We All Fall Down

Chapter 40

Becky

After leaving the hospital, I could no longer look him in the face. I couldn't justify in my mind the notion that he would give away a child, even in those circumstances. He tried to explain to me his reasoning, but I wouldn't hear it.

"The baby wasn't mine, Becky," he'd said.

"So! John wasn't mine, and I helped you with him. I loved him, still love him!" Hot tears streamed down my face.

"That's different," his voice lowered and his eyes jumped from me to his gray hands in his lap.

"How?! How is it different?!" I searched his face, but as usual, he reverted to the meek coward he was. He opened and closed his mouth several times, but said nothing, just shrugged his bony shoulders and kept his eyes downcast.

I stormed out, only stopping to make arrangements for them to have a ride back home and drove their car the five hours back, alone. I rolled the windows down to keep me from having to smell Rick. I focused on the yellow lines of the road and not the ache of my heart breaking in my chest. I could hardly stomach Patrice, sure, but I would never have allowed him to lie to her for all that time about her baby. That wasn't his decision to make. That action alone made me question so many other moments in the time I'd know their family. How often had Rick done things without including her, and what were they exactly? Was Patrice the way she was naturally, or had he created the monster she became?

I dissected all of it on that drive home. I scrutinized what I knew versus what had been told to me. If Rick was so upset about this baby not being his biologically, did he ever consider that John also wasn't his? Or Ben? Was it because this baby was a girl and not a boy? Was she too sane during their births for him to have sold them off under her nose? So many questions that I'll never have the answer to.

I pulled the car into his driveway. It was late, the sun had long set and all that lit the road were street lamps and the lights coming from my home. Ted must have been watching obsessively because he stormed out right as I turned the car off. It was only then that I realized I hadn't called him with any updates. He must have been worried sick.

A small part of me felt a spark of joy.