Scarsdale, New York: Saturday 4th August 2018

Hell, I was tired. It had been the week to end all weeks. Wall to wall meetings, clients and colleagues who seemed hell-bent on bickering and arguing about every tiny detail. Somehow me and my number two guy, Steve, had managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But it had been a real stressful, roller coaster ride of a week.

And now it was one twenty in the morning and I felt totally wiped out. My shoulders ached, my legs hurt from the long flight from LAX, and even the simplest thoughts seemed to take inordinate effort and time. If someone had asked me my middle name it would probably have taken me a minute or two to answer.

But as the key turned and I opened our front door it felt great to be back, even if I didn’t have enough energy to enjoy it properly. But at least, after the long haul up the stairs, I’d be able to crash in my own bed. Next to my own wife. As I hauled myself up the stairs, just thinking of her soft, warm body sparked some early thoughts of what I’d do to Sue and that body tomorrow morning. After a good night’s sleep.

Being careful to stay as quiet as I could, I gently opened our bedroom door and eased into our room. Sue’s side of the bed is next to the en suite bathroom so I had to pass by her side as I headed to brush my teeth.

As I edged down Sue’s side of the bed, only street lighting for illumination, my heart leapt into my throat. Sue wasn’t there.

She wasn’t there.

Where the hell was, she?

I’d spoken to her only yesterday. Hell, I’d spoken to her every single day since she and Francis had gone off on their romantic vacation together in Europe. And everything had sounded just fine. She’d sounded loving and warm, and like me, she’d told me she was looking forward to being reunited again back home.

But she was gone.

I’d been a dumb fool, agreeing to Francis and Sue’s request that I let them vacation together for ten days in the most romantic country on earth. And now the stupid fool had paid the price. She was gone. No doubt persuaded by Francis to start as they meant to go on, living as man and wife in his large doctor’s residence. No longer happy with two or three days a week, both of them greedily wanting the whole nine yards.

I cradled my head in my hands, feeling absolutely crushed. And totally confused. Sue had sounded so keen to see me. To be home and back with me. Sue wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t that duplicitous. Nor that good an actress.

As I sat there, head in hands, rocking back and forth, the positive voices in my brain told me that there might be a different explanation for why Sue wasn’t here at our home, as she’d promised to be.

There’d been no scope for miscommunication. During our call Thursday night, she’d even teased me, joking that as Friday night was normally one of her ‘Francis nights’, did I want her to come home from JFK? Or should she head to Francis’ place so she’d be there when he got back from his daughter’s birthday party? I knew she was only messing with me, but my response had left her in no doubt in whose bed I expected her to be waiting when I returned from LA.

I’d missed her like crazy the last ten days, and Sue knew this and just how much I was looking forward to seeing her again. And just yesterday she’d reassured me how much she was looking forward to seeing me. Surely there had to be another explanation for why she wasn’t where she should have been. Maybe a delayed flight or a flight diverted to another East Coast airport, due to summer storms or some such.

After my initial panic, the little light of hope was beginning to flicker and draw in air. I looked at my phone and wondered if I had the courage and strength to dial Sue. I’d either end up heart-broken or a reprieved man. But as long as I didn’t dial, I had hope. Calling would either end that hope or give me a Hallelujah moment.

I hesitated. I knew I’d call in the end, but still, I hesitated as I summoned the strength.

Finally, I pressed ‘call’, Sue’s number magically called up from the recent list.

I closed my eyes and held my breath, preparing myself for the worst. Ever since childhood, I’d always looked on the downside. Always thought that the worst of any two options would be the one I’d be dealt. So, I screwed my eyes shut and waited for Sue to pick up and deliver whatever ‘Dear John’ words she’d prepared.

But what I heard made me jump ten feet in the air. It wasn’t Sue’s voice that I heard. What I heard was Sue’s phone ringing from another part of the house.

At first, I wasn’t elated, I was just downright confused. Why would her phone be somewhere else in the house, when she herself wasn’t here in our bed, where she’d promised to be?

I slowly gathered my wits and tried to get over my shock, letting Sue’s phone ring so that I could use the sound as a homing beacon.

