by Holly Jacobs
They’d barely nodded yes before Livie was tearing through the house to get ready.
“Another afternoon to ourselves. What will we do?” Hayden asked.
Brian grinned. He couldn’t seem to stop grinning and laughing. To be honest, he didn’t want to. “I seem to remember last time we were here Mom and Livie took off, and we stayed in front of the fireplace all afternoon.”
He’d mentioned his mom, and though he still missed her, the memory was a sweet one. There was some pain, but it was muted when compared to the pleasure of thinking about Kathleen. From the smile on Hayden’s face, he knew it was the same for her, too.
He took her hand and swore to himself he’d never let go again.
Hayden was right. His mom had talked about living out loud, and that was important. But as Hayden had said, so was loving out loud.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hayden hurried down the quiet corridor of the hospital at one o’clock in the morning. It was almost a full-out run. The smell of the antiseptic cleaner that the nighttime housekeeping crew was using filled her nostrils, making her already queasy stomach tighten. She’d never cared for the smell, but her reaction to it had never been like this. This was a whole new level of not liking it.
She rushed into the restroom just in time.
Five minutes later, still feeling weak from throwing up, she was back in the hallway.
“Hayden?”
She smiled as she spotted the short, squat lady with the most amazing smile. “Marti.” Hayden hugged her. “What are you doing here? One of ours?”
“No. I was here for someone on another floor and thought I’d pop up and see if you were working tonight.”
“I am.” Seeing Marti brought back the most painful time in her life, but rather than feeling crushed by the memories, she felt … she searched for a word … relieved that those days were behind her. But that wasn’t quite it.
Ever since the trip to Southampton they’d known happiness, and an appreciation for how good things were between her and Brian.
“So how are you, all of you?”
“I’m fine. We’re all fine,” Hayden said, meaning it.
Marti didn’t question the statement, just quirked her eyebrows.
“Really. I am now. If you’d asked months ago, the answer might have been a different one, but I am fine now. Bri and I are both fine,” she added. “Livie, too. She’s loving school.”
“Good. I worried about you all. Every family copes with loss differently.”
“That’s a tactful way of saying we didn’t cope well. But we eventually figured things out.”
Marti nodded. “I thought you would. But if you don’t mind me saying it, you’re looking a little green around the gills.”
“I am. I’m not sure what kind of bug I’ve got, but it sucks.”
“Nurses make the worst patients. Why don’t we go sit in the lounge for a few minutes. I’ll make you some herbal tea that might help settle your stomach.”
Marti got Hayden settled on the couch and busied herself at the microwave. While she worked, she asked, “How’s your mom?”
“The same as ever. They have a new combination of drugs that seem to be helping stabilize her mood swings. It wasn’t just that she was a problem for the nurses, it was that she was miserable. No one should have to live like that.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
Marti brought a cup of steaming tea to Hayden. One sniff was all it took. She set the cup down, bounded off the couch and sprinted to the restroom again.
When she got back, sure that she’d purged her stomach, Marti was waiting, smiling. “So when are you due?”
“What?”
“The baby,” Marti said slowly, “when’s it due?”
“Baby.” Hayden’s hand dropped to her stomach. “Baby?”
She tried to remember when she’d had her last period. She’d always been irregular to the point that she no longer watched the calendar.
The realization sank in. “Oh.”
“Oh. I take it a test is in order?”
Hayden nodded, lost in the enormity of the what-ifs. After trying for so long, and finally admitting defeat, could they have gotten pregnant? It was too much to hope.
“Let me know when you find out for sure,” Marti said as she left.
Hayden made it through the shift, still nauseated, but feeling a growing sense of excitement. It had been a while since her period, and she’d been feeling sick, off and on for days. She was only forty. Women had babies when they were much older than that.
She stopped at the drugstore on the way home and picked up a pregnancy test. She went straight into the bathroom, not wanting to raise Brian’s hopes and just minutes later dash them.
