Her Second Forever

by Joanna Sims

  “What?”

  “I—I’m getting married.”

  “I know, sweet pea.” He smiled and tightened his hold on her. “I know you are.”

  * * *

  Lee didn’t see him leave, but she knew that he had. His truck, always a big presence in the parking lot, was gone. Lee ducked into her office for a moment to collect her emotions. She closed the blinds of both windows and sat behind her desk in the dim light. She didn’t have tears at the moment—she had cried so much over the last couple of days, her ducts had all but dried up. And what good were those tears anyway. She had always known that this day—Colt’s last day with Strides—was coming. But it still hurt nonetheless.

  After several moments alone, she stood up, squared her shoulders and forced herself to put on a cheerful smile that didn’t exactly match her mood. This was a celebration and she wasn’t going to dampen the occasion by sulking around the place like a kid who’d had her favorite toy taken away. No. She was going to push her sadness aside and focus on the riders. When she focused on the riders—when she focused on anyone other than herself—that was when she was at her best.

  “You did a wonderful job this summer, Callie.” Lee stopped by the dessert table to thank the young woman. Callie had grown up with Strides and now she was a woman engaged to be married. Callie was one of Lee’s original riders and proof, at least to Lee’s mind, that the program worked.

  “Thank you,” Callie said, fussing over her baked goods. “Are you coming to my party?”

  “Absolutely I am.”

  “I—I really want Tony to work here with me. Can he work here with me?”

  “We’ll have to see, Callie. I didn’t just give you this job, you know. You had to earn it.”

  “I—I had to have an i-interview.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I—I had to prove that I could do the job.”

  Lee nodded.

  “Tony sells carpet,” Callie told her.

  Lee laughed. “We don’t have a lot of carpet to sell around here, Callie. But we’ll see what happens when he moves here, okay? We’ll all sit down together and talk about what he wants to do with himself. He might not even want to work with horses.”

  “He’s afraid of horses.”

  Lee scanned the table of treats with a smile. “That might be a problem, Callie. Horses are kind of what we do here.”

  “Okay,” Callie said in her easy way. “Do you want a cookie?” She pointed to a nearby plate. “Those are Uncle Colt’s favorite cookies.”

  “What kind are they?”

  “Salted caramel cookies,” Callie said. “Try one.”

  Lee picked up a cookie and took a bite of the soft, gooey treat. “Hmm. That’s delicious, Callie.”

  Callie beamed at her. “Do you like it as much as you like Uncle Colt?”

  Surprised, Lee bit the inside of her cheek. She chewed the bite of cookie, swallowed and then said, with complete candor, “Well, I don’t know, Callie. This is a mighty tasty cookie.”

  * * *

  “Hey. I didn’t know you were out here.” Colt walked into Liam’s workshop.

  Liam was working on his antique truck, something he tended to do when the estrogen in the party-planning process became too overwhelming for him.

  “If I thought the beginning of this whole engagement party ordeal was stressful in the beginning? Brother, you have no idea.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I sincerely believe that all of this wedding stuff has shaved years off the end of my life just from stress alone.”

  Colt sat down in a nearby chair and crossed his arms loosely in front of his body. “Yeah, but you’re making Callie happy.”

  Liam stopped twisting a bolt with his wrench to look over at him. “Now, that’s what makes all those years I’m losing on the end of my life worth it.”

  “She’s a good egg, that one,” Colt said.

  “That’s the truth.” Liam finished his task and turned back to him. “You know, I think about this engagement party and this wedding. This isn’t a party for a woman with Down syndrome—this is a party for a young woman. Nothing else. None of us could have ever imagined this for her. But Callie imagined it for herself.”

  Liam paused for a moment before he continued, “I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like without her in it now.”

  “None of us can,” Colt agreed.

  Liam came over to search for a tool in his tall red metal toolbox. “So, what’s new with you?”

  “Nothing.” Colt frowned. He knew his family had some inkling that he had been dating Lee; they had seen them on the ranch on occasion. No one knew that he had ended things with her.

  Liam looked up at him. “That doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  Of all of his brothers, perhaps Liam was the one who might be able to give him some sound advice about Lee. He was, after all, the only one of them who had married a woman with a child. He was the only brother who had adopted and promised to love Callie as his own for the rest of his natural life.

  “I broke up with Lee.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Liam found what he was looking for in the toolbox. “You want to talk about it?”

  Colt did want to talk about it after all. He told Liam everything, including the fact that he had gone as far as to buy her an engagement ring. Liam, as he always did, listened without a word. He just listened. And then, when Colt had completely exhausted everything he had to say—angry words, hurt words, loving words—Liam took a moment to digest what he had heard. That was Liam’s way.

  Finally, Liam took a break from his project to share with Colt what he had been thinking.

  “I’m not going to sit here and tell you that her plan isn’t an unusual one.”

  “Unusual isn’t what I would call it. Crazy and weird is more like it.”

  “But,” Liam continued, “who’s to say that she’s wrong?”

  “Me. I’m to say.”

  “Look—I can’t fault you for not wanting to raise another man’s child when you feel you should be starting a family of your own with Lee.”

