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Em.” I shook my head as if I was waking up from a dream. Because that’s how this whole thing felt. Like it was a dream. Or a nightmare. I couldn’t tell.
I was thrilled about the baby, but furious that she had kept it from me.
“How could you not tell me?” I demanded. “This is our baby. Our child. Did you think you were going to raise the kid in secret? I would have found out sooner or later.”
Questions were tumbling out of me all at once. I needed answers. My whole world had just been upended.
Emzee cleared her throat. “I’ve known for about a month,” she confessed.
I let that information sink in, and I wasn’t happy. “So you knew you were pregnant when you asked for a divorce. You knew when you left Chicago,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “And you never said anything.”
“That night of the gala, I took a pregnancy test. That’s when I knew,” she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. “It was the same night I found out what you did to me in high school.”
“So you thought you’d just, what, hide out in some other city for the rest of your life to avoid me and try to be a single parent? Or pretend the kid was someone else’s? Maybe get Andrew to play daddy? Do you realize how fucking unreasonable that is?”
“I didn’t plan this!” she shouted, getting off the bench to stand in the path of my pacing. “I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t know where I’m going to be or what I’m going to do. This is all new territory for me.”
