Everything about Justin froze. Everything. He didn’t even blink.
Maybe Taryn was lucky, and someone stopped time in the instant before those words hit his ears.
But then his hands came up between them and, if it were possible, he stood even taller. His chin dipped slightly. “What baby?”
Jemma gasped. “Taryn . . .”
Taryn’s head kept shaking back and forth, her fingers pressing tighter and tighter against her lips until it was impossible she wasn’t tasting blood. The tears pounded at the back of her eyelids in rhythm with her heartbeat. No. No. No. Not. Like. This.
Justin’s hands lowered and clenched into fists, pressing into his thighs. “Taryn.” His voice was low and deep and wounded. “What baby?”
Words wouldn’t even form in her head, even if they had, her jaw was too tight, her throat too full for them to squeeze out.
“That’s why you vanished.” His words were impossibly slow, dragged out and quiet.
“Justin.” His name squeezed out around Taryn’s fingers, weak and feeble.
He held his arm straighter, hand halting the rest of her words. He pressed his lips tight, shook his head, and walked out.
Taryn jumped and squeezed her eyes shut as the back door slammed, rattling the house and shaking her off the last fragile inch of her foundation.
* * *
“Taryn.” Jemma’s voice broke through the roar in Taryn’s ears. She grasped her granddaughter’s wrist and pulled her hands away from her mouth. “Sit down.” Reaching around, she patted Taryn’s back, then pressed on her shoulder, easing her into the kitchen table chair that had somehow appeared right behind her.
Jemma pulled her own chair around and sat knee to knee with Taryn, waiting, just like she used to do when she was little and had a bad dream. Her grandmother would sit on the edge of the bed, pat Taryn’s knee, and wait for her to talk.
Taryn couldn’t look her in the eye. This was her homecoming, her moment of freedom after being in the hospital. It was supposed to be filled with fun surprises like the quilt and the tree in the living room, and quiet calm for her to recover. Taryn had wrecked it all. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was thin in the room, drowned out by the ticking clock passing seconds on the wall.
“For what?”
“This. Today. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Taryn waved a hand toward the den behind her. “We even got you a live tree. Justin and me.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful. I can smell it from here. You two went out to the back side of the orchard, didn’t you?” Jemma patted her granddaughter’s knee and sat back. “Is that where you were on Sunday when you were so late coming to the hospital?”
“I’m sorry.” Seemed there was an endless supply of things to apologize for.
“Stop.” Jemma’s smile was a flash before it disappeared. “My big old mouth. Taryn, I’m so sorry. I just . . . I forgot he was here.”
Taryn hadn’t. She couldn’t. Not the way he’d looked at her. There was no way the image would ever go away.
“It was just the idea of you and Justin sewing the quilt with each other. The irony of it. You finding it right as he shows back up, and then you working on it together. It just . . .”
“What did you mean it was mine?” The truth was there, but she wanted to hear it from her grandmother.
Jemma shook her head and sat forward, forcing Taryn to look her in the eye. “Justin came to me just before the two of you graduated from high school. You’d only been dating a little over a year, but you’d been friends since the cradle. I knew exactly what he wanted when he showed up.”
“Don’t say it.” Taryn sat back, not wanting to hear it out loud after all. It wasn’t real, and nothing had been lost if nobody ever said it out loud.
“I told him he had my blessing a thousand times over. When the two of you fought and he didn’t ask you . . . I used to wonder what would separate the two of you, but then you got pregnant, and it was obvious. I folded up the quilt and put it away. Probably I should have destroyed it, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Everything made sense now. The way Justin acted the day she begged him to stay, then tried to manipulate him to stay. The regret slumping his shoulders when he walked away from her. Taryn had blown it with her neediness. Her fault. All her fault. Always her fault.
“No wonder he thinks I vanished. Because I did. I pushed him away and then let him walk away.” Taryn dropped her face into her hands. “I blew it. And now, I blew it again by not telling him. He’ll never forgive me for this. And he shouldn’t.”
