Becca's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Menopause is nothing to get worked up about,” she muttered when she found herself hesitating to open the examining-room door. “Nothing to bother Will about, either.”

  She was lucky, actually, that Will was so busy with the new signature building at Montford. She could have her little midlife crisis without involving him.

  With one last reassuring pat to her flat stomach, she yanked open the door, marched down the hall to the doctor’s office and settled herself in a chair across from Dr. Hall’s desk.

  “You’re forty-two, Mrs. Parsons?” the woman asked, frowning down at Becca’s chart.

  “Yes.” So it was a little young for menopause; Becca wasn’t complaining. As a matter of fact, she thought the early onset a blessing, cause for celebration. She’d pick up a bottle of Dom Perignon on the way home.

  And maybe some steaks, too, if the doctor would just quit frowning. At the moment Becca’s stomach didn’t want Becca to think about steaks.

  “It says here that you’ve never been pregnant?” the woman asked, still reading the chart.

  Becca shook her head. She didn’t like Dr. Hall’s glasses. They were just a bit too chic for someone who frowned so much. And who wore her hair in that old-fashioned twist that made her look more like a spinster schoolmarm than a compassionate caregiver.

  The doctor raised her head, pinning Becca with an expectant stare.

  “Have you ever been pregnant, Mrs. Parsons?” Dr. Hall asked.

  “No. No, I haven’t.”

  “You didn’t want children?” The woman’s lips were pursed, her brow still puckered, but at least her gaze was back on the chart in front of her.

  Becca couldn’t help wondering what it was the woman saw there that was so interesting. “A long time ago I wanted children, yes,” she answered slowly. She hated having to tell this clinical woman about one of her greatest heartaches. Hated having to explain something that her regular gynecologist in Phoenix knew so well. “My husband, Will, and I tried for years, went to fertility specialists, spent far more money than we should have trying every way we could to have a family, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Not then, apparently.” The doctor nodded, her finger tapping her lower lip as she continued to study a chart she must have memorized by that point.

  “Not ever,” Becca said adamantly. “We’ve made a good life for ourselves, Will and I. We both have careers, hobbies, a lifestyle that suits us. We’re happy.”

  Most importantly, they had each other.

  Becca had finally come to emotional peace with her childless state. She was all through with feeling sorry for herself. And through with other people feeling sorry for her, too. Early menopause was really and truly a blessing.

  Apparently satisfied with Becca’s answer, the doctor closed the chart and, hands folded on top of it, looked across her desk at Becca.

  “Mrs. Parsons, the test you took at home last week wasn’t wrong. You are pregnant.”

  “No,” Becca said, or meant to say. The word was little more than a strangled whisper. “I can’t have children.”

  How many times over the years had she had to explain?

  “Yes, well, that’s what we need to talk about,” the doctor said. She leaned forward, her elbows on her desk.

  “From what you’re telling me, you and your husband are unprepared for this pregnancy.”

  Numb, Becca nodded. She had no idea what the doctor was talking about. The dark nights of the past week were taunting her—telling her that those worries hadn’t been pointless, the panic not unreasonable. Her life as she knew it was ending. And she had no idea where to find the beginning of a new one.

  She couldn’t be pregnant. There had to be some other explanation.

  “You’re forty-two years old, Mrs. Parsons.”

  “Yes.” Becca was fairly certain of that fact. It was familiar. Something that she could grasp. “Yes.” She nodded vigorously. “I’m forty-two.”

  “Having a baby at forty-two, while not uncommon anymore, is still a risk…” The doctor’s gaze was serious, though not unkind. Becca clung to that look, the woman’s actual words fading in and out. She heard something about weak placentas.

  “…your blood pressure is a little high, which makes me additionally concerned…”

  Feeling that something was expected of her, Becca nodded again. The doctor was right. Her blood pressure did have a tendency to run a bit above average when she was stressed out. And Lord knows, it had been a stressful week. What with Mayor Smith’s financial bombshell and all. As a paid—and elected—official of Shelter Valley’s town council, Becca should have some say in how the town’s money was spent. She ran her fingers through her hair, comforted by the familiar feel of the stylishly mussed strands.

  “…there are also the hormonal considerations.”

  Becca tuned in again. “Many women giving birth at your age,” Dr. Hall went on, “experience some rather alarming postpartum hormonal imbalances. Women who’ve had children before. With this being your first, you’re even more susceptible to these types of things.”

  Her first.

  Paralyzed with shock, Becca tuned out again. If she could only clear the fog surrounding her…

  Why couldn’t she get rid of the fog?

  Or the terrible churning in her stomach?

  She needed Will.

  She wanted to be out of here, on the road, driving her Thunderbird.

  “…birth defects.”

  Becca heard only the two words, but the doctor was finally finished. She’d stopped speaking, her eyes filled with sympathy.

  Becca hated that. More than just about anything, she hated pity.

  She couldn’t seem to do a damn thing to take control of the situation. To show the doctor that there was absolutely no reason in the world to feel sorry for Rebecca Parsons.

  Having heard very little of what the doctor had said and comprehending even less, she didn’t really know what the situation was. She only knew that it had to be happening to someone else.