About five seconds later I wasn’t jumping ten feet in shock, I was jumping ten feet in the air as my Hallelujah moment arrived. There she was. The love of my life, lying peacefully asleep next to Grace, in Grace’s little home from home.

Lying there together, snuggled up and spooned together, they looked for all the world like a couple of sweet chipmunks or squirrels. Or at least that’s what I thought in my adrenaline doped frame of mind. As my heart rate slowly came back to human levels, I breathed deeply and took in the sight of the two of them sleeping so peacefully.

When I’d finally rejoined the human race, I slowly worked to the right-hand side of the bed, where Sue was lying. She looked so beautiful and peaceful. As I looked at her, I knew I wanted to slowly wake her and take her off to bed with me. Just so we could cuddle and be together. Making love and reacquainting myself with her soft, warm and welcoming body could wait until the morning. But as I continued looking at Sue, I decided to let her sleep. After the shock and worry, I’d been through, just knowing that she was here was enough for me. I’d happily give her the gift of an undisturbed night’s sleep.

The only prize I’d take for myself would be to plant a tender loving kiss on her forehead. A mark of my unselfish love for this amazing woman.

Having given Sue this kiss, I suddenly felt guilty as I looked across at Grace.

The truth is that although I had feelings for Grace and did love her, I’d hardly thought about her these last few minutes. All my terror and my thoughts had been for Sue. I felt guilty about this, but more than this it made me realize that my relationship with Grace would never be anything compared to my love for Sue. And as I looked across at both of them, I knew that Sue and I had to try and get back the balance in our lives. We’d both enjoyed playing the games over the last few months. But the shock and thoughts of the last few minutes had me realize that, as we steered the ship of our marriage, we needed to nudge the wheel in a slightly different direction. The direction we’d always intended before we’d allowed the fun of the last few months to tempt us off course.

I planted a second tender kiss on Sue’s forehead and turned to head to bed, feeling calmer and hungry for the feel of the crisp clean sheets and the support of the mattress for my weary limbs. But as I turned, I saw a thermometer on the bedside table by Sue.

Maybe she wasn’t well. Or maybe it was Grace who wasn’t well, and that’s why Sue wasn’t in her own bed. She’d come in to look after and comfort Grace and had fallen asleep. That was just like Sue, ever the Good Samaritan. Always looking out for other people and putting them first.

Thinking these thoughts about my wonderful wife, with a rye smile I walked back two steps to do a little tidying, picking up the thermometer to take it back to the bathroom cabinet. I didn’t recognize it as the normal thermometer we’d had in the family for years. An old school thin glass device that Sue’s mum had given her when she started nurse training, way back in 1991. I smiled to myself again, thinking Sue had finally upgraded to one of those fancy digital thermometers that she was normally so critical about.

As I picked it up my weary brain registered three words written on the white plastic.

‘Pregnant +, Not Pregnant –‘

If I’d jumped ten foot just a few minutes ago, this was a full Olympic triple jump. My eyes were wide as saucers and my heart was pumping fit to burst. It wasn’t a digital thermometer, it was a bloody pregnancy test. And it was sat on the bedside table next to my wife Sue. My wife who had just spent ten days being romanced and made love to by her Nigerian boyfriend Francis.

All of a sudden, my chest felt incredibly tight and I felt light-headed, having to reach out to steady myself and then take a seat on the bed next to Sue.

Sue was pregnant. Pregnant by Francis. Or at least, most likely pregnant by Francis. We’d made love several times over the last few weeks. But I was under no illusions. During their vacation and in the weeks leading up to it, I knew Francis had been inside Sue a lot more than I had been. This fact allied with my super low sperm count meant that the chance the baby was mine was remote in the extreme. The chance the baby was black and fathered by Francis was nigh on certain.

I clutched at my chest, taking deep breaths to try and calm myself, pulling wildly at my tie to help my airflow. How could she have done this to me?

Done this to us?

