The Woman Next Door Read Free Page A

denial, months of reassuring each other that it was only a matter of time, they were starting to wonder if something was wrong.
    After examining Amanda, the doctor pronounced her healthy, then repeated the verdict when Graham joined them. Only when Graham flashed Amanda a broad smile and pulled her close did she allow herself to be relieved. “I was frightened,” she told the doctor, sheepish now that the worst had been denied. “People tell awful stories.”
    “Don’t listen.”
    “That’s sometimes easier said than done.” The worst storytellers were her sisters-in-law, and what could she do? She couldn’t turn and walk away when they were talking, and it wasn’t as if they spoke from personal experience. Their stories were about friends, or friends of friends. O’Learys didn’t have trouble making babies. Amanda and Graham were an anomaly.
    The doctor sat back in his chair, fingers laced over his middle in a fatherly way. “I’ve been at this for more than thirty years, so I know what problems look like. The only one I see here is impatience.”
    “Do you blame us?” Graham asked. “Amanda’s thirty-two. I’m thirty-eight.”
    “And married two years, you say? Trying for a baby for just one?
    That’s not very long.” He glanced at the notes he had scrawled earlier. “I’d wonder if it was stress, but you both seem happy with your work. Yes?”
    “Yes,” they both said. It had been another banner year.
    “And you enjoy living in Woodley?”
    “Very much,” Graham said. “The house is a dream.”
    “Same with the neighbors,” Amanda added. “There are six kids, with great parents. There’s an older couple—” She stopped short and gave Graham a stricken look.
    He pulled her closer. “June just died,” he told the doctor. “She was diagnosed with cancer and gone six weeks later. She was only sixty.”
    Amanda still felt the shock of it. “I barely knew June a year, but I loved her. Everyone did. She was like a mother— better than a mother. You could tell her anything. She’d listen and hear and make solutions seem simple. Ben’s lost without her.”
    “And what did June say about your getting pregnant?” the doctor asked.
    Amanda didn’t deny having discussed it with her. “She said to be patient, that it would happen.”
    The doctor nodded. “It will. Truly, you do look fine. Everything is where it should be. Your cycle is regular. We know you’re ovulating.”
    “But it’s been a year. The books say—”
    “Close the books,” he ordered. “Take your husband home and have fun.”
    ***
    For their third anniversary, Amanda and Graham drove into Manhattan to see a specialist. He was actually their third doctor. Thefirst had fallen by the wayside when he kept insisting that nothing was wrong—and it wasn’t that Amanda and Graham were convinced that there was, just that they thought a few tests were in order. So they met with the second, a local fertility specialist. He blamed their problem on age.
    “Fine,” Graham said, voicing the frustration he and Amanda shared, “so how do we deal with it?”
    The man shrugged. “You can’t turn back the clock.”
    Amanda reworded the question. “How do you treat . . . older couples who want to have kids?”
    Graham gawked at her. “Older couples? We average out at thirty-six. That’s not old.”
    She held up a hand, bidding him to let the doctor answer.
    “There are definitely things you can do,” the man said. “There’s AI. There’s IUI and ICSI. If all else fails, there’s IVF.”
    “Translate,” Graham ordered.
    “Yes, please,” Amanda added.
    “Haven’t you read up on this yet?” the doctor asked. “Most couples in your situation would have done research.”
    Amanda was taken aback. “The last doctor we saw kept saying nothing was wrong. He told us just to keep on doing what we were doing and not to worry about special procedures.”
    “Do you want a baby, or don’t you?” It was less question than