Talking, Not Talking

Talking, Not Talking

“We need to talk.”

Dinah said as she stepped slowly into the living room from the kitchen, absentmindedly wiping her damp hands with a dish towel. Her mouth had gone dry, and she struggled to say the words because her lips started to stick to her teeth from anxiety! But still the words were soft and very controlled.

Across the room, her husband William sat at the computer sorting through work that had accumulated while they were away on vacation. The pale glow from the monitor flickered across his face as his fingers suddenly stilled above the keyboard. Not completely paying attention, he didn’t respond right away! Dinah walked closer to him, “William, did you hear me?” She had managed to wet her mouth a bit by taking a hard swallow and a deep, silent breath simultaneously!

For a brief second, the room felt painfully quiet as Dinah waited for his response. Suddenly, William snapped to attention. He spun around in his chair, slapped both hands against his lap, and jumped to his feet. “Okay,” he said, heading straight for the couch in preparation for their talk.

The eagerness in his readiness to talk shocked them both; he hid it, she could not. Dinah froze in the moment. Now that she had his attention, she would have to finish!

“Come here,” he said. Dinah felt even more anxious because of how quickly this all was happening!

She obeyed almost cautiously, and sat beside him, making sure to leave some space, but he pulled her closer and wrapped one arm around her and placed her other hand in his. His grip around her felt firm… and reassuring.

William loved Dinah very much, and she knew it!

She was not one of those wives who worried about another woman, being left alone by a workaholic husband, or just a man who had no clue! He knew how to make her feel safe and wanted! He always knew, even from their first date! He was always attentive and aware!

Dinah could not resist him; he was exactly what she had prayed for! Many, many times he’d said the same! Dinah wanted to just rest in his arms as she had done so many times before when there was something they needed to discuss! She'd tell him the issue and let him do what he did best: solve the problem!

But he couldn’t solve this problem; he'd just sat down to what she believed would be the last time he'd hold her that way again.

“You know,” he said with a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, “I've never said this. Normally, when you say those words, my stomach drops A little, and my knees get weak. But this time…” He paused, studying her face carefully. “I think I know what this is about.”

Dinah’s heartbeat stumbled. She stared at him in confusion! “What do you mean?” she said, nervously hoping he didn’t!

He sounded extremely calm and certain.

But there was no way he could have known.

How could he?

Dinah was pregnant. Pregnant with their first child.

The secret had followed her home from vacation like a shadow she could not outrun. More than once during the trip, she had almost told him. Candlelit dinners. Long walks by the water. Quiet mornings beside him while he slept peacefully, unaware. The words had risen into her throat again and again, but every time fear wrapped itself around her chest and silenced her.

Why would a woman need courage to tell her husband, who was crazy about her, that she was carrying his child?

Dinah had A secret she’d been keeping from William!

For years, she had been taking birth control pills without William knowing. Carefully. Faithfully. Quietly hiding the truth beneath smiles, hopeful conversations, and practiced affection whenever children were mentioned. She'd learned long ago how to pretend well enough so that no one questioned her sincerity.

They had even gone before their Pastor and church congregation, once asking for a prayer that God would bless them with a child!

There were many conversations between the two of them about God’s timing being perfect and how they would just be patient and that it wouldn’t matter if they never had children, because their love for one another wouldn’t change!

Dinah had two secrets! One was buried underneath the other so deep that there was no way William could ever suspect!

She didn’t want children! She never did; there was never a part of her that desired them! She was the 3rd of 5 children for her parents, and all of her siblings who are married are now parents themselves! They were Auntie and Uncle to them, and that was perfectly fine with her! Dinah thought motherhood was a burden that she never wanted to bear!

For years, Dinah prayed about the lack of desire, but nothing ever changed! She had A loving husband. A stable marriage. A beautiful home. A baby should have been the natural next step. At least that was what everyone believed. Only one person knew the truth.

Sarah.

Her closest friend had been the only person Dinah trusted enough to confess her true feelings to and now the fact that she was pregnant. Sarah had tried countless times to convince her that motherhood was not the prison Dinah imagined it to be. “It changes you,” Sarah would say warmly. “But in the best way.”

Sarah begged Dinah to tell William that she didn’t want children for years, but Dinah just couldn’t bring herself to break his heart! Now, Sarah begged her to tell him that she was pregnant while they were away, but she didn’t!

It had been three days since returning from their vacation, and she had a short window to get an abortion, and time was getting closer to when she would begin to show if she didn't do something!

William thought she was about to confess something else. Something he had already prepared himself to hear. His thumb brushed gently across her hand as he smiled at her and said, “I know, you want your mother to come and live with us!... I knew it all along!… As a matter of fact, I was going to bring it up to you on vacation, but I figured I’d wait to give you some more time to be sure, since you hadn’t brought it up yet!”

