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“What if we go and he has irrefutable proof that it’s your child?”
Once again, his hands reached for hers. She hugged herself, not letting him touch her.
“Grace, that’s not possible. The more I think about it, the less likely I think it is that it’s true. In my experience, she was always meticulous in her dealings with people. If I was the father of her child, why didn’t she tell me? I can’t help but believe that she would have wanted me to know, to share the responsibility for the baby, the cost of her education, all the things that are needed to care for a child. I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t have insisted that I help out. What woman wouldn’t?”
“What will we do if it is your child?” Grace asked, as she kept waiting to wake up from a bad dream, cry out and be cuddled by her husband, the way it had happened after other nightmares.
The thought that a child would come into their lives in such a destructive, personally tragic way was almost beyond believing. “If this child is yours, you’ve hurt an innocent child because of your careless behavior while destroying our marriage.”
Aidan stood perfectly still. “I realize that, Grace. And I have no idea how I’ll make it up to you, but I will. As for the little girl, we owe it to her to talk with this lawyer and see what proof he thinks he has that I’m her father.”
If she was to keep her marriage as God intended, and rebuild the trust they’d always shared, she had to work her way through this horrible mess. But she couldn’t do it without proof that Aidan was serious about making amends. “There is only one way I will consider being involved with you in this, and that is if you tell me everything. If I find out you’ve been lying to me about this woman, about your time with her, our marriage is over.”
“I have told you the truth. And there is zero chance that this is my child. You and I have been trying to get pregnant for years, and every doctor we went to couldn’t find the cause. I simply won’t accept without further DNA tests, that I could have fathered a child so easily. Not after all the times you and I have made love, all the procedures we went through. It’s as simple as that. From my point of view, this is a mistake on someone’s part. I want to get it straightened out so that you and I can go ahead with adopting a child.”
“Adopt a child? How can you even think of such a thing when our marriage is in so much trouble? Didn’t you just tell me that you’d had an affair, that there might be a child from that affair? You think that this will simply be over by you admitting to what you did?” she asked, shocked and angry.
“I didn’t mean right away. I meant after this is over.”
“Aidan, this won’t simply go away. The fact that you had an affair is bad enough. The thought that you had a child with this woman makes everything impossible. Can’t you see that?”
She stood with her hand on the door, her head pounding, and watched her husband’s face. A face she loved, had loved most of her life. And now, because of one phone call, it might all be over. “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”
“Grace, I’m begging you to go with me. You can’t imagine how terrible I feel for the pain I’ve caused you. I want to make it up to you by being totally honest about all this. From now on, wherever this takes us, I want you with me.”
She heard the sincerity in his voice, saw the expression of remorse on his face, and her determination to walk out slipped from her. Whatever he’d done, however much he’d hurt her, she was still his wife and she had to allow him to make this right. Maybe he couldn’t, and she would have to live with that. But whatever came out of this, she didn’t want to end up regretting what she’d done, how she’d behaved.