  “You’ll need some time to discuss this with your husband, of course.” Dr. Hall finally broke the silence that had fallen. “Though I wouldn’t recommend taking more than a few days.”

  “Yes,” Becca agreed. She needed her husband. It was another of those things, like her age, that she didn’t question.

  “I’ll speak to him, too, if you’d like,” the woman added softly.

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor stood, so Becca did, too, taking the doctor’s hand as it was extended.

  “As soon as you decide to go forward as I’ve recommended, I can perform the operation right here at the hospital as an outpatient procedure.”

  “Procedure?” Becca asked. The blankness that had overtaken her mind was scaring her.

  “The pregnancy termination,” Dr. Hall said. “I’d like to give you all the time you need, but as I’ve already explained, you’re at least two months along, which doesn’t leave us more than a few weeks to do this as safely as possible. The sooner we can get it done, the better.”

  Termination? Becca started to panic. Dr. Hall said that so matter-of-factly. As if there really was something within Becca to terminate.

  “Thank you,” Becca said once more. She had no idea why, but it seemed appropriate. And if she had nothing else, she always had her manners.

  Somehow she made it out of the office. Into the mild March day, lifting her face to the sun’s warming rays. Arizona sunshine. It felt so good. So warm and enveloping. So strong and reassuring. So normal.

  How could anything feel normal when everything inside Becca, everything she’d ever been, had changed?

  And how could she just get in her car as if the world hadn’t permanently altered, shifted completely off its axis?

  “You okay, lady?’

  Focusing on the young man who’d stopped his bicycle beside her in the parking lot, Becca tried to smile. “Fine, thank you.”

  And then, because he seemed
to expect it, she unlocked her car, opened the driver’s door and slid inside.

  No, she wasn’t okay.

  She was pregnant.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SLEEK MIDNIGHT-BLUE Thunderbird swallowed the miles, traveling highways, city streets, even, for a brief turn, a desert track. Becca was tempted to just let the beautiful car rest out there in the middle of nowhere, cacti and skillfully concealed roadrunners its only company. She was going nowhere. Might as well be out here, where human reality hadn’t reached yet.

  She was pregnant. Finally. A baby of her own was growing inside her. The sudden elation took her breath away. And then brought it back in a whoosh of nervous excitement.

  Which was followed almost immediately by an incredible rush of fear.

  Her stomach lurched. She had a major problem. Spurred by thoughts she had to keep at bay, she jerked the car into gear and drove off again, leaving a huge cloud of dust in her wake. The two-hour trip from Tucson to Shelter Valley had taken four and she wasn’t even close to home.

  Despite an entire town of family and friends ahead of her, she’d never felt so alone in her life. This was her body. Her problem.

  Her prayers of more than twenty years had been answered. But answered too late?

  Becca knew one thing for sure. She was scared to death.

  Finding the freeway that led to Shelter Valley, she turned her powerful car toward the town that had everything she needed—security, happiness, love. Home. And picked up her cell phone.

  Her chances of getting anyone were slim, which might have been why she was finally ready to try.

  “Tucson Women’s Health Clinic. May I help you?”

  Becca’s stomach protested again. “Is Dr. Hall still there?”

  “One moment, please.”

  As it turned out, the doctor hadn’t left yet. She was quite willing to repeat what she’d told Becca earlier, in her office. This time, Becca heard every word.

  Fifteen minutes later Becca dropped her cell phone into the console beside her. She put her foot on the gas and took the next ten miles at more than a hundred miles an hour. She was the dean’s wife. The town matron. The one other people came to when they had problems. The one who usually managed to solve those problems.

  And she was losing it.

  Whatever fates had thought her capable of handling this day were wrong. She couldn’t do this.

  It was dark by the time she turned off at the Shelter Valley exit. Will would be home, wondering where she was. Hungry. Worried.

  The first time they’d thought she was pregnant, Will had brought home a beautiful little antique table box he’d spent their grocery money on, with an inscription carved in its frosted glass top. It had read Mommy’s Treasures.

  Inside she’d found a tiny square card on which he’d written, “I’m thankful you’re going to be the mother of my children, but more than that, I’m thankful you’re my wife.”

  The box had remained on a shelf in a closet after that first disappointment. And after the second and third, as well. Becca wasn’t quite sure when it had disappeared. She only knew that one day, when she was looking for something in that closet, she’d noticed it missing.

  Although they’d never talked about it, Becca knew Will had disposed of it for her. For both of them. The precious box had been too painful a reminder of broken dreams.

  Becca couldn’t face him. Couldn’t see to his needs. Couldn’t even see to her own.

  So where did she go now?

  Her mother? Unequivocally no. Her mother lived in the past. She always had, but Rose’s preoccupation had grown much worse since Becca’s father’s fatal heart attack a decade ago.

  And she couldn’t go to Sari. Though she’d always been closest to her younger-by-a-year sister, Sari was still grieving for the daughter, her only child, she’d lost two years before. Becca’s problem couldn’t help but remind Sari of Tanya, would only be a catalyst for more pain.

  And as she’d never confided in her two older sisters in her life, now probably wasn’t the time to start.

