On a Night Like This by Ellen Sussman

Author:Ellen Sussman [SUSSMAN, ELLEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446506007
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When he got home, Emily had made dinner. She had found pasta and a can of tomatoes to make a sauce. Someone must have taught her to cook, Luke thought.

I’ve gone from one woman cooking to another, he thought. And he imagined Blair cooking all night after he left, feeling the way she would feel. How could I have left her like that? He felt sick, his stomach twisted in knots.

He opened a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass.

He pulled out plates, forks, knives and glasses. He filled them with water, hers with no ice, and set the table, where they always sat, he by the window, she in the chair to his left. He thought of sitting down to dinner in Blair’s restaurant, the waiter serving him the food she had promised. He should have stayed. He should have told Emily: “No. It’s too late.”

He thought of Emily setting the table for Gray Healy in Noe Valley, just a few miles away.

“You rented that house? In Noe Valley?”

“I saw you circling the other night. You’re crazy.”

“Is that why you’re back? Any man that crazy in love is a man to hang on to?”

“No. That’s not why.”

“Tell me why,” Luke said, finally sitting heavily in the chair. She handed him his plate of pasta.

“I don’t know,” Emily said.

“That’s not good enough.”

“It might be all I can offer you. I can tell you a million things: I got lonely; I missed you; I missed Sweetpea; I wanted our life again. I’m pregnant.”

Luke looked at her. She was staring at him straight on, unsmiling. He looked down at her stomach—the cashmere sweater was long and full—he couldn’t see if her belly was round.

“Whose baby?” he asked.

“Yours,” she said, still looking at him.

“How do you know?”

“I wasn’t sleeping with him.”

“Ever?”

“Then. It’s your baby.”

“How do you know? Goddamn it!” Luke shouted and stood up, knocking the chair back behind him.

Emily closed her eyes and gripped the sides of her chair.

“I wasn’t sleeping with him then,” she said quietly. “I’m three and a half months pregnant. I left before I knew. Three months ago.”

“How can I believe you?”

“You just have to. Please, Luke. Sit down.”

He stepped toward her and saw her flinch again. Why the hell was she afraid of him? “I’m not going to hit you. Did Gray Healy hit you?”

“No, Gray Healy did not hit me.”

Luke sat down.

“I need to know,” he pleaded. “About the baby.”

“Then believe me,” she said.

He held her eyes. “Why did you keep it?” he asked.

“I never considered otherwise.”

He had wanted a baby, their baby, and he had tried to talk her into it for years. She wasn’t ready, she said. And kept saying. She was too young, she wasn’t yet established in her career. She always had a reason for putting it off. Luke remembered the promise that Emily had made with her sister.

“Who got pregnant first?” Luke asked. “You or Dana?”

“She’s two weeks ahead of me.”

“And you’re back because you decided to have this baby—and you thought you should raise it with its father?”

“No.

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