Free Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman Page A

before we didn’t have to rely on a babysitter to go out for the evening. By then we’d be old enough to qualify for the early-bird special, and would still be eating dinner while it was light out.
    When I saw Peter’s vintage orange BMW 2002 pull up to the valet stand, I took the pregnancy test out of my purse and put in on his plate.
    He bounded up the stairs and gave me a kiss. “Date night!” he said happily, and squeezed me around the middle. I smileddespite my trepidation and squeezed him back. He plopped down in his seat and reached for his glass of water. The smile disappeared from his face when he glanced down at his plate.
    “Surprise,” I said softly, trying to smile. I couldn’t read the expression in his gray eyes. He didn’t speak.
    “Kind of a shock, huh?” I asked.
    He nodded slightly and gingerly picked up the pregnancy test. “On my plate?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You put it on my plate.” He handed it to me. “It’s, like, full of pee.”
    “Eew. Right. Sorry,” I said, and stuck the test back in my purse.
    “You’re going to save it?” he said.
    “I saved both of the others.”
    “Huh.”
    “What does that mean? Huh?”
    “Nothing. Just huh.”
    My eyes got hot and prickly, and I could tell I was about to cry. “So I take it this isn’t good news.”
    “No, no. It’s not that. It’s just . . . it’s just a surprise.” He rubbed at his jaw and exhaled loudly.
    “No kidding.” I tore off another hunk of roll and spread the butter with short, angry jerks of my knife.
    “It’s just that I kind of thought you had to have sex to get pregnant,” he said.
    I glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    He smiled weakly. “Nothing, I mean, we’re not exactly doing it all the time.”
    “Yeah, well, we’re obviously doing it enough.” I snatched up my menu and pretended to read it.
    “C’mon, sweetie,” he said.
    I ignored him and studied my menu. “What the hell is a cardoon? And why is it on every damn menu in the city?”
    “Juliet. Honey. Look at me.”
    I didn’t.
    Suddenly, he got up and walked around the table. Hekneeled down next to my seat and took me into his arms. I stiffened, not yet ready to forgive him for feeling the same ambivalence I did. But after a moment, I leaned into his chest and buried my face in the folds of the old flannel shirt he hadn’t bothered to change out of. Then I started to cry.
    “Aren’t you happy?” he said. “I’m happy. Let’s be happy about this, okay?”
    “You are
not
happy,” I wailed. If there had been another living soul in the restaurant, they would have stared at me.
    Peter smoothed my hair out of my streaming eyes and kissed me. “I am. Really. It was just kind of a shock. But I’m happy. Definitely. Are you happy?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, wiping my nose on his shoulder. “Didn’t you sleep in this shirt?”
    Peter and I agreed to wait until we were sure the pregnancy was going to stick before we told the kids. He tried to convince me that the secret should be kept from everyone else, too, but he knew that was a lost cause even as he made the argument. I’m just not constitutionally capable of keeping my mouth shut about something like that. I’m fully aware of the ludicrous irony of a private investigator who can’t keep a secret. But to give myself a little credit, I’ve never violated a client’s confidence. It’s really only the intimate details of my own life about which I’m embarrassingly indiscreet. My poor long-suffering husband found out about my little problem the hard way. We had been dating only a few weeks when Stacy came to New York on business. One of her clients was performing in a spectacularly bad play off Broadway (Models turned actresses should never, I mean
never
, attempt Strindberg. I think that’s actually a federal law, and if it’s not, it should be.), and Stacy had begged us to come to a performance. She took us out for dinner afterwards to thank us