A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  Andie finally gave up and hung up the phone. As she stood there, her hand on the cool plastic handset, she was consumed with a frantic, primeval longing for her mother. Leticia, in her brisk, competent manner, would know all about the right kinds of herbs to have on hand in this kind of emergency, both antiseptic and anesthetic. Maybe she could just call her...

  You're stalling, Andie, she thought as she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The wild panic that had been nipping at her since she ran into the ranch house began to growl in earnest. She couldn't do this. She couldn't. She wanted to escape to the safety of her own house, away from Beth's pain, away from the breathing and the pushing.

  Away from the baby.

  The baby. Andie felt her breathing accelerate, her lungs begin to suck in tortured gasps of air, and she dug her fingernails into her palms. Slowly, steadily, she forced herself to calm down.

  She was stronger than this, dammit. She had to be, for Beth's sake and for her own. Summoning all her energy, she walked to the sink, poured a glass of water, and drained it in one quick motion. Her hands shaking, she splashed frigid water on her face, then washed her hands and gathered the supplies Will needed.

  Drawing one more unsteady breath, she left the kitchen. She could do this. She would do this.

  In the end, Andie did little more than watch. Will astounded her with his gentleness, his easy competence. He squeezed Beth's hand when she needed it and wiped the sweat from her forehead. He was calm and cool, everything Andie wasn't.

  "I need to push," Beth moaned.

  "Don't push, sweetheart," he said. "Not yet. Just breathe for a little while longer. The doctor will be here any second now. That's it, sweetheart. You're doing just great."

  The bawling of cows outside distracted Andie from the drama unfolding before her, and she glanced out the window to see Jace riding hell for leather down the hillside. Several hundred yards behind him a couple of the Bar W hands were driving in the herd of about sixty range cows, but the distance between Jace and the herd lengthened with each powerful stride of his mount.

  "Is that my husband?" Beth asked. Her face was pale, her red hair plastered to her forehead.

  "Yeah." Andie was already heading for the door.

  "I want him in here now so I can kill him."

  "You'll have to wait in line, honey. I'm first."

  "I'll take a shot at what's left of him," Will said, "but after we get this baby here."

  Jace slid off his lathered horse just as Andie opened the front door. "I saw the Jeep when we topped the hill," he panted. "It was parked all wrong, with the door wide open, like somebody rushed out in one hell of a hurry. What's the matter? Is it Beth?"

  "Your child's about to be born. Where in the blue blazes have you been?"

  He opened his mouth to reply, panic flitting across his handsome features, but she grabbed him by the front of his denim work shirt and hauled him inside.

  "It doesn't matter," she said. "You're here now. But I'm not going to let you touch her or that baby until you shower off this horse sweat and heaven knows what else is all over you. Move it, buster."

  Jace made it, just barely.

  "The baby's crowning," Will said, just as his brother-in-law rushed into the bedroom in clean clothes. "Beth, honey, it looks like we're on our own with this one."

  "I have to push, Will. I'm sorry," she whimpered.

  "Okay, sweetheart. Give it all you've got. Great. Great! Just one more and we're there. Thatta girl. There you go.... There you go..." With a mighty heave, the baby slid out in a slick mess onto the towels Will had padded up underneath Beth.

  "Oh my word," Jace breathed, his face paling.

  The baby squawked at the indignity of it all. "You have a son," Will exclaimed. "Ten fingers, ten toes. One head."

  He laughed exultantly, even as be wiped his face on his shoulder. Andie didn't know if he was wiping tears or sweat. It didn't seem to matter. She felt numb, her emotions frozen, even as she felt the tears coursing down her own cheeks.

  "Oh my word," Jace repeated. He gathered his wife into his arms, and the two of them stared at the tiny thing they had created.

  Andie didn't realize she was edging away from the tableau on the bed until her shoulders bumped against the far wall. She stiffened and took a step forward while Will quickly, efficiently cleaned up the child and wrapped him in a receiving blanket from Beth's hospital bag. He handed him to his parents just as a bustle sounded from the doorway.

