Cindy understood. For the first time in her memory she was most important to someone. She felt almost desperate in happiness. Eager. She had heard versions of the sex talk at school, from her mother, out of the mouths of classmates, and she’d been around farm animals all her life; the only thing about that evening that scared her was her fear that Paco would stop.

He didn’t. In fact he was attentive and gentle and enduring with Cindy until he had to return to his family in Mexico. They had four and a half weeks during which, most evenings, she managed to visit him.

Cindy didn’t get pregnant from her first affair (that happened a bit later, and luckily after she’d left home). But she enjoyed her experience with attention and power. Paco convinced her that with her looks, she need never be lonely. And he wasn’t the last handsome man to lodge in that outbuilding.

By the time Cindy left home at 19, she thought she was pretty good at sex. She was comfortable with men. She loved the power she achieved, when she knew a guy wanted her, as she let him have a little more. She started using her full name. She arrived in the city as Cynthia, and she soon found a secretarial job and a room in a 3-bedroom flat.

The changes were stimulating at first. She even found a friend in one of her flatmates, a hard-partying valley girl from southern California. They had some congenial adventures until Cynthia’s pregnancy, when Sandy threw rigid disapproval at her. As it happened Cynthia miscarried, but Sandy started morning-after critiques of Cynthia’s prior evening choices, and the weight of those critiques soon broke their friendship. Cynthia moved on to another flat, just like she moved on to other jobs and other men.

When I met her, Cynthia was 23 and getting hardened. She had never been with a male her age before. She expected me to come on to her and when I didn’t, she wondered if I was gay. After all, I talked to her about shoes and hair like a woman would, I didn’t use up the air between our faces when we conversed, and I made a point of not looking at her breasts.

We became friends. She got a job through my weird cousin Allie, who never found employment herself except a position in clerical placement, finding jobs for others. Allie sent Cynthia to my office, and she was hired to assist my boss’s partner, so we had adjacent work spaces and projects and meetings to share. Our conversations led to lunches. We had afterwork drinks a few times, but I didn’t enjoy those. Once she started drinking she was hard to stop. After three cocktails she started spilling cleavage and/or secrets. I think I first understood my attraction to her when I noticed how much it bothered me to watch her flirt with old business men. I don’t think I would have heard about her history if booze hadn’t loosened her tongue.

One of the definitions of a friend is someone who will help you move. We did that for each other. And I was there for her when her oldest brother died.

It was a tractor accident on the farm. No one ever determined whether George was inebriated or the machinery misfired. The event was sudden and final. I accompanied Cynthia on her travel home for the funeral and aftermath. And it was there, in the then-unused outbuilding, the night after George was buried, that Cynthia learned I’m not gay. It was good; I think she was sincere; it felt real.

She was so tender then. Looking back now, I’m sure she was grieving as much for her sad childhood as for her dead brother. Being on that farm and around her folks brought it all back for her. That’s when she told me about the pregnancies. She admitted that she’d been caught several times, and the three occasions that didn’t result in miscarriages sent her to the doctor to terminate. The procedure was called a therapeutic abortion. I’m all for choice, but I don’t understand what was therapeutic about them.

I hear it; that sounds bitter. I guess I am. Because I thought we’d have a family. When we decided to marry I thought it would be more than the two of us. Even though the sex was never as sweet after the first time, even though it became so infrequent we almost never did it except in hotels when traveling, Cynthia got pregnant at least once. And told me in no uncertain terms that she would not go through with it. She never wanted to be a parent. She terminated that gestation.

She may have had other abortions, after. I now know how much she stopped telling me. I guess I was her celibate phase. In our quarter century together, we had sex a few times a year. That was okay with me; I’m not the most highly sexed guy. And I trusted her absolutely. I wasn’t looking for trouble; I had no idea about her dalliances. Now I know about her boss and the rich restauranteur client, and the married Colombian guy we hired so often to do odd jobs around the house. I try not to figure how many I don’t know about.