Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub

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      Cam doesn’t really expect the pregnancy to change anything between her and Mike. Not the big picture, anyway.

      He chose to leave; she doesn’t want him back by default.

      She didn’t even think she wanted him back at all, for that matter…

      Not at first.

      But lately, it’s as if a haze has begun to lift a little and she’s been able to see certain things more clearly. Not just her marriage, but the past in general, and the future as well…when she allows herself to think about it at all.

      Cam watches her daughter take another tortilla chip and dredge it through the small bowl of salsa. She tries to think of something else to ask. Or say. Or do.

      She can’t just sit here, hands clasped so they won’t feel quite so…empty.

      Will it be like this from here on in? she wonders, reaching for a chip—not because she’s hungry, but because she has to occupy fingers that wouldn’t mind being wrapped around a stemmed wineglass right about now.

      “I made chicken soup for dinner,” she informs her daughter unnecessarily.

      Tess makes a face and tilts her head toward the fragrant stockpot on the stove. “I know, I saw. Why?”

      “What do you mean, ‘why’? And how come you’re making that face? You love homemade chicken soup.”

      “Right, and you haven’t made it in years.”

      “Not years.” A year, though, probably. At least.

      Cam, who once considered cooking her favorite hobby, has been shamefully lax in that department.

      “So why are you making it now, on the hottest day ever?”

      Because I’m pregnant and I’m craving it, that’s why.

      Of course she doesn’t say it.

      Tess doesn’t know about the baby.

      Nobody knows, other than Cam’s ob-gyn. When Dr. Advani—a kindhearted, tiny woman she’s been seeing for years—confirmed the pregnancy, Cam cried.

      It took the doctor a moment to realize the tears weren’t exactly joyful.

      “If this baby wasn’t planned, you should know that you do have options,” she began, to Cam’s immediate horror.

      “No! No, I could never—I…. I want the baby. I just…”

      …want my husband, too. I want all of us to be a family. I want to feel the way I did when I was pregnant with Tess and the future was full of promise.

      Granted, back then she and Mike were broke. But that was their only real problem, and it was a surmountable one.

      This time, Cam is alone, thirty-seven years old and facing what feels like a treacherous mountain whose summit is still obscured by that fog of uncertainty.

      But what choice does she have? All she can do is climb, one step at a time, praying she doesn’t lose her grip and fall.

      “It’s good for you,” Cam tells Tess. “Chicken soup. That’s why I made it.”

      “I just feel like something lighter.”

      “That’s strange. You don’t look like something lighter.”

      Tess looks up sharply.

      Cam wishes she could take back the stupid quip. She said it because it popped into her head; because it’s what Mike would have said. A typical Mike line.

      “Whatever.” Tess glowers.

      Cam sighs and crunches another tortilla chip, trying not to long for a Margarita to wash it down.

      Margarita?

      Ha. Who is she kidding?

      Tequila straight up would do the trick, no salt or lime required.

      But that, of course, is out of the question.

      She СКАЧАТЬ