Halfway to Forever

  She would be a mother again.

  “Hi …” She set her fingertips on Alicia’s tombstone and dusted off a layer of dirt. “I have something to tell you.”

  A crow sounded in the distance. This visit was for peace of mind and nothing more. Hannah’s precious oldest daughter would never have questioned her intentions, never have doubted her place in Hannah’s heart. Her fingers stopped moving and settled over Alicia’s name.

  “Matt and I have decided to … to adopt a little girl.” Her voice broke, and from behind her sunglasses tears trickled down her face and dripped off her chin.

  She waited until she could find her voice. “After … after the accident I couldn’t imagine ever loving another man,” Hannah wiped the back of her hand across her wet chin. “Or another daughter.” A sound that was part laugh, part sob slipped from her lips. “But here I am, happy, married, and … convinced God has another daughter for me somewhere out there.”

  The traffic hummed from the road behind her. “You understand, right, Alicia? I’m not trying to … to replace you, honey.” She sniffed. “The bond you and I shared, the one you and Jenny shared, that’s something none of us will ever have again. Not like it was.”

  Hannah paused and gazed up, willing herself to see beyond the blue to the place where Tom and Alicia now lived and loved and laughed.

  Gradually her eyes shifted back to the tombstones. “I saw a documentary last night about kids in America, kids waiting for someone to love them, and … I don’t know … something inside me snapped.” She shrugged and managed a smile despite the fresh tears on her cheeks. “I can’t have more babies. We’ve known that since Jenny was born. But adoption?” She sniffed. “I wasn’t sure I could do it … until last night. Then, all of a sudden, I knew. I could open my heart to another little girl.”

  The background noise faded. Hannah traced the A in Alicia’s name, pushing away the dirt that had gathered there. “We’ll adopt a toddler, someone who needs a second chance at life.” She blinked, and two more tears slid off the tip of her nose onto Alicia’s stone. “I don’t know where she is … or who she is. But I know she’s out there somewhere. And I wanted you to know bec–”

  There was a catch in Hannah’s voice, and she held the sobs at bay. “Because she’ll be your sister.”

  Hannah closed her eyes again and waited. The image of her oldest daughter grew clear in her mind once more. “Alicia …”

  There she was. The smile, the honey blonde hair, the warmth in her eyes … it was all as close and real as if she were standing there in person.

  There were no words, but a distinct sense of approval pierced the darkness. The feeling swelled, and Hannah had no doubts. God wanted her to know Alicia would have supported this decision with her whole being.

  Hannah ached to reach out and pull the image of her daughter close, but the lines began to blur. As they did, peace oozed between the cracks in Hannah’s heart. It was okay to let her daughter’s memory fade for now. The visit had reminded her once more that she no longer needed to feel the pain of Alicia’s and Tom’s deaths with every excruciating breath, but only as a sad truth that simply was and could not be changed.

  Hope wrapped its arms around her as she opened her eyes. It was time to go home, time to let Matt and Jenny know what she’d decided. Of course, Jade and Tanner Eastman would want to know, too. The couple had become their best friends these past years. They’d been there while Matt and Hannah walked through a year of collecting documents and filling out adoption forms, gathering letters and completing a dossier.

  The Eastmans understood. They were desperate to have a baby, but so far hadn’t been able.

  Despite Hannah’s tears, a smile tugged at her lips. Yes, Jade and Tanner would be thrilled that Hannah was finally ready to move forward.

  She let her eyes settle on Tom’s tombstone. “Pray for us, Tom.” Two tears landed near his name, and she wiped her cheeks with her fingertips. “Pray for the little girl … whoever she is.”

  Once more she looked back at the stone, at Alicia’s name carved in it. “One more thing, honey. When we bring her home and … and people ask me how many girls I have.” Hannah wiped at her tears again. “I’ll always tell them three. Two who live here with me … and one who lives in heaven.”

  Two

  The day had been nothing but salty sea breeze and endless blue skies. Matt and Hannah were gathered on the back deck of their beach home, their picnic with the Eastmans in full swing. They sat there, eating, overlooking the surf and a blazing sunset, and Matt reached for Hannah’s hand. He set his burger down on the paper plate and looked around the picnic table at the others—their own precious eighteen-year-old Jenny, and Jade and Tanner Eastman and their thirteen-year-old son, Ty.

