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                                    The Case

He had to know her deeper feelings.  He would have to delve.  It was essential to the case.  Anyone who thought that emotions didn't matter in the long run was a fool.

He had never known a woman who had aborted a fetus, except for Jessica, of course.  And, there were certain circumstances there.  In his analysis, he would have to weed out those important differences.

In Becca Stevens' case, she had been impregnated by her husband.  Everything about it was quite orthodox.  The emotionalism that resulted, then, became the expression of a natural loss. 

With Jessica, the truth was never really known.  That complicated the equation, to a large degree.  Strictly as a hypothetical, he could suppose the child had been his, but if that were true, then why had she moved so suddenly and unannounced to terminate the pregnancy?

The entire relevancy lay, of course, in the undeniable damage to a woman's psyche that came from the clinical death of what once had been growing inside her.

No less germane to the comparison was the fact that Becca Stevens' abortion was not the result of a premeditated act on her part.

How many times had he lain awake listening to the faint sounds of tears and of Jessica's restlessness?  She had been affected.  That was clear.  He hadn't meant to hurt her, if indeed he had.  In a certain way, he felt it was a question of propriety.  If she were in love with someone else, where was the benefit to further passion?

The phone rang four times before he answered it.  Jessica was obviously asleep.  The resonance of his voice reached out into the room, but it seemed the caller was not inclined to respond; to his voice, anyway.  He sat for some moments more, slowly savoring the residuum of the golden cognac.  In a court of law, there was a fascinating format of inquiring into a situation's truth.  It was very simple, really.  With a witness under oath and on the stand, there was to be a question first, and then an answer.  Another question, and one answer more.

In a certain sense, he had come to grips with the situation.  Despite the time and emotions saved by that kind of settlement of affairs, he had often wondered in this last year what would have been borne of a true inquiry, and what the answer would have been, had he asked that first question.  "Why, Jessica?  Why?"