She’d never used an at-home pregnancy test before. When she suspected she was pregnant with Livie, she’d gone straight to the doctor. But now she couldn’t wait. She read the instructions, which if they were to be believed, said the test was accurate. Very accurate. Accurate enough that whatever it decreed, she could pretty much rely on.
Stomach flu, pregnancy.
Stomach flu, pregnancy.
She waited for the test results, the two options going back and forth in her head.
Stomach flu, pregnancy.
She checked her watch, and with hands shaking, looked at the small stick.
Stomach flu, pregnancy.
Tears in her eyes, she hurried into the bedroom and stood a moment, watching Brian asleep in their bed. After months of separation—both physical, which was bad, and mental, which was worse—it looked so good having him back here. The thought came to her whenever she saw him there.
She walked to the side of the bed, and sat. “Bri?” She ran a hand through his hair. “Wake up.”
His eyes fluttered open.
“Hey, you. Come over here.” He pulled back the sheet and patted the bed next to him.
“I have a surprise for you. A big surprise.”
“A surprise on a Saturday morning? Does it have anything to do with you being naked under these sheets with me?”
She grinned. “I’d like it if it ended that way. But it starts with me showing you this.” She pulled the small white stick out from behind her back.
Brian looked at it, his sleep-fuzzed brain obviously not quite comprehending.
“We’re pregnant.”
He sat up and took the stick. “How?”
“Well, first the girl’s body releases an egg …” She laughed. “I think it was Southampton. Okay, so it could have happened almost any of the nights after that, but I choose to think it was that first night together again in Southampton.”
“Pregnant? Pregnant?” he repeated, looking dazed. Then slowly a smile spread across his face. “Pregnant.” He opened his arms to her. “Come here.”
Hayden went and he pulled her in tight. “Pregnant,” she whispered against his bare chest.
“After all these years, I’d totally given up hope. Livie leaves for college next September. That’s what—” he did the math in his head “—eight months? I was planning to take you on a trip to Europe. Something wildly romantic. Paris maybe.”
“Instead, we can stay home and change diapers.” She laughed, then touched his cheek. “I don’t mind the change of plans. Do you?” She needed to hear it from him.
“How can you even ask?” He hugged her again. “A baby. We’re going to have a baby. I missed so much of Livie when she was born.” He paused. “Do you think she blames me?”
The question had come out of the blue, flooring Hayden. “Blames you?”
“Livie, for not being here? For missing all those moments?”
After all this time, he still harbored guilt?
“Bri,” she said gently, taking his hand in hers, trying to reassure him without words. When his expression didn’t register relief, she tried again. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl who was so loved. When I used to hold the phone to her ear and you’d speak, she’d go
crazy, her hands and feet going a mile a minute. She loved you, and never doubted you loved her. That’s all any child needs.”
“But I’ll be here for this baby … for you. God, Hayden, I plan to pamper you and take care of you. I …” Words failed him.
“I never doubted it, Brian. I never doubted you.”
It was good that she hadn’t. Unfortunately, Brian had. Even during their first decade as a happily married couple, he’d occasionally worried that somehow he’d screw up. Then, after his mother had died and his relationship with Hayden floundered, he’d been sure he’d screwed up.
Since then, he realized that if they’d talked about it, if they’d shared their own personal self-doubts, their marital problems might not have deteriorated to the point they had. So rather than hold on to his feelings, he expressed them to her.
“I know we’ve talked over our problems, and I don’t want to beat a dead horse, and hearing you say that you know I’ll be there means a lot, but I need you to really know, to understand, I won’t mess this up. I’m here for you. Whatever you need. Whatever Livie or this baby needs. I won’t let the words we don’t say come between us again.”
Hayden took his hand again. “I mean it, I know. No matter what happened between us I never doubted that you’d be there for me, for Livie.”
She was smiling, so was he. He pulled her into his arms and simply held on tight.
