Rock Wedding(49)

She didn’t answer for a long time. When she did, it was another punch to the gut. “What if my body can’t hold on to our baby?”

Abe didn’t know how to ease Sarah’s hurt, but he couldn’t stay silent when the guilt in her voice was a heavy, suffocating blanket. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “You did everything right.” He knew that without having been there for her second pregnancy, because during the first, she’d religiously followed all medical advice. “You hear me, Sarah? You did all you could. Some things in life we can’t control.”

Sarah didn’t answer.

It wasn’t until maybe an hour later that she stirred. Sliding out of his arms, she left without a word; he wanted to follow, see that she was all right, but he told himself to give her space. She knew he was here, his shoulders ready to help her bear this weight.

She returned after five minutes, having washed her face and redone the knot into which she’d twisted her curls. “We need to work out the logistics.”

Abe wasn’t surprised by her sudden calm. Sarah had always liked to organize things, had found serenity in ticking off items on a list. Back at the start of their marriage, she used to make lists for what he needed to pack when he went on tour. He’d find the list beside his phone, smile because she’d always add smiley faces next to stern warnings about essentials he couldn’t afford to forget if he didn’t want to be caught short. Those lists had been for fun anyway—Sarah had ended up packing for him more times than not.

He could still see her standing alone in the doorway, waving good-bye as he left her before that last tour. It would’ve been easy to convince himself that he didn’t know why he’d left her behind rather than bringing her along, but Abe was through with self-deluding lies. He hadn’t taken Sarah on tour because she’d meant too much to him. He’d been in no headspace to love anyone as much as he’d loved this sweet, smart, beautiful woman who’d tumbled unexpectedly into his life. So he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.

He’d been a coward and she’d paid the price for his spinelessness.

“I want to be there,” he said today. “For the whole deal.”

Sarah walked into the kitchen, busied herself chopping up ingredients for a salad. “We can work out visitation for after the baby is—”

“No, Sarah.” Having followed her, he took a seat on the stool directly opposite her, only the speckled gray of her counter between them. “I want to be there for the pregnancy too.” If she’d made a different decision, he’d have gone with her then too. “The scans and the vitamins and all that shit.”

Sarah’s knife stopped moving on the carrots she’d cut into teeny, tiny slivers. Huge, dark eyes lifted to his. “What?” Open disbelief.

He didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. It was time for him to man up and step up. No more hurting her because he was so fucking scared of how much she could hurt him if he let her in. No more being so terrified of losing her to death one day that he’d rather push her away. No more being an asshole who left her alone.

“I want to be there to drive you to the doctor’s,” he said, “and I want to be there when you find out if it’s a boy or a girl.” He took a deep breath, his chest shuddering with the force of his emotions. “I might have been a failure as a husband, but please give me the chance to be a good dad.”

Sarah blinked really fast, then returned her attention to the pale wood of her chopping board. Scraping the demolished carrot into a bowl, she picked up an orange bell pepper and, slicing it in half, began to clean out the seeds. “What about your music?”

The sharp words bit hard. But Sarah had more than earned the right to demand an answer, demand certain promises. “We’re not planning to tour again for at least a year or two, and any other appearances that come up, I’ll check first with you to make sure it doesn’t clash with baby-related stuff.”

Sarah began to cut the bell pepper into thin, rectangular pieces. “The others won’t mind? Fox, Noah, David?”

“Hell no.” He rubbed his face. “It was never about them, Sarah. You know my behavior was my responsibility.”

The magnificent Amazon who was his ex-wife continued to slice the bell pepper, her expression difficult to read. “It’s not a short-term commitment, Abe.”

Putting down the knife at last, she placed her hands on the counter and took a deep breath. “If… if this baby makes it”—one hand going to her belly—“he or she is going to need you always. Do you understand that? It doesn’t matter if life gets hard or if your addictions start howling, or if something horribly sad happens, you still have to be a dad.”