  Mentally running through everyone she knew in town, Becca had reasons for avoiding all of them. Her friends were married, had families they’d be sitting down to dinner with. Her colleagues would be doing the same. Not that she had that kind of relationship with them, anyway. You didn’t show up on their doorsteps with a personal problem. Shelter Valley residents were close enough to know everyone else’s business, but they still respected one another’s privacy.

  She thought of the minister at church, but other than the one committee she still served on, she and Will weren’t too active anymore—didn’t even always attend church. She’d grown somewhat distant from Reverend Creighton.

  Randi. Driving by Shining Way, the street where Will’s sister Miranda, younger by twelve years, had just moved six months before, Becca suddenly knew where she had to go. She hung a U-turn in the middle of the road and was in front of Randi’s new house in seconds.

  “Please be home,” she begged aloud, searching the pretty house for signs of life.

  There was a light on in the back—the kitchen—but that didn’t mean anything. Randi always left lights on.

  She rang the bell with shaking fingers. And waited. Tapping her foot, counting, blowing the bangs off her forehead, she tried to think where Randi might be if she wasn’t home. Did she have a game tonight? Becca couldn’t remember her having said so when they’d had dinner with Will’s parents and Randi at his brother Greg’s house on Sunday.

  Could Becca show up at the field dressed in a suit, looking for her?

  “Becca! What a nice— What’s wrong?” Randi stood framed in the doorway, wearing a pair of tight-fitting gym shorts and a T-shirt.

  Relieved that her sister-in-law was there, after all, Becca opened her mouth to make light of the day she’d had. To practice on Randi before going home.

  She burst into tears, instead.

  FUNNY HOW LIFE could be so fickle, Will thought without humor. What had been a great day, from this morning’s discussion, through the golf game and lunch to the late financial meeting, had turned into a nightmare. Becca was missing.

  Carrying the portable phone with him, he strode through the house again, looking for the note he must have missed. Becca never went anywhere without leaving him a note. He lifted his briefcase off the kitchen counter, in spite of the fact that he’d already checked there twice since arriving home more than an hour before. And he racked his brain for someone else to call.

  There was no council meeting tonight, or any other type of meeting he could think of that she could possibly be attending. She hadn’t said anything about being gone that evening, and she always told him her schedule. He’d already called someone from every one of Becca’s committees, anyway. The Women’s League. The Fine Arts Council. Church. He’d called her mother and Sari, though he was careful not to alarm either of them. Her friends were all eating dinner with their families and hadn’t heard from her. His only comfort was that neither had the hospital nor the police department.

  His mind raced ahead, concocting a scenario worse than an accident. Becca was strikingly beautiful. Could she have caught the attention of some sick bastard? Surely not here in Shelter Valley. There hadn’t been a rape in years. And she hadn’t mentioned anything about making the one-hour trip into Phoenix.

  Cold in spite the day’s warm temperature, he moved on, studying her desk again for clues. More thorough this time, he went through the drawers and then, the notepad she kept by the answering machine. There were names he didn’t recognize, but that was nothing unusual. Becca dealt with a lot of people outside Shelter Valley in the course of performing her various charitable and civic duties. And she’d been looking furiously for a funding source for her newest project, Save the Youth.

  The red suit she’d put on that morning wasn’t in the closet, so she hadn’t changed. Had she told him about a meeting out of town and he’d forgotten? Not likely. He was always aware of Becca. Came
from almost thirty years of loving her, he supposed. And close to twenty of worrying about her as they struggled through attempt after futile attempt to have a family. There’d been a time or two in years past that he’d been afraid the disappointment was going to kill her.

  A time or two when it had nearly killed him.

  Will jerked sharply when the phone in his hand pealed.

  “Hello!” he said roughly. “Becca, is that you?”

  “Will, it’s Randi.”

  Randi. Biting back the crushing disappointment, he pinched the bridge of his nose. He was probably just overreacting. Strickland’s tragic story had been lingering in his mind all afternoon. Becca was fine.

  “How ya doin’, sis?” he asked. A gifted athlete and his athletic director at the university, Randi held a very special place in his heart. He was glad he was the brother she kept in touch with the most.

  “Fine.” She sounded a little subdued. “Listen, Becca was just here.”

  His heart stopped, then started to pound. Thank God. “What was she doing there?” he asked, grinning with relief as he sank down on the side of the garden tub in their bathroom.

  “She’s on her way home,” Randi said, not answering his question. Her tone of voice sent warning signals Will couldn’t miss.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She just needs to talk to you, Will,” Randi said in a hurry. “But listen, you need to be nice to her, okay?”

  “I’m always nice to her.” He stood up. “Tell me what’s wrong, Randi.”

  “I…can’t, Will.”

  “Is she hurt? Ill? Tell me, dammit!” he, who never raised his voice, yelled into the phone.

  “Calm down,” Randi said, not the least bit intimidated. Which, ironically enough, relieved him somewhat. “She’s not ill and she’s not hurt and you’d better be patient with her, you hear me?”

  His baby sister was yelling at him? Will looked around the huge bathroom, the double sinks, the Persian rug Becca had been so excited about finding. Was he in the right house? The right life?