She clamped her hands together in her lap and stared out the front window. “So, I tried to call him one more time on a Friday, and he didn’t answer. So I texted him and said I had the weekend off, and I was coming there…er…here. Because I needed to talk to him about something, and he was really worrying me.”
“And did he respond?” Sunny asked.
Liza glanced at her. The elderly woman now appeared a bit blurry through Liza’s welling eyes.
“He said, ‘Okay.’” Liza shrugged. “So, the next morning I got in my car and drove. And it was mid-January. It was cold. It was raining. My car was kind of a piece of junk. And I made it to the interchange in Houston. And that was when he called me. For the first time in three weeks. And he said…”
Liza pressed her eyes closed and rested her elbows on the table as she covered her face.
“What did he say?” It was Ophelia who asked, Ophelia who rubbed a comforting palm over Liza’s arm, but Liza’s mind was back in Houston on a rainy day in January ten years earlier.
She now felt like she was drowning in snot and tears behind her hands, and someone rubbed a paper napkin on her hand. She uncovered her face and took the napkin from Sunny.
“He said he had agirlfriend,” Liza managed. “And he wasn’t talking aboutme.”
“I don’t understand,” Ophelia said, index finger pressed to her mouth and eyebrows gathered. “He’s never had a girlfriend as long as we’ve known him, and we met him the night Morales passed away.”
“Well, there was no girlfriend.” Liza wiped her nose and twisted the edge of the napkin. “He told me a few weeks ago, and we discussed all of that. The day I tried to come here happened to be the day after Javier’s death, and he just couldn’t face me. Not after so many weeks of hiding from me because he was just…ashamed…I guess. He’d made all these big promises about things he was going to do when he got here, and I don’t think he was prepared to handle civilian life. And he just let himself go and started hiding from me. And then something unimaginable happened, and it was just the last straw for him. So, he came up with the worst thing he could think of to end our relationship.”
“Oh,honey.” Ophelia clutched her mouth and placed her hand on Liza’s back.
Sunny reached for Liza’s hand and stroked the back of it. “Sugar…what happened to the baby?”
Liza exhaled quietly and stared at the frail hand on hers, opening her mouth to explain, when the hardwood creaked with a heavy footstep. She glanced up, and her gaze collided with Connor’s eyes, which flashed with anger.
Her stomach plummeted so hard and so fast that she grew dizzy.
“Yeah, what happened to the baby, Liza?” Connor stepped in the kitchen, approaching the table, and she pushed her chair back to stand up.
“Connor, I was planning to tell you all of this, and soon. It just happened to come up right now and—”
“Just sit.” He held up his hand. “I’m going to sit. And then you can finish.”
She hesitated. “I don’t think you want to hear this with everyone else around.”
He sat across from her and placed his hands on the table. “I’m just fine with Ophelia and Sunny being here while I hear this. And you were going to tell them anyway. This keeps either of us having to tell the story twice. I’m sure it’s not the kind of story you like telling. Right?”
Connor’s typically pale blue eyes were so angry they were nearly black. She knew hers were filled to overflowing. He was punishing her. This was a public hanging. A shaming. For her audacity to keep something like that from him, even though she’dtried.
She shook her head.
“Then have a seat.”
She sat back down. “I needed to practice having this conversation before I—”
“I know, sweetheart.” The edge in his tone softened somewhat. “I heard everything from when you said you want to marry me.” A quick smile stretched his lips before it faded. “And when you said we can’t commit to a marriage if there are any secrets. I agree with that. So I want us to lay everything out on the table.” He spread out his palms in front of him. “And I like this table. A lot of good things for me have happened at this table, so if we’re going to have to hash through something bad, I kinda want it to happen here. Is that okay?”
Liza jostled her head in ayes. Connor seemed like a ticking time bomb. He was eerily still and calm, and right then, nothing seemed more terrifying.
Ophelia stood up. “Can I get either of you a water?”
Liza nodded.
“I’m all right, thank you,” he said, and then he turned his gaze from Ophelia back to Liza. “We’re clearing the air right now, so I have to tell you that I know about the baby. I know about the…” He brought his fist to his mouth and dropped his gaze, and Liza’s head began to spin. “I know…uh…that you lost it.” His throat bobbed. “Ialsoknow that you had some serious injuries at around the same—”
Liza’s jaw fell open. “How the hell do you know all of that?”
“I took you to the clinic when you had the flu. You filled out all the forms, and I took them to the desk for you, and I happened to see the medical history form. I wasn’t trying to read it. It just happened to be on the top of the stack.”
