by Lisa Dale
“But you’re not saying yes either.”
“I’m just saying that I need a little more time. I have to think.”
Gene stood. “Do that. And do it quickly.” She watched him walk to the doorway and pause. “I can’t save this marriage alone,” he said. Then he left.
She leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes. Gene was right. Something was wrong and going more wrong by the day. And yet she loved him as much now as on the day she said I do. And she knew—certain as the sunrise—that he loved her too. But something was off, a gear slowly falling out of alignment. She could pinpoint the night it all started, the exciting and life-changing night they decided yes, they were ready for a child.
I can’t save this marriage alone… Karin closed her eyes. One of them had to save their relationship, but Karin was the one who could do it. Not Gene. There was only one way.
October 13
Mrs. Montaigne was the first customer of the day at the Wildflower Barn, smiling her big droopy smile and shuffling her way inside.
“Morning, Mrs. M.,” Lana said.
“Bonjour, dear,” Mrs. Montaigne said. She walked with all the physical dignity of a duchess gliding into a ball, but her skirt was stuck in her stockings on one side. “I just dropped by to pick up a book about carving pumpkins for my granddaughter.”
Lana pointed her in the right direction, but Mrs. Montaigne didn’t head toward the books. Instead she walked right up to Lana and put her hands on her belly with the same kind of ease with which she might have picked up merchandise off a shelf.
“Soccer ball,” Mrs. Montaigne muttered. “A girl.”
Lana laughed, and she felt like they were sharing an inside joke—all three of them.
“You’re over halfway through,” Mrs. Montaigne said. “Are you starting to get excited? Have you pointed the finger at the father yet?”
“It was an immaculate conception,” Lana said, taking Mrs. Montaigne’s arm to hurry her walk toward the jack-o’-lantern books.
“You mean…?” Mrs. Montaigne pointed toward the ceiling, her eyebrows raised. “Well, at least you know you’ll get good child support.”
“Funny,” said Lana.
Four days had passed since she last saw Eli, since he’d kissed her. Every night, he called her to wish her good night. This was not unusual. Sometimes they would go for weeks where they would talk to each other every day. Other times they wouldn’t see each other for months, and then Eli would return from a trip and everything would pick up exactly where it had left off.
But over the last four days, she’d felt different, amazingly close to him. She found herself waiting for his call in the evenings. And she fantasized about when and where he would kiss her again. What had happened the other night still resonated between them, more intense because of how difficult it was not to mention. More intense because she wasn’t able to see him. She suspected it was all part of his plan.
Last night, she’d gone to a labor class, and she’d purposely not invited him to go with her. The group watched a video of multiple women giving birth—the looks on their faces pained but not panicked, while their husbands rubbed their wives’ feet or spooned beside them on a hospital bed. Afterward the instructor wanted them to pair off, to discuss their visions of what the birth would be like. She said the relationship between mother and partner was never as important as it was the day of the baby’s birth. She said emotional support was as vital to a laboring mother as the machine that monitored her and her baby’s beating hearts. While the other couples spoke softly, holding hands and cooing at each other, Lana sat alone, filling out the worksheet by herself.
It had made her face an important fact: She didn’t know what to expect from Eli, or where their relationship was going. And what’s more, she didn’t know what he expected of the fact that she was having a baby. Where did he imagine her child fit into whatever future they had? Her own desires had not changed—she still wanted to travel, to explore. And yet, when she looked into Eli’s eyes she saw that his idea of the rest of his life was much different. He saw white-picket fences, children playing in the yard—a nice little family. But what was a dream-life to him was merely settling to her.
It was time to tell Karin flat out that she could have the baby. She couldn’t have a family and have her dreams. Admittedly, she’d been putting the moment off. Once she made the offer of adoption to Karin, she would never be able to take it back. But she was well along in her pregnancy now and she needed to settle the adoption question once and for all; if she promised the baby to Karin, maybe it would end her growing attachment. She could stop thinking of the child as hers. And Eli could too.
Mrs. Montaigne left the Barn just as Karin was walking in. Her sister was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved thermal under a Wildflower Barn T-shirt. She made small talk with Mrs. Montaigne while holding the door.
“Did she buy anything?” Karin asked once she was gone. She plopped her stuff down on the counter and tucked her purse underneath.
“A book.” Lana looked down at the inventory list that she was supposed to be working on. Karin stared at her a moment longer than usual.
“You okay?”
Lana shrugged.
“I’m taking that as sister-speak for No, I’m not. How was the class?”
Lana tried to muster up some enthusiasm. “Fine. I should have had a partner.”
Karin’s voice rose. “They said they would accommodate single mothers! I knew you should have let me go with you. I’ll call them right now.”
“No, no! They did accommodate me. It just… felt weird.”
Karin nodded. “Is Meggie here?”
“She’s in the back assembling the gift baskets.”
“Let’s have her watch the register for a bit. We need to take a walk.”
