Free Why the Sky Is Blue by Susan Meissner Page B

to think the worst, Mrs. Holland.”
    I just sighed and asked him to please call me Claire.
     
    *
     
    That evening, I told Dan that maybe we should tell Katie about the baby. Maybe Spencer too. He didn’t agree at all.
    I began to think I should have brought him to the doctor’s office after all so he could have seen what I saw, heard what I heard. He was still pretending none of this was real, that I would miscarry before he had to deal with any visual evidence that I was pregnant. He didn’t want to deal with it verbally, either.
    “Dan, I’m starting to show,” I said as softly as I could, because I knew he would wince at hearing it. And he did. “The doctor said the placenta’s not in the danger zone. It’s just a little low. It could be many more weeks before anything happens. I could be six or seven months pregnant by then, Dan. Katie will know. She will be able to see it. Everybody will.”
    He almost put his hands over his ears—that’s how frustrated he was. But there was no easy way to make him understand.
    I said nothing for a few minutes as he wrestled with the reality of that which he wanted to believe was only a nightmare; just a bad dream he would soon awaken from.
    “I’ve dealt with not having protected you from this happening, but, by God, I was going to protect them from knowing,” he finally said, hoarse with anger. “They shouldn’t have to deal with this. They’re just children.”
    “I know, Dan. But I don’t think we can wait much longer,” I whispered.
    He didn’t want me to be right about this, but he knew I was. He just nodded and then started to walk away.
    “I want to make sure we do it right,” he said.
    “Yes,” I said in response, hardly knowing how we would do it at all.
    We told them that night after supper. Dan got a fire going in the family room, and I made hot chocolate. We gathered on the couch, the four of us in a row. It was a blistering cold evening, and a frigid wind was howling around the eaves of the house. It felt snug and warm in the house.
    It was difficult to tell them both at the same time because Katie, at nearly twelve, knew a great deal more about life than Spencer at nearly seven. While she understood all too well how this baby had started growing in me, Spencer was full of questions that we hadn’t planned on getting into for a couple more years. We tried to keep it simple, but it kept getting more complex.
    “But how did the bad man give you the baby?” he kept asking me, even after Dan and I had tried twice to vaguely explain that the father of the baby wasn’t Dan.
    “It doesn’t matter how he did it. It just matters that Daddy didn’t give it to her,” Katie snapped, surprising Dan and me with her abruptness.
    In any case, it satisfied Spencer for the moment.
    “So what are we supposed to do with the baby?” he asked next.
    Although Dan and I had never talked specifically about giving the baby up for adoption, we both knew that it seemed like the only option we could both live with.
    “If I don’t have any trouble, and the baby is born okay, then we will find a good home for it,” I said, shaking a little as I said it. “There are many people who want very much to have children and can’t.”
    “Why can’t they?” Spencer asked, ever the inquisitor.
    “Stop asking so many questions, Spencer!” Katie snapped, again. I could tell I was going to have to spend some time alone with her. She was terribly angry.
    “So it’s not going to be our baby?” he continued.
    “They don’t want it. Can’t you understand anything?” Katie exclaimed, glaring at her little brother. She was slipping into as dark a mood as I had ever seen her in. It scared me. It also occurred to me that we weren’t “doing it right.”
    “Look, kids,” Dan ventured. “Your mom has had lots of trouble with her pregnancies. She may have trouble with this one, and then it won’t matter.”
    “But what if she doesn’t?” Katie retorted. “What if