“Wednesday morning.”
That had been when he’d left. “Why didn’t she call me?”
“That’s something you’ll have to ask her.”
Taking in the obvious concern behind his quick demand, her low tone dropped even farther. “She just asked me to tell you about the miscarriage because she knew you’d have questions. You know how difficult this sort of thing can sometimes be,” she reminded him, empathy heavy in her tone. “She really doesn’t want to talk about it herself right now.”
Speaking professional to colleague, she hurried on to tell him that there had been no complications and that Jenny was recovering physically as quickly as anyone she’d ever seen. Speaking as a friend, she told him how frightened Jenny had been when she’d realized what was happening and how, after she’d tended her at the clinic before the day’s appointments had began and taken her home, Jenny had started crying and hadn’t stopped until she’d exhausted herself.
“I made her stay with me the first night,” she admitted, “but she was afraid she was imposing, so she went back home. There was really no need for her to stay after that, anyway. I’ve been keeping an eye on her and she really does appear to be doing better. I haven’t seen any more tears.”
Greg opened his mouth, closed it again. He usually had no trouble processing information on several levels at once. All that registered at the moment was that Jenny had lost her child, but she hadn’t called him. He didn’t know if that was because she hadn’t felt she could, or if she simply hadn’t needed him. Either way had its own crushing impact.
“You should also know that people have been asking about her since she took the end of the week off. I’ve just told everyone she had a bug. There’s no reason for anyone to think otherwise.”
Through his oddly paralyzed thought processes, Greg began to realize what Bess was doing. She was sharing what he would need to know when people inevitably commented on Jenny’s health. She was also assuring him that what she knew would go no further.
The assurance wasn’t necessary. The woman who had tended Jenny’s medical needs often seemed to possess all the warmth of a drill sergeant, but she was fiercely loyal to those she cared about. She would also stop speaking forever before she would betray a professional or personal confidence.
With as much experience as Bess had, she would have known how far along Jenny had been—and that the baby couldn’t possible have been his. Considering that, it also seemed pretty apparent that Jenny had confided the nature of their relationship to her.
Her graying eyebrows knitted together, concern for him deepening the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. “Is there anything you want to know about what happened?”
The physician in him had no trouble understanding why Jenny had asked Bess to give him the details. No woman wanted to relive the loss of her child no matter what its stage of development. Having to answer questions about when she first realized something was wrong, and the myriad details that had led her to exhausting herself with tears wasn’t anything he wanted to put her through.
He didn’t need the details, anyway. “Not as long as she’s all right.”
Bess’s manner became oddly offhand. “Good, then. And by the way,” she mentioned, heading for the porch, “I don’t think she’ll have any trouble getting pregnant again. Just in case you got to wondering.”
She pulled the door open then, calling for Jenny as she walked inside the house that sported more lace and feminine do-dads than the tea section at the gift shop and smelled pleasantly of apples and cinnamon.
Not totally sure what to make of the knowing look he’d seen in the older woman’s expression, he remained by her front door and watched her disappear into her kitchen.
“Leave that,” he heard her admonish. “I can wash those up later. And don’t forget to take these with you.”
The murmur of Jenny’s voice drifted toward him, her tone too low for him to catch what she was saying. But he heard her say, “Thank you,” to the woman before she appeared in the doorway. Hugging a grocery sack against the teal fleece pullover she wore with her jeans, she called back a quiet, “For everything,” on her way to where he stood.
Reaching him, she took a deep breath, looked up and said, “Hi.”
His glance swept her face. “Hi, yourself,” he replied. Her eyes were dark and huge against her pale skin, her smile of welcome far weaker than he was accustomed to seeing.
He reached for the bag. “Let me take that.”
“It’s not heavy.” As if needing something, anything, to hang on to, she hugged the sack tighter. “It’s just a couple quarts of applesauce. We’ve been canning all morning,” she said, and slipped past the door he held open.
They’d reached the walkway when he fell into step beside her.
“How was your symposium?” she asked quietly, her focus on the grass growing between the cracks.
“Long.”
He got the gate, latched it behind them. With gravel crunching beneath their feet, they started along the shoulder of the sparsely populated road.
“Did you have time to stop for lunch?”
He wasn’t going to do this. It was just like her to try to mask or bury whatever bothered her most. And if she didn’t want to talk about losing the baby that had come to mean so much to her, then he wouldn’t test her almost unnatural calm by asking about it. But there was something he had to know.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Jenny didn’t know if it was accusation or disappointment she heard in Greg’s voice. She was having a difficult enough time trying to figure out everything she was feeling herself without wondering why he even questioned what she hadn’t done. She couldn’t believe how conflicted she felt over losing the child that had gone from being a source of panic to the focus of her future. By day she lived with a gaping emptiness that rivaled anything she’d experienced before. At night, curled in her bed where the dreams she’d once had for her baby haunted her restless sleep, she battled guilt, which Bess had told her she didn’t need to feel because there was nothing she could have done to prevent what had happened, along with a huge and escalating sense of loss.