“I love you.” During the bad times those were the words they’d needed to say the most.
“Me, too,” Hayden assured him. “I love you, Brian Conway.”
Six months later
Time.
Hayden had read somewhere that quantum physics had proven that time wasn’t finite. That it expanded and contracted.
The last six months had sped along at an astonishing rate, and now she found herself here, in this place. A year ago she wouldn’t have believed it.
She knew she was waxing philosophical, but as she glanced over at Brian, sound asleep in the recliner, then down at the baby in her arms, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Mom?” Livie cried as she flew through the birthing-room door. “I saw the note when I got home.”
Hayden pulled the blanket down to give her daughter a better look at her brother.
Brian woke up and joined them, running his left hand tenderly along Hayden’s cheek, his right touching the baby’s small fist. “Becker. We’re going to name him Becker.”
“Nana’s maiden name,” Livie said.
Hayden nodded. She looked at the three of them and marveled. This was her family. She loved them all so much. She’d gone through so much to get here.
As much as Hayden still cared for her mother’s needs, her mother had never been her family. She was the woman who’d given birth to her.
For the longest time Hayden had credited Kathleen with giving her a family, but as Hayden looked at her husband, she knew it was Brian who’d rescued Cootie MacNulty that day on the bus; it was Brian who’d given her a home. Brian who’d given her a family. First, by sharing his mother, then by giving Hayden two beautiful children.
She raised her hand and covered his. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For this. For them. For us.” Her eyes filled with tears, which she valiantly tried not to shed. Finally, she gave up the battle and let them fall freely. “Hormones,” she said, but she knew that wasn’t it. She was simply overwhelmed with feelings of love, of gratitude … of being exactly where she wanted to be.
Brian came down and hugged her, murmuring small I-love-yous in her ear, and she reached out with her unfettered hand and eased his head to her and kissed him. In that one kiss she tried to imbue all her feelings, the largest of which was love.
“Oh, geez, you guys. I mean, I’m happy you two are back together, but really, a little less showing it in front of me and the baby.” Livie laughed, and leaned over to her brother. “Beck, honey, you’re really in for it. These two are going to drive you nuts with all the kissing and stuff, but believe me, even when they drive you crazy, you’re a lucky kid.”
The baby started to wiggle and make noises. “I think he wants to nurse,” Hayden said.
“After that kiss, I can’t take much more. I think I’ll roam the halls and look for cute interns.” She grinned. “I figure you two could use a bit of alone time.”
She leaned over, kissed Hayden and left.
“She’s some kid,” Brian said. “And if Beck’s anything like his older sister, I suspect we’re going to have our hands full. But I’ll confess, I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me, too.” Those two little words didn’t seem to go far enough to express how she felt about their future. Of watching Livie graduate, go to college, get a job, get married. At watching Beck start from scratch, learn to crawl, to walk … And at having a chance to be with Brian, to grow old with him, to have him at her side. No, those two words didn’t go nearly far enough, so she added three more that did. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” he replied.
Hayden was sure their relationship would have its ups and downs, but she was also sure they’d find their way through them. She planned to live out loud, love out loud and treasure every good day.
She looked at her family and knew it was a good day.
Epilogue
Hayden and Brian held hands as they sat in their chairs, watching Livie walk up onto the stage.
Over the last twenty-five years, Hayden had grown so accustomed to the way her hand felt in Brian’s that frequently she didn’t even think about it. But tonight … tonight was a night for not only remembering, but acknowledging the importance of the small things.
Holding Brian’s hand was one of those things.
Livie stood at the microphone at the center of the ballroom. “I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight to honor my mother and father’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It’s such a milestone, one that deserves this kind of occasion. I’d like to ask Mom and Dad come up and say a few words, but before that, although most of you know us, I’d like to introduce us. I’m Olivia, their daughter, and …” She waited as Becker joined her. He was slowly leaving that awkward teen stage and beginning to grow into his body. Tall, lanky and in need of a few pounds, his hair wild and in desperate need of a trim, he smiled. “And I’m Becker.”
