Lark shrugged. “I never doubted your ability to get what you wanted. For me, though, wandering around Dublin gave me some healing space away from my family drama. I came back believing I had a future as a writer. My lowly job as an assistant in the newspaper office up in Sturgeon Bay was a start.”
Miles rested his forearms on the table. “I’m glad to hear that. But speaking of family drama, it won’t be long before we have to talk to our families about what’s going on. Andi knows, but no one else.”
She let her shoulders slump. “Oh, boy, another happy thought. I’m really not that worried about my parents or my brother, mainly because I don’t much care what they think. I’ve gone my own way most of my life. It’s Evan, and to a lesser extent Lyle, who give me anxious thoughts.”
Miles nodded. “Speaking of anxious, I’ve been thinking about the way I felt years ago after I left you in Minnesota, took my finals in Stevens Point, and then drove home. Every minute I was in my parents’ house over Christmas break, my hands shook, my stomach churned. I even lost weight.”
Puzzled, Lark said, “I don’t understand.”
“Let’s just say I was pretending all the time.” He moved one hand in a rolling motion as he spoke. “‘Miles took his finals, Miles opened a gift box holding a silk necktie, Miles hugged Aunt Rosa and shook hands with Uncle Art.’ Inside, I was jumpy, fearful that I’d be found out. It was irrational, but it wasn’t until I was back for my last semester that I stopped looking over my shoulder.”
“And I was safely tucked away in Ireland. Safe from myself, anyway.”
Miles frowned at her and tilted his head, as if expecting her to elaborate.
Rejecting the option to say nothing, she rushed her words. “Having an ocean between Minnesota and me kept me from acting on the urge to go bang on the door of the agency and shout that I’d changed my mind. I wanted my baby back.”
A flicker of pain crossed Miles’s eyes. This was the emotional point where they truly had gone their separate ways.
Lark reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “It was a beautiful dinner, Miles. But let’s leave now.” An idea came to her. Something to lighten the mood. It would give them privacy if the big talk was coming. “If you’re up for a walk, I know a lovely place we can go. We can come back for our cars later. But I don’t want to finish this conversation here.”
Miles swallowed hard, but didn’t look away. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
* * *
“I’M EAGER TO know where this walk is going to take us,” Miles said, buttoning his coat. He smiled down at Lark, whose hair was tamed in some kind of twist. But she seemed vulnerable, even deceptively delicate in her high-heel boots. As he followed her out the door, he was struck that she looked so different from that morning they’d met at Hugo’s, but equally pretty and appealing.
Lark tilted her head back and pointed to the sky. “It’s actually a beautiful night. Not too cold and a nearly full moon. And you’ll like where we’re going.” She led the way down a side street, where houses were decked out with elaborate holiday lights. “By the way, just to be clear, going off to Ireland was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It kept me from making some big mistakes. In a way it saved my life.”
“Wow.” The pressure in his chest spoke of the intensity of emotion behind Lark’s words. “That’s a strong statement.”
She stepped around a not-quite-frozen puddle on the sidewalk. He offered his hand in case she wanted support, but she ignored it, apparently preferring to navigate the sidewalk in her spiky, heeled boots on her own. Like she’d done everything else. She was good at taking care of herself. But then again, so was he.
“What I said is one-hundred-percent true,” Lark responded in a low voice. “Most of the time the urge to get our baby back lived inside me on a low-level frequency. But every now and again I thought I’d burst out of my skin with regret.” She let out a long sigh. “That’s why being so far away allowed me to gradually get used to the idea that I could move ahead. At least I pretended to tuck thoughts of the baby away in some category of my brain labeled ‘safely handled.’”
They strolled past a large brick house all but obscured by white lights. A Christmas tree also decorated with only white lights stood in the center of the bay window. A man and a woman were moving around in the living room. Presumably content? Maybe. Miles knew that unhappiness, even misery, could be hidden behind the perfect facade. He and Andi had played that game.
“Are you saying you didn’t worry about her being well taken care of by her new parents?” Miles asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far. For all the angst I had about the whole experience, I’ve always had faith in the agency, I guess. Why do you ask? Were you worried about her well-being?”
Stopping to stare at the brightly lit house, Miles grunted. “No. It’s embarrassing to admit how little I thought about her. The whole experience, really, start to finish. Once I got through Christmas break, that is.”
“You mean you were relieved, right?”
“It always comes back to that. You believe my dominant feeling was relief. Not regret or sadness.”
“Okay, Miles, if that’s not true, then convince me otherwise.”
The strength of her voice startled him. He swallowed past a heavy lump in his throat. “I can’t. Because you’re right. I felt profound relief over escaping something that would have completely changed the course of my life. Even worse, I didn’t want to lose my parents’ respect. That’s why I didn’t tell them, and why I was so jittery over the holiday break when I couldn’t avoid spending time with them.”
