Линси Сэндс - Meant to Be Immortal [calibre]

CJ shook her head at the memory. “And then it was the same as it had been while we were dating. He was away more than he was there, and I was working a lot. I didn’t mind too much at first, but after the first year I . . .” She shook her head. “It was nothing like my parents’ relationship,” she said finally. “Oh, he was sweet and attentive when he was there, but he was there so rarely . . . In truth, I didn’t really feel married,” CJ admitted with some of the bewilderment she’d felt at the time.

Sighing, she waved that thought away as the self-pity it was, and continued, “Three years passed like that. Basically, I felt more like I was married to my job, and he was the mistress on the side. Then I started to develop a paunch and throw up in the mornings.”

Mac sat up straight, his eyes wide. “You had a baby with him?”

CJ mentally gave him marks for sorting out what those symptoms meant so quickly. She’d been slower to cotton on to the issue. At first, she’d just thought she had a stomach flu or something. But then she realized she’d missed a couple of periods and she’d put two and two together. She didn’t say that, though; CJ simply went on with her story as if he hadn’t spoken.

“I took a home pregnancy test, and damned near fainted when it turned out positive. We were both workaholics. He was hardly ever there. We weren’t ready for a baby. But when I told Billy about it the next time he showed up, he was happy as hell. This was great to his mind. We could do this. We’d saved nearly enough money to put a down payment on a house and should be able to swing it before the baby was born. And he swore he’d work less and help out with the baby. Which I didn’t believe for a minute,” she assured him.

She might have been naïve when she got involved with Billy, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think a baby would change his habits. Marriage hadn’t, why would a baby? Besides, men weren’t known for loving the diaper routine. But he’d seemed so happy, and by that time CJ had started to come around to the idea of having a baby. It would mean taking pregnancy leave from work, and then finding a good nanny, but . . . A baby of her own, she’d thought with wonder. A little CJ or a little Billy. She’d started thinking about names and decided if it was a boy she would name him Johnathan after her father. A girl would be named Marge for her mom.

CJ didn’t tell Mac any of that. Instead, she said, “I went to my doctor to have it confirmed and get checked out, as you do.”

Mac nodded, but CJ didn’t speak again for a moment. Licking her lips, she thought about her next words and then said, “In Canada an HIV test is standard for pregnant women. In some provinces they don’t even tell the mother she’s being tested for it, but in Ontario they do tell you to be sure you don’t have an issue with it and I think you can refuse it if you want, but I didn’t care one way or another. I had been jabbed by a needle in a perp’s pocket while I was frisking him about a year before I started dating Billy. The guy had HIV, and I had to take meds and go in to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B, and syphilis every month for a year after, and every time I was freaked and stressed while I waited for the results. But every test was clean.

“And boy did I celebrate after the last one,” she admitted with a faint smile. “I went out with some cop friends and got pickled pink. That’s the night I caught Billy’s attention. He joined our party as just another member of the gang, but asked me out the following week and we started dating. I wouldn’t sleep with him at first, though. Knowing I was clean, I insisted on him getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, before I’d take that step. His tests came back clean too and he was the only person I’d slept with since then so I knew that I didn’t have HIV. But if it was standard procedure, and my doc wanted to check, that was fine.

“At least that’s what I thought at the time,” CJ said bitterly. “So, you can imagine how shocked I was when this test came back positive for HIV.”

Mac slid his hand forward on the tabletop to cover hers, but CJ withdrew from his touch. She could not take it just then. Straightening her shoulders, she soldiered on. “I won’t bore you with the drama that followed that revelation. Suffice to say that he was tested again and turned up positive too, and then there was a lot of denial on his part, and blaming me, saying it must have been because of that jab I got from the druggie’s needle. That a year of testing obviously hadn’t been enough, and I’d contracted it and probably given it to him. He made me feel so bad, so guilty, and so dirty. He acted like I’d tainted him, and told me I was lucky he loved me, or he’d divorce me for it.”

She paused to take another sip of coffee, and then said, “Word got out around the station, and interestingly enough, some of the other female officers started freaking out and getting tested. I wondered about that, and suspected he might have had affairs or something, but then Wally, one of Billy’s coworkers who oversaw the audio and video recordings of his undercover activities, came and told me that not only was it common knowledge that Billy had screwed half the female cops in our station, but when he was undercover he really ‘lived the life.’ Like really lived it: shooting up and screwing countless skanks and even prostitutes who hung out around the drug dealers. And he’d continued to do so after our marriage,” she added bitterly. “Wally said he was pretty sure that at least one of the prostitutes he’d been messing with for the last six months had HIV or maybe even full-blown AIDS, because she’d started looking really rough and losing weight the last three or four months.”

“Ah, Christ,” Mac muttered angrily.

“Yeah,” CJ breathed sadly. “Billy was nothing at all like my dad. He was just a really huge mistake.”

She peered down at her coffee cup, and gave it a half turn on the tabletop and then added woodenly, “I lost the baby.”

Mac started to reach for her hand again, but stopped when she stiffened. She hadn’t meant to, but didn’t think she could get through this if he touched her.

Acting as if that hadn’t happened, she said, “I guess my body didn’t handle all the stress and revelations well. Wally finished telling me what he had to say and I thanked him politely, like he’d just given me a weather outlook. Then I turned and started to walk away. I hadn’t taken three steps when these terrible cramps had me stopping and hunching over . . .”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mac said, his voice breaking. This time he didn’t reach for her hand. Instead, he was suddenly out of his seat and standing in front of her. Before that could even register with her, he’d scooped her out of her seat, taken it himself, and settled her in his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly. “So sorry you went through that.”

“It was bad. The baby was far enough along that . . .” She paused and shook her head. It didn’t matter. Every miscarriage was a loss and bad. Sighing, she said, “I quit my job. I just couldn’t handle everyone knowing everything about me like that. Besides, the other detectives acted like they were afraid to be around me. Like just being in the same room might give them HIV. So, I quit and took a job at CSIS while I went through the divorce. I worked there a couple years, and then switched to the SIU and here I am,” she finished wearily.

Mac cuddled her close and kissed the top of her head, murmuring, “Thank God for that. I might never have met you otherwise.”

For some reason that made CJ smile, and she quickly dashed away the tears now leaking down her face and cuddled into him, allowing him to comfort her. She felt like she was finally grieving for all that she’d lost: her baby, her marriage, the man she’d thought she was married to, and even her own innocence. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to cry since it had happened, and it actually made her feel better. She supposed his reaction helped. He wasn’t acting like she was tainted or dirty or stupid, or anything else she’d been telling herself the last several years. In her head, CJ knew that having the illness didn’t make her any of those things, but feelings didn’t always listen to the rational part of your brain, and she had felt like she was. But with Mac holding her and comforting her, she felt a little less like she was.