Page 82 of Mountains Divide Us

“I didn’t use a condom.”

“Oh.” It was like an invisible wall slammed down in front of her face. Everything changed, like somehow I’d just hit her “off” button. She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s irresponsible—”

“Frank. It’s fine.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t have children.” Closing her eyes and breaking our connection completely, all the color drained from her cheeks. “Like, ever.”

The world stopped spinning for a minute. She held her breath.

“I-I should’ve told you before. I’m sorry. I understand if this… if it changes things for you.”

“Changes things?” The way she’d said it was cold. Detached. Almost robotic. It was a side of her I’d never seen.

Pushing me back gently, she disconnected us and stood. “Do you see my underwear anywhere?”

“Samantha?”

She reached for her sweater on the floor and pulled it over her head, straightening her glasses and tugging her long hair loose so it lay wet down her back, and then bent to pick books up off the floor. I stood, too, zipping up and righting my shirts. I had another uniform in my truck that still had its buttons, if we could get to it.

What did she mean? The words resounded in my head. “Can’t have children. Like, ever.”

“Samantha, talk to me. Would you come back, please?”

She dropped the books from her hands into a chair and then found her underwear and pants by the front desk. Turning away from me, she dressed and said, “It’s not a big deal. I had really bad endometriosis in my teens and early twenties, and that caused an ectopic pregnancy in college. Remember that jerk I told you about?” She waved a hand in the air, like what she was telling me didn’t mean anything.

But I was starting to understand just how much it did. She’d never mentioned kids, even when I had. Any time I talked about wanting a family, she’d gone quiet. How had I not noticed it before now?

“It was a whole thing. I was in the hospital—I almost died, actually—but I’m fine now. They had to remove one of my fallopian tubes, and the other one is scarred closed. So don’t worry. You didn’t get me pregnant, and I haven’t had sex in almost three years, so you don’t have to worry about STIs.” She stood completely still. “I know it’s not what you were expecting to hear, so I understand if that changes how you feel about me.”

“It doesn’t.” How could it?

“This thing you want,” she said, still facing away from me, “the family you deserve—I can’t give you that, Frank. Are you hearing me? You want a whole boatload of kids, right? Your kids? Well, I can’t have them. Ever. My reproductive system is dust. The damage extended to my ovaries and uterus too. No in vitro for me. No surrogacy. So that’s it for that dream. It was dead a long time ago. If you want a family, you’d be better off finding someone else, maybe even someone younger who can pop out a brood for you. I can’t.”

When she turned, I could see on her face she was imagining it—me with another woman and kids—and my heart broke for her. The sadness on her face made me ache inside.

No. I couldn’t imagine it either. Samantha was it for me. Kids or not.

I opened my mouth to tell her it didn’t matter. If she loved me, too, and we were meant to have a family, I would find a way, but the door blew open, whirling a blast of snow into the foyer, and then Abey was there, hands on her hips. How did she always appear out of thin air?

She looked back and forth between Samantha and me, then took in an eyeful of the mess we’d left behind us. Grum shot out from the bathroom and ran to her, jumping up, trying to convince Abey to pet him. She patted his head. “While y’all were here gettin’ jiggy with it or whatever, we might’ve gotten a beat on your boy. Tilda Granger just called the station. She thinks somebody broke into the Oswalds’ house down the street from her. There’s a light on inside, but they’re in Arizona till April. I already called ’em, and Mr. Oswald said there shouldn’t be anybody in there.”

Samantha turned and looked at me. “Go,” she said.

I nodded. “But you’re comin’ with me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SAMANTHA

Riding in Abey’s back seat on the way to hopefully find the kid I’d let come between Frank and me, I was kicking myself. Why had I told him like that? I could’ve let the moment pass between us without ruining it. And now, every time he thought about the first time we’d made love—the first and probably the only time he’d ever tell me he loved me—he’d remember this huge thing I’d dumped on him and the way I’d tried to brush it off, like it wasn’t this big, important thing.

Like it didn’t change everything.

I’d made the decision that he wouldn’t want me if I couldn’t have children, even though, when I thought about it, he hadn’t actually ever said that, and I’d decided I wasn’t good enough for him because of it too.

I felt like a fool. An immature child. And I felt like I was proving that our age difference did matter, even though I’d been doing everything to convince us both it didn’t.

I hadn’t even had a chance to think about the fact that we’d had sex without a condom, forcing me to admit the truth I’d said I was ready to tell him but was still terrified of.

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