He stared at a cluster of small spruce trees in the next front yard. No lights, no holiday transformation. “And I always knew I could keep it secret. At least in those early years I didn’t regret or even second-guess our decision.”
There it is, Lark...it’s the best I can do.
“Thank you for being honest,” she said, starting off down the street.
If she wanted silence for the moment, then he’d give it to her. They passed one house and then another and another.
“Winter in Ireland was a lot like the weather we’ve had lately,” she said. “Damp, chilly, but not so very cold. I walked a lot and fell in with a crowd of students in the various arts programs. It was the first time I didn’t have the voices of Mom and Dad reminding me about the practical stuff, you know, like making a living.”
With a soft laugh, she pointed to the turret of a house across the street. “Mom used to warn me about having my head in the clouds, and being satisfied with living in an attic somewhere and filling journals and notebooks with my golden words.” She shook her head. “Both my parents think my little cottage is equivalent to that attic—charming, but impractical.”
Ridiculous. “For what it’s worth, I think your cottage is wonderful. It reflects who you are and what you value most. Evan will see that one day.”
She laughed. “You promise?”
“I wish I could make that promise.” He hesitated. “I wish a lot of things.”
Now it was her turn to stop. “What do you mean?”
He wasn’t sure if what he was about to say was a true regret, but it had been on his mind for a while. It was right that he finally voiced it. “I wish I had seriously considered a plan to keep the baby.”
“And why didn’t you?”
He exhaled. “Because I wanted the problem to go away.”
“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? If not, I would have found a way to keep her, instead of just fantasizing about doing it. I’d have done it whether you wanted her or not.” Her voice was hoarse when she added, “That’s why when it was way too late I wanted to pound on the agency’s door and demand her back. I never felt totally right with my decision.”
She began walking again, obviously eager to get to
wherever she’d chosen as their destination.
“Every once in a while I imagine what might have happened if I had done that,” Lark said. “But now, this last week, I think of the great life Perrie Lynn has had. Who am I to believe I’d have done as well?”
“But you would have found a way to do a great job,” Miles said, surprised by his emphatic insistence. “With or without me.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but at some point I had to at least try to make peace with myself. But I never forgot her.”
“And you think I did. That’s the crux of it. Right? The critical point.”
She waved her hand across the street toward a row of lights. “Where we’re headed is up ahead. You can see the lights.”
Hmm...she hadn’t answered the question. But then, he’d hedged his own response. It would be wrong to say that he’d forgotten their child, but neither was she at the front of his mind every day.
As they approached the lights, their formation made sense. He laughed out loud. “It’s a skating rink. That’s where you’ve brought me.”
“I used to skate here as a kid.” She pointed across the fence. “The warming shed is over there next to a concession stand, but both buildings are probably closed tonight.”
He nodded to a couple skating hand-in-hand. “That didn’t keep those skaters away.”
A white wooden fence surrounded the rink, along with trees spiraled with fairy lights. “We can watch from here,” she said, resting her elbows on the top of the fence. “Once Evan made it clear skating wasn’t his thing, I never gave this rink much thought. And now, here I am, going to the internet to watch clips of skating competitions. I can even tell you all about the origin of the Biellmann spin.”
“You can, huh?” Miles was getting eager to pop his surprise, but it was too early. They still had ground to cover.
“Tell me one more thing. If you weren’t thinking about our baby every day, I get that. But where did she fit into your life and memories as the years passed?”
He let the question hang in the air until he slowly exhaled, ready to answer. “She receded into a kind of hazy background, at least until Brooke was born. As her birth approached, I became increasingly nervous. I was terrified something would go wrong.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “Was it a superstitious feeling that you’d be punished?”
“Probably. I tried not to analyze it. But once Brooke arrived, I was overwhelmed. Our baby receded from my mind again. Then, less than two years later, Andi wanted—demanded—a divorce.” Miles shook his head thinking back on those chaotic days. “Mere months after it was final, she remarried a really unreliable guy, and divorced him less than a year later. Meanwhile, I got the opportunity to be Daddy. Perrie Lynn’s birthdays were always odd days. But I have to admit that she stopped being real to me much of the time.”
“Ah, a sense that it never happened?”
“More or less. Did that ever happen—”
“No, if that’s what you’re asking. It never happened for me. She was all too real.”
“All the more reason you could have reached out to me,” Miles insisted, “like maybe on her birthday. Why didn’t you?”
“Oh, please, Miles. Be honest. Would you have welcomed such a call?” She mimed putting a phone to her ear. “‘Hi, Miles, just wanted to talk about the baby we gave away. Hope I’m not bothering you in your new life.’”
He raised his hands in a defensive motion. “Okay. Enough. I get the message.”
“You know I’m right. We had to go our separate ways.”
But he didn’t believe that was completely true. “Let’s just say, I wouldn’t have ignored you if you’d tried to reach out. We could have found a time and place to talk in private.”
