"Morgy, are you there?"
"I'm here. And I guess the answer is, I'm still trying to decide. Like I said, he's into Eastern medicine and Native American . . . I'm not sure what. But if I need you, are you still in the project?"
"What do you mean?"
"Darlin', don't play dumb. You know exactly what I mean. Could you come back if I needed you? Really needed you?"
There was a long pause, wherein the milliseconds dragged by like hours. Trees were gliding past, throwing shadows on
my windshield, and I still felt vaguely dizzy. I also had a residual ache in my abdomen where Alex Goddard had given me those damned muscle-relaxant shots. Why was I even considering going back?
Finally: "You're not making this easy, you know. Down here, without our . . . project on the front burner every day, I've been reassessing . . . well, a lot of things. If we had a baby, it would turn our lives upside down. I mean, it's not like we just bought a sheepdog and chipped in on the grooming. This is a human life we're talking about. Are we really prepared to do justice to a child?"
There it was. I didn't know whether I wanted to burst into tears, or strangle the man.
"Well, why don't you just think about it," I told him. "This doesn't sound like a conversation we should be having on a cell phone." Blast him. "If that's the way you feel now, then I might just have a baby on my own." How, I wasn't sure. I'd been so certain we were a couple, I'd not given it any real thought. "Or then again, I might just go ahead and adopt, with or without you."
"Look, I'm not saying I won't do it. I'm just saying it's not a trivial thing." He paused. "So where does that leave us?"