Confused, Wes handed her the check. “Laney, I didn’t do this to hurt you. I only wanted to be able to go on with our marriage without—”
“I know,” she interrupted, smearing her tears across her face. “Please hurry and get ready,” she choked on her way to the door. “Amy’s waiting for us.”
The rest of Wes’s birthday was a lesson in civility, an exercise in spurious enjoyment despite the disappointment and hurt swirling just beneath the surface. Laney’s only comments were directed at Amy, and her eyes held a fragile, shattered quality that he felt was unwarranted. What did she think? That by paying her back he was cutting himself off from her? Did she think all the love and tenderness and passion they had shared had been an act? Did she really think he was only doing what he’d been hired to do?
It made him furious when she avoided meeting his eyes as he helped her and Amy back into the car after dinner. It was as if she had just been waiting for some reason to doubt him, he thought, some reason to prove that life would continue to cheat her of what she held dear.
He drove home, maintaining a light conversation with his daughter, noting the way Laney gazed out the window as if everything she believed in had been snatched out from under her. Couldn’t she see that he loved her, that he didn’t want money to be any part of their reason for being together, that he needed to support her and care for her on his own? Didn’t she see how good it made him feel to be able to give that money back?
She went to bed when Amy did, leaving him to hash the facts out in his mind. Where had he gone wrong? he asked himself. Had it been a mistake to love again, in spite of the prospect of someday losing that love? Had it been a mistake to reach out, knowing that reaching out could mean realizing how empty his life could be? Had it been a mistake to rejoice at what he’d believed was her love for him, when rejoicing quite possibly meant the deepest sadness a man could know?
The night grew older and he grew wiser as the pain in her eyes etched itself on his heart. None of those had been a mistake. But the check … the check had been his undoing.
He closed his eyes as he realized that, in her mind, paying her back had reduced their love to mere services rendered. Why hadn’t he seen it before? Why hadn’t he expected it? He pinched the bridge of his nose. She thought she was his albatross. She thought his feelings for her were borrowed, grudging, duty-bound, the way her father’s had been.
He was bone tired by the time he went to the bedroom and found her lost in a deep slumber like a child whose only refuge was sleep. He’d been such a fool, he thought. He’d fostered her fears, nurtured her insecurities. Making her sleep for weeks under the portrait of Patrice, clinging to the house like a kid would cling to a tattered blanket, holding on to yesterday when all he wanted to do was let go.
A deeper love than he had ever known for a woman filled him, and he crawled into bed next to her and slid his arms around her. She had been sleeping more and more lately, lying in bed longer than she should each morning, retiring earlier. Was it because she had been depressed? Had he been so thankful of his own happiness that he had overlooked hers?
He dropped a kiss on her temple and pulled her tighter against him. “I love you, Laney,” he whispered, though she did not hear. “And tomorrow I’ll prove it to you.”
It was time to move forward, he told himself finally. It was time to say good-bye to Patrice, sell the house, and put his past where it belonged—in his heart and mind for the times when he needed it, but not in some tangible structure that had so little bearing on the present. His life with Laney was more than any man could want. And he had new castles to build with her.
Laney felt as if she’d been turned upside down and shaken when she woke the next morning. She had never had a hangover, but she had a strong suspicion that she might prefer it to the dizzy, nauseous, weak feeling gripping her. Wes was beside her, fully awake, watching the way she clutched her head and lay back down after starting to get out of bed. “I think I’m sick,” she whispered.
He propped himself on an elbow and laid his hand on her forehead. “No fever,” he said, his brows knitted. “Maybe it’s a virus.”
She closed her eyes and tried to lie still until her dizziness subsided. “Wes, I’m sorry. I was awful last night.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “I understand why you thought what you did. But Laney, our marriage is still a marriage, now more than ever. I don’t want that money to come between us somewhere down the road. By giving it back to you, I can feel free of that artificial bond we had in the beginning. And we can concentrate on the really important things.”