Jemma was so quiet it was as if she’d left the room, even though her knees were in full view between Taryn’s fingers. Finally, she pulled in a deep, shuddering breath. “Honey, when he said you vanished, he didn’t mean what you’re thinking.”
“What else could he mean?”
“I’ll be right back.” Her voice was so heavy, it was a wonder she could stand up, but she did, leaving Taryn to sit and catalog her mistakes.
This couldn’t stay a secret forever. Taryn had always known it would come out eventually. Dropping her head back onto the chair, she stared at Jemma’s ceiling and counted the dents from dozens of Happy New Year champagne pops when her grandparents used to get together with their best friends every December 31. They had a good life together, full of laughter, lots of love and acceptance and mutual respect.
There were some brief mumbling, a bang, and a rustle from Jemma’s room, then she reappeared in the kitchen doorway, holding an envelope. Handing it to Taryn, she went to turn off the sink she’d left running when she first spotted the quilt.
It was one of those long white security envelopes, the edges worn like somebody had handled it often. It was sealed, one corner torn slightly. Taryn flipped it over to see the front. Maybe it was from her mother, something left behind for the moment her daughter needed it most. Now would definitely qualify as the time.
The front of the envelope sucked her breath away. It was Justin’s handwriting, addressed to her. The postmark was one week after she’d left for college. Six weeks after they parted on his front lawn. Six weeks of her tears and her guilt and her condemnation over what she’d done to him. Right after she found out there was a baby coming into the world.
Taryn swallowed hard around a lump in her throat the size of one of the Brodigan apples in the orchard. “What is this?”
Not a sound came from Jemma in the kitchen. It was like she’d disappeared.
Standing and whipping around, Taryn held the envelope up beside her face, the paper shaking, crumpling in her clenched fist. “What is this?” Her voice climbed louder. It wouldn’t be stopped, wouldn’t tone down. As much guilt as had lain on her like a blanket half an hour ago, there was an equal amount of disbelief flaming now.
“It came right after you found out you were pregnant.” There was a metallic clang as Jemma settled the teakettle on the stove. “You were already on your way to Pennsylvania. Your father called in the morning before the mail ran, and the conversation . . .” She stopped talking and gripped the handle of the oven, eyes fixed on the blue ceramic tile behind the stove. “It was full of every reason your mother never should have married him. All of those things about how she used you to hold on to him and to ruin his life, how all of his plans were wrecked because you were born because she wouldn’t give you up like he said she should. He said she was selfish, clingy, needy.”
The same things Justin had seen in Taryn.
It stung the back of Taryn’s eyelids, even though there was nothing new being said. “All of the things he said about how he stayed here instead of taking a job in California . . .” The words rang in her father’s voice in her head. But still . . . She gripped the envelope tighter, the corner poking her palm.
“I held onto the letter for a couple of days, thinking you were too emotional, and there was too much going on. And the longer I held it, the harder it was to give it to you.” Jemma’s knuckles were nearly white on the oven han
dle. “I thought about it a lot, but it was for the best.”
For the best. The same words Jemma had said to Taryn when she encouraged her to give up the baby, to not tell Justin, to not tell anyone. The same words she’d used when she started to sound like Taryn’s father, convincing her it was best not to ruin Justin’s life, to let this go, to let someone who was happily married and desperate for a baby, in the position to properly care for one, have Sarah to raise.
“I watched your mother wither, Taryn. Your father, before they married, he was a wonderful man, one we would have been proud to call a son, always here helping your grandfather. But something snapped in him when your mother got pregnant.” She cleared her throat, her voice straining around tears. “He said she did it on purpose to keep him from going to California. Maybe she did. I never had the courage to ask her. But I couldn’t stand by and watch you make the same mistake. Sweet baby girl,” her voice fell to a whisper, “you and your mother suffered so much with her married to a man who resented you both. I couldn’t watch the same thing happen to you.”
