like that. Basically, I felt more like I was married to my job, and he was the mistress on the side. Then I started to develop a paunch and throw up in the mornings.”
Mac sat up straight, his eyes wide. “You had a baby with him?”
CJ mentally gave him marks for sorting out what those symptoms meant so quickly. She’d been slower to cotton on to the issue. At first, she’d just thought she had a stomach flu or something. But then she realized she’d missed a couple of periods and she’d put two and two together. She didn’t say that, though; CJ simply went on with her story as if he hadn’t spoken.
“I took a home pregnancy test, and damned near fainted when it turned out positive. We were both workaholics. He was hardly ever there. We weren’t ready for a baby. But when I told Billy about it the next time he showed up, he was happy as hell. This was great to his mind. We could do this. We’d saved nearly enough money to put a down payment on a house and should be able to swing it before the baby was born. And he swore he’d work less and help out with the baby. Which I didn’t believe for a minute,” she assured him.
She might have been naïve when she got involved with Billy, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think a baby would change his habits. Marriage hadn’t, why would a baby? Besides, men weren’t known for loving the diaper routine. But he’d seemed so happy, and by that time CJ had started to come around to the idea of having a baby. It would mean taking pregnancy leave from work, and then finding a good nanny, but . . . A baby of her own, she’d thought with wonder. A little CJ or a little Billy. She’d started thinking about names and decided if it was a boy she would name him Johnathan after her father. A girl would be named Marge for her mom.
CJ didn’t tell Mac any of that. Instead, she said, “I went to my doctor to have it confirmed and get checked out, as you do.”
Mac nodded, but CJ didn’t speak again for a moment. Licking her lips, she thought about her next words and then said, “In Canada an HIV test is standard for pregnant women. In some provinces they don’t even tell the mother she’s being tested for it, but in Ontario they do tell you to be sure you don’t have an issue with it and I think you can refuse it if you want, but I didn’t care one way or another. I had been jabbed by a needle in a perp’s pocket while I was frisking him about a year before I started dating Billy. The guy had HIV, and I had to take meds and go in to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B, and syphilis every month for a year after, and every time I was freaked and stressed while I waited for the results. But every test was clean.
“And boy did I celebrate after the last one,” she admitted with a faint smile. “I went out with some cop friends and got pickled pink. That’s the night I caught Billy’s attention. He joined our party as just another member of the gang, but asked me out the following week and we started dating. I wouldn’t sleep with him at first, though. Knowing I was clean, I insisted on him getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, before I’d take that step. His tests came back clean too and he was the only person I’d slept with since then so I knew that I didn’t have HIV. But if it was standard procedure, and my doc wanted to check, that was fine.
“At least that’s what I thought at the time,” CJ said bitterly. “So, you can imagine how shocked I was when this test came back positive for HIV.”
Mac slid his hand forward on the tabletop to cover hers, but CJ withdrew from his touch. She could not take it just then. Straightening her shoulders, she soldiered on. “I won’t bore you with the drama that followed that revelation. Suffice to say that he was tested again and turned up positive too, and then there was a lot of denial on his part, and blaming me, saying it must have been because of that jab I got from the druggie’s needle. That