“It’s just that … it’s just that we’re on such shaky ground. I have trouble knowing what’s really mine.”
“I’m yours,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
She reached up to slide her arms around his neck, but queasiness assaulted her again and she dropped her head back down. Her skin was pallid and clammy, and her hands trembled.
As if he’d seen enough, Wes rolled over to the telephone, his motions abrupt and determined.
“Who are you calling?”
“The doctor,” he said. “You’re sick.”
“But I don’t have a doctor.”
“Then it’s time you got one,” he said as he riffled through the phone book they kept in the nightstand drawer. “I’ll call mine. He’s the nicest man you’d ever want to meet, and he’s become a good friend over the years.”
“I’ll be all right.” She sat up and waited for her balance. “I think I’m feeling better already.”
Wes ignored her. Within seconds he was making her an appointment for that morning. When he hung up, Laney forced herself to stand. “Wes, I really don’t have to go to the doctor. See? I’m fine.”
Wes got out of bed and pulled on his robe. “Laney, you’ve been unusually tired lately. There’s obviously something wrong this morning. I don’t believe in taking chances.”
Of course he didn’t, she thought with a sweet surge of warmth that made her feel even more ashamed of her actions last night. He’d seen firsthand what illness could do, and she’d do anything to lay his fears to rest. “OK, I’ll go if it’ll make you feel better.”
He kissed her. “It will. Amy can come to the office with me and stay with Sherry while you’re gone.”
Laney wondered how she could have imagined that his offering the money back meant something less than a gesture of love. Even if her first conclusion had been sound, he continued to offer her more love than she had ever known. She got dressed, feeling better as the morning went on.
The doctor’s office was decorated in a blend of burgundy and gray, lending a peaceful, secure feeling to the patients who waited. The wait wasn’t long, however, and the doctor proved to be worth the trouble. He seemed to know all about her relationship to Amy and her marriage to Wes, and he welcomed her warmly, shaking her hand and smiling.
After half an hour of questions that he posed as idle chitchat, he took her symptoms and examined her, then left her with a smug smile on his face. In a few minutes he came back, his smile broader than before.
“What is it, Doctor? A virus?” she asked.
He chuckled and looked down at her chart. “Not quite. Something a little more serious, I think.”
Her face went pale, and his laugh grew more boisterous. “It’s a baby, Laney,” he said. “You’re going to have a baby.”
“A what?”
“A baby,” the doctor repeated.
Laney caught her breath. “But that’s impossible. Wes is sterile. Amy was adopted.”
The doctor leaned forward and patted her knee. The gentle smile on his leathered face bordered on amusement. “No, Laney. You’ve got it all wrong. It was Patrice who couldn’t conceive, not Wes.”
Dizziness crept over her again, and the air suddenly seemed thin. She touched her head, as if doing so could help her absorb this new development. A hesitant smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Are you telling me that I’m going to have Wes’s
baby?”
The doctor patted her shoulder, and his voice was colored with genuine fondness. “Some things take a while to sink in, don’t they, Laney? Yes, you’re going to have Wes’s baby. Would you like me to call him?”
She snapped out of her daze and let a silly smile take full control of her face. “No. No, I want to tell him. It can be a late birthday present.” She covered her mouth. “Oh, Doctor,” she whispered, “are you absolutely sure?”
He laughed again. “Absolutely.”
Laney drove around for a while after she left the doctor’s office. She was anxious to share the news with Wes—news that, she hoped, would cement things even further between them—but she wanted to be alone with the idea first. Was she really going to have the chance to rejoice in a pregnancy? Was she really going to take her baby home and nurse it and change its diapers and watch it grow? Was she really going to share her joy with the baby’s father and sister?
“A baby,” she said aloud. “I’m going to have a baby.”