“So you manipulated the situation yourself.” Why was her voice so low? She was furious, but she couldn’t take it out on Jemma now, not when she’d just come home from the hospital. “You listened to my father, and you twisted the situation to end how you wanted. How you thought was best. You manipulated me. And Justin.” And our child.
A car door shut softly outside. Taryn turned to watch the back door. Justin had come back? Already?
Jemma came around the bar and laid her hands on Taryn’s shoulders. “You’re angry. And you should be. Go home. I made a phone call. Marnie’s here to stay with me tonight.” She brushed the hair out of Taryn’s face. “It’s okay. I understand, but don’t you dare stay here and hold all of this in.”
Unable to argue, too scared to try, Taryn shoved the letter in her pocket and brushed by Jemma, out into the mudroom, then pulled her hiking boots on. Without looking back, she yanked her coat off the hook and slammed out the back door into the cold.
15
How could her own grandmother manipulate her? How could Jemma listen to Taryn’s father, of all people, the man who had made her own daughter’s life miserable for so long, who’d treated her granddaughter like a nuisance at best, a flat-out fly to be swatted away at worst?
Taryn had never, ever questioned Jemma. Never believed she was capable of anything other than sheer, bossy honesty to a fault. But now . . . it was like everything she knew about her grandmother blew up in her face. She’d lied for years by hiding the letter.
“How could you?” It felt good to shout it, to scream it at the top of her lungs, to let the words bounce off the walls of her small kitchen and back to her, even if Jemma couldn’t hear them. The raw pain in Taryn’s throat felt like relief so much she wanted to yell it again and again, to shout it until her voice grew ragged and she couldn’t feel the hurt anymore.
But doing so would only bring nosy Mrs. Jenkins over to make sure no one was in the house trying to murder her.
Too late. Some part of Taryn had already died. After all, Rachel was wrapped up in Ethan and Mark. Justin was gone for good. Jemma was not who she’d always seemed to be. There was nothing left for Taryn to hold on to.
The stupid quilt. The stupid, stupid quilt. If she hadn’t gotten into things none of her business in the attic . . . If Jemma hadn’t been so dead set on making Rachel a quilt of her own . . . If Justin had fixed the leak instead of rushing her to the hospital with Jemma . . . Taryn and Jemma would be sitting in Jemma’s den right now in blissful ignorance. The same cozy little family of two in front of the fireplace, probably drinking hot chocolate, eating the cookies Jemma had baked, and admiring the decorating they’d done before this whole nightmare started.
Those days seemed forever ago. Taryn could dream it all day, but the cozy little scene wasn’t going to happen. None of this could go back and be undone.
Stupid quilt. Without it, life would be perfect. Taryn would never have known Justin was planning to ask her to marry him.
She’d have said yes. Her palms pressed tight against the cool vinyl of the refrigerator. The baby . . . Sarah . . . It would have been a shock, but it would have been a joy to bring a child into the world together, right?
Then again, if they’d gotten married, she’d have had to follow him wherever the army sent him, away from Jemma, away from the only family she knew, the only person who ever loved her without conditions.
Needy. Manipulative. You used me. Justin had said those words to her, standing in his front yard the day he left. And he was right. Marry him? They’d have been miserable. All of those things he’d said about her were true. Her mistake had saved him. Good thing he figured her out before it was too late.
Taryn ran one hand across her stomach. Well, almost before it was too late.
The letter crinkled in her pocket as her forearm brushed it. Two letters in one week, Sarah wanting to meet her face-to-face, Justin saying things she couldn’t even begin to guess. Twelve years apart and both life-changing.
Not for the first time, Taryn doubted her decision. Too much new information had her head tied in knots. She walked into the living room to fire up her gas fireplace and sit cross-legged on the edge of the white brick hearth. Settling the letter on the floor in front of her, Taryn smoothed out the wrinkles and laid her palms flat against it. “I thought he hated me.” Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe her father and Jemma were wrong. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Justin at eighteen was nothing at all like her father at eighteen.
