Chapter Text
The fact that Melissa’s chicken scallopini made Barbara suddenly feel sick to her stomach should’ve been a glaringly obvious sign of what was happening.
Not like the clues left behind by her husband when he was setting up to leave her, Barbara thought. No, she never picked up on those until it was too late and she cursed herself often for not noticing what he tried so desperately to convey to her.
They were both unhappy. They had been for a while. But Barbara was willing to wait out the storm while Gerald realized that the storm had long ago ended and what was left, the aftermath of it all, could not be repaired. And he tried to break it to her gently, give her out after out, hint after hint.
“Maybe therapy would be good for both of us,” he mentioned after he started seeing a therapist nearly a year prior who insisted that he needed couples counseling. With his wife.
“You know what’s really expensive? A divorce,” he said when Barbara began to think about Christmas shopping that year, saying that the girls’ wishlists were full of unnecessary and overpriced items.
“I’m gonna sleep on the couch,” he told her on a frigid night in January. She was half immersed in her book, half in her thoughts of something funny that had happened involving her best friend at work, and just nodded at him before he scoffed and walked out. Before she even realized that he’d left.
“He’s only out of work for a week, but I might be there for longer. I don’t know yet,” he informed Barbara and the girls before he kissed the younger two on the cheek and they waved him off, used to his traveling work schedule now. But Barbara didn’t get a kiss and she was aware that this wasn’t about work. He was visiting his brother and didn’t tell the ladies until the night before. But she couldn’t figure out why he’d kept it to himself for so long. Or perhaps she didn’t care because she let out a sigh of relief once he was gone.
“Can we call Melissa and have a movie night?!” six year old Taylor exclaimed, unsurprisingly interrupting the pattern Gerald had set in place. They’d been spending a lot of time with Melissa over the past few years, and especially during the last eight months or so.
And Barbara just smiled at the girls, nearly beaming. “You know, I bet she’d like the company,” she nodded, having heard that she and Joe were officially divorced and the paperwork finally showed up.
“You sure about this?” Gerald asked his wife nearly a month later after he finally returned home.
Melissa had been the one who persuaded Barb to pay more attention to her husband and she hoped that jumping in bed with him would work on some level. But after they fucked, Barbara rolled over with her eyes wide open, scared that she couldn’t remember Gerald being the way he was with her the last time she’d been intimate with him.
But it all felt different.
He was rougher, he seemed so distant. Didn’t tell her he loved her during or afterward. Didn’t even let her finish, which was so unlike him.
And Barbara felt so dirty . Something she’d never experienced before. And it made her stomach churn.
She felt the bed shift and knew he’d gotten up, and she curled up into herself before she felt tears on her face. She hadn’t expected this to happen, but if she was never consciously aware that something was wrong between them before, she certainly was now.
And two weeks later, when he told her he wanted a divorce, she understood that night together better. He wasn’t in love with someone else, but he wasn’t in love with her anymore, either. Or maybe he was, she decided, and maybe he had to get out for his own reasons. Barbara wasn’t sure.
“Do you want to see the girls?” she remembered asking him when they met up in the lawyer’s office nearly a month later. She realized that with the timing of it all, this was going to be a quick divorce if he could help it. But he hadn’t seen his daughters in as long as it had been since she’d been served the papers and she was struggling with that, maybe even more than the girls were.
“I don’t think I should right now, Barb. I’m not in a good frame of mind. Why don’t you look after them for a while? I’ll send you money or whatever you need. But I think it’s best right now if I stay away and figure out what to do next,” he’d explained before they parted ways.
Barbara cried all the way to Melissa’s place where the girls were helping the second grade teacher make cookies. She’d taken them while Barb went to the arbitration meeting so that the woman didn’t have to drag them along or try to find childcare. And Melissa didn’t mind, she loved spending time with the girls. But when their mother came through the door with tears in her eyes, Melissa asked them if they minded “washing” the dishes (with warm water) while she went to talk with Barbara about what happened.
“He doesn’t want to see the girls.”
“What?” Melissa’s face must’ve said it all because Barbara’s tears began flowing. “How could he not want to see them?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what caused all of this,” she slumped back slightly and Melissa pulled her into her embrace. “He’s just so upset with me.”
“Hey, why don’t you and the girls stay here for the night? Might help get your mind off of things.”
Barbara shook her head. “All of our stuff is back home,” she swallowed hard, knowing how silly it would be to try to lug things to Melissa’s for an evening. “How about you come to mine instead? You could sleep in the guest room.”
Melissa smiled with a nod after letting her go. “Yeah. That sounds good. You wanna take a bit to collect yourself? I can bring the girls when I head over, we can finish making our cookies and I’ll grab a change of clothes. Just leave me Gina’s booster seat.”
Barb hugged the woman as tightly as she could for a moment. Something about Melissa’s kindness and thoughtfulness in the moment just got to her. “Thank you,” she managed with a shaky voice, before wiping her eyes and ducking into the kitchen.
“You wanna invite Melissa over tonight?”
“For dinner?” Taylor’s eyes dazzled as she looked at her mother.
“For dinner and maybe if she wants to sleep over, we could have a movie night,” Barbara suggested as the girls clapped excitedly.
“Yeah!”
“Alright, you have to ask her. And if she says yes, I’ve gotta go tidy up. Are you girls okay to stay with her and help her finish the cookies?”
They both nodded at Barbara who pulled them into a group hug. And with that, the plans were set into motion.
But Melissa didn’t leave after that first night. In fact, she spent a couple of weeks at Barbara’s house, checking in on her own place every few days or so.
And after school on a Thursday night, Barbara had requested chicken scallopini, which had always been one of her favorite dishes that Melissa made. But the second she saw it in front of her, the moment she smelled the chicken so close to her face, she could feel her stomach gurgle with upset.
“Oh, God,” she barely had time to make it to the bathroom before she vomited.
Later that night, once everything had settled down and the girls were tucked in, Melissa knocked on Barbara’s bedroom door gently.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“When were you gonna tell me that you’re pregnant?”
Barbara frowned at her. She was not a doctor nor was she even close to being right. But Barbara didn’t dwell on it for long before she set Melissa straight. “I’m not. I just got a wave of nausea. I’m fine.”
“You had an aversion to meat with Taylor and Gina, too, remember?”
“I’m not pregnant! There’s no way—” Barbara began before she cut herself off, thinking back to that awful last night in bed with her ex. Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about how they hadn’t used protection, about how she hadn’t had her period in a while even though she thought it was coming a few weeks back, but she had chalked its absence up to stress. She calculated how far along she would be in her mind and sure enough, nine weeks out was about the time she stopped being able to eat meat products with the girls, too. “Mel?”
“We’ll get a test tomorrow on the way to school,” she reassured her, sitting down beside her in bed, realizing that Barbara hadn’t even put it together in her mind. She suddenly felt terrible that she’d been the one to tell her best friend what she thought Barbara already knew. “It’ll be okay.”
And even though Barbara hadn’t seen it coming, she knew just as Melissa did now that it was true. She really had to be more observant, pick up on more happenings around her, feelings she had, words people alluded to. But those thoughts were for another day, she decided. For now, she had to decide what she was going to do.