She drove to a maternity store and bought two dresses that wouldn’t fit her for weeks. Then she went next door to the baby shop and bought a christening gown and a pacifier. Her baby, she thought over and over as she pressed her hand to her stomach with gentle reverence. Wes’s baby.
Most of the morning had passed when she recalled the boxes of baby clothes that had belonged to Amy, boxes she had left in Amy’s closet when they’d moved. She wondered now if her baby could wear any of them. There were blankets and little hats and tiny little socks. A flutter of excitement whirled inside her, and she headed for Wes’s old house to find the box.
Her excitement waned, however, when she pulled into the driveway of the tiny house and saw Wes’s truck. He was supposed to be at work, she thought. What was he doing?
Pressing her hand on her stomach, Laney quietly turned the knob and opened the door. Wes wasn’t in the living room, so she stepped inside, careful to close the door soundlessly behind her.
She stood still for a moment, listening for the sound of a hammer repairing something she hadn’t known was broken or the sound of boxes being moved out of the attic. Maybe he’d come to find some tool he needed at work, she told herself. But there was no sound. The house was dead quiet.
She wasn’t sure why she stayed quiet as she moved toward the kitchen and glanced inside to see if he was there. But it had something to do with her feeling like an intruder, as if he’d made this date with his past, and she hadn’t been invited.
When he wasn’t in the kitchen, she headed up the hall, her feet making no sound on the carpeted floor. She passed Amy’s bedroom and looked inside. The child’s bedroom furniture was there, but the mattress was bare and the room had been stripped of all her belongings. Wes was not there.
She passed the bathroom and saw in a glance that he wasn’t there.
That left only one place, she told herself. He was in his bedroom—the bedroom with the empty closet, the furniture they intended to sell. The bedroom with all his memories.
Swallowing back the emotion rising to her throat, she stepped into the doorway.
Wes sat with his back to her on the edge of the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, and his head hung low. He was holding the picture of his dead wife.
Patrice, Laney thought, backing away quickly from the door. He had come here to mourn over Patrice. Did Wes come here every day to cry over her? her mind railed. When she had believed she was making progress, making him love her, was he really having a quiet little grieving affair with the ghost of his first wife?
An anesthetic numbness washed over her, blurring the lines of her life until the edges seemed unclear. It was turning out just like it had before. There was a baby, and its father didn’t love her, and once again, she was left wondering what she was going to do.
She got into her car, nursing that numbness and backed out of the driveway without Wes even knowing she’d been there. She was halfway down the block before the numbness burst like a dam, and the tears assaulted her.
It was too good to be true, wasn’t it, Lord? She should have known that God’s provisions didn’t go as far as she thought they had. Things weren’t supposed to be so easy for her. There had to be a catch.
And now she knew there was. Patrice was still a player in this hopeless triangle of her marriage. Wes was never going to let her go. The house was like a shrine to her, where he went to pay homage when Laney didn’t know it. She should have known—should have expected it. His love for Patrice had been too strong to put behind him.
She cried all the way to his office to pick up Amy, who was “helping” Sherry with her paperwork. Pulling herself together, she took Amy home and told herself that if Wes wasn’t wholly hers, he wouldn’t be completely happy about the baby. He would wish it were Patrice’s instead of hers. Laney would see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. It would destroy her ecstasy over her baby, and she wouldn’t let him do that. This baby was going to be wanted.
She and Amy kept busy cleaning house when they got home, and she tried desperately to wipe the scene from her mind. Wes, bent over the picture of Patrice, clinging incessantly to what he could never have again.
Laney was distant when Wes got home, and when he asked her about her doctor’s appointment, she was vague. “It was just a twenty-four-hour thing,” she hedged. “I’m fine now.”
But the way she averted her eyes when she said it and the distant way she stared off into space as they ate, told him she was not fine at all. He didn’t press her, because he was afraid. Was she hiding something, the way Patrice had tried to hide her illness at first? Was she trying to protect him?
