“Condom!”
“Oh, shit.” Gregory had pulled out of her, gotten on a condom, and they’d finished. Afterward, he’d fallen asleep, while Veronica had lain awake beside him, counting backward to the date of her last period, trying to convince herself that she’d be okay. They’d always used condoms, even the time in the alley. They’d always been careful. Surely she wouldn’t find herself in trouble because of this one brief lapse, she thought. Surely not.
Three weeks later, she missed her period. “It’s fine,” Lee said, holding her as she cried, and, of course, not understanding why she was crying. “Look. You’ll go to the doctor. Maybe it’s a false alarm. And if it’s not…” He held her face in his hands, which only made her think of Gregory. She’d swallowed hard as Lee said, “We were going to get married, anyhow. This just accelerates the timetable a bit.” Sick with shame, hating herself for deceiving this good, kind man, Ronnie had nodded. He’d been the one to call her doctor, and, after, he’d brought her a warm washcloth and tenderly wiped the tears off her face.
“I don’t deserve you,” she’d sniffled.
“Of course you do,” said Lee.
It will be his baby, Ronnie told herself a month later, when the doctor confirmed what two weeks of nonstop nausea had already suggested. Whatever the truth of it is, this baby is going to be Lee Weinberg’s son or daughter. Gregory had dark-blond hair, thick and straight. Lee’s hair was brown and wavy. Gregory’s skin was pale; Lee’s was darker, and it tanned easily in the summertime. Gregory was almost six feet tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted and graceful; Lee was a few inches shorter, with a tendency to stoop. Their faces and features were completely different—different noses, different cheeks, different foreheads, different chins. None of it mattered, Ronnie told herself fiercely. There was only the tiniest chance that Gregory was the father, and, even if it was true, this would be Lee’s baby. Lee would believe it. He had, Ronnie thought sadly, no reason to doubt her.
Then, at her six-month appointment, the doctor heard two heartbeats. “Twins!” he said, slapping Lee on the back. Lee’s face lit up with delight as Ronnie lay on her back, her legs still in the stirrups, frozen in shock, paralyzed with shame.
“We always said we wanted two,” Lee told her, down in the parking garage, as he hurried around the car （they’d already bought what Ronnie had dubbed the Inevitable Volvo） to hold the door open for her.
“Yes,” Ronnie said. She felt numb. She felt like her guilt was right there on her face, like Lee could see, and Dr. Sanderson could see, and astronauts in outer space could see what she had done.
The next morning, after Lee had gone to work, she called a gynecologist; not the one she used, a stranger whose name she’d pulled from the phone book at random. “Twins with different fathers?” the woman repeated, after Ronnie had introduced herself and said that she was researching a new novel. “It’s rare, but it does happen. Some months, a woman releases two eggs instead of one. If both of them end up being fertilized within a day or two, and then both successfully implant, you’ve got two babies with different dads. Of course, it’s much more likely that one man fathered both babies.”
Ronnie hoped the woman couldn’t hear the tremble of her voice. “So let’s say the twins have different fathers. Would her husband be able to tell right away? As soon as the babies were born?”
“Well, for example, if the fathers are different races, that would make it pretty obvious,” the doctor said dryly. “But beyond that, unless you did genetic testing, you wouldn’t be able to tell. If the babies don’t look too different, and if the husband has no reason to suspect that he’s not the father, your main character wouldn’t have much trouble pulling the wool over his eyes.” Ronnie felt sick. When the doctor paused, Ronnie was certain she was going to say This isn’t a theoretical question, is it? Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on? but instead, the doctor said, a little shyly, “Love your books, by the way.”
Ronnie thanked her and promised to send her a signed copy of After Dawn. She hung up the phone and sat at the kitchen table, with one hand resting on the ledge of her belly. Maybe both babies were Lee’s. Maybe both of them were Gregory’s. Maybe each man had fathered a baby. Should she try to find out the truth? And what would she do with that information, assuming that she could obtain it? Break my husband’s heart, she thought.