Lark Lake Lodge

Chapter Fifteen

The Truth About Babies

Harlan was good on his word and then some. His stamina and dedication were impressive, to say the least. I lost count of how many orgasms he gave me over the course of the afternoon.

That evening, I threw on my jeans—commando once again—and the Firebrand T-shirt from my goody bag so we could go up to the main building and have Easter dinner in the restaurant with Simon and Michael. They left the table several times to put out fires, but overall, we had a lovely meal regardless of Simon’s constant teasing about our newly minted relationship.

We brought a bottle of wine back to the carriage house that night and finished it. We talked, drank, slow danced, and eventually made our way back to the bed, which had been made in our absence. After a slow and savoring bout of lovemaking, we fell into a deep sleep only to waken again in the middle of the night and do it all over again .

Our dead of night coupling was sleepy, lazy, and in the end, a total disaster. Don’t get me wrong, the sex was outstanding. Even in his sleepy state, Harlan was completely in tune with me and gave me an orgasm that made me realize I’d never really had good sex before. Afterward, he panted against my neck, peppering kisses there. He slowly pulled out of me and when he went to peel off the condom, his reaction was unexpected and terrifying.

“Shit! Oh no,” he said.

I immediately flipped over to face him and sat up. “What’s wrong?”

He let out a chuckle that made me think he’d lost his mind after his worried reaction just moments before. I looked down and he was pulling just the top ring of the condom off of himself.

“Well, I was about to spiral into a panic when I saw that this thing broke. But I guess that’s one advantage of…well, that you can’t…you know,” he said. He was uncomfortable getting his point across.

Dear God. Why didn’t I ever tell him the truth? I meant to. I really did. But the story is so humiliating and there was never a good time.

I reached down and retrieved the rest of the disastrous rubber. He held out his hand and I placed it in his palm. He got up from the bed and headed into the bathroom. My mind went into overdrive while I listened to him dispose of it, wash his hands, gargle a little mouthwash, and run the sink for a second.

He returned with a warm, wet wash cloth. He placed his palm on my shoulder and gently encouraged me to lie on my back. I watched him in amazement as he tenderly rubbed the cloth between my legs. He took such good care of me, and I’d betrayed him by not being up front about my past.

Well, no time like the present.

I launched. “I need to talk to you about something. ”

He tossed the wash cloth into a hamper across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He rested a reassuring hand on my thigh.

“What’s up? You okay?”

“I…made a big mistake,” I began.

“No! Don’t say that. This isn’t a mistake.” His eyes went wide as he leaned forward, his breath shallow and his forehead wrinkled. He was practically panicked because I’d bungled the intro.

Great job, Maisie. You really know how to take a situation from bad to worse.

“No, wait. I said that wrong. All this—what’s happening between us is amazing. You’re amazing. I wasn’t talking about the sex.”

He let out a cleansing breath and sat back. “Oh, thank God. You scared me.”

“What I’m trying to say is your relief about the broken condom is based on some flawed information.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Randy got the wrong story. Everybody got the wrong story from Rob. Including me,” I said.

“Sweetheart, I don’t know if it’s because I’m still a little sleepy, but I’m super confused here.”

“I know this is probably the worst timing in the world to tell you the mother of all possum stories, but here goes. I wasn’t the one with fertility problems. It was Rob. He has something called Klinefelter Syndrome. It’s when a guy is born with an extra X chromosome. He didn’t have a lot of other symptoms, but it made him sterile. He’d known he had it since just after puberty, but he never bothered to tell me. In fact, he went to great lengths to hide it from me.”

“Jesus. ”

“Yeah. If you disliked him before this story, you’re really going to hate him by the time I’m done.” I started at the beginning and shared the entire saga.

“When we first were married, I was really keen to have a baby. I pressured him to start trying right away, but he pushed back, saying it would be nice to have a little time to just be married. I gave him a year before I insisted. All of our friends had gotten married before us and were procreating like crazy. Some of them were already on their second child, and I’d started to feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb.

“I was really patient with the process at first. When the first few months passed with no results, I stayed super positive, reminding myself that it wasn’t an exact science and sometimes it just takes a while. But after a year, I sunk into a depression.

“After putting the full court press on Rob, I finally got him to agree to see a specialist. We found a great doctor and went in for tests. When it was time to get our results, Rob told me he thought it would be best if he met with the doctor alone. He framed it in a way that made it sound like he was trying to protect me, saying it was really hard to watch me go through all of the disappointments we’d suffered and it might be easier to hear difficult news from him than in the office of a doctor who was a veritable stranger. I should have known that when he offered to do something so thoughtful that he was up to no good. He’d never been what one would consider a caring person.

“After the appointment, he came home and told me a completely made up explanation of why I was the cause of it all. I was barren and we’d never have children. It took me a good six months to get used to the idea that I’d never feel a baby move inside me and that the only children in my life would be other people’s kids. I begged Rob to consider adoption, but he had a laundry list of why he wouldn’t do it. Finally, after a lot of therapy and self-care, I crawled out of my depression and accepted the fact that motherhood wasn’t in the cards for me. I lived under that assumption for six years.

