I'm sorry, but I've got to protect our baby.

It was time for her contingency plan.

Chapter 17.

Parked outside the doctor's office, Joshua attempted again to reach Rachel on her cell. It was a quarter past two, and not only was she late for her appointment, she wasn't answering her phone, either.

Was she stuck in traffic and having cell connectivity issues? Or had she lied to him again?

Until lately, he never would have considered the latter possibility, and it disturbed him to harbor such doubts about her. But he couldn't help it-her recent behavior had been suspect.

He passed the next few minutes tapping the steering wheel and listening to Christmas music on the radio. Stevie Wonder was singing, "Someday at Christmas," one of Joshua's favorite holiday tunes, but the song failed to cheer him.

Something was wrong. He could feel it.

He called Rachel's cell again. Again, he got her voice mail.

Finally, he called the salon. One of the stylists told him that Rachel had left a short while ago for a personal appointment.

Joshua twisted the radio knob to a station that continuously broadcasted traffic news. In a city such as Atlanta where people drove like bandits, you never could discount the possibility that someone running late hadn't gotten delayed in a ten-car pileup somewhere.

But there were no traffic snarls on the South side.

Joshua went inside the doctor's office, identified himself to the receptionist, and asked if Rachel had called to say she was going to be late, or had requested to reschedule. The receptionist was a young black woman with a frizzy Jheri-curl. She eyed Joshua up and down in that appraising manner that black women often did, shook her head, and told him to advise his wife that she would have to pay a twenty-five dollar fee for missing her appointment without giving twenty-four-hours' advance notice.

"Right, I'll be sure to let her know." Joshua turned away.

Back in his Explorer, he called their house, on the remote chance that Rachel would be home. Surprisingly, she answered on the third ring.

"Hey, baby." Her voice was subdued, as if she had been asleep.

"Rachel, I've been here at the doctor's office for almost half an hour waiting for you. What happened?"

There was a long pause.

"Please . . . come home," she said. "I need to see you."

Anxiety crawled up his spine. "You don't sound good. Is everything okay?"

"Come home. Please." Her voice nearly broke on the word, "please."

Something was wrong, but she clearly didn't want to discuss it on the phone.

"I'm on my way."

At home, Joshua found Rachel on the sofa in the family room. Coco lay curled on her lap, slumbering.

Rachel smiled wanly. She wore a red terry cloth bathrobe, her legs folded beneath her, Indian style. A box of Kleenex stood on an end table; crumpled tissues lay on the table, and one was bunched in her lap.

Joshua had been prepared to question her about why she'd skipped her doctor's appointment, but one at her gave him pause.

"You've been crying," he said. "What's wrong?"

Rachel gently placed Coco on the floor, rose off the couch, and came to him.

"Hold me," she said.

Joshua held her. She was freshly bathed, the lemony fragrance of her body wash filling his nostrils. Her still-moist skin dampened the front of his shirt.

But when he felt her trembling, and heard her stifled sob, he realized that her tears, not bath water, were saturating him.

"Baby, what is it?" he asked. "Please, tell me."

She tilted her head backward, looked up at him. Tears shimmered in her eyes-eyes that held secrets and pain.

A horrifying thought came to him, something so awful he was afraid to put it into words. But he needed to know. "Is there something wrong with . . . our baby?"

She shook her head. Wiped her eyes.

Some of the tension drained out of him. "What is it?"

"Upstairs," she said. She slipped out of his embrace and went to the staircase, her robe billowing around her legs. Coco scampered after her.

"Rachel? Come back and talk to me."

But she disappeared upstairs. Why couldn't she tell him what was wrong?

He went upstairs. Rachel was in their bedroom, standing at the double-windows that overlooked the dense, winter-peeled woodlands beyond the back of their house.

Rachel had dropped her robe to the carpet; she was nude. In the blend of gray afternoon light and shadows, her rear profile was like a luscious illusion.

Joshua felt a warm rigidness stirring in his jeans. With all of the questions spinning through his thoughts, this was hardly the time for sex, but his body apparently had other ideas.

"Do you love me?" Rachel asked in a whisper, her back to him.

"Of course, I love you. I'll always love you."

"Will you?" She looked over her shoulder.

"Come on, Rachel." Joshua sat on the bed, almost squashing Coco; the tiny dog scrambled off the mattress and darted into her pet kennel on the nightstand. "I don't understand why you're acting like this."

"I love you, too." She moved away from the windows and in front of him. He felt heat radiating from her body, as if she was burning up with some inner flame. "I'll always love you . . . no matter what happens."

No matter what happens.

The words, ominous and mysterious, made him open his mouth to ask what she meant. But she put a hold on his questions by pressing her fingers to his lips, buttoning them shut.

