“Of course you care about your job.” To Steven, it seemed as though overnight she had become a different person.

“No, I don't …but I don't want to destroy us,” she said sadly, turning over to face him.

“I can tell you one thing I do know for sure, Adrian, and that is that I don't want a baby.”

“You might change your mind later. People do,” she said hopefully, but he shook his head.

“I don't. I don't want kids. I never have, never will, and you used to think that was all right too. Didn't you?”

She hesitated and then admitted something to him she never had before. “I thought that maybe eventually …you might change your mind one day. I mean … if we really never had kids, then I suppose it would be all right. But in a case like this … I thought maybe … I don't know, Steven. I didn't ask for this. But now that it's here, how can you just sweep it from our lives without a second thought?” It was awful.

“Because the quality of our lives will be better if I do, and you're a lot more important to me than a baby.”

“There's room for both,” she pleaded, but he shook his head.

“Not in my life there isn't. There's room for you and no one else. And I don't want to compete with a baby for your attention. I don't think my parents said more than two words to each other in twenty years. They never had the time or the energy or the emotion. They were drained. There was nothing left of them when we grew up. They were like two used, finished, old dead people. Is that what you want?'

“One baby isn't going to do that,” she said softly, pleading with him again, and clearly getting nowhere.

“I'm not willing to risk it, Adrian.” he said, looking down at her. “Get rid of it.” His voice trembled as he spoke to her, and he went back downstairs for a long time, just to get away from her, and the threat of the baby she carried within her.

She thought about it for a long time as she waited for Steven to come back upstairs, and she knew that if she gave up this baby, an important part of her very soul would be lost forever.





SUNDAY AND MONDAY WERE A NIGHTMARE OF ARGUMENTS and recriminations between the two of them, and at six in the morning on Tuesday before Steven left, Adrian finally collapsed in hysterical sobs and agreed to do anything he wanted. She hadn't been to work in two days, and she didn't want to lose the husband she loved, even if it meant giving up their baby. She promised to take care of the abortion while he was gone, and that day all she did was lie in bed and sob until she went to see the doctor at four-thirty.