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“Kitten,” he whispered. He scooped me off the counter and into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his hips, still kissing every inch of skin I could reach, and let him carry me to the couch, where he sat with me straddling his lap.
“As much as I like what you’re doing, I have to tell you that I’m going to be fine.”
I stopped kissing him. “You are?”
“Probably.”
My eyes narrowed. “Probably?”
“It’s what I tell myself, anyway.” He sighed. “Like I said, HD is a tricky fucker. Not to get too technical about it, but the gene is made up of repeating proteins. There is a certain length that is safe for everybody, and a certain length that is guaranteed HD. Anything in between is a gray area. Twenty-seven repeats or fewer is considered safe. Forty or more repeats means you develop HD eventually, but no one can predict when. Suzie’s number was firmly in the safety zone.” He paused. “I’m one of the lucky one percent of cases where my test was inconclusive. My number is thirty-five.”
So, not safe. But not guaranteed HD, either. “What does that mean?” I asked, needing reassurance that he couldn’t possibly give.
“It means maybe I’ll have HD, but maybe I won’t. It means I do my damnedest not to think about it, because life is too short to worry about something that might not happen and I can’t control anyway. It’s usually diagnosed somewhere between ages thirty and fifty, and so far, I don’t have any symptoms. Dad had symptoms as early as late forties, but we didn’t realize something was really wrong until he was sixty.” He rubbed his jaw. “There have been cases where someone was seventy before they developed real symptoms. Not often, but it’s happened.”
His dad was sixty, and some people were seventy. So even if it did hit Michael, I could still have another two decades with him before it all turned to shit. Some people never even gotthatmuch with the person they loved—
Whoa. Stop right there. Who said anything about love? This wasn’t love. It wassomething, I couldn’t deny that. Something that might even be important, because the thought of only two decades with him made it hard to breathe. Two decades was such a long time, but it still wasn’t enough. How had I ever thought that twomonthswould be fine?
“Nora?” he prodded. “Are you alive in there?”
“I’m alive.”Barely. Just shaken to my very soul, that was all.
I swallowed hard. So far, none of this explained Alison or the divorce. No one would leave a marriage based on a diagnosis that might not ever happen. Would they? “How did Alison take this?”
He rubbed his beard. “The thing is, when healthy people with slightly longer proteins, like me, pass the gene on to their child, it sometimes gets a little bit longer. And this can sometimes make it long enough to cause HD. It could also happen that even if thirty-five repeats doesn’t cause HD for me, it could for my child. I wanted kids, Alison wanted kids, but I couldn’t risk that. That left us with a sperm donor. We thought about it. Even picked out a few donors. In the end, that wasn’t the kind of family she wanted.” He shrugged. “So.”
I waited for the rest. For the part that explained the divorce. He said nothing. “So?” I urged.
“So she left.”
Well, shit. I tried to make sense of that, turning his words this way and that in my mind, but finally gave up. I needed more information. “I don’t understand,” I said, feeling my way delicately through a conversation laden with minefields for us both. “What about other options?”
“Kids were what she wanted most in the world. Biological kids, although I would have been happy with adoption. That was what she needed to be happy, and I couldn’t give it to her. She was thirty-six and if she didn’t leave, kids—the way she wanted kids—might never be an option for her, realistically. We were out of time.”
“But that’s not fair,” I protested, even though I knew it was a stupid argument. Fairness had nothing to do with it. The drive to procreate was one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Thousands of years of evolution had made sure of that. I felt it myself. I wanted a baby more than almost anything. At thirty-five, I knew all about biological clocks and geriatric uteruses.
“Life’s not fair,” he said, stating the obvious. “So I told her to go.”
“What?” I pulled back to look at him.
“It wasn’t…it wasn’t an acrimonious divorce. I told her to go. She was miserable while we were looking at options for sperm donors. She didn’t want to have a stranger’s baby, she said. But, god, she really wanted to be a mom. She cried all the time. So one night, when she asked me what she should do, I told her I wanted her to be happy, and I meant it. I told her to go.”
My heart broke a little at that. God, it must have damn near killed him to do that. To tell the person he loved, his wife, that she should be happy even if it had to be without him. And to do that while facing his dad’s diagnosis, and the uncertainty of his own future. I sympathized with the yearning for a baby, but right then I also hated Alison with the fire of a thousand suns. How could she do that to him?
“Alison isn’t a bad person,” he said, as though reading my mind. “I don’t hate her. And, honestly, it was for the best. Watching what my mom is going through with my dad, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
I frowned. “If the roles were reversed, if she couldn’t have kids, or if she had a devastating illness looming in her future, you wouldn’t have left. Right?”
“I like to think that’s true, but who knows? Can’t know anything for sure. I left after my dad was diagnosed and didn’t come back for three years.” Guilt seeped into his voice. “I should have stayed.”
“He wasn’t showing symptoms then,” I pointed out. “Nothing major, anyway. Nothing worth putting your life on hold for to stay here.”
“He’s showing symptoms now. And I’m leaving for New Hampshire in a few weeks. I’m not breaking wedding vows, but Iamleaving.”
I looked at him and then at the newly framed pictures hanging on the wall behind him. The truth hit me like a very obvious brick to the face. “No, you’re not.”
“I have to be in New Hampshire—”