I knew she was taking the pill so that Francis, already a father of three, wouldn’t knock her up. So how the hell had this happened? Was it an accident, or was it intentional? Was that what the whole ten days in Italy and Spain had been about? Was it just a surefire way for Sue and Francis to make sure that he knocked her up? Their clever little plan, even getting the stupid cuckold husband to give his permission. His sad addiction being his downfall. The fix by which he’d be forced to bring up another man’s bastard child.

All these terrible, terrible thoughts slammed around my brain, creating a devastating oppression that I thought would surely crush my brain just as it had crushed my chest moments before.

I had a brief moment of hope when a little voice in my head reminded me, I’d not actually read the test results yet. The words I’d read, ‘Pregnant +, Not Pregnant – ‘were etched in black writing on the white plastic. They were the key, not the actual results.

But this brief moment of hope lasted less than three seconds, as I looked at the two little windows and clearly saw a big black ‘+’. Telling anyone who cared to look that there’d be a new arrival in the world in less than nine months time.

A ‘big black +’. How ironic. How fitting, given the man who’d fathered the child.

After the shock, then came the despair.

After the despair, then came the sense of regret.

The sense that I had no one else but myself to blame. And the despair and the regret were joined by a single malt. Always my friend in moments of sadness and reflection. As I poured myself a drink and started thinking through all of the consequences, I just about had the presence of mind to pour from one of my own bottles. Rather than the twelve-year-old Highland Park that Francis had given me.

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I was awoken from my semi-drunk stupor by the subtle fragrance of perfume and a soft voice, accompanied by a hand gently shaking.

“Honey, wake up. Why are you sleeping in the chair?”

As I slowly came to, I looked up to see Sue’s beautiful face smiling down at me. My mouth was parched from the booze and I struggled to talk. As my mouth tried it’s best to self-lubricate, I just about managed to get three words out.

“Test. Pregnancy test.”

Sue’s smile turned to something I find difficult to describe. Her expression mixed up all kinds of feelings. But mainly concern and worry.

“She’s pretty upset about it, Pete. I know you’ve got really low sperm count, but you should have been more careful. She’s only a girl, right at the start of her life. She’s too young to have a baby. What is the scholarship committee going to say? It’s really going to put a spanner in her studies.”

I tried to take in what Sue was saying.

Why was she talking in the third-person? Why was she worrying about studies and scholarship committees and being too young?

And slowly, ever so slowly, the penny started to drop. I knew from the look on Sue’s face this wasn’t some elaborate game. She looked genuinely upset and worried.

I closed my eyes and said a little prayer of thanks to the gods. ‘Thank you’. My face broke out in a smile that could have lit up the entire East Coast. Never mind my whiskey breath, I grabbed Sue’s face between both hands and kissed her like I’d never kissed her before.

She wasn’t pregnant! Hallelujah. She wasn’t carrying Francis bastard child. All was well in the world. The gods had smiled on me and I still had a marriage and a loving wife.

It was Sue’s turn to look surprised. “Have you gone insane? Why are you so damned happy? Did you want another child so much?” She was a potent mix of confusion and anger.

As the pieces came together, I held my hand up and moistened my whiskey mouth again to explain.

“Sue, I’m pleased because last night, when I saw the test lying next to you, I thought it was you who was pregnant. I thought you were carrying Francis’ child. And it frightened me to death. That’s why I reacted like I did when you told me that it’s Grace who’s pregnant, not you.”

I looked into Sue’s beautiful green eyes as the confusion and puzzlement ebbed away, trying to work out what was left. I felt like I’d dodged one bullet, only to see its brother heading for me right behind it. But at least the second bullet didn’t seem quite so terrifying, feeling as I was that I’d just dodged a full howitzer round.

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Those moments of elation, when I realized I’d dodged the bigger bullet, were probably the high point of the whole weekend. Because once Sue had got me onto the right page of understanding what had actually happened, we then had to start thinking about the mess that we were all in, and what we’d do to sort it.

At one level, talking about the conception and birth of an infant child should never be described as a mess to be sorted out. Any parent, uncle, aunt or grandparent knows the magic that a little life will spread into a family.