  Colt nodded his agreement. Finally, Liam was talking some sense.

  “But I’m raising a daughter who isn’t my own biologically.”

  Those words were a sucker punch in the jaw for Colt. During all of his thinking, mostly angry, about Lee’s desire to have Michael’s child, he never connected Liam’s situation with Callie to his situation with Lee. Yet, they weren’t completely different.

  “Could I love Callie any more if she were my own flesh and blood?” Liam asked.

  Colt met his brother’s eyes silently.

  Liam continued, “Could you love her any more if she were a Brand by blood?”

  “Hell, no,” Colt retorted angrily. “That doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”

  Liam gave him a nod of approval before he asked, “Then why does it really make a damn bit of difference to you who the biological father of Lee’s baby is? Wouldn’t you love that child just the same as you love Callie?”

  “I don’t know. It seems...” Colt paused “...different to me somehow.”

  “Maybe how you’re thinking has nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with how you think you measure up with Lee’s late husband.” Liam turned back to his project. “Maybe that’s the real truth, brother.”

  * * *

  One week after the end of summer session, Lee was at the Bozeman Fertility Clinic, waiting for her pelvic scan. She had already had her blood drawn and now she would have them check the thickness of her uterine walls, which was one factor in frozen embryo implantation success. Then she would see the doctor to discuss each step in the process. Lee felt surprisingly calm, considering how many years she had been working toward this moment in her life.

  �
��Lee Macbeth.” The ultrasound technician opened the door and called her name. Lee smiled and followed her into the back.

  On the table, Lee watched the screen while the technician performed the ultrasound. The technicians’ weren’t supposed to signal anything good or bad with their expressions, but Lee could see by the extended time the technician spent on one area of her pelvis that something had caught her attention.

  “Everything okay?” Lee asked, looking at the black-and-gray ultrasound screen. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary—but then again, she didn’t have a trained eye.

  The technician was noncommittal, telling her that the doctor would go over the results of the ultrasound with her in a moment. Lee got dressed quickly and went back to the waiting room. Now she was nervous. Was something on the ultrasound that would stop her from moving forward with the transfer? Was her lining too thin? Lee wiggled her foot nervously, not even able to occupy her mind with a game of Candy Crush on her phone. All she could do was look at the door and will it to open.

  The nurse called her name and she sprung out of her chair and quickly made her way to the doctor’s office.

  “Good morning, Ms. Macbeth,” Dr. Shankar greeted her warmly. Dr. Shankar was a woman of middle age, petite with black hair. She was a well-known expert in the field of fertility and Lee felt lucky to have her as her doctor.

  After Lee was seated, Dr. Shankar smiled at her. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m good,” Lee was quick to say. “Never healthier. As far as I know.”

  “This is good to hear,” the doctor said. “A mother’s health is always most important for the baby.”

  “I agree,” Lee said. “That’s why I’ve been taking vitamins, getting plenty of rest, exercising, meditating. I am so ready to start this process, Dr. Shankar. I’m ready to transfer those embryos.”

  Dr. Shankar’s smile didn’t falter when she said, “I’m afraid that isn’t possible at this time, Ms. Macbeth.”

  For a moment, Lee felt as if she were falling backward. She felt dizzy and sweaty and woozy. She swallowed a mouth full of bile down and winced as it burned her throat.

  “Why not?” she asked the doctor.

  “Because your ultrasound and your blood work show us that you are already pregnant.”

  Lee stopped breathing for a split second. She stared at the doctor, stunned.

  “I’m pregnant?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Shankar nodded. “Have you not been experiencing symptoms?”

  Lee looked down at her hands, thinking. Yes, she had been a bit queasy, but stress always made her stomach feel wonky. Yes, she had put on some weight but she had naturally assumed it was all of the pasta primavera she had been binging on since ending things with Colt. She had missed her last period but she had irregular periods, which was one factor in her difficulty with fertility. So, a missed period was no cause for alarm when she had tried for years to get pregnant to no avail. They had only had unprotected sex two times early on in their affair and she had gotten her period after the first encounter.

  “The red barn,” Lee said in wonder, her hands pressed to her stomach. She had tried for years to get pregnant and then Colt managed to knock her up on a hay bale in the red barn?

  “I’m sorry?” Dr. Shankar asked.

  Lee didn’t repeat it. The place of conception was not something she wanted to widely advertise.

  “I fell off a horse a couple of weeks ago,” Lee said, her eyes on her slightly rounded stomach.

  “Then I would say, Ms. Macbeth, that you are twice lucky.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The night of Callie’s engagement party at the Story Mansion in downtown Bozeman, Lee took extra care with her appearance. She had gone to Rebecca’s Clip Art Salon to have her hair trimmed and styled. She treated herself to a massage and a facial so her skin would look dewy and fresh. Lee had spent countless hours shopping for just the perfect cocktail dress and then spent an even longer time trying shoes on her high-heel foot for her prosthetic. It wasn’t easy to find a shoe that had the right angle to fit the prosthetic foot designed for high heels and she was often thwarted from buying the shoes that she truly wanted for the outfit. But in the end, she found a sexy pair of strappy black heels to go with her little black dress. Lee knew that Colt loved her silky brown wavy hair, so she wore it long and loose just for him. He also didn’t like a lot of makeup so she was careful to have a light hand when she applied her mascara and eye shadow and lipstick.

