Love and Other Natural Disasters Read Online Free PDF

could carry on like that for over a year
and act entirely normal with me. He should have felt guilty every time he
looked at me, every time he looked at Jacob. He was betraying our family.
    If I hadn't overheard him tonight,
how long would he have continued behind my back? And how far would it have
gone? He'd resisted Laney once, but he hadn't ended their relationship. At the
word "relationship," I felt a bout of nausea. It worsened as I
thought of Jacob and the baby inside me. I'd always believed I was giving them
the best man I knew for a father.
    I was back in our bed, and nowhere
close to understanding, when the phone rang. It could only be him.
    "Hello," I said, my heart
at a canter.
    "Eve, let me come over.
Please. Can I come over?" Jon said in a rush.
    "No."
    "Please. I'm right by the
house."
    "That's not the point. How
close you are isn't the point."
    "You're right, okay? I've been
an asshole. Worse than an asshole. I don't want to be away from you, from our
life together. I'm sorry. Can I come and tell you in person how sorry I
am?"
    He'd put me in a position where I
couldn't believe him anymore. I felt the tears starting. "No, you can't
come here."
    "Please, Eve. Please." He
sounded like he was about to cry, too.
    "I can't believe you right
now. Should we talk when I can't believe anything you say?"
    "Yes."
    "I can't even look at
you."
    "Yes, you can. Please, Eve.
For Jacob. For our baby."
    "Don't bring her into
this!" I nearly shouted, and as I said it, I knew it was true. We were
having a girl.
    He was silent. I was silent. Then
he said softly, "You know it's a girl, too. I just realized it a little
while ago."
    At that, I wept too hard to talk. I
buried my face in the pillow and let the phone drop beside my head. He didn't
speak for a few minutes; then I heard my name over and over. I lifted the phone
to my ear.
    "Please let me come
over," he said.
    How could we recover from this? Six
weeks ago, he'd spent the day with Laney, he'd signed off to her with
"Love." He was a liar and a cheat and possibly in love with another
woman, and possibly not in love with me and...
    I exhaled, and surprised myself.
"Okay."
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Me wasn't kidding about being right by the house. Five minutes
after we'd hung up, he was knocking on the front door. It wasn't enough time to
develop a decent game plan, so I was operating on one principle only: Don't
tell him what you know. Don't tell him you read the e-mails.
    I felt shame at violating his
privacy, which felt like my own violation of our marriage vows, but perhaps
most shameful, I knew that if I showed my hand, I'd never be able to check up
on him again. He'd change his password, knowing I was the kind of person he had
to guard against. I hated that we'd arrived here, that neither of us deserved
to be trusted anymore.
    I looked at myself in the
full-length mirror affixed to the bedroom door. Wavy auburn hair (my natural
shade, no hair dye during pregnancy) with a halo of frizz to frame my face,
blotchy skin, wearing the rhino-sized flannel pajamas that were my greatest
comfort outside of chocolate. And, normally, Jon.
    It had been a long time since I'd
really considered my appearance and what Jon might think of it. The truth was,
I didn't look that much worse right then than I looked
normally. I lived in those pajamas. I put them on us early in the day as I
could get away with, sometimes cooking dinner in them. My skin was often broken
out during pregnancy, and I couldn't easily recall my last haircut. But I
wasn't supposed to spend my life worrying whether my husband found me
attractive. I wasn't supposed to have to worry whether there was a Laney somewhere,
pretty and thin and woe-is-me- ing her way through the
holidays. In Jon's mind, maybe I was one of those hearty women who can squat
down in the field and have their babies and then get back to plowing, and Laney
was off being a damsel in distress with a perfect manicure and a blowout.
    He was knocking again,