The Baby News Grandma Posted For Us

I did not have an answer for him. I looked at the picture in my lap in the dashboard light, and I put my hand flat on my stomach, where there was nothing to feel yet, and I tried to be only happy. Mostly I was.

His phone rang at ten after nine that night.

We were already in bed. I was reading the pregnancy book my mom had given me, the one with the fruit sizes, and Grady was half asleep. He picked up the phone and looked at the name and sat straight up.

“It’s Kirk,” he said.

“Answer it.”

He looked at me like he was not sure. Then he got up, pulled on his jeans and a sweatshirt, and went out to the back step. In January. In his socks.

He was gone forty minutes. When he came back in, his ears were bright red from the cold and his face was wet, and it was not from snow.

He sat down on the edge of the bed with his back to me and did not say anything for a long time. I put my hand on his back. He was shaking a little, and I could not tell if it was cold or something else.

“They were expecting, Tess,” he said finally. “Kirk and Mallory. Last spring.”

I did not say anything. I could not.

“They found out in March. They were going to tell everybody at Easter. At Grandma’s.” He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. “She lost it the week before. Eleven weeks.”

“Oh, Grady.”

“Nobody knew. Not Grandma. Not Dad. Nobody. Kirk said Mallory couldn’t stand the idea of everybody knowing and then everybody being sorry. So they just didn’t tell anybody.”

I thought about Easter last year. Kirk and Mallory had come late and left early. Mallory said she had a migraine. She had sat on Grandma’s couch the whole afternoon with her coat still on.

I had thought she was being a little rude. I had thought that, and said it in the car on the way home. I felt sick remembering it.

“He said they’ve been trying again since summer,” Grady went on. “Nothing yet. And he said the wedding was the one thing. The one thing that was just good. That nobody could take away. And then we walked in his kitchen with a picture.”

“He could have told us,” I said. I said it softly, but I said it. “Grady, he could have just told us.”

“I know,” Grady said. “I told him that. He said he knew too. He said he heard himself say it and couldn’t believe it came out of his mouth, and then we were gone, and then Grandma posted, and Joan tagged him, and he sat in his truck in the garage for an hour.”

“Is Mallory okay?”

“He said she cried all afternoon. Not about us. About the whole thing. He said she told him he had to call.” Grady turned around and looked at me then. “He said to tell you he was sorry. He said he’d tell you himself, but he didn’t think you’d want to hear his voice tonight.”

I sat with that. I thought about the picture face down on his counter. I thought about Mallory at the sink rinsing a clean cup.

“Tell him I’m sorry too,” I said. “Not for posting it. I’m not sorry for that. But I’m sorry about their baby.”