“Mom. You can’t be serious. They are perfect. Lance is such a wild card! What could have possibly possessed him to react like that?”
“I felt the same way he did, Abigail. I just didn’t say anything.”
“You what? What is wrong with you?”
Her tone pierces the heavy fog of fatigue that is weighting my limbs and numbing my brain. I sit up and look at her directly. “What’s wrong with me is that I’m a human being. I can’t imagine watching my child be raised by those people. Can’t begin to wrap my mind around how heartbreaking it would be to visit him as a casual stranger.”
“You’d know you had done the right thing for him! That you’d done your best to put right a wrong and—”
“There’s the rub. Right there. I don’t believe what Lance and I shared was sinful. What I did wrong was not using birth control. This family is too . . .” I struggle for words.
“Too what, Christian? You want him raised by atheists?”
“I want him raised to understand that men and women are equals. That the man doesn’t make all of the decisions and say all of the prayers. That the woman can be a doctor if that’s what she’s called to do.”
“Please,” Abigail protests with a groan. “Not this again.”
But I’m not listening. In my mind, I replay the entire visit. Yes, Gordon was kinder and gentler than Thomas. But Michelle deferred to him in every comment, every move she made. She couldn’t even make a statement without turning it into a question.
I do not want my baby raised like that. It would be Abigail all over again, only this time with a boy. He’d be raised to believe he’s better, just because he’s a man, that he has the right to make all of the decisions, that women are created for him.
And then the truth hits me, as invigorating and in my face as a bucket of icy water.
I want this boy to be raised by me. This new me. Not the old Liz, or the old Elizabeth, but me. This woman who had the courage to say yes to life in the first place.
“God, Abigail. I don’t think I can do this.” I’m on my feet, reaching for my phone. I really need to talk to Lance.
Chapter Thirty
I wait for him on the deck, needing the fresh air, the feel of sunshine on my face. When I called, he was at Rosie’s, and it only takes a few minutes for him to drive up and park in the yard.
“Can I sit?” he asks.
“I won’t bite you,” I answer, and he settles down in the porch swing beside me.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know I went off—”
“I would have, if you hadn’t.”
He turns his head to look at me. “Really?”
“The Bible’s got hell all wrong. That meeting was worse than flames and pitchforks.”
Lance sighs, leaning back, stretching out his legs. A relaxed pose on the surface, but I can feel the tension radiating off him. “Maybe some other couple will be better.”
“Some other couple will be horrible in a whole different way.”
“God,” he says, and it sounds more prayer than blasphemy. “What a mess we got ourselves into. I need to tell you something, Liz. Something I should have told you a long time ago. About my son.”
“You have a son?” My hand goes to my heart. I’ve had enough shocking revelations for one day.
“Had,” he says, his eyes on the horizon. “Gwyn. He would have been twelve this August, if he’d lived.”
“Oh, Lance.”
“He was stillborn. You’d think the grief would be less when I never even had a chance to know him. But . . .” He swallows, shifts his weight. “Well. Rachel was so excited about that pregnancy. So hopeful. Ten miscarriages, years of fertility treatments. Every time we lost a pregnancy, it killed her a little more, killed us a little more. I begged her to stop. No more babies. We could adopt. We could be cat people or dog people. We could try to get back to the way we were together before she’d gotten so desperate for a baby. I told her it didn’t matter to me. She said if it didn’t matter to me, then I didn’t love her.
“But I told her I was done, anyway. Couldn’t stand to watch the cycle anymore, her terrible, wrenching hope when she’d miss a period, get a positive test. Her utter despair when she miscarried. I just couldn’t do it. I stopped . . . well, I wouldn’t be with her anymore in that way.
“We fought. She said if I loved her, I’d want her to have a child. That I’d see how much she needed this. She accused me of cheating on her. She wept, she ranted, she stopped eating and bathing. I took to hiding medications, locking up knives. I was scared to leave her alone, but being with her was a nightmare.
“We were already in debt from the fertility treatments. I took out a second mortgage on the house. And then, God help me, I finally agreed to try again. This time, just like that, we got pregnant. It was like magic, or maybe an answer to all of her prayers. I was afraid to hope, braced for the inevitable miscarriage, but then she made it past the first trimester. She felt the baby move, a first-time milestone for her.
“The two of us began to heal. She was happy again, alive. By the time she was twenty-four weeks, it was almost like all of those miscarriages hadn’t happened. The doctor was optimistic. The baby was viable—preemies that age had been known to survive. Everything looked great. We started preparing. Bought a crib. She was knitting baby clothes. Singing around the house.
“Money was a problem, but I kept that worry to myself. I’d always been self-employed on the farm. Gil and Rosie and I had equal shares and made decent profits, but I couldn’t afford good medical insurance. I was broke and in debt from paying for fertility treatments and the specialist. Rachel was supposed to have the baby in Spokane; everything was normal, but she was considered high risk because of all of the early losses. We were planning to stay in a hotel for the last few weeks of her pregnancy, close to the specialist, but she went into labor early. We panicked.