Lana nodded, her nerves fluttering. Whenever Karin pulled her aside, she had something to say. That could be good or bad. They paged Meggie to come to the register and then headed into the skeletal remains of the gardens outside. Just below the skyline, the far edge of the trees had turned fiery orange and red, so that Lana thought their true colors came out not on sunny days but on days like this, when the sky was overcast and gray. In the distance, a gaggle of Canada geese passed in a near-perfect V, flying south to warmer climes. She could hear their faint forlorn honking, but they flew so high that the beat of all those enormous wings seemed silent as wind.
“I don’t know the best way to bring this up,” Karin said. “I’ve been trying to think of what I can do to help.”
“You already do so much,” Lana assured her.
“But that’s not what I mean. I want to help you. And the baby. And me too. But I don’t want to offend you.”
“Just spit it out.”
Karin played with the cuff of her jacket. “I’m afraid you’ll be mad. I hope you won’t. I’m just trying to help. And of course, you can say no.”
“What is it?”
“Are you still considering giving the baby up for adoption?”
“Yes.” Lana held her breath.
Karin took her hand; it was chilly from the crisp fall air. “Do you want to ask me?”
Lana looked at her sister—her generous, fierce sister, who, under different circumstances, would be the soldier who dragged her comrades from the battlefield despite her own wounds.
“Do I want to ask you what?” Lana hedged, still unsure that she could go through with it.
“Do you want to ask me and Gene to adopt your baby?”
Lana looked down at their joined hands. And though she sealed her lips together, begging herself to stay quiet, she began to cry.
“Oh, Lana.” Karin put an arm around her, pulled her closer. The fabric of her windbreaker wheezed when she moved. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to. You can just nod your head…”
Lana leaned against her sister, felt herself growing short of breath. As much as she wanted to, she could not live her life in two places at once.
She had to choose: Eli and his vision of a quiet, settled family? Or her lifelong dream?
Giving the baby to Karin was the best possible outcome for everyone. Or, if it wasn’t the best, it was the most realistic. And that was the best she could hope for right now.
“You would do that?” Lana managed. “I didn’t think you wanted to adopt. I thought you and Gene were set against it.”
“This is your baby we’re talking about,” Karin said, squeezing her closer. “So it’s different. The baby would still be part of your family—as close as you are to me. But Gene and I, we could give it a good life, as its two parents. We could give it everything it needs.”
Lana should have felt joy, freedom—this was the solution she’d wanted but had been too scared to ask for. “Does Gene…?”
“He knows that we… we need this.”
Lana imagined Gene giving a bouquet of flowers to her daughter after a school play, the pride in his eyes to be called Dad. There was no doubt that Gene would love the baby as his own. She looked up at the sky, to the birds that were leaving the hemisphere. They disappeared over the tree line and the air became quiet and still again.
Lana moved away from her sister’s arm, pulling herself up straight. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her face. “After the baby’s born I’m going to take a trip,” she said, deciding, in that instant, to go away. “I’ll be gone for a while. A year, at least.”
“Oh, Lana.” Karin too began to cry. “You’re doing the right thing. You’ll see. It’s for the best.”
Lana nodded. In the sky, one lone goose overhead caught her eye. It was honking furiously, the sound as biting as an oboe’s song as it flew fast across the clouds. Lana wiggled her toes, the solid cold of the earth making her feet chilly, and then she took Karin’s arm and walked with her back inside.
October 14
Eli sat at the wheel of his car, Lana at his side as he drove. Around them, the sun was going down and turning the lush mountains into tapestries of gold, green, and red. The highway took them toward Stowe, weaving and curving among the mountains, dipping into valleys and skimming the shoulders of high peaks and emerald green farms.
“It’s beautiful,” Lana said.
They drove in silence, awestruck by the play of thick autumn light and colorful foliage that rivaled the springtime meadows at the Wildflower Barn. There wasn’t a billboard in sight, only occasional bald rock faces tinged pink by the evening. Even the pine trees, so tall and stark on the steeply sloping mountainsides, seemed to be faintly glowing.
Eli didn’t dare speak until the show was over and they’d turned onto Route 100. “Is this okay? Dinner, I mean?”
“It’s wonderful,” Lana said. But she sounded a little distracted.
“What are you thinking about?”
When she spoke her words were as flat as if they had been prerecorded at some earlier time. “I told Karin she could adopt the baby.”
He bit down on the word that almost left his mouth: No. For a moment he panicked—the idea that Lana would give away the baby shocked him. He hadn’t for a second thought she was serious about adoption. Sure, he’d heard her bring it up. But he felt like she was just experimenting with the idea more than she was committed to it. He hadn’t liked the thought of her giving up the child, but he didn’t want to put too much pressure on her either, so he’d kept his opinions to himself.
“It’s the only thing I can do,” she said, her tone flat once again.
“No, it’s not.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“There are… choices.”
“I can’t keep it.”
“Why not?”
“Please, Eli. We both know I can’t.”
“Why?”
“There’s a thousand reasons,” she said.
“Tell me one.”
“Eli, you know me. I don’t want to settle down. I want to live. I want to see the world. I have plans.”
