As we sit here, I sort of start to see the reality of why Luke felt so desperate that the only answer he could see was to marry another woman.
“Michelle?” a woman calls, and the four of us stand. The woman looks surprised as she sees the two lean, attractive men walking toward the ultrasound room with Michelle and me. “Last name?” she asks.
“Bennett,” Michelle says.
“Right through here,” she says with a smile, and the four of us follow her to the room.
Michelle sits on a table, Jack takes the chair beside her, and Luke and I hang back. The ultrasound technician turns off the lights. “Lie back, lift your shirt, and lower your pants just a little,” she says. Michelle does, and she squirts some gel onto Michelle’s stomach. She moves it around with a wand, and we all see some movement on the large television screen broadcasting Michelle’s uterus. There’s a bunch of other information on there, too. Dates and codes and things I assume are in some way related to pregnancy but I have no actual idea.
“There’s baby,” the tech says, and I strain to see what she’s talking about. I really just see some wavy white lines on a black backdrop.
“Where?” Luke asks, voicing my own question.
She takes a mouse and points to the baby on the screen. She circles a blob. “Right here,” she says.
“Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?” Luke asks.
“Not yet with certainty on the ultrasound, but if Michelle had the genetic testing done at ten weeks, the doctor should be able to tell you if you want to know,” the tech says. She doesn’t leave room for questions—like the one I have, which is whether Michelle already knows if it’s a boy or a girl. “I’m just going to take a few measurements. Michelle, you’ll feel some pressure, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, and it’s so weird that we’re all looking at the baby chilling in her uterus as the tech moves the wand all around.
Once the tech is done, she hands over a printout of the session. “You can head back to the lobby and the doctor will call you back shortly for your exam.”
“Does everything look okay?” Luke asks.
“Growth is on track and the baby looks healthy,” the tech says with a smile.
“Thanks,” Luke says.
The four of us head back toward the lobby.
“Do you know the gender?” Luke asks.
Michelle shakes her head.
“I want to know,” he says.
“Okay. I don’t.”
“Then I won’t tell you,” he says thickly. “But I have a right to know.”
Michelle just huffs in reply, and it may be kind of a petty argument, but it does give me some insight into why they ended things. They’re just not compatible, and if they argue on things like finding out gender, certainly they’ll argue over the bigger issues later.
My heart aches for Luke. He wasn’t expecting this twist of fate, and he certainly doesn’t want to share a kid with this woman he thought he’d written out of his life story, and now because of one drunken night, he’s stuck with her forever.
“Michelle?” Luke asks.
“Hmm?” she asks, lazily playing with Jack’s hand as she clutches it.
“Why did the chart in there put your date of conception at March thirty-first?”
Michelle blinks in Luke’s direction. “Huh?”
“The date of conception,” Luke repeats. “We weren’t together March thirty-first. We weren’t together until that weekend. April fifth.”
My heart races.
If what he’s saying is true...what if he’s not the father?
It crossed my mind when we first found out, but Michelle said he is, and he admitted they had a night, so we all assumed she was telling the truth.
But what if she isn’t?
Between the wedding and the charity event plus working on Luke’s public image, I sort of let the whole idea of whether Luke is really this baby’s father go. But maybe it’s time to revisit that train of thought.
“That’s an estimate based on the date of my last period. If you want more details, I’d be happy to get them for you. You know, like the length of my periods, how many tampons I go through...”
Luke holds up a hand. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
A paternity test might be, though.
I don’t bring it up in the lobby of the obstetrician’s office, obviously.
No...I wait until Luke and I are home, long after Michelle and Jack have slithered off to wherever it is they go. Sheila just left after doing a deep clean of the whole house, Pepper is taking a nap in the family room, and we’re enjoying some of Debbie’s homemade shredded chicken tacos for dinner.
“So you think it’s yours?” I blurt.
Luke chuckles. “I wish I could say I have no reason to believe it isn’t...but I don’t trust Michelle.”
“You mentioned you have some experience with paternity tests. Care to share more about that?”
He blows out a breath and takes a bite of taco before he answers. “I’ve had two women allege I was the father of their unborn children. For the record, I have no children. I was stupid, but I always wore condoms unless I was in a relationship. I know they’re not a hundred percent, but I requested both women take a paternity test anyway.”
“And they came back negative?”
He chuckles. “Something like that. They came back and showed I was not a match to the child.”
“Can they do one of those when she’s pregnant?”
He nods. “They can do a blood draw and compare DNA that way. It’s completely safe for both mother and child.”
“Then do it. Make her take one,” I say.
“It’s not that simple,” he says. “Aside from the fact that her father would murder me if he thought I was indicating that baby isn’t mine, she claims she wasn’t with anyone else. She’s sure it’s mine. And besides, we’d been in a relationship. I wasn’t exactly running for the condom box. I never found a condom in the morning, so we can both guess what that means.”
“You’re assuming you had sex,” I point out. I want to eat my taco because it’s so damn delicious, but I also need answers. “What if you didn’t? Drunk Luke hates Michelle just as much as sober Luke.”
“I can’t deny that.”
“You don’t even have definitive proof that you slept with her. Why aren’t you putting up a little more of a fight here?”
He stares down at his plate. “She says it’s mine. Her father has the ability to take away everything that matters to me. What choice do I have, Ellie?”
I don’t have an answer for that. He’s right. He’s stuck.
“Have you thought about asking her for proof it’s yours?” I ask.
“Of course I have. But then I think about how her father would react to that if he ever found out, and something stops me.”
“There isn’t anything stopping me,” I say, suggesting I’m happy to do his dirty work for him.
He looks thoughtfully at me for a beat. “I guess I can’t really stop you if I don’t know anything about it.”
“I’m your wife, Luke,” I say. “I’m here to protect you, to fight for you, to fight with you. We’ll get to the truth no matter what it takes.”