  "Looks like, as usual, I missed the fun part." Old Doc Matthews, his white hair windblown and his old-fashioned leather medical bag in hand, ambled into the room. "Trust you, Beth Walker, to do things your own way."

  "Sorry, Doc," she said weakly, still in the circle of Jace's arms.

  "Looks like that fancy specialist I sent you to in Jackson was one big waste of time and money. The sheriff here did just fine without either one of us."

  "The sheriff never wants to go through something like this again," Will said, just as the scream of an ambulance set the baby crying again.

  Just hang on. It's almost over, Andie told herself as she slipped from the room to usher in the paramedics with their stretcher. It only took a few minutes for them to pack Beth and the baby on the stretcher and wheel her through the ranch house.

  She should have known, though, that she wouldn't be able to escape that easily. Beth caught sight of her as they were nearly to the door. "Wait," she commanded the paramedics. They obediently stopped.

  "Did you see him, Andie?" she asked.

  Andie gathered the last fragments of her control and walked through the crowd of men to the stretcher. She could hardly see the child, he was so wrapped up in the blanket. She caught only a glimpse of red skin, puckered-up eyes, and a tiny cupid's bow of a mouth. It was enough. And too much.

  "You did good, kid," she said through the ache in her throat, brushing Beth's hair from her forehead.

  "He's beautiful, isn't he?" Tears welled in her friend's eyes as she cradled her child, and Andie smiled softly, though her heart felt as if it had cracked apart and shattered into a million pieces.

  "The most beautiful baby I've ever seen."

  In a flurry of activity, the paramedics wheeled Beth out the door, and suddenly the house was as quiet as death. Alone, Andie closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Work. She needed to work. Anything to take her mind from the images crowding through it.

  She hurried into the bedroom and stripped off the soiled linens and, with more force than the job called for, shook out a clean sheet with a powerful snap. She was throwing on the top sheet when Will appeared, his broad shoulders filling the doorway.

  "Hi," he said quietly.

  "Hi yourself," she answered. She leaned to tuck in a bottom corner, avoiding his gaze. "You did good, too, back there."

  "Beth did all the work."

  "She's lucky to have had you."

  He rubbed at his bad shoulder, unconsciously, she was sure. "Well, Jace wants to ride in the ambulance, so I'm going to follow them in their truck so he has transportation in Jackson. Doc Matthews will give me a ride back home."

  "Okay."

  He paused. "If you can drive my Jeep back to the ranch, I can take you to town to pick up your truck tonight or tomorrow morning."

  "Okay," she said again.

  He was watching her carefully. Too carefully. She turned away to tuck in the other corner.

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "Sure," she lied, praying she could make it home before she broke down completely. "Why on earth wouldn't I be?"

  ***

  No welcoming lights greeted Will when Doc Matthews dropped him at the Limber Pine Ranch close to midnight. Buzzing with exhaustion, he felt a moment's panic surge through him. Where was Andie? Usually she left on a porch light, but now only pearly rays from the full moon shimmered in the night.

  She probably just fell asleep after the stress of the day, he told himself.

  The dogs ran out
to greet him, and he took a moment to give attention to each one, as they'd come to expect. It seemed like a lifetime since he'd been able to enjoy the simple, pure pleasures of soft dog fur between his fingers, the calming sight of moonlight bathing the tops of the pine trees. The wondrous miracle of new life.

  He drew in a sharp breath as the reminder of his new nephew brought an ache to his chest. Through the ordeal of the delivery and the long drive to the hospital and back, he'd purposely shunted aside all the pain seeing that child summoned in him.

  Now, though, with his defenses down, he could feel all the memories of Sarah and their baby gathering force to attack.

  In an effort to divert himself, he started on his nightly walk around the ranch. It had become a ritual with him, a calming, relaxing practice to walk the length of Andie's well-kept property each evening.