But stopping at that positive thought would be to ignore all the practical issues and difficulties that Grace being pregnant with my child caused. Sue’s first quickfire burst of all the problems had been pretty comprehensive and accurate. Grace was so young. A student in a foreign country. Answerable to a scholarship committee, who no doubt had some ‘moral standards’ clause hidden deep within the small print. A young woman who was meant to spend the next three years studying and practicing nursing. Not attending prenatal and postnatal classes and nursing an infant son as she tried to study.

Sue and I had the luxury of a couple of hours together talking about things before Grace joined us downstairs. And it was a Grace with red puffy eyes, giving me an immediate understanding of how things had likely played out when Sue had returned home last night. The mama bear returning home to find her young friend frightened and in floods of tears. Needing consoling and comforting.

As Grace reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes immediately looked at me. The author of her condition. Her eyes conveyed simple questions. ‘What are you going to do about this? Are you going to step up, or am I on my own?’

As I looked into those young, frightened eyes, my world changed through a hundred and eighty degrees. Everything I’d been taught to be by my parents and by society told me that I needed to be there for Grace.

At one a.m. this morning I’d been thinking how much I cared for Sue and how Grace was really just a sideshow. But as I looked at Grace’s frightened and needy eyes, knowing that inside her tummy a tiny little embryo we’d made was growing, I knew that things had changed. It wasn’t that I loved Sue any the less. But I now needed to change things, to make more room in my heart and my life for Grace and the baby she was carrying. I was too frightened and scared to try and work out or be honest about how much space I needed to create. But I knew that things would change. And change in a big way.

With Grace’s large and scared brown eyes still looking into mine, her questions still unanswered, I calmly walked across to her and wrapped her in my arms. Her arms immediately reached up and wrapped themselves around my neck. It felt good to be so needed and vital, as Grace’s tears and sobbing burst into the open. Instinctively I pulled her tighter, trying my damnedest to convey my commitment to her through the tightness of my hold.

“Hey, it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay, you’re not on your own. We’re here for you. I’m here for you.”

In that instant, as my tongue got caught up with my words, the conundrum of what Grace wanted and what we’d offer struck home like a stake through the heart. What did Grace want here? What could we and would we offer? There were three people here. Three different views and lives and sets of thoughts. Did Grace want Sue and me here for her? Or just me? And of course, what she wanted wasn’t necessarily what Sue or I would or could offer.

I knew there’d be a hell of a lot more tears and a hell of a lot more crying before things settled into any kind of agreed plan or way forward.

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If I’d been tired at the start of the weekend, I was virtually on life support by the end of the weekend. I know I overuse the term ‘roller coaster’, but this was the real deal. I felt pushed from pillar to post, pulled in all kinds of directions by different needs and different people. By the end of the weekend, I felt like raising my hands. ‘Enough, no more, I can’t cope with any more.’

But in truth, I could hardly complain. In the cold light of day, it was me who had put that little baby in Grace’s tummy. She was the one who had had her life plans turned upside down in the matter of a few hours. By a simple plus sign in a ten-dollar pregnancy test. She was the one who was scared witless, about to face a new experience that would upend her life and for which she wasn’t mentally prepared. Compared to all of this, who was I to complain. As my father might have said, “You’ve had your fun, now man up and pay the price.”

The only saving grace that stopped the weekend from being totally insane was that we didn’t see anything of Francis. Instead, the weekend was a series of different conversations and outbursts. Sometimes Grace and me. Sometimes Grace, Sue and me. Sometimes Grace and Sue.

As the weekend passed, I think we all felt that we were making progress. Much of Saturday morning revolved around all three of us sitting down and talking. There were still plenty of tears and plenty of ‘why me’ and ‘why us’ questions. But I could tell that having both me and Sue there to support her made a huge difference to Grace.

In particular, Sue was marvelous, handling the whole thing with a love and sensitivity that in some ways put me to shame. I knew Sue must have been asking all kinds of big questions about what this meant for us and for her, but she put these on the backburner and concentrated on providing what Grace needed. She was brilliant at giving that powerful combination of coaxing Grace to share her thoughts and fears and offering up new things for Grace to consider. Whilst all the time letting Grace know that she, Sue, and we, Pete and Sue, were here for her.

