Don't Ever Tell. Brandon Massey

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СКАЧАТЬ past three o’clock in the morning?

      He gazed at the screen. He could make out a few words. He leaned forward—and accidentally bumped against the door.

      She whirled with a gasp.

      “It’s only me,” he said.

      She put her hand to her chest, sighed.

      “You scared me.”

      “I saw you’d gotten out of bed.” He stepped inside the room. “What are you doing up?”

      “Oh, only reading about pregnancy and newborns.” She hit a button on the keyboard, closing the programs she had opened. “I’m so excited I can’t sleep. I figured as long as I was awake, I’d do some research.”

      He wished there was sufficient light in the room to reveal her eyes, because he was positive that she was lying to him. He knew what he’d seen on the screen, and it had nothing to do with pregnancies and babies.

      “When are you coming back to bed?” he asked.

      “Right now, actually.” She switched off the computer. Within seconds, the display went black, and darkness fell over the room.

      She brushed past him as she left the office. “Coming?”

      He glanced at the blackened screen once more.

      “Coming,” he finally said, and followed her to the bedroom.

      11

      Lying in bed together, Rachel cuddled against him. He stared at the dark ceiling, but didn’t close his eyes.

      “Thinking about our baby?” she said.

      “Yeah.” And other things.

      “Justin Anthony Moore,” she said.

      Shortly after their marriage, they had picked out possible baby names for a boy, or a girl. Rachel had approached the task with an intensity that approached obsession, as if determining a name in advance somehow secured their child’s future.

      “What if we have a girl?” he asked.

      “We’re going to have a boy.”

      “It’s way too early to tell, Rachel.”

      “I don’t care about what the ultrasound might tell us. I know what I feel.”

      “I only want a healthy baby. Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter to me.”

      “A healthy baby…that’s what I want, too.” She was silent for a minute. “Love, do you ever think of going away?”

      “Going away?”

      “You know, like having a sanctuary…from the world. Somewhere you could be totally safe…without a care at all.”

      “Like a getaway or something?”

      “Hmmm…like that.”

      “To get away from who?”

      “No one in particular. Life…the world. Just the four of us—you, me, Justin…the dog.”

      “A secluded getaway would be nice,” he said. “Maybe we can buy one if we start playing the lottery.”

      “Maybe…” Her voice had softened to a whisper.

      “Where would you want it to be?”

      “Somewhere that…no one…knows about…”

      “Such as?”

      She didn’t answer. Her breathing had deepened. She was drifting asleep.

      He lay awake a while longer, mulling over their strange conversation and what he had seen on her computer screen, and eventually, he drifted to sleep, too.

      12

      He awoke at seven-thirty to find that Rachel had already left for work.

      There was a note on the dresser, written in her elegant script: Hey, sleepyhead. Will call with time for OB-GYN appt. Love, R.

      At the mention of the doctor, giddiness bubbled through him all over again. But the memory of how Rachel had lied about her late-night Web research quickly put a damper on his excitement.

      On his way downstairs to brew coffee, he paused at the threshold of her study. He pushed open the door.

      The answers to his questions might reside on her computer. If he looked, Rachel would never know.

      But he hesitated. He wasn’t one of those rude individuals who took malicious pleasure in digging through another’s belongings. His mother was nosy like that. He harbored bad memories of her rooting through his drawers and closets, looking for anything she could use to make his life miserable.

      He turned away from the study and went downstairs. He brewed a pot of coffee. Tim had repaired his computer yesterday afternoon as promised, so he took the laptop to his office and started to work on some initial design ideas for a new client.

      His office was located directly beneath Rachel’s study. Although it was surely his vivid graphic artist’s imagination at work, he thought he could sense her computer up there, tempting him to uncover its secrets.

      Finally, he pushed out of the chair and strode upstairs, walking so fast that Coco, sleeping on the sofa in the family room, stirred awake and chased after him, curious about his urgent mission.

      He rushed into Rachel’s study and punched the laptop’s power button.

      The machine whirred, proceeding through the boot-up cycle. He sat in the desk chair, started to adjust the height to accommodate his legs, and stopped himself. If he neglected to readjust the chair, she would know he’d been in there.

      Sweat coated his forehead. By doing this, he was crossing a line in their marriage, admitting to himself that he no longer trusted her, and there would be consequences to pay for his actions, if not to Rachel, then to his own conscience.

      Coco had not entered the room. The little dog sat on her haunches on the threshold, and he swore that her bubble-eyed gaze was accusatory.

      “I don’t have any choice,” he said to the dog, as if the animal would tattle on him. “I have to know what’s going on.”

      The computer reached the Welcome screen. In a log-on box, the username field was populated by his wife’s first name, but the cursor blinked in the password field—which was empty.

      He clicked the OK button, hoping that the system would grant him access without a password.

      It beeped and flashed a pop-up message: Please enter a password.

      “Shit,” he said.

      He drummed a tattoo on the desk. СКАЧАТЬ