“I drove her into Colville as soon as the contractions started. They were strong by the time we got there, too late to stop them, too late to drive to Spokane, but the doctor reassured us. Thirty-two weeks, babies do great these days. Rachel was so excited, so happy, so trusting. ‘Get ready to meet your son,’ she said to me. I . . . kissed her . . .”
He stops for a minute, and I swallow back a sob. I put my hand over his, and he laces his fingers with mine and squeezes. Takes a deep breath.
“They put her in a room and put a monitor on, and there . . . there was no heartbeat.”
“Oh, Lance. Oh God. I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t stop hoping. She said there was something wrong with the monitor. And the nurse said sometimes it’s hard to find a heartbeat. So they got the ultrasound . . .”
He withdraws his hand from mine, leaning forward and burying his face in both hands. For a long moment, there’s only the sound of his ragged breathing, a bird singing in the distance.
“The baby was dead. We . . . she . . . had to go through all the agony of labor, with no reward at the end. It destroyed her. When we buried that tiny baby, we buried us, too. There was nothing left between us. She left me a week later. And then the rest of the bills started rolling in. I couldn’t pay the mortgage, was facing bankruptcy. Rosie and Gil bailed me out. Took over the mortgage, bought out my share of the farm. They would have just given me money, but I couldn’t—I’d already lost everything else, my pride was the last thing I had left. The only thing.
“I didn’t want to live here after, anyway. The memories haunted me. I loved this house when I built it, but everywhere I looked, I just saw death. I told myself it was appropriate for renters to trash it. And then—”
“And then I came along. Why on earth didn’t you tell me all of this sooner?”
“Instead of just being a dick?” He laughs, shakily. “You came into my life like an earthquake, Liz. Shook everything up, and all of the skeletons I’d buried came tumbling out into the open.”
“I can see how me moving in here would have hit you. And
the pregnancy—God. No wonder.”
He shifts his position to look me in the eyes. “You may have noticed I live a . . . minimalist sort of life.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“When Rachel packed up and drove away, even before she filed for divorce, there was nothing left of me. At first I really did nothing but drive the tractor wherever Gil told me to. Eat when Rosie made me. Sleep whenever I could. And then little bits of life crept in. I love my nephews. I started volunteering for the ambulance, and it felt good doing something for other people. I earned my EMT, started working that job part-time. And then the community theater happened. Can’t remember why I decided to do that first play, but I loved being somebody else onstage. I liked the easygoing community with the theater people, so I did another play. I dated a few women, but it was very casual. I never let anybody get close.
“Then you walked onstage with me for that audition, and I felt like I’d been shaken until my teeth rattled in my head.”
“Sorry?”
He laughs, for real this time, and some of the tension goes out of him.
“It was a good thing. You woke me up. I looked around my apartment that night, and for the first time in twelve years, I realized that I have deprived myself of anything resembling a home. That night I brought you in—”
“Just research,” I whisper. “Casual sex. I know.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
The passion in his voice sets me to trembling. I can’t hold his gaze, letting my head and my eyes drop to my hands where they’re twisted in my lap.
“Is that all it was for you?” he asks. “Casual?”
I shake my head. Try to find the right words to tell him. Be brave. Be the new Liz. I take a breath and force myself to meet his gaze, his eyes so blue, so intense, they seem to be staring straight into my soul.
“I tried to tell myself that. You were . . .” I swallow, let my eyes drop again. I can’t look at him and say what I need to say. “Thomas was my first. My only. And he . . . he didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”
“Oh my God.” He sounds stricken. “That was your first time outside of marriage? I should have—”
“You were utterly perfect. I was so furious afterward, with Thomas, that I’d been married for thirty years and never knew it could be like that. But then you got all—”
“Weird.” He still looks aghast. “And then I turned into an asshole. You must have thought it was because you had sex with me. That I’d gotten what I wanted and lost interest.”
“Crossed my mind.” I try to smile, but my lips are trembling.
Lance puts his hand on my cheek, turns my face up to look into his. “It was the opposite. After twelve years of being locked up tight, not wanting anything, all of a sudden I wanted everything. You. A relationship with you. Three kids and a house and a dog. It terrified me. I didn’t know how to be normal around you, so I just stayed away until we bumped into each other at the Acorn.”
“And then I found the house. Your house.”
“I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to be happy, I saw the way you lit up. The way you noticed all of the little things I’d done to make it special. Rachel never—she never understood the house. It was just a house to her. Any house would have done. She didn’t care about the yard or the land. All she wanted in the world was the one thing I couldn’t give her. After I showed you the house that day, I forced myself to go back and walk through all of the rooms again. To try to picture happy things, to remember how I felt when I was building it. I was coming around.
“And then you collapsed and blurted out the news. I was shell shocked. All of this grief and rage about the baby and the divorce came boiling up, and I turned it on you. Can you ever forgive me for being such an asshole?”
“Are you going to be around to be forgiven?”
I hear the hitch in his breath, feel his muscles tighten. He shifts his position and gazes deep into my eyes, as if he’s trying to read my soul. “If you’ll let me,” he says, and the emotion in his voice makes me want to fling myself into his arms.
