love with.” He stood and paced in front of the chairs. “But don’t get me wrong, it was the alcohol combined with your seduction that got me into bed with you. Your encouragement worked, however. I turned to some of the top managers in the plant, and with their help, I began to see I could do it.”
“So at least I did something right.”
He sighed and sat down again. “Yes, I’ll admit it. You did something right. But I didn’t. I was still engaged to Celeste,” he explained, “but I was sleeping with you regularly. I was pretty careless at first when I was drinking so much, but later on I wanted to take precautions against pregnancy. You said you were taking care of it, and I believed you, until the day you came to me and said you were pregnant.”
“And so we got married,” she said.
“Not at first.” David rubbed his eyes. “At first I couldn’t believe it. You said you were on the pill. How could you be pregnant? I thought you were just telling me we had a baby on the way to get me to marry you or to get money out of me to stay quiet. By that time I knew how mercenary you were. Money was important to you—very, very important. I had been buying presents to keep you from telling Celeste about our affair. I think you and I would have been over except for the incredible sex we were having. It was like a drug to me. I couldn’t leave you alone.
“When you came to me about the pregnancy, though, I was so upset I wouldn’t even speak to you. You let me know it was either marriage or you would let the whole town know you were carrying the ‘Barrett bastard.’ That’s what you called him. You deliberately waited to tell me so it was too late to get an abortion.”
“An abortion,” Marnie said, aghast that she would even consider such a thing.
“Yes, that’s what you said. Although I would never have condoned such a thing, no matter what.”
“I would hope not. I would certainly hope not!”
“So we drove to Centerview and flew to Las Vegas to get married. It caused some stir when we got back, let me tell you. I had asked you to let me tell Celeste and my mother first, but you went to the Roadhouse and told everyone there, so it spread all over town in a hurry. Both my mother and my fiancée were humiliated.”
“Yes, I can see they would be,” she replied.
“I had moved back in here with my mother when my father died so she wouldn’t be alone. When we married, you moved in, too.”
“Had you been living with Celeste?”
“No. She was living with her parents until we married, and I had my own apartment until my father and uncle died. My mother’s life was put on hold. She could barely function, and I thought I needed to live here with her.”
Marnie looked around the room. “Well, all this explains the dichotomy in this house.”
“Dichotomy?”
“Yes, it means—”
“I know what it means,” he interrupted. “I’ve never heard you use the word before. You always seemed to have a limited vocabulary and would accuse me of putting you down when I used a word you didn’t know.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She thought for a few seconds and then laughed. “I guess I don’t know what words I don’t know.”
David laughed with her and then grew quiet. “At first we found lots of things we could laugh about together, but by the time Jonathan was born, things had changed.”
“Changed how?”
“For one thing, you hated this house. You were always on me about buying a new one, or at least leasing an upscale condo. And Mother was on your case about everything you said and did, which just made you say and do more to upset her.”
“Tell me about Mrs. Tucker.”
“By the time Jonathan was two weeks old, it was obvious you wouldn’t be able to care for him. You didn’t want to. His crying upset you—you didn’t know what to do about it. Mrs. Tucker had been a nanny for a family Mother knew. Their children had grown, and Mother approached her about caring for Jonathan.”
“So she’s been with him from the beginning?”
“Just about.”
“And she does everything for him? I don’t do anything?”
“Your idea of being a good mother is stopping in the nursery on your way out and telling him to be a good boy that day and stopping