That loss grew even greater when she thought of the man waiting for her to respond. She had fallen hopelessly in love with Greg. But she would lose him, too. The reason for living with him, the reason he’d married her, no longer existed.
“I didn’t call because I didn’t want to take you from what you were doing,” she finally admitted, wishing for the numbness that had once served her so well. “I’ve invaded your life enough as it is.”
Paper crackled as she tightened her grip on the bag. It seemed foolish to continue ignoring what was so obvious to them both. “I know I’m the reason you stay away from the house as much as you do. You’re not comfortable with me there, and I hate that I’ve practically driven you from your home. I just didn’t want to impose on your support any more than I already have.”
The crisp autumn breeze ruffled her hair, lifting the short strands of her bangs around her forehead. The day was beautiful, brilliant with fall color and a sky as clear and blue as her eyes. But it seemed to Greg that she noticed nothing of what he knew would have once enthralled her.
As she kept walking, kept avoiding his glance, he didn’t know if he wanted to stop her and make her look at him or simply appreciate that she was sparing him the desolation he’d glimpsed in her eyes.
It was his own fault that she hadn’t called him. The distance he’d put between them had made it impossible for her to turn to him when she might have needed him most. But he’d put that distance there because it had seemed to be the only way to keep their relationship from growing more complicated.
Outside her door the other night, he’d finally admitted how much he wanted her caring and concern. Walking with her now, he didn’t even question that he wanted her to call when she needed him.
What hit him in the next breath was how unavoidable his feelings were for her,
and how much more complicated things had already become.
“You’re not imposing on me, Jenny. I told you before, I want you in the house.”
“You wanted me there because you were trying to help,” she reminded him. And so he wouldn’t have to worry about her, she remembered him saying. He said nothing now, though, to deny that her presence was why he avoided coming home. Or that his life would be easier with her gone.
“I appreciate what you did more than you’ll ever know, Greg. But the reasons I needed your help no longer exist.” She was no longer pregnant. She no longer needed to worry about putting a decent roof over her child’s head or about protecting her own reputation. “The way things have been lately, it has to relieve you to know you don’t have to worry about me or the baby anymore.” She turned ahead of him onto the dirt path, filtered light replacing sunshine. “You can have your privacy back now.”
There was no longer any need for them to be together or for her to go with him when he left. As that reality sunk in, Greg drew to a halt.
“You know, Greg,” she said, turning to him when she realized he’d stopped. “I’m not sure how I’ll do it, but I’m going to learn to protect myself the way you do. I understand why you want to make your own way, but I still used to think you were cheating yourself by letting your past dictate so much of your future.”
She quietly studied his face, her own expression utterly earnest. “I can see now there’s a real advantage to making it solely on your own. If you don’t let yourself get all that attached to someone or someplace, it doesn’t hurt so much when you lose them or when it’s time to move on.”
He had the distinct feeling just then that there was more going on with her than what she was saying. But her wish to emulate him jarred him almost as much as the understanding in the haunted depths of her eyes. The idea that his past had that strong a hold on him threw him completely. He also dismissed it, along with the idea that she just might be right. He was more concerned that she thought he wanted his privacy back, and with how willing she seemed to give it to him.
“If you think I’m relieved about the baby, Jenny, you’re wrong.”
Her glance fell as she turned away.
“Don’t.” He caught her arm, turned her back. “You’re not thinking of moving out are you?”
“I thought it might be easier if I went back to my grandma’s house.”
“Easier for which one of us?”
One shoulder lifted in a halfhearted shrug. “Both.”
“It won’t be easier on me,” he insisted. “You’re in no shape to go back there and haul wood for heat or start working on it again. Your body isn’t through adjusting to the changes it’s gone through.”
She was being driven by emotion. He felt dead certain of that. He’d counseled enough women who’d gone through what she had to know it was textbook classic for her to push away those around her, to feel sadness, anger and guilt over the loss, no matter what the circumstances.
He’d just never felt those twinges of sadness himself. All the time he’d spent reassuring her and answering her questions about her pregnancy had made him start looking forward to the child almost as if it had been his own.
“You shouldn’t do anything heavy or tiring for ten days, Jenny. Give yourself at least that long to think things through, will you?”
Sensing that she might be even more fragile than she appeared, he let her go when she eased herself from his grip. Disturbed by the loss he felt when she withdrew from him, he brought up the only other thing he could think of to buy them both some time.
“It’ll be better for you in a lot of ways if you stay.” He didn’t bother to ask how she would explain to her—their—friends why she wasn’t moving with him when the time came. He doubted she’d thought that far ahead. He doubted she’d thought of anything beyond what she’d lost. “We’re married,” he reminded her. “I know how you hate gossip, and people are going to talk if we separate.”