Dinah looked at William, completely confused.

Yes, she had wanted her mother to come live with them ever since her father passed away, but so had her other siblings wanted her to live with them. But her mother wasn’t even ready to have the conversation about possibly leaving and selling the home she had shared with Dinah’s father.

That wasn’t what this was about at all!

Still, Dinah sat quietly as William continued talking, going on and on about how much he would love to have her mother move in with them. He talked about how helpful it would be someday when they finally had children. He even chuckled softly, joking that his own mother would probably get jealous and insist on moving in too!

Right as William continued talking, Dinah could take it no more, she jumped up from beside him and blurted it out.

“I’m pregnant, William… and I don’t want to have children! I want to get an abortion!”

The words came pouring out of her mouth like a dam bursting beneath violent waves. Once she started speaking, she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t bring herself to look William in the face either.

She paced frantically across the room, head down, confessing everything all at once—how she had secretly been taking birth control pills all these years, how she didn’t even understand how she had gotten pregnant. She rambled about how she knew this was an act of God, but insisted she wasn’t ready to be a mother… that deep down, she never wanted to be a mother at all.

Tears streamed down her face as she apologized over and over for allowing him to believe a lie for so many years. But now that she was pregnant, all she felt was anger.

Not happiness.

Not excitement.

Just anger.

William slowly stood to his feet in utter disbelief at what he was hearing. The room suddenly felt smaller, heavier, as though the walls themselves were closing in around him. He grabbed Dinah by both arms, holding her still so he could look directly into her eyes.

“Are you telling me you’ve been taking birth control this entire time?” His voice cracked beneath the weight of the question. “Three years of lies… and now you’re pregnant with our child—our first child—and you don’t want it?”

William released her abruptly and grabbed his head in disbelief, as though it might fall from his shoulders if he didn’t hold onto it tightly.

Dinah stood frozen exactly where he left her, weeping silently. She dared not move—not out of fear, but out of respect for the damage she knew she had just done to the man she loved. The man she had prayed for.

…the man who had prayed for her.

Something in William had changed instantly, and it was written all over his face. He looked at her as though he was looking at an imposter standing in the middle of his home wearing his wife’s face, speaking the words of A stranger.

Dinah, an English teacher by profession, suddenly understood the full weight of a word she had read, taught, and heard countless times before:

Devastation.

William was completely devastated.

And so was she.

The silence between them became palpable; both of them stood frozen in the very places they had landed when she was finally freed from the lie, and he had become captured by it.

What would happen now, Dinah thought to herself, she didn’t play this completely out in her head! What would be his response and what could they do to compromise?... Is a compromise even possible? They were both Christians; their faith did not allow for what Donna was proposing! ...She knew this, but still!

Dinah turned slowly around, only to see that William had turned his back to her and was staring out of their bay window as if in a trance!

A husband who once believed his home was strong, safe, and certain now stood among the shattered remains of trust, broken apart by years of invisible deception from the only woman he had ever loved completely.

And somehow, the cruelest part of it all was this:

She wanted to abort their child.

“There is no way I could ever allow her to abort my baby,” William thought to himself. But the thought that she didn’t want to have his child was more than he could bear.

He loved her deeply and had always believed she loved him the same. There was no way she could love him and not his child that they had made together. What was he supposed to do? He was the man who fixed things. But how could he possibly fix this?... How could he change the way she felt about being a mother?... Was it even possible?... Both of their minds were racing with questions not spoken!

Something was also there waiting in the silent room with them—quiet, unseen, but somehow a sense of solace for them both. It was holding them there, blocking every exit and refusing to let either of them run.

It was love.

After what felt like forever, William finally came out of the trance-like silence that had held him captive. Dinah still hadn’t spoken a single word. Her tears had quieted, but the weight of everything she confessed still lingered heavily between them.

Slowly, William lifted his hand and motioned for her to come to him.

And she did.

This time, when he held her, it was different. There was pain in his embrace, heartbreak even, but somehow there was still love wrapped tightly around it all. To Dinah, it felt strangely familiar, like being wrapped in the arms of her father again. She thought back to the times when she was just a little girl and had done something wrong. After the correction, after the disappointment, her father would always pull her close and hold her tightly—not to shame her, not to condemn her, but to reassure her that his love had never moved.

No judgment.

Just love.

Dinah clung to William the same way now, one arm wrapped tightly around his neck while the other circled his waist as though she were afraid he might disappear if she loosened her grip. And for the first time since the truth left her mouth, she felt relief.

William took a long, trembling breath and rested his head gently against her arm, while she laid hers against his chest, listening to the broken rhythm of the heart she had wounded.

Neither of them spoke.

There was nothing left to say.

Two people standing in the middle of their living room in a desperate, unsure, but hopeful embrace. Listening to the silence with no thought of letting go.

The End

Written by: Wynette Worthy