As Saturday moved into Sunday, it was clear to both Sue and me that Grace seemed a lot calmer and more assured than when she’d first discovered she was pregnant. With Sue’s, and to a lesser extent my help, Grace was re-discovering her natural self-confidence and strength.

By the middle of Sunday, I wouldn’t say that Grace was looking forward to it, but she was more balanced in her thinking. She knew that pregnancy and baby would change everything, but she also knew that she was going to have a little person in her life who would enrich that life. Probably more than the hassle and chaos they’d definitely inject into her life.

Grace also put it in the context of the world she’d known to date. In her own words, “Girls in Malawi who are a lot younger and with a lot less support than me are having babies every day of the week. If they don’t complain and just get on with it, why can’t I?”

I think Grace was able to make these big steps forward because she knew she wasn’t alone. I think to be alone in a foreign country and carrying this kind of burden would have been unbearable. But right from Friday night when Sue had first come across the sobbing Grace, she’d known that she wasn’t alone in this thing.

Throughout Saturday and Sunday, Sue and I kept ramming home the message that we were there for her in every sense of the word. We tried to steer clear of specifics because this would take time to work out, but we reassured her that she needn’t worry about money, or accommodation or about ‘friendship’.

‘Friendship’. Covers all manner of sins and other things. We didn’t get drawn into specifics. But we reassured Grace that the child she was carrying would always have two loving parents and a loving ‘Aunty Sue’. We were honest with Grace that we’d need to work out the details, but this was part of the weekend where I felt I was more useful than my motherly wife.

I told Grace, in no uncertain terms, that I would be damned if any child of mine was going to grow up without a loving mother and a loving father. I spoke from the heart when I told her that from my own childhood one of my biggest fears had been abandonment or loss of a parent. Meaning I’d give my last dying breath to be there for ‘our child.’

I’d not meant it that way, but Grace’s cheeks had been covered with tears when she’d heard me speak these words because she knew I was speaking from the very soul of who I was. I think at that moment she felt a ray of optimism break through, that from such an unplanned start her child would be well loved and nurtured.

But while I felt that this was my ‘Churchill’ moment, when Grace truly understood my commitment to the baby we’d created together, I was aware that it was also a surreal moment.

Because sitting to my left was Sue, my wife and best friend for the last twenty years plus. Listening to her husband emotionally declaring his do or die commitment to his new child and by implication that child’s mother.

Sue didn’t say anything at the time, but I knew there’d be many, many conversations to come. But there and then during that weekend, Sue pushed her own needs into the background, determined as she was that Grace would know that she was supported by both of us.

Maybe the perfect example of this was when it came to bedtime on Saturday night. Talk about Solomon’s choice. I’d spent all week looking forward to being reunited and back together with Sue. On my long flight back from LA I’d entertained myself with thoughts of what I’d do to Sue when we were finally reunited after our ten days apart. But by Saturday night, I knew the events of the day meant that neither Sue nor I would be much in the mood for the kind of reclaiming sex I’d planned. But still, an emotion-filled cuddle, with plenty of kisses, would have been a satisfactory second best.

But as Saturday night slowly moved towards Sunday morning, Grace declared that she wanted to turn in. Adding that she needed to take care of herself in her ‘present condition’, her little add of humor being a positive sign which made us all chuckle.

As Grace headed upstairs and turned right for the guest room which was home, Sue nudged me.

“Go after her, Pete. She needs you right now. We can wait for another day. Go and spend the night with her. She needs you.”

I looked into Sue’s beautiful green eyes, experiencing a confusing blend of emotions. Disappointment that Sue and I wouldn’t be spending the night together. Mixed with wonder and amazement at Sue’s generosity of spirit. Knowing in my bones that Sue looked upon Grace as if she’d been her own little sister or daughter. Someone who needed protecting and comforting at this vulnerable time in her life.

I didn’t say anything to Sue. That would have cheapened the moment. I just kissed her, letting our eyes do the talking.

As my lips left hers, Sue smiled. “Take her to our bedroom, honey. It will mean a lot to her.”

(Thanks once again to Mr. cbears52, for his selfless proofing into the early hours)