“About a year ago, I went for my annual appointment with my OB/GYN. My regular doctor was booked up, so instead I saw the new, fresh-faced physician’s assistant. During my exam she asked me what kind of birth control I used and I laughed at her. I explained that I was unable to have children. She scrolled through my records on her tablet with a sort of plucky Nancy Drew look on her face. She said there wasn’t anything in my records to support my infertility and then suggested something I should have done long before. She told me to get a second opinion.

“Without consulting Rob, I found a new specialist, and after a series of tests, she told me something that shattered everything I thought I knew. I was perfectly healthy and able to conceive.

“I was in shock. Up was down and down was up. By the time I got home, I forced myself to consider the possibility that Rob had deceived me. I was so nauseous I almost barfed in the car. How could that someone I’d loved intentionally hurt me that deeply?

“I confronted him, and no surprise, it didn’t go well. He came clean about his condition, but being the narcissist he is, he made the whole thing about his lifelong challenges—the struggle was soooo real, apparently. He said that I’d made such a big deal about having kids that it made living with his disorder even harder than it already was. He told me that my obsession with having a baby forced him to a crossroads where he had to either lie to me or lose me. In the end, he did both. I threw some shit in a bag and left for my brother’s house that day.

“So that’s why I flew off the handle when you hid your family’s tie to the lodge from me. Any deception was bound to set me off and feel like history was repeating itself,” I said, taking in a big breath. “And that’s why we actually should freak out about a broken condom. ”

When I finished telling my story, I was met with the mother of all Harlan stares. This one was stern. His brow was furrowed, his nostrils were flared, and his jaw muscle was working overtime. I was so worried that I’d bungled the start of our relationship by not being honest and up front.

“Are you mad?” I asked.

His eyes widened. “Not at you. God, no,” he said as I took a relieved breath. “I’m just trying to figure out the quickest way to get across the state so I can beat your ex into a bloody pulp.”

I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. His reaction to my woes and my lack of full disclosure was perfect. His arms wrapped around me and we sat holding one another for a moment.

“I mean, who would do something like that? I…I knew he was an asshole, but this is a whole other level.”

Every time I feared the worst with Harlan, he proved me wrong. He was on my side. In a short couple of weeks, I had more support and loyalty from him than I’d experienced in a near decade-long marriage.

But the question remained. What did he think about the fact that we might have just made a baby?

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “Do you know if you’re ovulating?”

A laugh escaped me. “You know, if you’d asked me that six years ago, I could have told you down to the minute. But I have no idea now.”

He stroked my cheek. The bug bites were starting to fade. He tucked my hair behind my ear and looked at me with a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Should we get a morning after pill?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about how to get one or if it’ll work, but it’s an option.” I was really out of my depth when it came to avoiding a pregnancy. My whole adult life had been spent praying to get knocked up.

“No,” he said, his answer definitive and confident .

“No? That’s it? Just no?”

I was in for a long stare, and he didn’t disappoint. He smoothed my hair back with his palm and then cradled my cheek in his hand.

“This is going to sound absolutely nuts, but maybe this was supposed to happen,” he said. His half-smile couldn’t distract me from the intensity in his eyes.

“That does sound nuts,” I said.

“Listen. You’ve wanted a baby forever. Maybe this is your chance.”

“Harlan, we’ve been dating for…what time is it now? Oh, that’s right, less than two days! Are you really ready to bring a baby into this?” I couldn’t believe how well he was taking all this.

“I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I think I could get pretty excited about the idea of having a baby with you.”

My wide eyes blinked over and over with shock. Could this possibly be Harlan the Hot Hermit? How on earth was this the gruff and quiet guy I’d first met? After a couple of weeks and one magical night in bed, he was ready to procreate. What the ever-living fuck?

“Look, you know I’m really into you,” he said, leaning in and kissing me.

“I do now,” I said with a broad grin.

“You’d be an amazing mom.” He didn’t know how much his words filled my bucket. I’d longed for that title with my whole being for what seemed like forever. “And selfishly, I’d love a chance to be able to actually raise my child.”

It all became crystal clear. He’d be giving me my first chance and I’d be giving him his second. We both wanted to give each other a child to ease each other’s pain. It was beautiful and tragic.

He continued with his daydream. “To be able to have her with me; to never have to feel like I’m borrowing her on school breaks and summer vacation; to never have to say goodbye; that would be wonderful.” His wistful smile was heartbreaking. “Or him ! What if it was a boy?”

This thing is spiraling out of control.

“Okay, maybe we should cool it with the baby talk for a second,” I said. “You’re about to start thumbing through a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting . The condom broke mere moments ago.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I got carried away,” he said. He crawled over me and sat beside me with his back against the headboard. “What I’m trying to say, is that whatever happens, I’m not going anywhere.”

My smile could have lit all of Saugatuck and Douglas. All the ladies in both towns who’d fantasized about my guy had no idea of how great he truly was. If they knew the man behind the hermit, they’d tear their hair out with jealousy. I was the luckiest girl in the world. Turning to him with a smile, I ran my hand along his bearded cheek.

“Thank you,” I said and gave him a soft kiss.

“Anything for my girl,” he said with a grin. He scooted down on the bed under the covers, and I followed. He lay on his back and I draped myself over him with my head on his chest.

My girl! He called me his! What an amazing turn of events. I’d worried that coming clean would blow up into a huge fight. Instead, he proved himself the most wonderful man in the world. I was so glad I’d finally told the truth.