“Oh, Lord.” Her eyes drifted shut. She dropped her forehead against the letter. “What if I was wrong, God? What if I ruined both of our lives?” Taryn sniffed, feeling the tears pushing against the back of her eyes. “What if I ruined all three of our lives?”
It was the one place she never allowed her imagination to wander, but now the movie spun up in her mind. Sarah was eleven now, about to be twelve. Her letter was so grown-up, so wise to her situation. How different would this Christmas be, probably buying Sarah her first cell phone? Maybe, since Justin came home to be with his dad, picking out a house where they’d all settle in Hollings or Dalton?
Would she still be a teacher?
Keeping Sarah would have meant leaving school to follow Justin wherever the army sent him. For the first time, Taryn considered what it would have meant for her to sacrifice for the baby instead of for Justin. She’d always thought of it in terms of saving Justin from being tied to her like her father was tied to her mother, but was some part of her being selfish? Refusing to give up her dreams to raise their child?
“Did I do the right thing?” She couldn’t even raise her face to look up, but God had to hear her. He had to.
If she’d given up college, she wouldn’t be a teacher. Wouldn’t be available to a kid like Chelsea who just needed someone to listen. There had been countless Chelseas in her life. Were they worth one of Sarah, when Sarah had the family she needed?
Did I do the right thing?
Not by lying to the adoption agency by telling them she didn’t know who the father was. Not by lying to Justin by not telling him at all. He never got a say in what happened to his own daughter. The betrayal he had to be feeling . . .
Must be something like the betrayal Taryn was feeling, only worse.
She sat up and stared at the closed blinds of her front window. Milky winter sun bled in around the slats. Jemma and Taryn had the exact same motives, protecting the ones they loved. How could she stalk out on Jemma for the same thing she’d done herself?
The realization didn’t make the anger die. It just dialed the heat down to a low simmer. Taryn might have lied, but Jemma manipulated the whole situation, and something in her just wasn’t ready to let it go.
Not until she knew what past Justin had to say back then.
The morbid side of Taryn, the side whispering for her to slow down and rubberneck when she passed a police car or a fire truck, dragged out the suspense as long as possible
. The envelope was thin, too thin to be more than one sheet, and it had been handled. A lot.
She picked it up and let it lay on her fingers, splayed in the open space between her two hands. The edges were shiny with someone’s repeated touch. Jemma didn’t just tuck this away and hide it. She’d worried it, thought about it, likely agonized over it. Just like Taryn, in her tiny little off campus apartment, all those nights when she thought maybe, just maybe, she should call Justin, only to have his face crowded out by her father’s scowl.
She’d done the right thing. Hadn’t she?
Did Jemma lay awake at night and wonder whether she’d done the right thing too?
Finally, when her heart couldn’t take any more, she slipped her index finger into the small tear in the corner and popped the seal, which was weak with a decade of time and touch.
The sheet of notebook paper was reluctant to let go of its folds, like it was not quite yet willing to tell her all she wanted to know.
She wanted to read it slowly, to take in what it said line by line, but her eyes wouldn’t wait. They skimmed sentences.
I’m sorry.
. . . my fault too.
. . . never should have said what I said.
. . . thought I wanted to marry you.
Maybe we should wait.
I still love you.
Her nose wrinkled, tickled by tears. She dragged a finger across the last sentence. I still love you. In spite of her manipulating him into sleeping with her. In spite of her trying to hammer his dreams out of him. He sat on his cot in basic training and said he still loved her.
Broken her. Unworthy her. Lying, manipulating, needy her. Just before he left, he saw the worst of her, yet when his anger cooled, there was still love.
The words might have been true twelve years ago, but now Justin had seen the real worst of her. The letter crinkled and crackled as she shoved it back into the envelope. No love could overcome what she’d done.
* * *
Coffee this morning was not hitting its mark. Taryn’s second official day of Christmas break. It would be better if there were school to go to. She wouldn’t have to think about anything from yesterday. She’d have more to do than stand in front of the fireplace in her pj’s and catalog the pathetic number of presents under her tree. Most of them were for Jemma.
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