“But is that all of it?”
“What do you mean?”
Eli held back the sigh of frustration that gathered in his lungs. “Do you think maybe the reason is that you think you wouldn’t be a good mother?”
Lana was quiet for a long time, so long that he wished he’d kept his theory to himself.
“It’s not because I think I won’t be a good mom,” she said at last. “It’s because I know I won’t.”
He thought back to all the times he’d seen his best friend leaning over a table of growing seedlings, examining leaves between her fingers with loving appreciation. Or about the times she’d stopped in a field of wildflowers to run her palms gingerly over the purple and pink tops of the dame’s rocket and phlox, so lovely she might have been a vision of spring itself. Sure, she was forgetful and unpredictable. And sure, she had dreams of traveling. But even the most temperamental and delicate of flowers bloomed under her patient guidance, and he had no doubt that a child would do the same.
“Are you sure about that? Or are you just afraid?” he asked.
“I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid I’m not going to get what I want from life—that I’ve ruined everything. I’m afraid of keeping the baby because in my heart I might always resent it for ruining my plans—and no child deserves that blame. But I’m afraid of giving it away too because… I don’t know why. But now that I have, it’s a decision I can’t take back.”
Eli squeezed her hand. Somewhere the sun was still above the horizon line, but here among the Green Mountains the dusk came earlier, and already the shadows were settling in for the night. He wished he knew the words to say to her that could make sense of a nonsensical world. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m with you. Do you understand what that means? I’m never going to leave you, Lana. I’ll be here every step of the way.”
She looked at him. Her eyes had turned pearlescent from the light and unfallen tears. “What do you think?”
“I think that deep down in your heart, you already love that baby.”
“Yes. I do.”
“If you love it, why not keep it?”
“Love isn’t enough.”
Eli brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “You’ll be a wonderful mother. If you love that baby, it’s yours.”
“Don’t you understand?” she asked softly. “I can’t have it both ways. I can’t have the life I want and be a good mother. It’s because I love the baby that I have to let it go.”
Lana paused on the sidewalk, looking up at the building before them with its white porch and pediment, its colonial redbrick walls, and its pretty black shutters. The inn was a relic of another time, brightly lit windows shining warmly against the night. If a horse-drawn carriage went jingling down the street right this moment, Lana wouldn’t be entirely surprised. “This is where we’re eating?”
“Is it okay?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and she took his arm as they walked inside.
She trembled nervously as he helped her take off her coat and handed it to the woman at the coat check. All at once questions about the baby and about the future were dwarfed by the huge and overwhelming question that stretched so tautly between them, here and now. As she walked before him, following the hostess into the beautiful dining room, she could feel Eli’s gaze on her, as if her every step and breath mattered. She’d worn a gray wool skirt and black sweater that draped low around her shoulders, and she could feel the back of her neck burning where it was exposed. She was glad when they finally sat down.
The room was dim, dark wood paneling everywhere. The decor was elegant and yet unpretentious. The chandeliers were little more than tin lanterns, beautiful holes punched in them like nighttime stars. A single taper shimmered between them on the table in a glass hurricane lamp, and the cloth napkins were starched but soft. Lana had never been taken to a more perfect restaurant on a date—just the right blend of comfort and romance.
“This is amazing,” she said.
“It’s just the
beginning,” he replied.
The waiter came to their table and began to pour her a glass of wine without asking. She laughed and held up her hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t drink.”
The waiter glanced at Eli, then back at Lana. “This is a very special vintage,” he said. And when he turned the bottle around she saw that it was sparkling cider, no doubt made in Vermont.
She smiled at Eli. “You thought of everything,” she said.
They looked over their menus, chatting lightly, and placed their orders. For a moment, silence stretched out between them, filled by the sounds of clicking plates and other people’s conversations. Eli excused himself for a moment and she sat at the table, looking around. The dining room was filled with couples sitting in Windsor chairs. They held hands across the tables, playing with each other’s fingers, or they sat close to each other talking in low voices or not talking at all.
For a moment when Eli returned, she worried they wouldn’t have anything to talk about. But sure enough, the conversation flowed easily, the food arrived, and the next thing she knew, very few people were left in the dining hall—and then there was just the two of them, their cooling cups of coffee, and the candle between them melting down.
She looked at the man across from her, the man she thought she knew but perhaps never truly had. In the light from the lanterns overhead his short hair gleamed almost golden, pieces going this way and that. His face was cleanly shaven and his gaze was warm. She felt as if the years were disappearing, as if she’d spent all this time trying not to know him, and she now found herself peeling away the layers she’d put between them to find something beautiful but genuine underneath. They were the same two people they’d always been, but there was a new underlying richness and density threading through their conversations, harmonic tones added to a familiar melody line.
She looked into the fizzy bubbles of her cider. “I have to tell you something.”
His smile flickered. “Why do I have the feeling it isn’t good?”
She smiled a little. “It’s not bad. It’s just something I’ve never told you before. Something I feel like I should say.”
He nodded, waiting.