Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [78]
Annie looked startled when I reached across the table and squeezed her hand, but she squeezed back gamely, smiling at me. “You must be so excited,” she said. “This must feel like it’s taking forever.”
“I can wait,” I told her. I’d waited for love, I’d waited for Marcus, and I could wait until May for the arrival of the baby who would serve as living, breathing, evidence of our love; the baby who would make us complete.
JULES
A fact I have learned as I’ve moved further away from childhood: if the telephone rings before seven a.m., it’s never good news.
In the predawn gray on a Thursday morning in October, the buzzing of my BlackBerry jolted me awake. Rajit, I thought, rolling over with my eyes still shut. I’d been in the office until eleven the night before, working on the common stock comparison for a footwear factory that one of our clients in Kansas was planning to acquire, and rather than bothering Kimmie, who went to bed at ten, I spent a rare night at home. Rajit had probably forgotten his passwords again (after being up all night doing cocaine, I suspected) and was calling me to get them.
I saw a Pittsburgh area code—not Rajit, then—and pressed the button that would connect the call. “Hello?”
I half expected I’d hear my father’s voice, but instead, there was a stranger on the other end of the line, a woman who sounded young and unsure of herself. “Is this Julia Strauss?”
I sat up, my mouth suddenly dry and my heart beating too loudly. “Yes.”
“This is Sergeant Potts with the Pittsburgh Police Department.” I knew then, before she had to say another word. “Your mother gave me your contact information. I’m calling about your father. I’m afraid I have bad news.”
“Is he...” I swallowed hard, my throat clicking. “Is he in trouble? Did he get arrested? Does he need...”
“We got a nine-one-one call this morning, just after five a.m. Your father’s girlfriend had found him unresponsive. The para-medics made attempts to resuscitate him, but...”
But.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” said Sergeant Potts, “your father is dead.”
I closed my eyes, holding perfectly still, like maybe if I didn’t move I could unhear what I’d just heard. Outside my door, my roommates were stirring around me, getting ready to start a normal day, Amanda plodding into the kitchen to make coffee, Wendy flushing the toilet and turning on the shower. “Ma’am?” the police officer said.
“How did it happen?”
“The investigation isn’t complete,” she said. “We’re still talking to people. Gathering evidence.”
“Were there drugs involved?”
Sergeant Potts paused.
“My dad was in rehab this summer,” I said. “He was in a halfway house for six weeks after that. He was going to meetings. I thought . . .” My voice caught in my throat. I thought he’d get clean. I thought he’d be grateful. I thought my sacrifice would have meant something.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
“Yeah,” I told her. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”
I left Rajit a message, telling him there’d been a death in my family and that I’d need the rest of the week off. I pulled my laptop out from under the bed, turned my back to the door, and called my mother. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, no.” I could picture her, in her blue robe, her hair in a ponytail, coffee mug in her hand, pitying me and Greg, of course, but maybe feeling relieved, too, glad that this was over, that