But I’m not ready for that. Neither of us is ready for that.
“If I were to keep the baby, you would help me?”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
The hope in his eyes is too bright, too much, and I have to look away. “I can’t let somebody else raise this child. I realized that during that horrible interview. But it’s not just my baby, and not just my decision. We’d have to figure out how to raise him together.”
“The marriage offer still stands.”
I shake my head. “Not that. We would raise the baby as friends. As partners. Neither one of us is in any shape for a relationship beyond that.”
He cups my face in his hands, tilts it up toward his. “Liz. I think I love you. I don’t know if I can do that.”
I can hardly breathe with the memory of kissing him, the desire to do it again. But, very gently, I turn my face away, freeing myself from his touch. “You barely know me. I don’t even know me. This is not the time to make a relationship commitment. For either of us, Lance.”
“Liz.” He reaches for me, but I draw back, out of reach of his hands, afraid that if I let him kiss me again, I’ll melt and say yes to anything.
“As friends. Or not at all.”
The moment that follows trembles on a balance point that will change the course of my life, one way or another.
Finally he nods. “Deal.” He holds out his hand and I give him mine. We shake, a strong, businesslike gesture, but he holds my hand longer than he would need to and I can’t bring myself to pull away.
Which is how Abigail finds us. She lets the door slam shut behind her and glares at us both, as if we’re teenagers caught out in a forbidden tryst.
“What is he doing here?” she demands.
“I invited him over to talk.” I keep my voice calm and level, letting my hand rest in Lance’s instead of snatching it back. “Sit down, Abigail. I’ve come to some decisions.”
“Pretty sure I don’t want to hear anything either of you have to say right now.”
“I’m not going through with the adoption.”
She sighs, gustily, and crosses the deck to lean on the railing. “Look. I get that you didn’t like this couple. I heard what you said, and you have a point. But they aren’t the only ones. We can find somebody more compatible.”
“Abigail. I am not adopting the baby out to anybody. He is my responsibility.” Her mouth opens, and I raise my hand to silence her. “Don’t. There are women my age raising babies all over the country. You know what I realized during that fiasco? He’s mine. Or Lance’s and mine, I should say. We created him. We’ll raise him. End of story.”
“So what now?” Her voice rises. “You’re going to let this . . . this man . . . move into the house? I am not living with the two of you. I can’t even imagine what Dad would say about this!”
“Your father has nothing to say about this. He’s not here.” A bubble of laughter rises at the insane idea of Thomas and Lance and Abigail and I and a baby, all living happily together under the same roof.
The laughter is definitely a mistake.
“You think this is funny?” Abigail demands. “I don’t even know who you are anymore. And I tell you what. If he’s moving in, I’m moving out.”
“I’m not planning to move in.” Lance’s tone is calm. Understanding, even. “I’m sure this is hard enough for you already.”
“You have no idea how hard anything is. Either one of you. I can’t do this. I’ve tried, but I just can’t.” She stalks back into the house, slamming the door behind her.
“I’m sorry,” I say in the reverberating silence that follows. “She is rather opinionated.”
“Thank God for that. Imagine if she was like that Michelle person, all tentative questions, like she’s asking for permission to exist in the world.”
He’s right. Abigail is strong. Resilient. She’s le
arning to express her emotions.
I heave myself up onto my feet. “I should go check on her.”
“And I should get some work done.” He stands there, facing me, close enough that I could so easily step into his arms.
But I’ve made my choice, and I stay with it.
“Thanks for telling me about Gwyn. And how you feel about the house.”
He shrugs. “Should have told you sooner. See you soon.” He drops a kiss on my cheek, and I watch him walk to his truck before I go back inside to make peace with my daughter.
At least that’s the idea, but I see at once there will be no peace in the immediate future. There’s a suitcase open on her bed, and she is stuffing clothes into it without bothering to fold them. Strands of hair have come loose from her braid. I watch as she throws a pair of shoes in on top of a skirt, then crams in three sets of nursing scrubs.
“What are you doing?” I ask, alarmed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Her face is hidden from me, but her voice is blurred with tears and her shoulders are shaking with sobs.
“Abigail. Honey.” I put my hands on her shoulders, but she shrugs me off.
“Don’t touch me.”
Sinking down on her bed, I close the suitcase, preventing the addition of an armful of underwear. “We need to talk about this.”
“Do we?” She faces me, defiant and tear streaked. “What is there to talk about? My opinions don’t matter to you. You’re going to do whatever you want no matter what I think. And I am not sharing a house with that man.”
There are so many possible responses, and my answer is going to matter. I leave the Lance issue alone and zero in on what I guess to be the problem.
“Your opinions matter very much to me, because I love you. But that doesn’t mean I’m always going to do what you think I should do. You’re my child, Abigail, not my mother. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“If I asked you, would it be different? If I asked you to stop having any contact with Lance?”
“He’s the father,” I say, a little helplessly. “He has a right to be involved.”
“If you adopt out the baby, his involvement isn’t with you. Don’t you see? If you loved me, you’d do this for me.”
A Borrowed Life Page 25