Free Why the Sky Is Blue by Susan Meissner

think about it, Patty,” I said. “Right now coming in to see you seems rather pointless. I’m sure you’re a great therapist, but I don’t need any therapy at the moment.”
    There was silence on the other end. I hadn’t remembered ever being so blatantly honest before. I wondered if my head injuries had flipped a switch in my brain that had never been “on” until then. We hung up shortly after that.
    That night after supper, Dan asked me if I had called Patty.
    “What did she say?” he asked when I told him I had.
    I told him instead what I had said.
    “Claire, why don’t you just go see her? It can’t hurt just to talk with her,” he said.
    “I am not going to see her just so you can feel better,” I replied. “That’s like my putting on a sweater because you’re cold.”
    And then I added what I hadn’t earlier and shouldn’t have then. I guess the switch was still flipped inside my brain: “If you’re having trouble dealing with what has happened, by all means, call her up.”
    I regretted saying it the moment the words left my mouth. I apologized, but as is always the case, spoken words cannot be unheard, even though they can be forgiven.
    I promised Dan that I would go to Nick the moment I felt emotionally unstable or unsure. I reminded him that that was what he was doing. And he seemed to relax after that. But we were so obviously at different poles in our still-black abyss. He struggled to see my perspective on so many things just as I struggled to see his. We struggled in every area of communication, including our most intimate moments in our bedroom. It was nearly the end of November before Dan felt brave enough to approach the topic of lovemaking. We stumbled through our first night of intimacy after the attack like newlyweds in an arranged marriage.
    “When this is all over, it will be different,” Dan said afterward, in the darkness of our bedroom. “It will be the way it was.”
    I convinced myself that he had to be right. My attacker would steal—at the very most—nine months from me. But only nine months. The rest of my life belonged to me. And the rest of our marriage belonged to Dan and me.
    By Thanksgiving, the morning sickness had ceased, and I felt particularly well. Hormones, surely. My parents and Matt flew out for the long Thanksgiving weekend, and we had a wonderful time. I only had a few moments alone with my mom, just long enough to confirm to her that I was still pregnant. She asked if I had been back to a doctor, and I guiltily told her I hadn’t. Becky had been bugging me for several weeks to set up an appointment with her doctor, but I hadn’t felt shamed about not doing it until my mother asked me why I hadn’t.
    “Claire, you must know that you may not have a miscarriage,” she told me gently.
    She was right. I did know it. But I didn’t want to think about giving birth to this child. And I figured if I held off going to a doctor, I wouldn’t have to. I was pretty sure I would know one way or the other by the fourth or fifth month of the pregnancy. All a doctor would do between now and then is feed me vitamins, measure my abdomen, and listen to the staccato sounds of an infant heart beating. I had no interest in those things.
    We celebrated my birthday before my family left, though I wouldn’t officially be thirty-seven until December first, and then the wonderful weekend ended. The day after my mom, Stu, and Matt returned to Michigan, the first winter storm rolled in, instantly transforming the barren Minnesota landscape into a stunning and elegant scene.
    I spent the rest of December preparing the house for Christmas and putting off making a doctor’s appointment. Both were easy to do.
    We had a slumber party on the night of December twenty-first for Katie’s twelfth birthday and it was two in the morning before the house was finally quiet and Dan and I fell exhausted into bed.
    Outside, a gentle snow was falling, and the house was peculiarly silent