Livie leaned over and gave him a hug, but with typical teen-boy reaction, he ducked out of it. His fair complexion turned a subtle shade of pink.
Hayden’s hand tightened around Brian’s.
“And the family’s grown. I’d like to introduce my husband, Lou, and our daughter, Kathleen, and our son, Sammy.”
Hayden watched as her family gathered center stage. Lou was a lovely man who’d joined their family six years ago. A pediatrician, Hayden had met him at the hospital, a new doctor in a strange city. She’d brought him home for dinner, and there’d been something immediately there between him and Livie.
Livie had told Hayden then, that he was the first man she’d met who came close to living up to her father. That was when she knew that Livie was going marry Lou.
Three years ago, they’d made her a grandmother for the first time. Little Kathleen was the spitting image of a woman she’d never meet, but would be a part of her life through the many family stories. She held her father’s hand as they walked onto the stage. Lou carried Sammy, who was just a year old now, and quite the hellion. He reminded her a lot of Becker at that age.
There they all stood. Their family … Kathleen’s legacy.
Livie continued, “We wanted to do something to honor Mom and Dad on this very special day. Two people who’ve spent their lives doing for others, not only through their careers in medicine and social work, but through the way they’ve cared for their family. Becker and I are probably the most fortunate kids ever. Our parents loved us and always put us first. And my kids are so blessed to have such a special pair of grandparents. So, please join us in honoring my parent
s’ twenty-five years of marriage. But more than that, their lifetime of love.”
The crowd clapped.
“Mom and Dad?” Livie called, beckoning them onto the stage.
Brian didn’t let go of Hayden’s hand as they stood and walked up to the microphone.
Hayden let him go first, willing to let him speak for both of them because the tremendous lump in her throat made her wonder if she’d be able to.
She looked out at the crowd. Colleagues, friends. Then back at her kids, her family and the lump only got bigger.
Brian cleared his throat, then squeezed her hand. “Before I turn the mic over to my better half, let me just say…” The crowd laughed and he quickly added, “Not that I’m saying Hayden talks too much …”
The laughter got harder.
“Let me just say, the last twenty-five years have been wonderful, but my journey with Hayden started a long time before that. I was twelve and dressed as a biker, she was eight and a sorry-looking ghost. She knocked on our door and my life was never the same.” He kissed her.
He moved over, and because they were still holding hands, practically dragged her in front of the microphone.
She was silent, not sure she’d find the words she wanted. Glancing at all of them, her family, she remembered that little girl who’d knocked on the Conway door. She’d been so alone. Despite the fact she had parents, she’d been so much an orphan.
“That day I walked down Briar Hill Road and I knocked on Brian’s door, I was coming home, even if I didn’t know it then. That one Halloween, my whole life changed. It was a turning point. Our lives, Brian’s and mine, have been filled with other moments like that, times when something happened and everything changed.”
She leaned closer, their arms touching. Even after all these years, just touching him could give her such comfort. “Some might say that a life is defined by the big moments, ones that alter a person’s direction. I’d say, those are the times that punctuate a life, but don’t truly tell the story. My story with Brian is told in the little things. Like in the water-balloon fights, the roadtrips, teasing each other and later with our children. All those small moments with Livie and Becker, and now with Kathleen and Sammy. Bedtime stories, school plays. All those moments of love. That’s where our life is written, in a lifetime of them with each other, with our children, with our grandchildren and with Brian’s mother, Kathleen. Some of you never met her, and though Brian’s mom has been gone for many years, she’s still alive in our family. We share memories of the amazing woman who gave us so much, taught us not to be afraid and to live every precious moment of our lives out loud—to risk ourselves for what matters. A woman who showed us what matters most is love.”