  “We have something to tell you.” He smiled at Hannah, and his presence soothed her soul the way it had since the first day they met. She leaned against him. They had already told Jenny their plans, and Hannah thought her response had been positive. Guarded maybe, but good all the same.

  Matt went on. “We contacted our social worker yesterday … and gave her the green light.”

  Jade’s eyes lit up and she clasped her hands together as she caught Hannah’s gaze. “Are you serious? You’ve decided to—”

  “Yes.” Hannah smiled, and the accomplishment in that one single word hung like a gold medal around her neck. How far she’d come since that awful August day four years ago, how greatly God had blessed them. And suddenly—surrounded by the people she loved, enjoying a barbecue on the deck of the beach-side home she and Matt and Jenny shared—the sum of all they’d been and all they were … all they were about to be … was almost overwhelming. “Yes,” she said again. “We’re ready to adopt.”

  Tanner’s face broke into a grin and he reached across the table to shake Matt’s hand. “Congratulations.”

  There was a brief flicker of sadness in Tanner’s eyes, and Hannah understood. Tanner and Jade wanted more children, but since marrying more than a year ago, Jade had miscarried once and been unable to get pregnant since then. Hannah’s heart went out to her friends, and though neither of them mentioned their own situation, she knew what they had to be feeling.

  Tanner swung his arm over Jade’s shoulders. “So, the world’s best business partner is going to have a little one running around, huh?” He leaned back in his chair. “Okay, don’t keep us waiting.” He took a bite of his burger, and a blob of ketchup landed squarely on his khaki button-down shirt. “Give us the—”

  Hannah and Jade exchanged a look, and they both giggled.

  Tanner finished chewing. “What?” He looked around the table.

  Matt smothered a grin with his hand, and Jenny and Ty laughed into their napkins.

  Jade was the first to rescue her husband. She pointed to his shirt, and Tanner glanced down. He chuckled and shook his head. “That settles it. Someone else will have to teach the Bronzans’ new little girl how to eat.”

  Hannah and Jade locked eyes again and burst out laughing. How often had their good-looking, powerful husbands spilled a drink or stained a shirt or broken a chair at their legendary get-togethers? Matt and Tanner might run the nation’s most powerful religious freedom law firm, but at home they were often little more than oversized boys.

  Matt loosed his grip on Hannah’s hand, and his dimpled grin lit up Hannah’s heart. “Well, Tanner, I, for one, am appalled at your manners.”

  Tanner nodded, his expression playful. “That’s what I get for hanging out with you.”

  Amid the laughter, Jade dabbed a wet napkin at Tanner’s shirt, giggling so hard her shoulders shook.

  Hannah studied her friends through smiling eyes. It was good to see Jade laugh. She’d been dragging for several weeks lately, tired, achy. Jade blamed it on a lingering cold, but after all she and Tanner had been through, Hannah hated to see her sick.

  The conversation shifted back to Matt and Hannah’s adoption plans. As the evening wore on, Jenny took Ty to a mo
vie with her friends, and the men congregated on the deck around Matt’s old guitar. Hannah and Jade took a walk down the beach.

  It was mid-March, and though the temperatures were cool, there had been no fog for days. As the sun set, the Pacific Ocean stretched out like a blanket of liquid blue beneath a canopy of crimson and gold. A hundred yards down the beach, Hannah stopped and stared out to sea, breathing in the damp, salty air. “I never get tired of it.”

  Jade drew up beside her. “It’s breathtaking.”

  “Like a living masterpiece direct from God.”

  The picnic that day was one of their monthly get-togethers, their way of staying connected and supporting each other. Jade and Tanner lived in a spacious house in Thousand Oaks, twenty minutes away, on two acres of rolling hillside. They had four bedrooms and a bonus room, a monument to Jade and Tanner’s dream of having a houseful of children one day.

  The women started walking again and Hannah turned to Jade. “You look better, not so pale.”

