He’d assumed getting the divorce was a formality. All that was required of him was his signature. No one had told him it would be like having his arms torn off and that it would leave him feeling as if he were sitting on a pile of rotting garbage. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?
“Goodbye, Molly,” he said after a moment.
“Goodbye, Jordan.” Her voice quavered and he knew she was experiencing the same things he was. The same pain, the same sense of loss.
From Thursday onward it would be like that song Molly sometimes sang. He’d be someone she used to love.
“Jordan,” she said quickly. He heard a note of panic in her voice.
“Yes?” he said softly.
“Nothing.”
“Molly, listen, I know we’re divorcing, but if you ever need me for anything…”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”
“I see.” He shouldn’t be hurt by her words, but he was.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, Jordan, I appreciate it. If you ever need me for anything, please call.”
“I will.” Although he doubted he would. “Goodbye,” he said again and replaced the receiver before she could echo the word.
For reasons Jordan didn’t want to analyze, he didn’t have the heart to hear her say it a second time.
Six
“If you don’t tell Jordan before Thursday afternoon, I swear I will.”
“Dad!” Molly argued, so frustrated she wanted to weep. “This is none of your business.”
“I’m making it my business!” He got up and walked around his desk until he stood a few feet from where she was sitting. They rarely disagreed, and when they did Molly could generally reason with her father. Not this time.
“Jordan has a right to know he’s going to be a father.”
“I’ll tell him in my own time,” Molly insisted.
“You’ll tell him before Thursday,” Ian said.
“Do you seriously believe Jordan will call off the divorce?”
“Yes.”
“The baby isn’t going to affect how he feels about Lesley. He wants his freedom, and my pregnancy isn’t going to stand in his way.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
Ian was serious; if she didn’t tell Jordan she was pregnant, he’d do it himself. She almost wished she could let him. Walking over to the phone she punched out the number she knew so well. Jordan answered immediately.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“Yes, why?”
“I’m coming over.”
“Now?”
“Yes, I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said and banged down the receiver. Her father smiled approvingly until she walked over to the liquor cabinet and took out a full bottle of his favorite Kentucky bourbon.
“Where are you taking that?” he demanded.
“To Jordan. He’s going to need it.”
Her father chuckled and escorted her to the front door, opening it for her. “Give me a call later.”
“You’re a conniving old man.”
“I know,” Ian Houghton said, beaming her a wide smile. “How do you think I got to be bank president?” The sound of his amusement followed her out the front door.
By the time Molly pulled into the driveway of the home she’d once shared with Jordan, she’d changed her mind no fewer than three times. She might have done so again if he hadn’t already opened the door and stood on the porch waiting for her.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Molly didn’t answer him. Instead she walked into the house and headed straight for the kitchen and took a thick glass tumbler from the cupboard. Next she walked over to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door and filled the glass with ice. Then she poured Jordan a stiff drink and handed it to him.
“What’s that for?” he asked, frowning.
“You might want to sit down.”
“What’s going on?”
Molly had thought she could do this unemotionally, but she was wrong. She was shaking like the proverbial reed.
“If you won’t sit down I will,” she said, slumping into a chair. She set the whiskey bottle on the table, and it made a loud clanking noise that echoed through the kitchen.
“What’s gotten into you?” Jordan asked. He pulled out the chair across from her. “I realize this divorce thing is more emotionally wrenching than either of us expected, but…” His voice trailed off.
Her eyes started to water. “This doesn’t have to do with the divorce.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Oh, honestly, Jordan,” she said impatiently, “don’t be so obtuse.”
“Obtuse? About what?”
She had an aversion to coming right out and telling him. “Think about it,” she told him, gesturing wildly with her free hand. The other continued to hold the bottle.
“I am thinking.”
She felt like having a stiff drink of that bourbon herself, but she couldn’t, not when she was pregnant.
“Care to join me?” Jordan asked, bringing down a second tumbler.
“Not a good idea for me right now. Trust me, it’s tempting, I could use the courage.”
“It’s probably better if you don’t. You never could hold your liquor.”
“Great, insult me.”
He stared at her as if he hadn’t seen her in a long while, as if studying her would tell him what it was he didn’t know.
“We made love in Africa, remember?” She waved the whiskey bottle at him, hoping to jolt his memory.
“Yeah, but why bring it up now?” As soon as the words left his lips, he made the connection, falling back into the wooden chair. Slowly his eyes met hers. They grew wide, then narrowed as he reached for the tumbler and drank down a big gulp. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and briefly closed his eyes. “You’re pregnant.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?” she said mockingly.
“How long have you known?” Why he found that so important, she could only guess.
“A couple of weeks.”
“It’s taken you until now to tell me?”
Outwardly he was as calm and collected as the next man, but his anger simmered below the surface. The inflection of his voice gave him away.
