Page 57 of The Breath Before Forever

“It’s a new phone,” he returned.

Only a little defensive.

She had been the one to pick up his newest burner device from a shop in Dubna that promised to keep extra stock on hand of whatever phone her husband preferred. It simply took her last name and the address of where the phones should be delivered for the man who ran the shop to understand the important person he was dealing with.

It was Vera’s first time realizing how well-known her husband actually was in the area. Being told was not the same as experiencing it firsthand.

On the screen, Vaslav squinted one eye where his head was half smooshed into a grey pillow. She could only see the unscarred side of his face, but when she blinked had had her eyes closed for a brief half of a second, she could map the rest of his expression from memory.

“I wasn’t lying this morning when I said I missed you,” he told her. “Maybe I knew what the icon was for, hmm?”

“I wasn’t entirely honest, either,” she returned.

His partially amused expression bled away any fondness that had been staring at her. In its place was his puckered brow and confusion. “What?”

A reasonable question.

Now or never.

There was no going back.

She snatched the pregnancy test off the counter at the same time she told Vaslav, “The first pregnancy test I took—” Her words cut off when it appeared like Vaslav was lifting out of bed, and the phone rolled into the blankets, leaving the screen black for a few seconds. Once she could see him again, although it appeared like he was now sitting up in bed, Vera continued. “I waited too long to get an accurate result I could read.”

She produced what she’d been hiding in her hand, making the pregnancy test visible to her husband. Yet, his stony gaze didn’t flicker a bit on the screen to say the plastic pink and white test had taken any of his interest or attention.

His silence was the worst, though.

It made her keep talking.

Just so someone was saying something.

“I still thought—I was sure—I wasn’t pregnant, but I didn’t—”

“You went to Hannah’s to take the pregnancy test?”

“Yes, but no I haven’t taken it yet,” Vera admitted. “I couldn’t do it. I felt too guilty. Like I was lying to you—hiding something from you. And knowing what I do ...” She trailed off, lifting one shoulder as his expression fell with sadness, and he glanced downward at something she couldn’t see on the screen.

“I noticed some other things; I got sick, too, and—”

“Would you take it now?” he asked.

The request was quite different from the first time he demanded it of her. She didn’t even verbally agree, and just popped off the cap carelessly. It fell to the floor, bouncing alongside the toilet where she could retrieve it later.

“Might be easier if you don’t listen,” Vera said. “There’s a mute—”

“Really, I don’t think you can use that excuse. We’ve done this once,” Vaslav returned, mustering one of his cocky grins for her on the screen. All the while, her hand trembled while she grasped onto the pregnancy test. There, it sat so lightly, yet it still weighed her down with an unseen heaviness from the what ifs she couldn’t answer.

“Besides,” her husband added, clearing his throat, “in ten or fifteen years, I won’t even be walking to the bathroom. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves in complaining now.”

“You’ll have a nurse.”

Several, if needed. No matter the state of him, he would be taken care of, and she was going to make sure of it. Maybe she didn’t have a realistic look at what that future would be, but she wasn’t living in delusions, either.

Vaslav grunted while Vera placed the phone on the counter so she could see him, and he had a view of her from the neck up. Neither of them spoke while the tinkling tell-tale sound hit the water in the ceramic bowl. Vera grabbed the cap from the floor and pulled the test from between her legs while she finished relieving her poor bladder.

“Do you want to have a child to raise and me to manage in ten years, as well?” Vaslav questioned.

Focused on pulling her panties up and resituating on the toilet after she flushed it, Vera hadn’t been expecting his frank question. She froze as she was sitting down, the pause noticeable between the period she remained in the air to when her backside fell. He didn’t give her the chance to think of what she wanted to say before he spoke again, not that she had the words, anyway.