  Heading along the west fence, he crossed the footbridge over the irrigation ditch and walked down around the far pasture. A barn owl called somewhere overhead, and the wind mourned through the tree-tops, but otherwise all was quiet.

  He closed his eyes, inhaling the intoxicating scent of flowers—of fresh growth—that permeated the entire ranch. For some reason, all his emotions felt close to the surface tonight. He felt as if he'd spent the last three years in a numb daze, immersed in novocain, that was just now beginning to wear off.

  He was heading back toward the house and the cottage when he saw her. Just a shadow in moonlight, she was curled up on the garden bench, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  He stared. "Andie? What are you doing out here? It's past midnight."

  She didn't answer his call, and unease stirred to life inside him. "Andie?"

  "Go away," she said, her voice so low he barely heard.

  He ignored the order and walked closer, then stopped abruptly. What be saw shook him clear through. His calm, unflappable Andie—who could take on a roomful of wild preschoolers or an angry rancher without blinking an eye—looked as if she was a heartbeat away from total hysteria.

  "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

  "Nothing's wrong. Go away, Will. Just go away. Please?"

  He squatted down so he could see her eyes. The anguish there, raw like a gaping wound, stunned him. She made a soft, mewling sound, and before he could think it through, he pulled her off the bench and into his arms, unable to bear her misery.

  "Shhh, baby. Don't cry." She only cried harder, the sobs shuddering through her body in jerky waves. "What's the matter? I can't help you, Andie, unless you tell me."

  "They're gone. All of them. Gone."

  "Who's gone?"

  It was a long time before she answered, and when she did her voice was as fragile as a rose petal. "I thought I could be strong, Will, but I can't."

  "You are. You're one of the strongest women I've ever met. Look at all you do—running the Limber Pine by yourself and the school. And taking care of everybody in Whiskey Creek whether they want you to or not."

  "It's a lie. All of it."

  "What happened, Andie?" he asked softly. "Can you talk about it?"

  Her cheek nestled against his chest and he patted her hair awkwardly, wishing he knew what to do to ease her pain.

  "I've tried so hard to be happy for Beth," she said, "and I am. I truly am, Will. She's wanted this baby forever and she's my best friend and I wanted her to have her dream. I could handle it, I told myself. I've had a long time to deal with it. But I can't. It hurts. Oh, Will, it hurts."

  He didn't know what to say, so he just brushed his hand through her hair again and held her while she sobbed, questions swirling around inside him.

  After a few minutes, her shoulders heaved as she struggled for control, then she took a deep breath and pulled away from him. "I'm sorry. You're very good with hysterical women, you know."

  He gave a ragged laugh. "I do my best. You want to tell me what this is all about?"

  "No, I don't. If I tell you, you'll know what a terrible, selfish person I am."

  "I could never think that. Tell me, Andie."

  She sighed and sat down again, pulling her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around them protectively. She stared out at her darkened garden for a long time before answering, and when she spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

  "I—I was married before. You know that, right?"

  He nodded, remembering her talking about meeting her husband at college and wondering briefly why that bothered him so much.

  "I... We tried. To have children, I mean. Peter wanted a son desperately. It was like an obsession with him. He—he came from a very important family. Old money. They wanted a new Stansfield to carry on the family name." Her voice quivered with bitterness.

  "I got pregnant right away, and for the first time since Peter and I got engaged I felt as if his family accepted me. His parents had had some blue-blood debutante picked out for him. I'm afraid a half-Guatemalan, half-Irish schoolteacher just didn't fit their plans." She gave a travesty of a smile and continued. "I didn't much care, but it was hard on Peter, their disapproval. So I was happy for him when they began to mellow after they learned I was pregnant."

  She looked out into the night, at something he couldn't see. "It was a boy, we found out. We planned to name him Christopher." She paused. "When I was eight months along, I started bleeding. They did a Caesarean but he... he was already dead. I'd wondered why I hadn't felt him move for several days."

