“What does this one say?” Rob asked, standing in the master bathroom near the sink with his back to me.

“It’s positive, like the last two, so can we put an end to the farce – clearly I’m pregnant.” I said as I handed him the third pregnancy test I had taken for him in the last half hour, making my way to go sit down on the bed.

In the bedroom I contemplated the bed, the bed that had been our bed and I decided to make my way to the living room instead. I sat down on the sofa and found that I couldn’t get comfortable, every fiber of my being reminded me that this wasn’t my home anymore, I didn’t want to be there. He had followed me into the living room and sat down in his recliner but was eyeing me warily. The was silence between us, not the companionable silence that comes with intimacy a new uneasy silence.

I could feel tears threatening to fill my eyes. This had been my home, and he had been my love, were we really reduced to this? He distrusted me so much that I had been asked to take not one, but THREE pregnancy tests. We could hardly hold a civilized discussion.

I had called Rob no less than a dozen times before he finally answered, realizing I was not going to stop calling until I got to talk to him. I explained the situation calmly and concisely – I was pregnant and I planned on placing the baby for adoption, I was only calling him because he had to sign paperwork as well. (Frankly, I didn’t really want to have this conversation over the phone but my concern was that I would never get him face to face with a cryptic “we need to talk” message.)

“Emily is going to be very unhappy about this,” he said putting an end to the akward silence.

It was the wrong thing to say, like striking a match to kindling, my sadness flared into anger with that one statement.

“Your new girlfriend’s happiness is really the least of my concerns right now,” I said as I rose to my feet and started for the door.

“Hey wait,” he said as he jumped to his feet and gently grabbed my arm, “I’m sorry it was the first thing that came to my mind.”

“How lucky for me that when I tell you I’m pregnant, her happiness is the first thing that comes to your mind,” I said bitterly, this was not going the way I had planned.

“Look, sit back down, let’s talk about this,” he said.

I sat back down, even less comfortably, on the edge of the sofa. I was ready to bolt for the door in case things took a turn for the worst.

“You know that I won’t be paying you any child support, right?” He blurted out.

The only good thing about Rob’s statement is that I was so shocked, I couldn’t make a break for it. He knocked the wind out of me.

“What?” I asked

“I won’t be paying you any child support if you change your mind and decide to keep the baby.”

I thought I was angry before, when he brought up Emily, but now I was irate.

“First and foremost, IF I decided to keep the baby, you are legally obligated to help support YOUR child, no matter what your intentions are,”

“I will leave the country before I pay you a dime in child support,” he interrupted me.

My eyes narrowed but I continued on as though I had not been interrupted “and secondly, conversations like this are exactly why I think it would be better if we placed the baby for adoption. We can’t hold a civilized conversation, let alone co-parent a child.”

I was on my feet and out the door before he could respond. I made it as far as the front porch when a wave of nausea crashed over me and I bent over and threw up in the bushes and that was where he found me.

Sitting on the front porch in the afternoon sun, after I had thrown up on the zinnas, we had a much calmer discussion. Maybe he had realized I wasn’t the enemy, this wasn’t a ploy to trap him, I had an adoption plan and really and truly if I could’ve not involved him, I wouldn’t have. Maybe seeing me in a weakened state brought out some of the tender feelings that he still had for me, somewhere underneath all the drama. Perhaps it was just that the porch was a safer, more neutral location, but calmly and civilly we discussed “our” adoption plan. (I was a little disgruntled that he was suddenly acting like he had been responsible in making the adoption plan, but as long as it got his signature on the dotted line I wasn’t going to split hairs.)

I calmly and rationally explained my search for an adoption attorney, what Mary had said when she talked to me, and where things would go from here.

“So what do you need from me?” he asked in a tentative voice, and I felt more relaxed.

We discussed and debated and in the end we agreed to three things -

First and foremost, he was not going to discuss the pregnancy at work. We lived in a small town, at the heart of which is a miltary base where Rob worked. Someday, his job would take him out of this town and I didn’t forever want to be known as the girl he got pregnant. I had already learned that gossip spread like wildfire across the base.

Second, Rob did not want to tell his parents. They lived out of State and were all ready out of sorts with him, because earlier this year he had relinquished parental rights to his daughter from his first marriage. His daughter was not quite six months when he and his wife had divorced and now that his ex-wife was getting married and the little girl was two, he felt like it was the right thing to do. (I had noticed that after he relinquished his rights his relationship with his ex-wife improved and even the way he felt about his daughter seemed to change for the better.) He didn’t think that they could survive losing another grandchild. I had only met his Father and liked him alot, but since they were no longer part of my family, I agreed to whatever was best for Rob.

Finally, Rob said he was going to cancel Emily’s two week visit. I did not ask him to this concession, but I was relieved when he made the offer. He was adamant that I was going to need a strong support network to get me through my pregnancy and he wanted to make himself available to me at any time of the day or night. He told me stories about the day his ex-wife woke up and couldn’t stand raw chicken and he had been forced to remove all of it from the house while she was sick in the bathroom.

For all the hurt and ugliness that this meeting started with, it ended on a note that I felt was hopeful. Rob and I were united in one thing – we wanted what was best for the baby. I was certain as long as we could keep our focus on the baby everything else would just fall into place.

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