“Sure,” she cried, “blame me! I didn’t get pregnant all by myself, you know. Oh, no, you had to come after me like…like Indiana Jones, sweep me into your arms and—”
“Our making love was…unexpected,” he said. “I didn’t plan for that to happen.”
“Are you saying I did?”
“No,” he shouted and wiped one hand down his pale face. He picked up the bottle and refilled his glass. “What are you going to do?” he asked, not looking at her.
“About what?”
“The pregnancy?”
“That’s a stupid question. I’m going to have this baby, raise him or her and live long enough to be a problem to my grandchildren. What else is there to do?”
Jordan propped his elbows on the table. “What about the divorce?”
“I don’t see how this pregnancy should make any difference. Lesley will understand.” Although Molly would have enjoyed being a bug on the wall when he broke this news to his fiancée.
“You might have said something sooner, don’t you think?” He glared at her accusingly. “You knew on Saturday, didn’t you? That’s what your father was hinting at. Who else did you tell—your good friend Dr. Stern?”
“David has nothing to do with this.”
“But you—”
“Listen, Jordan,” she broke in. “I’ve done my duty and told you about the baby. I realize it’s a shock—it was a shock to me, too. But this doesn’t change anything. You can go on your merry way and do whatever you please.”
Jordan scowled at her. “You might have given me some warning. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Might I suggest
—nothing?”
“No,” he growled.
“Here,” she said, handing him the bottle. “When you’ve had time to think this through, give me a call and we can talk about it in a more reasonable fashion.”
* * *
Reasonable fashion!
It was just like Molly to waltz into his home, the night before their divorce was final, and casually announce she was pregnant.
Jordan was furious. He reached for the tumbler, and brought it to his mouth. At least she’d had the foresight to realize he was going to need a drink to help him deal with this.
Pregnant.
A baby.
Jordan’s hand tightened around his drink. How could this have happened? If he wasn’t so shocked, he’d laugh. Weeping, however, seemed far more appropriate.
Molly had had time to adjust to the news. He hadn’t. Frankly, he didn’t know that he ever would. Dealing with the possibility of losing a second child was beyond his endurance.
His hand was shaking, and Jordan realized it had nothing to do with the amount of alcohol he’d consumed.
He was frightened. So frightened he shook with it. Give him a band of gun-toting rebels any day of the week. Another gunshot wound was preferable to the risks involved in loving another child.
The grandfather clock in the living room signaled the time, reminding him that in a matter of hours he’d be standing before a judge.
* * *
“Thank you so much for meeting with me,” Amanda Clayton said on Thursday, when Molly joined her on the wooden bench in Lincoln Park. She was a petite young woman with thick dark hair that curled naturally.
Pierre had given Molly dozens of croissants over the past few weeks in an effort to encourage her to meet his daughter. Molly had finally agreed, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to say anything that would help.
Although the day was cloudy and overcast, Amanda wore sunglasses. Molly wasn’t fooled; the glasses were an effort to disguise her blotchy red eyes.
“How long has it been?” Molly asked gently.
“Christianne died six months ago yesterday. How…how about you?”
“Jeffrey’s been gone almost four years now.”
“Four years,” Amanda echoed, then added softly. “Does it ever get any better? Does the pain ever go away?”
“I don’t know.” Molly had been uncomfortable about this meeting from the first. How could she possibly help someone else when she hadn’t been able to help herself? “I can get through a day without crying now,” Molly told her.
“How…how long did that take?”
“Two years.”
“What about your husband?”
“How do you mean?”
“This seems so much harder for me than it does for Tommy. I can’t even talk about Christi with him because he thinks we should forget. But how am I supposed to forget her?”
“You can’t and you won’t. Your husband’s hurting, too, but men often have a more difficult time expressing their grief. My husband never cried, at least not when I could see him.” She knew Jordan had grieved in his own way, but never openly and never with her.
“What…what did you do with Jeffrey’s things? I know this must sound stupid, but what am I supposed to do with Christi’s clothes and her toys and the special things we bought for her? Do I just pack those up as if she’d never lived? Do I give them away? Or do I leave them out?”
“I don’t know,” Molly answered sadly.
“What did you do?”
Molly clenched her hands into tight fists. “A few days after we buried Jeffrey, my…husband went into our son’s room, closed the door and packed up all his things to give to a charitable organization.”
Molly vividly remembered the terrible argument that had followed as she fanatically sorted through the boxes, removing the precious items that had marked Jeffrey’s too-short life. She’d managed to salvage his baby book, a hand-knit blanket and his baptismal gown. A rattle, too, and a few other things that were important to her.
Their argument had scarred their marriage. It was as though Jordan believed that if he could get rid of every piece of evidence that Jeffrey had lived, the pain would stop. They’d each dealt with their grief in different ways. Molly had clung to every memory of Jeffrey, while Jordan had systematically pushed their son out of his life.