  “What do you think?” Lee asked Chester, who was watching her in the breadbox position from the bed.

  “Will Colt like this?”

  Lee spun from side to side and looked at her reflection in the mirror. She liked how she looked in the long-sleeved cocktail dress with the swirly short skirt that showed off her prosthetic leg and new strappy, sparkly black shoes. She ran her hand over her stomach, pulling the material more tightly over her growing bump. If someone saw it, they wouldn’t assume right away that she had a baby on board. Soon, that wouldn’t be the case.

  Her video chat started to ring and she ran to answer it. “Hi, Tessa!”

  “Let me see!” her sister said excitedly.

  Lee put the phone down on the nightstand and stepped back so her sister could see her outfit. “Ooh, pretty.”

  “Did you see the shoes?”

  “They’re neato,” Tessa confirmed. “You look beautiful, Lee. How are you feeling?”

  Tessa was the only person who knew that she was pregnant. After she shared the news with Colt, then the rest of her family and friends would be told. But for now, it was just a secret between sisters.

  “I don’t feel pregnant.”

  “That’s a bonus.”

  “I know,” Lee agreed. “The whole thing is blowing my mind. I’m like one of those old metronomes that Grandma Macbeth used to have on her baby grand—one minute I’m happier than I’ve ever felt in my life and the other minute I’m so sad about the embryos that Michael and I created. All I want to do is eat ice cream and listen to Sarah MacLachlan all day long.”

  “That sounds a bit pregnant.”

  Lee laughed. “I suppose.”

  “Is tonight the night?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. I know he’ll be there.”

  Lee had considered calling Colt and asking to meet but she wanted the moment to be more organic. The engagement party seemed like the perfect place to gauge how he was feeling about her. Did he miss her the way she missed him? She missed him so much, every day.

  * * *

  Colt put on his tuxedo, flipped his hair out of his face and then took a look in the mirror. His face was clean-shaven and the tux fit like a glove. The person he wanted to impress was Lee and he was pretty sure he would accomplish that goal with this getup.

  There had been too many times to count when he had gone to pick up the phone to text her or video chat or call. He had stalked her on social media just to keep up with her day-to-day life he missed her so much. Yes, he had kept himself busy—his friends were glad that he was available to hang out again now that Strides wasn’t taking up the lion’s share of his free time. But Lee was never far from his thoughts. By now, she would have been to the fertility clinic. By now, she could be pregnant with Michael’s baby. He hadn’t been able to completely evolve on the subject but he was working on it. What he couldn’t accept was living his life without Lee. If she was pregnant with Michael’s child, then he wanted to be with a woman who was pregnant with her late husband’s child. That was where it was at for him. Would he have chosen it—planned for it—wanted it? No. But he did want Lee. He wanted to be back with his sweet Lady Macbeth.

  Colt checked the time on his phone, grabbed his keys, took one last look in the mirror and then headed out the door. He wanted to get to the party early and stake out a spot so he could greet Lee as she came in the door. She w
as supposed to be his date—why couldn’t they still go together? If she walked in the door with another man on her arm, Colt was going to be flat-out devastated. Lady Macbeth was meant for him. She was his woman—his wife. His mind couldn’t seem to accept any other outcome.

  When he arrived at the Story Mansion, the majority of his family had already arrived. The main room of the historic mansion, with its dark wood molding and ornate light fixtures, was brimming with the excited energy of the Brand family. Everyone was laughing and talking and admiring the decor. Everyone was on a high of sheer happiness at the thought of Callie having a special night with her fiancé, Tony.

  “Hey, it’s good to see you made it back.” Colt shook Tony Sr.’s hand.

  “It was touch and go there for a while,” the father of the groom-to-be said honestly. “Callie did not want to let go of the idea of them starting a family right away.”

  “I know it,” Colt said. “Kate says she’s wanted to have a baby since she got her first baby doll. How did Tony Jr. handle it?”

  “Honestly—better than I did.” Tony Sr. smiled. “He handled it like the man of the house, albeit with a very strong, very equal woman of the house on the other side of the issue. For now, babies are permanently on hold.”

  In the main ballroom, Callie was holding court with her fiancé, Tony, on her arm. Callie looked prettier, and more adult, than he had ever seen her before. His mother had hand-sewn a beautiful blue traditional garment with long fringe and sparkly beading that twinkled when she moved her arms.

  “Congratulations to you both.” Colt hugged his niece and shook Tony’s hand. “Are you ready for the next step?”

  “I’m ready.” Tony squared his shoulders. He was standing so proudly next to Callie. It was obvious to anyone who saw them that these two people were genuinely in love. So in love that it had brought two families from completely different lifestyles together.

  “I—I can’t wait,” Callie said and then giggled behind her hand.