Page 24
“She and I have been married almost ten years.”
My stomach dropped. They weren’t newly married. It wasn’t some impulsive courthouse decision they’d both immediately regretted.
I looked toward my car.
“Blair.”
“Three minutes and forty-five seconds.”
He rubbed his beard. “We started trying to have kids a few years into the marriage.”
I looked back at him like I know this nigga didn’t.
“We always wanted a family,” he continued. “At least, I thought we did.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“She wanted it more than anything.”
“So did you?”
“At the time, yes.”
The answer came immediately and I laughed to myself thinking what the entire fuck.
“We tried naturally for a while. Then we went to doctors for treatments and procedures. We kept going to different specialists when we didn’t like what the first one told us.”
His mouth pulled into a small smile. “You know how people do when they think enough money can change an answer.”
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t understand what the fuck he thought was smile worthy.
“Eventually, we got one that money couldn’t change. She can’t have children.”
Caleb continued before I could respond. “It fucked her up.”
I swallowed.
“Bad.”
He stared at a tree. “For a long time, she wouldn’t talk about it. Then it was all she talked about. Then she stopped talking altogether.”
I lowered my coat because my arm was tired. That was what I told myself.
“She stopped working, she stopped going out, and she stopped answering her friends’ calls.”
“Does she have family?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Her mother died before we met. Her dad was never around. She has no siblings. She has a couple cousins she barely talks to, but my family became hers.”
I thought about the way he’d told me he called his mother every morning.
I thought about the family dinners he’d mentioned with his siblings, nieces, and nephews. All of those thoughts suddenly rearranged themselves in my head with a woman I had never pictured standing beside him.
“So, she’s close to your family?”
“Very.”