  Jade nodded and something in her eyes grew distant. “I felt good today, being with you and Tanner, laughing a little.”

  Something caught in Hannah’s heart. “Things are okay at home, right?”

  “We’re fine.” A smile tried to climb up Jade’s cheeks, but fell short. “Just wondering about God’s plan.”

  “Babies?”

  “Babies.” Jade sighed and her eyes grew wet. “We love Ty so much, but he’s thirteen. At this rate, he’ll be busy with his own life by the time we give him a brother or sister.”

  Hannah walked a few steps and stopped. “How does Tanner feel?”

  “He doesn’t get it.” Jade brushed her dark bangs off her face and shook her head. “He missed so much of Ty’s growing up years … all he wants is a baby in every room, a chance to be the type of father he couldn’t be to Ty.”

  The cool, damp sand filled in the places between Hannah’s toes. “Ty was eleven before Tanner found out about him, right?”

  “Right.” Jade stared at the sun as it dropped below the horizon. “You’d never know it; the two of them are inseparable. Tanner is such a good dad. Still … sometimes I think the whole baby thing is taking a toll.”

  “Meaning …?” The soothing sound of a lone seagull punctuated their conversation.

  “He’s been burying himself at work, staying later, going in earlier. There’s always a pressing case …” Jade hugged her arms close to her body. “Lately it’s like he could work day and night and it wouldn’t be enough.” She was quiet, but after a moment a soft huff crossed her lips. “No one believes in his cause more than I do … I’m the one who talked him into it fifteen years ago. But sometimes it feels like he’s pushing me away, closing down his emotions.”

  Hannah nodded and fell in step alongside Jade. “Matt gets that way sometimes. There were times when we’d talk about adoption for three weeks straight, until I needed a break. A day or two to sort out my feelings. Those would end up being the same days he’d work late.”

  Jade bent down and picked up a broken piece of a sand dollar. “Then there’s my health.” She brushed a sprinkling of sand off the shell, and Hannah had the clear impression Jade was refusing to make eye contact with her.

  A knot formed in Hannah’s gut—a knot made from strings of fear she could no longer ignore. Bad things didn’t happen just to other people anymore. They happened. It was that simple. She stopped, and Jade turned to look at her. “The headaches?”

  Hannah saw a heaviness in Jade’s eyes. She was thirty-five and usually looked ten years younger. But the past couple months …

  “The headaches only come once in a while. Nothing to worry about.” Jade slipped the broken sand dollar into the pocket of her windbreaker and shrugged. “I’m tired all the time. After a shift at the hospital and Ty’s baseball game, I’m wiped. No wonder Tanner has his mind on work.”

  Hannah swallowed and considered her words. Jade was a trained nurse, after all. Surely if she were worried, she’d go in for tests. “Have you thought about seeing a doctor?”

  Jade smiled. “Now you sound like Tanner.” She faced the ocean and seemed to stare at something unseen and far away. “You know what I think it is?”

  “What?” Hannah took a few slow steps back toward the house, and Jade kept up beside her.

  “Depression.” A sigh slipped from Jade’s lips and blended with the ocean breeze. “Isn’t that crazy?”

  “Of course not.” The knot relaxed. Depression was better than other possibilities. “Lots of people get depressed.”

  “But me?” Jade stretched her hands over her head and took a slow breath. “I wasn’t depressed when my life was falling apart. But now that I’m living my dream, married to a man I’ve loved since I was a little girl … now I get depressed? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Hannah remembered the miscarriage Jade had eight months earlier. “It makes perfect sense. It hasn’t even been a year since you lost the baby.”

  Quiet fell between them, and Jade wiped at a stray tear. “I think about that child every day. Sometimes it seems like everyone else has forgotten there ever was a baby.”

  “Even Tanner?” Their steps were slow and easy, the beach empty but for the two of them.

  Jade shook her head. “No. Tanner talks about her.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes.” Jade sniffed and ran her fingers through her hair. “All my life I’ve wanted a daughter and … yes. The baby was a girl. She’d be two months old if she’d lived.”