This was what had driven them apart. In looking at Molly, Jordan was forced to remember his son. In looking at Jordan, Molly was forced to cope with Jeffrey’s death.
“Tommy thinks we should sell the house.”
“Do you want to move?” Molly asked.
“No. Tommy has some bizarre theory that there was something in the air that caused Christi to die. He believes the same thing will happen if we have another baby, but I love our home, and the neighbors have been wonderful. I don’t want to move someplace where I don’t know anyone. I talked to the doctor about it and he’s assured me nothing in the environment was responsible. Besides,” Amanda said, “I don’t have the energy it would take to find a new home and then pack up everything we own. It’s all I can do to get from one day to the next.”
Molly understood that. For weeks after Jeffrey died, she could hardly manage to get out of bed in the morning and dress. By contrast, Jordan was up at dawn and didn’t return until long after dinner.
Work had been his release, his salvation. There hadn’t been any such relief for Molly, not until she realized she couldn’t continue to live with Jordan.
“Eventually I went back to work,” Molly said, remembering that it had taken eight months for her to function again. “That helped me more than anything. At least when I was working I didn’t dwell on ‘if only.’” She dragged in a deep breath, knowing that only someone who’d suffered these kinds of regrets would understand. “You see, I’m a nurse, and as a medical professional I couldn’t keep from blaming myself. I should have known.… I kept telling myself I should have been able to do something. Jeffrey woke that morning and cried. I … I wanted to catch a few minutes’ extra sleep, so I stayed in bed. By the time I got up…” It wasn’t necessary to finish.
“Tommy and I woke before Christi and he wanted to go in and get her up, but I told him to let her sleep while I took a shower. Only she wasn’t sleeping,” Amanda said, her voice cracking, “she was dead.”
Molly reached for her hand and gently squeezed her fingers.
“I lost more than my baby when Christi died,” Amanda whispered brokenly. “I lost my faith, too. I don’t attend church anymore. I don’t want to believe in a God who allows children to die.”
Molly had made her peace with God early in the grieving process. She’d felt so terribly alone and needed Him so desperately. “I can’t believe God caused Jeffrey’s death, but I know He allowed it. I don’t understand why. I just have to accept it.”
Amanda reached for her purse. “Would you like to see Christi’s picture?”
“Very much,” Molly said.
Amanda opened her purse and handed her a small padded photo album. Christi had been a beautiful baby with a head full of dark, curly hair and bright blue eyes. “She looks like such a happy baby.”
“She was. I sometimes wonder…” Amanda didn’t finish. She didn’t need to; Molly understood. She’d wondered herself what Jeffrey’s life would’ve been like if he’d lived. Her own life, and Jordan’s, too, would have been drastically different.
“I have to get back to the hospital,” Molly said. They’d already talked much longer than she’d expected.
“I’m glad we met.”
“I am, too. Although I don’t know that I helped you.”
“But you have,” Amanda assured her. “More than you realize. Would it be all right if we got together again sometime? I know it’d help my husband if he could talk to yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Molly said, struggling now to keep her voice even. “I’d be happy to meet with you again, but Jordan and I are getting divorced.” It was the first time she’d ever
spoken the words aloud. She didn’t add that their divorce was effective that very day.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Molly stared into the distance until she’d composed herself enough to respond. “So am I.”
* * *
She should probably do something wild and expensive, Molly decided when she got off work that afternoon. It wasn’t every day a woman got divorced. Surely the occasion called for a shopping spree or a lengthy appointment at a spa.
Molly had almost reached her car when she heard someone calling her name. She turned to find Dr. David Stern walking briskly toward her.
“Hi,” he greeted her breathlessly. “I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to catch you.”
“Hello again.” She was mildly surprised that he’d been looking for her. They’d danced a few times at Kati and Matt’s wedding, and had eaten together on the lush green lawn, but she hadn’t talked to him after Jordan had been so rude.
“I was hoping I could convince you to go out to dinner with me tonight,” David said. He was tall and burly. A few of the staff members referred to him as Dr. Bear, not because of his temperament, but because of his size.
“Tonight,” she repeated.
“I realize it’s short notice, but I’m on call the rest of the week. We could make it another evening if that’s more convenient, but it never fails—if I’ve got a date, someone decides this is the night they’re going to hurl themselves off a cliff.” His grin was wide and boyish.
Molly had liked him from the moment she’d watched him comforting an elderly patient. She liked his compassion, his gentleness, his sense of humor.
“I’d enjoy dinner with you very much,” she told him. “But not tonight.”
“You’ve got other plans?”
“In a way. My divorce was final this afternoon and, well, I was thinking I should do something…extravagant. I don’t know what. Something reckless.”
“Hey, some would say having dinner with me is pretty daring.”
Molly was tempted to accept his invitation, but she wasn’t ready to date again, not so soon. In addition, there was the baby. Not every man would be thrilled to date a pregnant woman. “I don’t think I’d be very good company.”