Page 54 of Never Lie
“Really?”
He nods solemnly. “I read it’s very serious. You could get really sick.”
“Oh…” I think back to the bologna sandwich I ate earlier. And I might have eaten a roast beef sandwich earlier in the week. God, I need to be more careful. This pregnancy thing is so tricky. “I’m glad you checked. But how did you know that? We don’t have any Internet.”
He hesitates for a beat. “I didn’t read it today, obviously. I read it before. Like a long time ago. I just remembered it.”
“Oh.”
I don’t know why my husband would have been reading about things pregnant women should and shouldn’t do years ago. But I’m not going to question him. Maybe he read it in an article and it stuck in his mind. That happens to me sometimes. That’s how I learned that there are earthquakes on the moon. And they’re called moonquakes.
“I wonder if you’re having a girl or a boy,” he muses as he pulls the heated turkey out of the microwave.
“I have a feeling it’s a girl.”
“Based on what?”
I lift my shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s just this feeling I have.”
He smiles indulgently. Ethan might be a nice guy, but he is not spiritual. He believes in science and facts and is the kind of person who would roll his eyes over me telling him I have afeelingabout the gender of our child.
“If it’s a girl,” I say, “we could name her after your mother. And if it’s a boy, we could name him after your dad.”
It’s like a curtain has dropped over Ethan’s face. He plops a lump of mayonnaise on one of the sandwiches without even bothering to spread it out. “My parents and I weren’t close.”
I frown at the edge that has crept into his voice. “Why not?”
“We just weren’t.”
“Did you fight?”
He picks up a knife from the block and starts slicing the sandwiches. “Sometimes. I don’t know.”
“What did you fight about?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You must remembersomethingabout it…”
Ethan slams the knife down on the counter loud enough that I jump. “IsaidI don’t remember, Tricia.”
I back away from the counter. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He looks up at me, his crystal blue eyes flashing. “Why do you always have to be so damncuriousabout everything? Why do you have to know everything about everyone?”
“I just…” I wring my hands together. “I don’t have to know everything about everyone. I just want to know aboutyou. Because you’re my husband, and I love you.”
I don’t know why it’s so hard for him to wrap his head around this. I mean, Ethan has met every member of my family—even my great aunt Bertha, who is ninety-nine years old, was at our wedding. And I have metnobodyfrom his family. Not even one person.
Is it so wrong to be curious where he came from? After all, he’s going to be the father of my child.
“I don’t want to talk about my parents.” His voice is quiet now, but firm. “It… it brings back bad memories, okay? I want to move forward… with you. I don’t want to look backward.”
“Okay,” I say. “I understand.”
Ethan carries the plates containing our turkey sandwiches to the kitchen table. I join him, but I’m still feeling wary after that outburst. The two of us eat our sandwiches, but we’re quieter than we usually are during meals. Obviously, there are some topics that Ethan feels he can’t talk about with me. But he’s wrong. I need him to see that he can tell me anything.Anything.
Although perhaps not at this very moment, when we’re trapped in an isolated house with no way out in the foreseeable future.