  Hannah gazed across the watery horizon. “Losing a child isn’t something that ever goes away, Jade. Whether that child was miscarried—” she thought about her visit to the cemetery the week before—“or killed in a car accident.”

  Jade’s teary eyes locked onto Hannah’s. “I don’t know how to let her go. I want a baby so badly.” Jade hung her head and gentle weeping overtook her.

  Hannah pulled her close, hugging her the way a mother hugs her lost child. Hannah knew Jade’s story well. Her mother had abandoned her when she was a child and left her to be raised by an alcoholic father. Jade had no siblings, so though Hannah was only four years older, she sometimes was the next best thing to a mother—or maybe an older sister.

  “It’s okay.” She ran her hand along Jade’s shoulder. “You should have said something sooner.”

  Jade nodded and after a while she pulled back. Her face was wet with tears. “I keep telling myself I’m supposed to let it go. People miscarry all the time, right?”

  “But it still hurts. If you don’t talk about that kind of pain it’ll eat you alive, Jade.”

  Jade sucked in a deep breath and started walking again. “Maybe that explains my health.”

  “Exactly.” Hannah kept her steps slow, giving Jade a chance to sort through her feelings.

  They walked in silence until Jade turned, her eyes searching Hannah’s as though looking for an unfathomable secret. “How did you do it, Hannah? How did you learn to live again?”

  Hannah knew the answer as surely as she knew her name. “God carried me.” She slowed her pace, and after a few more steps stopped and faced her friend. “He’ll carry you, too.”

  She nodded, fresh tears in her eyes. “I know. I feel like this … this depression is keeping me from getting pregnant. Like I’m too tense to conceive.”

  Hannah angled her head and smiled. “You’ll have more children one day, Jade. I believe that with all my heart.” She sat down on the sand, pulling her knees to her chest, then patted the spot beside her. “Wanna pray?”

  Jade dropped beside her, every motion slow and weary, as though she lacked all hope. They bowed their heads, and Hannah prayed for Jade’s broken heart and empty arms. She asked that God bring healing and joy and health to Jade and a deeper understanding to Tanner.

  “And please, Lord, one day soon … bring Jade another baby.”

  Matt drew his guitar close and kicked his feet up on the deck railing. “What else?”

  Tanner grinned
from a nearby lounge chair and stretched out his legs. He hadn’t wanted to come tonight, but like always, time with the Bronzans was medicine to his soul. “Eagles. ‘Desperado.’ ”

  Matt plucked at a few chords and began to play. The music filled Tanner’s senses, and he closed his eyes, singing along despitethe fact that neither of them was exactly on key. They sang about losing all their highs and lows, about getting down from the fences before it was too late. The surf provided percussion in the distance.

  When the song ended, Matt studied the fingers on his left hand and winced. “They’re shot.” He set the guitar down beside him. “I need to play more.”

  “We need to play more.”

  Matt cast him a lazy grin. “We?”

  Tanner tossed his hands in the air in mock indignation. “I’m vocals, you’re guitar. A few more nights like this, and we can forget about law. Take this act on the road.”

  They both chuckled at the thought, but as their laughter faded Tanner crooked one elbow behind his head and uttered a sigh that felt like it came from his feet. He stared at the canopy of stars above, then looked at Matt. “I’m worried about Jade.”

  Matt nodded once, his voice slow, thoughtful. “She looks tired.”

  He gazed at the sky again. “She’s always tired.”

  “Maybe she should see a doctor.”

  “Yeah, maybe …” Tanner could hear Jade trying to reassure him. She was a nurse. She knew enough about medicine to know when she needed a doctor, and she didn’t think she did. He’d tried to change her mind, but for now it was a closed subject unless some other symptom came up. Tanner let the worry fade. Whatever was wrong with his wife, it wasn’t the Bronzans’ problem. And tonight was supposed to be a celebration. Matt had been talking about adoption almost from the first day he started working at the firm. It was Hannah who couldn’t make up her mind. In fact, just four weeks ago at lunch Matt had been more discouraged than Tanner remembered ever seeing before. He said he didn’t think Hannah would ever make a decision and he wanted to prepare himself for the fact that they might never raise a child together.