One Cold Night

his hand, which had settled behind her ear. Her fingers felt so warm. “You?”
    He nodded. “I’m used to it.”
    “Dave, we need to talk.”
    “I know we do.”
    But after all these hours, when they finally had their chance, she fell silent. He took a metal folding chair from against the wall, fanned it open and sat solidly facing her. And waited. She seemed unable to begin.Her silence unnerved him, and he felt he had to help her, jump-start the conversation if he could.
    “I think Lisa’s all right,” he said. “I think she’s taking a long walk somewhere, fuming over whatever happened between you two. I think she started the yellow line, then changed her mind and threw the paintbrush in one of her fits, just at something she was thinking. My God, think of the hormones raging inside a kid at the age of fourteen.”
    “It was a man’s footprint, Dave. You said so yourself.”
    “Someone came along and stepped in the paint after she changed her mind about the line and ran off—”
    “The police are taking this pretty seriously,” she said.
    “Of course they are, as they should. We have to take these things seriously, just in case, but the thing is, Susan—”
    She sat forward suddenly. “Lisa is mine.” Her eyes settled uneasily on his face, waiting for his reaction.
    At first he didn’t realize what she was saying. Then he felt a coolness emanate from his stomach and seep into his muscles. A coolness and nausea, like the sudden illness that befell him once while riding to work on the subway. He had fainted, been checked out by the doctor that afternoon and pronounced in excellent health. His colleagues had called him “pregnant woman” and “wimp” and “old lady” because worrying over one another’s health was something the guys at the precinct did not openly do. He was a man, a cop, and he didn’t get sick for no apparent reason. And he did not get sick from words.
    But these were not just words. “Lisa is mine,” she had just said. Meaning Lisa belonged to her? Meaning Lisa was... He knew what it meant; Susan couldn’thave been clearer. Lisa had been about to launch a search for her birth parents, and they had fought and Lisa had stormed out and was missing now. He knew what it meant.
    “I was fifteen when I had her.” Susan’s voice was soft; it was the same voice that whispered “I love you” in his ear when they had made love that morning; the voice that had insisted she was not ready to have a baby. “I’m sorry I never told you, Dave, I just...”
    She stopped talking. He waited. This was nothing like what he’d expected her to tell him tonight. It had never once occurred to him that Susan could have been Lisa’s birth mother; that concept and all that went with it had not once crossed his mind; never.
    “I wanted to tell Lisa first,” she said, “but I didn’t know how, and time kept passing.”
    “And you told her tonight.”
    She nodded, keeping her expression still and her eyes on his face. “I’m sorry it took so long. I’ve been working it out. It hasn’t been easy.”
    He got up and paced the small office, hands jammed in his pockets, eyes grazing her, then darting away. It hurt to look at her now, which seemed absurd. She was the same person she’d been five minutes ago; nothing had changed; nothing had to change... did it?
    “You said you didn’t know if you wanted children,” he said, aware of a growing inner bafflement, an itch of betrayal. “But you never said you already had one.”
    “I gave birth to her,” Susan said in a quiet voice, “but I didn’t raise her.”
    “What?” He stopped pacing and faced her.
    “I gave birth to her, but—”
    “Okay, I heard you. I heard you.” He folded thechair back up, rested it against the wall and resumed his pacing and thinking and pushing away of the cool tentacles that were creeping through his insides.
    “Dave, I wasn’t ready for a baby at fifteen. I didn’t raise her because I wasn’t equipped to be a mother then.”
    “But you did raise her, in a way. You kept her.”
    “My parents kept her. I did what they thought was right.”
    “So you’re telling me you didn’t want her. That even then you knew you didn’t want children. You got pregnant, and because your parents didn’t believe in abortion they adopted her themselves.”
    “I never said I didn’t want her!”
    He realized his summary had sounded chilly, but wasn’t it essentially true? She might have had an