“Are you at the office?”
“Yeah, I was about to leave, why?”
“I need you to stay there for a few minutes. I’ll be right there.”
He didn’t say anything more, but I figured that it was going to be important. Tommy was acting strange, and that always made me pause because he was usually pretty even-keeled. The last time he’d been like this, my company was being taken over. That couldn’t happen again, but if Tommy was being all short and secretive, he must have a very good reason for it.
The next few minutes felt like an hour, but when he finally got there I was able to relax a little. The look on his face was not one of dread. It was one that I didn’t understand. Tommy looked a little smug, but also a little unsure of how to tell me his news. I could tell that he was trying to get the words right in his head before he spoke. That made me nervous all over again.
“Just spit it out already.”
“Well, I don’t know how to say this, but I saw Desiree.”
The name made my head snap back. I could honestly say that I had not thought our conversation was going to go like this. I had thought of many scenarios in my head while we were waiting, but none of them had had to do with Desiree.
“Where did you see her?”
“Down on Hunter Street with her roommate. I guess they still live together.”
I sat down in my chair and kind of looked off into the middle distance for a moment. She was still in the city. Something I hadn’t thought was likely. I had looked for her for months, but the girl had just disappeared into thin air.
“Are you sure it was her?”
Tommy nodded and sat down across from me. He must have gotten the feeling that the talk was going to take a bit longer than first anticipated. I had thought about Desiree a lot, but by this point I hadn’t thought I would find her again. I had come to the conclusion that she was gone for good, and I was trying to move on. So to hear that she was still in the city and so close felt like a punch in the gut.
“I talked to her for a minute, but she looked like she wanted to get away from me. Like a little bird, she was.”
The last comment threw me off, but I realized that it made sense. Desiree didn’t want to have anything to do with me. That was why she had left. While I’d tried to tell myself that something had happened to make her move – a good job offer in another city, maybe – in my heart, I had known all along that she just wanted to be away from me.
“So how did she look?” I wanted to know that she was okay, and I knew that the empathetic Tommy was good at picking up on things like that. His eyes were as direct as they had been a moment before, and it made me worry that something was wrong.
“Well, she looks different, Greg.”
“How so?”
I was trying to imagine what could be different than when I had met her. No change came to mind.
“Okay, look, I’m just going to say it.”
“Please do. Just spit it out.” I was getting exasperated, and I knew it was because of who we were talking about. I was never able to control myself and my emotions when it came to Desiree. That’s why I was getting bent out of shape so quickly.
“She’s pregnant. Really pregnant, Greg. She looks like she’s about to pop any minute.”
His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about this. My Desiree was pregnant?
“Did she have a ring on her finger?”
Tommy looked at me a little strangely and just shook his head. He’d obviously been doing the math, and he was much better at it than I was. It hadn’t occurred to me yet that it could possibly be mine. All I was thinking about was that someone else had been with her and now she was no longer mine.
“I don’t think she’s married, Greg. I think you’re not really thinking this through.”
I still didn’t understand what he was saying, but Tommy gave me time. The smug look was back on his face, and it was that look that made me think outside of my current realm of possibilities. I tried to calculate how long it had been since I’d seen her. It must have been around five or six months. That still didn’t seem to add up to ‘about to pop’, as Tommy had so eloquently phrased it, so I thought farther back, to my very first time with her in the meadow. It was that night that had started it all, and it hit me like a ton of bricks what that could mean.
“You think it’s mine?”
He nodded his head that he did. I was sure that he was enjoying the expression on my face. Enjoying it a little too much, if you asked me. I felt like I’d been sucker punched in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe, and for a second I thought I might pass out.
“How do you know it’s mine, Tommy?”
“Well, she wasn’t the type to sleep around, the timing is about right, and when she saw me, I could tell that she was more than a little nervous. Desiree knew that I was going to tell you about it, and she didn’t like that idea at all.”
His words should have made me happy. The woman I loved was still in the city and she was carrying my baby. But that still didn’t tell me why she’d left, why she’d kept her pregnancy from me, and why she was so worried that Tommy was going to rat her out. Why didn’t she want me to know?
The questions and the answers I came up with didn’t sit well with me, but I had to keep my composure. Tommy already knew how I felt about her, but I didn’t want him to know how badly I missed her and wanted her back in my arms.
“Do you know where she went?”
“No, she watched me leave. I think she was making sure I wouldn’t know.”
“So she doesn’t want me to know she’s still here?”
He agreed, but I could tell he didn’t want to. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but it’s obvious that something happened. She was nervous about talking to me, and I know that it was because I work for you. She even asked if I still did.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“I think she wanted to, but once she found out that I was still working for you, the conversation was completely over.”
I sat back and closed my eyes. I still wasn’t sure what it was that I had done wrong. There had to be a reason she was acting this way. Was it because she had gotten pregnant and didn’t want to tell me? But in that case I assumed she would have gotten rid of it. If she was heavily pregnant, that meant she was keeping the baby. She was going to keep my baby and never even tell me about it?
The idea made me a little sick to my stomach, and the knotting in my chest was back. How could she do this to me? If Tommy hadn’t run into her, I would have never known. I didn’t like that feeling at all. I was filled with something akin to rage. “How could she do this to me?”
“I don’t know, Greg, but now is not the time to get mad. She really looked like she was going to have the baby at any time. Now is not the time to go chasing her down. Whatever her reason, it will still be around once the baby is born.”
I wasn’t feeling as calm about it as he was. “So you think that I should just leave her alone and let her have the baby? Without me?”
Even saying the words hurt me a little, and when he agreed, I got that sinking feeling back. I didn’t want to let her go, let it go. Tommy had told me everything he knew, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I was going to have to wait for Desiree to come around to find out the rest.
“I need to find her, Tommy. That is what I want you to do right now. That is your assignment. Find me Desiree and that week off is yours.”
He smiled at me, no doubt already imagining a sybaritic trip to Vegas with his friends. He’d been giving me not so subtle hints about it for a couple of weeks now. I knew how much he wanted to go, and I was perfectly willing to live without him for a week if it meant that I would get Desiree back. She was all that I ever thought about anyway, and now that I knew she was carrying my baby I just had to find her again.
“Fine, Greg, I’ll find her, but you have to give her some space. I liked Desiree, and I don’t want her being stressed out when she is pregnant. It’s not good for the baby.”
I still wasn’t used to thinking about myself as a father, or her as a mother, but I got what he was saying. I was in new territory, and I was going to have to figure out a way to deal with it.