He went with her to tuck Amy in that night, and after the story and the song that Laney sang to her each night, Amy reached up and hugged Laney’s neck. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered shyly.
Laney caught her breath. “I love you too, sweetheart.” A sudden rush of dizziness swept over her, coupled with abrupt nausea. She wanted to cry, to drag Amy out of bed and spin her around in a breathtaking hug, but she felt too weak. Instead, she tucked Amy in then felt her way from the bedroom as Wes followed. He caught her in the hall, slid his strong, gentle arms around her waist, and pressed his forehead against hers.
The depth in his luminous green eyes told her that what he was about to say had no ghosts blurring it. “I love you, too,” he whispered.
Waves of emotion poured over Laney, and she closed her eyes, willing the room to stop spinning. Had they both said what she thought they had said? Desperately, she wanted to tell him how she had waited to hear that, how she’d wanted to say it, but all that escaped her lips was a murmured, “Wes … I’m going to be sick.”
Alarm flashed in Wes’s eyes again. He released her, and she made a mad dash for the bathroom. He waited until she could speak, then dropped down beside her where she sat on the bed with her head between her knees. “Laney, please, tell me what’s wrong.”
She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. Her complexion was pale, and she was breathing like a runner at the end of a marathon. “Just the excitement,” she said. “She called me Mama.” And you said you loved me.
“Laney, you wouldn’t have gotten sick over that.” He grabbed her shoulders, his hands trembling. His jade eyes grew misty, cutting through her heart. “Laney, I’ve got to know. Something’s wrong with you, isn’t there? What did the doctor say?”
She lowered her eyes. Could she tell him yet? Should she? “Nothing. I told you—”
“Tell me the truth!” he cried, shaking her. “I love you, Laney. Don’t do this to me!”
She met his eyes, saw the paralyzing fear, saw the love that couldn’t be denied, saw the anguish over the vague possibility of loving and losing again. He thought she was sick, like Patrice, and he was terrified.
Suddenly it didn’t matter if his reaction hurt her. His feelings were more important. She had to tell him the truth.
Quickly her hands came up to frame his face. “I love you too,” s
he said without thought. A tearful smile crept across her face, and she knew the time was right. He would be happy. “Don’t be afraid,” she said on a nervous breath. “I’m not sick. I’m pregnant.”
A moment of stunned silence gripped them as he stared at her, and then a smile overtook his features like dawn peeking over the horizon. “You’re pregnant? With a baby?”
The look on his face erased all the problems that had clouded her mind. His joy was irrefutable. Somehow she would put her disappointments away where she wouldn’t think about them. “Isn’t that the usual way?”
He laughed, the loud, rolling sound of a man waking up from a long sleep, and a tear rolled down his cheek. She kissed it away.
“A baby,” he whispered. “A baby.”
He lifted her up, as if she were suddenly fragile, and put her in his lap. She was smiling, beaming, but something amiss stole from her glory. His smile faded a degree. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you seem so sad and distant when I got home? Aren’t you happy?”
“Of course I am!” she said. “I was so excited when I found out that I’ve already started buying things.” She swallowed, and the lines of worry that he’d seen so many times before creased between her delicate brows. Studying his face, she realized it was a time for honesty. No longer was there room in their lives for hedging. “Then I remembered the baby clothes at your house, and I went to get them. I found you there.”
He waited for her to go on, and when she didn’t, he prodded her. “Why didn’t you come in? You could have told me then.” She looked down at the pattern on her skirt, traced it with her finger as a deep sigh escaped her. “I did go in. I found you in the bedroom, staring at Patrice’s picture.”
“And you thought …” His voice trailed off, and he started to speak and stopped. There was a poignant lift to his brows when the words finally came out. “Laney, I was saying goodbye. I packed that picture, along with everything else, in boxes and cleaned out the house. There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard by now. I had expected it to hurt, and I’ll admit that there were a few pangs of sadness when I was boxing everything up, but the relief and anticipation were better than the pain.”