The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,165

knife.”

Sam cleared her throat. Her expression, as always, was obscured by her dark glasses. “And?”

“And she ran tests and did scans and then she said something about the thinness of this wall or scarring on that tube and she drew this diagram on a sheet of paper but I said, ‘Give it to me straight.’ And she did. I have an inhospitable womb.” Charlie laughed bitterly at the phrase, which sounded like something you’d read on a travel review site. “My uterine environment is not suitable for hosting a fetus. The doctor was amazed I’d managed to get so far into my second trimester.”

Sam asked, “Did she say it was because of what happened?”

Charlie shrugged. “She said it could be, but there was no way to know for sure. I dunno, a guy jams the handle of a knife up your twat, it makes sense that you can’t have babies.”

“The last time,” Sam said, always zeroing in on the deductive fallacy. “You said Dandy-Walker is a syndrome, not resultant of a uterine malformation. Is there a genetic component?”

Charlie couldn’t go down this road again. “You’re right. That was my last time. I’m too old now. Any pregnancy would be considered too high risk. The clock has ticked down.”

Sam took off her glasses. She rubbed her eyes. “I should have been here for you.”

“And I should have never asked you to come.” She smiled, remembering something Rusty had said two days ago. “Our familiar impasse.”

“You need to tell Ben.”

“There’s that you need again.” Charlie blew her nose. She had not missed Sam’s bossy older sisterness over the years. “I think it’s too late for me and Ben.” The words sounded flippant, but after her disastrous attempts at seduction, she had to stop denying the possibility that her husband would not come back. Charlie couldn’t even work up the courage to ask him to stay last night because she was too afraid he would tell her no again.

She said, “Ben was a saint when it happened. Every time. I really mean that. I just don’t understand where all that goodness comes from. Not his mother. Not his sisters. God, they were all awful. They wanted to know every detail, like it was gossip. They practically set up their own hotline. And you don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant, and buying baby furniture, and planning your maternity leave, and being big as a Mack Truck, then a week later you go to the grocery store and everybody who was smiling at you before can’t even look you in the eye.” Charlie asked, “I’m assuming you don’t know what that’s like?”

Sam shook her head.

Charlie was not surprised. She could not see her sister risking the physical toll a child would take on her body.

Charlie said, “I turned into such a bitch. I would hear myself—I can hear myself now, ten minutes ago, yesterday, every fucking day before that—and think, Shut up. Let it go. But I don’t. I can’t.”

“And adoption?”

Charlie tried not to bristle at the question. Her baby had died. It wasn’t like a dog, where you could get a new one a few months later to take away the loss. “I kept waiting for Ben to bring it up, but he kept saying he was happy with me, that we were a team, that he loved the idea of the two of us growing old together.” She shrugged. “Maybe he was waiting for me to bring it up. Like the Gift of the Magi, but with a toxic uterus.”

Sam put on her glasses. “You say that it’s already over with Ben. What do you lose if you tell him what happened?”

“It’s what I gain,” Charlie said. “I don’t want his pity. I don’t want him to stay with me because he feels an obligation.” She leaned her hand on the closed casket. She was talking to Rusty as much as Sam. “Ben would be happier with someone else.”

“Utter bullshit,” Sam said, her tone clipped. “You have no right to decide on his behalf.”

Charlie felt like Ben had already decided. She could not blame him. She was hard-pressed to believe any forty-one-year-old man would be unhappy with a limber twenty-six-year-old. “He’s so great with kids. He loves them so much.”

“So do you.”

“But he’s not the one keeping me from having children.”

“What if he was?”

Charlie shook her head. It didn’t work like that. “Do you want a minute alone?” She indicated the casket. “To say goodbye?”

Sam frowned. “To whom would I be