Then she took one of his hands and placed it on her hip, as though offering her body to him.

His fingers lay against a long, faded scar that curved from her upper thigh to her hip. It looked as if the damage had been done with a knife. When he'd once asked her about it, she'd told him it had come from an old accident, and had promptly changed the subject.

As if aware of his inspection, she cupped the back of his head and pulled him forward. His lips brushed against her taut stomach.

She grasped his shirt, began to pull it off.

Although Joshua wanted to learn the reason for her sadness, he understood on an intuitive level that Rachel needed this intimacy with him, that it would salve her hurt spirit better than any words he might possibly speak. He would ask her questions about what had happened and many other things . . . but later. For now, he would do only what he had vowed to do on the day they married: love her.

Afterward, they lay together, tangled in bed sheets. The room was painted in shadows, their slow breaths the only sound in the room.

For Joshua, the post-orgasmic glow was as pleasurable as actual intercourse. As they lay together, enveloped in the warmth of their bodies, they might have been isolated in a cabin in some remote mountain range, sheltered from the troubles of the outside world.

Lying on her side as he lay on his back, Rachel placed her hand on his chest and playfully walked her fingers upward to his chin. Joshua took her fingers and kissed them.

"We need to get together more often in the afternoons," he said. "This is much better than taking a nap after lunch. Although I could use a nap now-you wore me out."

During their lovemaking, she'd been especially passionate, and her energy had inspired him to even greater feats of endurance and performance. Joshua's muscles were limp.

But Rachel's sadness, whatever its cause, seemed to have faded, for the most part, as though her body had burned it away during their lovemaking. Her eyes were bright and lively again.

"We won't be able to do this when the baby comes along," she said. "Hard to be spontaneous when you've got a newborn that needs constant attention."

"We'll manage." He gazed at her directly. "Why you were so upset earlier?"

She looked away to the shadowed ceiling. "I don't want to ruin the mood, baby. We'll discuss it at dinner."

"Fair enough." He rested his head on the pillow. He was relieved that she didn't want to discuss the subject then. He was enjoying the peacefulness of the moment.

You're too soft, man. What was all that crap you talked about putting Rachel on the spot and asking tough questions about how she's been acting lately?

His stern, interior voice was right, of course. There was much that he needed to speak to Rachel about, from her behavior that afternoon to her recent lies, but as much as those things upset him, he didn't necessarily want to talk about them.

His tendency to avoid conflict had always been a character flaw of his. Sometimes, he was convinced that was partly why Rachel was drawn to him. She loved him; he believed that. But it was reasonable to assume that she also loved how he never pushed her for answers to hard questions. Someone like her, whom he suspected had never been completely forthcoming about her past, would be attracted to a spouse who never probed too deep.

He'd thought his parents had a dysfunctional marriage, but in a way, his own marriage was equally screwy. That he was aware of it and was reluctant to force changes, however, made him wonder about how firm the foundation of their relationship really was. Was it built on solid ground, or sand? And did he really want a truthful answer to that question?

Rachel bent her arm and propped her hand against her head. "Speaking of dinner, what would you like me to cook?"

He yawned. "I can eat anything. Whatever you want to make is cool with me."

"I think I'll go to the grocery store, then." She sat up.

"Right now?"

"It's almost four. I want to beat the after-work hordes."

"Okay." He yawned again. "I'll be here. I'm going to take a nap."

"These hips worked you over, huh?" She rolled off the bed and tapped her bare backside. "Respect the booty, baby."

He laughed. "True dat."

He watched her dress in a powder blue jogging suit, Atlanta Braves cap, and sneakers. She came to the bed and kissed him lustily.

"I love you." She squeezed his hand. "Always."

"Always."

She left the room. He turned over in bed, and closed his eyes. He truly was wiped out; he'd slept fitfully the past two nights, and felt capable of sleeping from the afternoon through the following morning.

He never heard Rachel leave. He promptly fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was half-past six o'clock in the evening. Coco was at the bedroom door, which was closed; she was shivering in the distinctive way that Chihuahuas did, and something about her struck immediate fear in Joshua.

He flung aside the sheets and sprang out of bed.

"Rachel? Are you here?"

There was no answer. The house was dark and silent.

She'd been gone for over two hours. He couldn't imagine that a routine trip to the grocery store would take so much time.

He hurried downstairs.

On the kitchen table, he found a letter.

Chapter 18.

The kitchen was dark. Joshua flicked on a light switch.

The letter lay on the table, bracketed by the hurricane lamps they'd burned at dinner last night. A small silver key rested at the foot of the paper; it resembled one of those keys you might use to disengage a padlock.

Joshua did not immediately pick up the letter and read it. He wasn't sure that he wanted to.