He glanced down and watched Lark’s gaze following the couple taking yet another turn around the rink. The two glided with easy grace on the ice, their movements smooth, synchronized. She couldn’t take her eyes off them.
“To contact you would also have forced me to admit I hadn’t moved on. I was full of bitterness and angry with myself. Why hadn’t I made a different decision? Maybe if my parents hadn’t been in such a horrible crisis, I would have told them, gone home, kept the baby. Maybe I should have asked you to help me.”
“But I didn’t step up.” He hated thinking about the obligatory things he’d said to let her know he’d manage to adjust if she kept the baby. But looking back he judged himself a coward. “This is what needs to be said, Lark. You couldn’t lean on me or even involve me much in your decision. I didn’t give you that option.”
“You’re right,” she said, not looking at him. “From the minute I confirmed I was pregnant, I knew I was more or less on my own. Sure, you did all the decent things. Helped with the bills, were with me during labor and all that. But you didn’t want her. But then, neither did I—at the time.”
She didn’t fill in the blank, leaving him to speculate what had changed as time passed.
“I’m sorry I didn’t reassure you that I’d help you raise her. I’ll regret that until I take my last breath.”
Lark nodded slowly, her gaze cast down. “I don’t mean to hand off all the blame to you. Like any major decision, the consequences are complicated. Whenever regret threatens to overwhelm me, I remind myself that if I’d made a different choice, I might not have married Lyle and had Evan. Regardless of the mismatch with Lyle, I can’t imagine life without my son.”
“Yes,” Miles said, nodding, “I get that.”
“I also consoled myself with the notion that whoever adopted her had been longing for a child, likely not able to have their own baby.” Lark sighed as she shook her head. “I’ll never forget how horrified I was, not just scared, but horrified to learn I was pregnant.”
“You seemed resigned by the time you told me,” Miles said, recalling the sick feeling that had come over him. Initially he’d been pleased to see her at his door, but as soon as she’d blurted out “I’m pregnant,” he’d had no idea what to say. The first words out of his mouth had been “What do you plan to do?”
But he and Lark had already been over that ground. He didn’t want to cover it again.
The damp wind picked up. Lark tightened her scarf around her neck. They’d need to walk back to their cars soon, but he still had his so-called surprise.
Staring at the skaters on the ice, she said, “In the end, Miles, I’ve tormented myself with what-ifs and might-have-beens, but I usually quickly circle back to the notion that I—we—did the right thing. The Olsons wanted a child. All these years, that’s what got me through and lifted some of the pain.”
He touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry you’ve been haunted by this—and I will always regret not stepping up at the time. You have to believe me.”
She lightly tugged at the fabric of his coat with her gloved fingers. “I do.” She dropped her hand. “There’s more we could hash through, but I don’t see the point now. I’m just glad, really glad, both of us had a chance to have a family.”
“Me, too.” In a dry tone he added, “Even if the marriage part didn’t work out so well.”
“You can say that again.”
Her smile was back. It was time. “Uh, I know you’re getting cold, but before we call it a night, there’s something I want to ask you. Nothing bad.” He laughed. “I’m nervous like a kid. Actually, it’s something good.”
She cocked her head. “Well, then, out with it.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his coat. “Being an optimist at heart, I went ahead and did this without asking you first. I’m hoping you can make it work with your schedule.” He opened a folded paper and handed it to her. “It’s dark, I know, but the paper is the email confirmation for two tickets to the North American Figure Skating Competition next month. It involves four days in Boston.
”
She studied the paper and then pressed it to her chest. “You mean we’d get to see Perrie Lynn skate? Live?”
“That’s right. And I’ve booked our flights and two hotel rooms. But if you can’t go—”
“Oh, I can go,” she interrupted. “I’ll find a way. Lyle can keep Evan for an extra day or two or we’ll switch weekends or something.” She glanced at the paper again. “But, Miles, would being there at the event violate our agreement with the Olsons?”
He shook his head. “No, no. I thought of that. I booked seats that are about as high in the arena as you can get. We’re staying in a hotel more than a block down the street.” He explained that the tickets covered all the major events, so they’d see the pairs’ competition and the ice dancers, too.
“This is fantastic!” She laughed and threw her arms around him for a quick hug. “I can’t believe it. We’ll be hidden from view, but we’ll be there to see her compete. Ha!”
Not knowing Lark’s financial situation, he wanted to clarify that he was paying for the whole trip. “I took a chance because I wanted it to be a surprise, but the tickets are refundable if it turned out you couldn’t go. I wouldn’t have gone to the competition without you.”
“Are you sure, Miles? I can pay my way. Really.”
“Absolutely not. As it happens, I have to be in Boston for work right after the event. Your flight home leaves on Monday, but I don’t come back for another couple of days.”
“Well, well. Merry Christmas, Miles!” She tilted her head back and laughed with joy.
One-hundred-percent satisfied he’d made a good choice, Miles exhaled the breath he’d been holding and laughed along with her.
Girl in the Spotlight Page 11