Regrets Only by Nancy Geary Page A

months he’d shared with Morgan receded into his distant past, he’d realized how very lucky he was to have survived an affair with his marriage intact. Little escaped the notice of Sherrill Bishop Nichols, but he’d managed for that brief season to pull it off. Perhaps she’d been too absorbed with her daughter or her pregnancy with their son to question his late nights at work or his weekend travel. But such distractions had been an aberration. He couldn’t do it again.
    And he didn’t want to jeopardize his current situation. Sherrill had been the winning lottery ticket for this son of a Baltimore Realtor. His father had supported a decidedly middle-class existence selling ranch-style homes and center-entrance Colonials in subdivisions with names like “Rolling Acres” and “Windy Hill.” Now Tripp lived in an eighteen-room mansion in Haverford with a full-time housekeeper and gardener. He and his wife shared a trainer twice a week. A personal assistant paid the insurance on his Infiniti, dropped off his dry cleaning, reminded him of his anniversary, and arranged for weekly floral deliveries to his wife, including larger bouquets for special occasions. He liked the comforts that came from marrying a woman with a substantial family fortune, a woman who asked for little by way of intimacy and wanted no part of intellectually or emotionally charged conversations. As long as he dressed appropriately and accompanied her to myriad social and charitable events, as long as his name appeared after hers on the photo-ready Crane’s Christmas card of their smiling children, as long as he didn’t embarrass her in any way, his life was easy.
    “I never terminated my pregnancy.” Morgan now stumbled, as if the weight of her words made her lose her balance.
    “What?” Instinctively, he looked around again, scanning the crowd for the telltale turquoise.
Please, Sherrill, stay away
, he thought, feeling sweat break out on his forehead.
    “I’d told you I was pregnant. I told you at the time it was your child.”
    “But . . . but . . .” he stammered, although he knew she was right. He couldn’t argue that point.
    He could still picture her sitting across the Formica table at Eddie’s Diner with a cup of lukewarm peppermint tea. She’d worn a pale blue sweater and gray flannel skirt. Psychiatric journals, papers, and patient folders were piled on the banquette next to her. She’d made her announcement with what he thought was dismay. She’d spoken of how much she wanted to finish her residency, to begin her practice, that she wasn’t sure she was prepared to revisit that plan. She’d given up her domesticity once because she’d believed in what she was doing. “You told me you’d had a vasectomy,” she’d said.
    And then he’d had to confess to the greatest lie of all. He’d never had surgery of any kind. She’d been so apprehensive about sleeping with him, about even the remotest possibility of getting pregnant, that he’d said that to reassure her while making himself sound more liberated, more egalitarian than he’d ever dreamed of being. He’d never expected the relationship to last past that first night, or ever to see her again. And the lay was worth the lie. “I have a family,” he’d said. “I can’t leave my wife. I can’t abandon my children.” Those words had sounded more pitiful than he’d intended.
    That look on her face—her mouth slightly agape, her head tilted, her nostrils flared—he’d never forget that. Had it been shock? Anger? Disbelief? It had taken her a moment but then her eyes had welled with tears. “I’m sorry,” he’d said, but he didn’t have to articulate anything more. They both knew instinctively that it ultimately didn’t matter what she decided because his mind was made up.
    She hadn’t said a word. She’d just stood, gathered her papers and journals into a bundle in her arms, and walked out. Two days later, he’d received a small ivory card upon which