She looked back at him with a faint frown. She clearly hadn’t thought of that. That breakdown in her logic only confirmed what he’d just concluded.
“I guess moving right now wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“It really wouldn’t,” he agreed.
She said nothing to indicate how she felt about continuing the illusion of being husband and wife as they continued along the shaded path. He said nothing else about it, either. All he cared about just then was that she wouldn’t be going back out to that dilapidated old house—and that he’d just bought himself a reprieve.
Chapter Thirteen
Greg sat at his desk, listening to Jenny say goodnight to Bess. She had seemed a little subdued to him when she’d come downstairs that morning, but at the clinic everything about her had seemed normal. For the most part. There was a sadness beneath her smile that was impossible for him to miss. Others simply assumed that the subtle quietness about her was just the low energy that sometimes followed a virus. Bertie Buell had even called wanting to know if Jenny was feeling better and if she should get her flu shot early.
He heard the back door close a moment before Jenny poked her head around the doorway. “Is there anything you need me to do before I go?” she asked.
Even now she sounded fine. But then, she’d been busy all day, distracted by work from the latest change to shake her life.
“I can’t think of anything,” he replied, feeling as if the ground had somehow shifted beneath his own feet. “Are you working on costumes tonight?”
“Mine are finished.”
“Are you going to Claire’s?”
“She has a meeting with the high-school band director.”
“No plans, then?”
She lifted one shoulder, the motion more dejected than dismissing. “There’s nothing to do tonight. You’ll be a few hours yet?” she asked, because that was now long he had been staying.
“Less than that.”
She gave a little nod, lifted her hand. “Then, I’ll see you later,” she murmured, and turned from the door.
Had he not been waiting for a phone call from Ed Cochran, he might have taken his files home to work on just so she wouldn’t be rattling around the house alone. He had the feeling, though, that being left alone was what she wanted right now. That, and something to do.
If there was anything he’d learned about Jenny it was that she could handle just about anything as long as she stayed busy. He knew she relied on work and projects to distract her from what she didn’t want to think about. And heaven knew she’d had more than her share of unwanted thoughts to escape. But she didn’t have any distractions now. And she needed escape more than ever.
“Jenny. Wait.”
He pushed back his chair, rose from his desk.
He had spent hours last night trying to concentrate on his reading. He’d also spent most of that time with his mind weighed by matters he once would never have considered. For the past ten years, he had called the shots in his career and in his personal life. He had lived free of his past, made his own way and lived as he chose, all on his own terms.
Or so he’d thought until Jenny had looked up at him with her lovely, wounded blue eyes and in all sincerity told him she wanted to learn to detach herself the way he did. He hadn’t believed for a minute of those ten years that the past had any sort of hold on him. He’d escaped. He was free. But the very fact that he continued to avoid dealing with the responsibility of his father’s estate told him he hadn’t yet been able to break that past’s hold.
The same feelings that disturbed him every time he thought of his father rushed back to knot his gut in the moments before she reappeared in the doorway. But whether or not he was somehow failing or relinquishing control by not handling the matter entirely alone didn’t matter just then. What did was that Jenny needed something to occupy her mind, something to help her escape the sadness she so bravely tried to hide.
“There is something I need,” he told her.
Thinking he needed her to
copy or track down something for him, Jenny watched Greg lean down and open his bottom desk drawer. The realization of what he was after struck her even before she saw him straighten with a foot-high pile of manila envelopes in his hands.
Looking as if the things might explode, he set the pile on the edge of his desk.
“If you’re feeling up to it, you could get started on these. That fund you mentioned really is good idea.”
Jenny glanced from the tense line of his jaw to the stack of envelopes he’d been avoiding like the proverbial plague. She didn’t know if he’d finally decided to allow her assistance because she wouldn’t be around to help after he left, or if he’d simply decided it was time. Either way, she couldn’t help feeling relieved for him that he was finally getting on with it, and enormously grateful for the task. She didn’t mind being alone at the house. She just didn’t want to be alone there with nothing to do but try not to think.
“I’ll carry those over for you.”
“I can get them.”
“I said I’ll do it,” he insisted, shrugging off his lab coat. “I need to come back here for a while. But I’ll bring dinner from the diner.”
“I can make something.”
“I know you can. You just don’t need to do it, tonight. Okay?” Something like exasperation had entered his tone. Or maybe it was just the tension that was always there whenever the estate was on his mind. Whichever it was, the edge was impossible to miss.
She didn’t argue with him. Partly because his bringing dinner was really quite thoughtful. Mostly because she suddenly had the feeling the frustration he felt had to do with her, himself or some combination thereof and she simply didn’t have the energy to deal with why that frustration was there.
They had two months to go before he left. Somewhere in there she needed to figure out what she was going to do when he did. Right now, she just wanted to get through one day at a time and hope that something would occur to her along the way. Greg’s plans were certainly moving along. He’d been trading phone calls all day with the Rural Medical Corps and the doctor who was coming to replace him.
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