Slice by William Patterson Page A

over in his chair in the morning.
    â€œHoney,” Aunt Paulette had said to her, “maybe he’s . . . maybe he’s avoiding something.”
    â€œAvoiding something?” Monica had asked.
    â€œSounds to me like he’s losing interest in intimacy.”
    â€œThat’s crazy!”
    â€œDon’t be angry, honey. I’m just getting a vibe that he’s using work to avoid being close. . . . Maybe you ought to see a counselor.”
    That had really enraged Monica. Her nutty old aunt’s “vibe” was wrong. Todd was trying to make sure he didn’t lose his job. He was trying to guarantee their income stayed high because soon, very soon, Monica wanted to have a baby—
    She thought the hardest part of today hadn’t been Bryan or Heather or anything else. It had been watching Jessie and Abby together. How badly Monica wanted a child. Bearing Todd a son or a daughter would really bond them together. But they’d been trying for more than six years now. They’d seen all sorts of specialists and Monica had tried all sorts of fertility drugs, but nothing had helped. Doctors had determined the problem was with her, not Todd; it wasn’t that she was completely infertile, just that it was very, very difficult for her to get pregnant. For a while, to increase their odds, they had been having sex all of the time, practically nonstop, in fact—on the kitchen table, outside in the yard—hoping one of those times would be the charm. But in last few years all that frantic sexual activity had dwindled off, and by now they’d stopped talking about having a baby altogether. Adoption was out of the picture; Todd insisted he wanted a kid who carried on his genes. And Monica wanted so desperately to give it to him.
    She was being punished.
    There were times she truly felt that way. If she believed in fate and karma and all that craziness Mom used to talk about, she might even be convinced of the fact. Monica lived with a secret, something she’d never confided to anyone, something she kept down deep in the darkness of her mind and tried not to remember. In her junior year of high school, she’d deliberately gotten Todd—her sister’s boyfriend—drunk, and then had sex with him in the back of his car. Jessie had been home with the flu; Monica and Todd had gone out with a bunch of other friends, one of whom had snuck out a couple of bottles of Jack Daniel’s from his father’s liquor cabinet. Monica kept pushing Todd to take another swig of the whisky, daring him to drink it all.
    She’d had a crush on him for months; she’d hated the fact that Jessie had won him and she hadn’t. Monica was very bitter that Jessie always seemed to get whatever she wanted. The teachers at school all thought Jessie was so smart and so clever; their friends all preferred Jessie to her, since Jessie was funny and warm and always offered such good advice to problems. Mom certainly favored Jessie—they were like two peas in a pod—and even though Dad always said Monica was “just like” him, Monica suspected that even Dad, deep down, had a respect for Jessie that he didn’t have for her. So, for as long as Monica could remember, she’d envied her sister.
    Stealing her boyfriend, she’d reasoned, would balance things out.
    Monica had hoped that having sex with Todd—something she knew Jessie refused him—would win him over. But it hadn’t. The morning after, he’d told her it had been a mistake, that he still cared about Jessie. That was when the plot hatched in Monica’s mind. A couple of weeks later, she informed Todd that she had missed her period. It was a lie. But the fear that she might be pregnant with his child brought them into conspiracy together. Todd accompanied her to Planned Parenthood, where she had the pregnancy test. She insisted he wait for her outside. When she came out, Monica lied again and