  It was eerie how calmly she spoke the words, Will thought. As if she were reciting a grocery list or a TV schedule.

  He reached for her again, but she shrugged him off and hugged her arms tighter around her legs. "The doctors said it was just one of those things. They didn't know why it happened. We'll try again, I thought. I was young. We had plenty of time. But I—I miscarried another baby six months later, when I was three months along. A girl that time. And then ten months after that, another boy."

  He couldn't bear it, couldn't stand the anguish threading through her voice. "Andie, stop. You don't have to tell me anymore."

  "I thought I was over it, Will. It was years ago, after all, and I thought I could be strong. So a little while ago I—I decided I wanted to give Beth some of the things I'd saved. I went to the attic and opened the box of baby clothes, and I found this." She held up a knitted baby blanket, blue with yellow teddy bears on it, and Will's chest ached when he saw the tears sliding down her face.

  "I knitted it for Christopher, spent months on it. I'm a lousy knitter, you know." She gave a watery laugh. "But I wanted to make something special for him. For my son."

  Why was she telling him this? Andie wondered. Once the words started, she couldn't seem to stop them. They gushed out like the first churning surge of water spilling from the irrigation canal when she opened the diversion gate every summer.

  She couldn't tell him the rest, how the last failed pregnancy had been all her body could take. The terrible time in the hospital after the tubal pregnancy burst her fallopian tube, the infection that had raged for weeks, forcing the doctors to take her womb in order to save her life.

  The children she would never have.

  Andie stared out at her garden. It sounded so melodramatic put like that. She would never bear a child, but that didn't mean she was any less of a person, any less of a woman. Despite the fact that Peter's parents had somehow convinced him otherwise.

  "People never knew what to say to me," she went on. "That was the worst. They always said they understood what I was going through. But how could they? No one knows, unless they've lost a child, how it gouges out your heart to look at a mother pushing a child in a stroller. How your arms always, always, feel empty."

  Something about his silence drew her attention, and Andie was shocked to see his face set in a stony mask.

  Suddenly she remembered his son, the child who had died unborn along with Will's wife. Shame at her own self-pity washed through her. All day she had been so consumed with her own pain, she hadn't given one single thought to w
hat he must be going through.

  He had lost so much. Yet he had managed to work past his own heartache to help his sister. How he must have struggled to be so calm and efficient back at the ranch while he delivered the child.

  "Oh, Will," she said. "I'm sorry. So sorry." Acting entirely on instinct, spurred only by a need to comfort him, to wipe that grief from his eyes, she stood and wrapped her arms around him. For a moment he held his arms out to his sides, as if afraid to touch her, then he clutched her fiercely, like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline.

  Chapter 7

  For a long time she held him there in her garden, his face buried in the crook of her neck while the night wind whispered in the trees, and the air, lush with the scent of a thousand blossoms, eddied around them.

  Grief seemed to seep from him, rippling, shuddering out. Her own anguish carefully locked away once again, Andie clutched his back, his hair, longing to heal him, to absorb his pain inside her.

  She thought of his word that morning in her garden when she'd asked what he was looking for. Atonement. As if it had been his fault his wife and his son had died.

  He didn't deserve to lose so much. A wife. A son. His innocence and idealism, all in one fell swoop. He'd only been doing his job, fighting for peace in a violent world. She hurt to think of it, to think of him blaming himself for what had been a cruel act of vengeance.

  Slowly his shuddering eased and he relaxed in her arms, then pulled away.

  "You're very good with hysterical men," he said, repeating her words.

  She laughed softly. "Thank you."

  Then, as she'd somehow known he would, he dipped his head and kissed her. Gently. Sweetly. A kiss meant only for thanks, for comfort, but she couldn't stop the sigh of pleasure that whispered from her parted lips. It felt wonderful. Wonderful and right, like the first snowflakes in the winter, the first budding plants in the spring.