“I don’t know …” I was so cold. “Four times—”

“He knocked you up after four times?”

“Maybe it was six.”

“Six times in two months?” I didn’t answer. He said, “Didn’t you use protection?”

“Of course we used protection. I’m not an idiot.” A cramp seized my guts. I turned to my side and balled my body up. “It must have ripped.”

“We were having sex all the time without protection. How did you know it was his?”

“I didn’t know.” I turned over so as not to look at him. “I made him do a paternity test.”

“Why did you even bother with the test when he was wearing protection and I wasn’t?”

I was silent. My unspoken words cut to the heart of the problem.

Chris had been beaten as a child, once so severely that he had lost a testicle when he was around nine. Although he wasn’t sterile—our son proved that—it had never happened again. He refused to take tests, but we both knew what was flying. The fact that I got pregnant after two months with a stranger must have torn away whatever shield Chris had constructed to protect his male pride.

He finally said, “Why didn’t you have an abortion? I already thought you had one. I beat the crap out of you because of it. I wouldn’t have known the difference.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Did you love him that much?”

“I didn’t love him at all. I was going to end it—”

“Then why did you run away with him?”

“I was pregnant!”

“Why didn’t you just get rid of it?”

“I’m Catholic—”

“Don’t hand me that utter bullshit, Teresa. You’re about as Catholic as I am. When you found out it wasn’t mine, why didn’t you do something about it?”

No answer for that one either.

He waited for a minute for me to say something.

A minute was a long time not to speak.

“Ah.” He got up from the bed. “I get it.” He ripped away the towel that had been wrapped around my cast and dried himself off, then threw it at my face. He started to dress. “You wanted a baby more than you wanted me.”

When he was fully clothed, he rolled me on my back once again. We were face-to-face, nose-to-nose. His eyes told me, in those few moments, that he was reliving all the humiliation I had put him through. I always could tell when he was a finger’s snap away from losing it. Instead he stood up and clenched his fists. He said, “You’re lucky someone got to you before I did. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole bone left in your body.”

He turned around and left, slamming the door behind him.

HE SHOULD HAVE felt great.

Instead, he felt lousy.