by Nora Roberts
What had it been like for her? For Amelia?
SHE SAT AT her dressing table, carefully rouging her cheeks by gaslight. Pregnancy had stolen her color. Just one more indignity, after the horrible sickness morning after morning, the widening of her waist, the incessant fatigue.
And yet, there were benefits. So many she hadn’t counted on. She smiled as she added color to her lips. How could she have known Reginald would be so pleased? Or so generous.
She lifted her arm to study the ruby and diamond hearts that circled her wrist. A bit delicate for her taste, really, but you couldn’t fault the glimmer.
And he’d hired another maid, given her carte blanche for a new wardrobe to accommodate her changing body. More jewels. More attention.
He visited her three times a week now, and never came empty-handed. Even if it was only to bring her chocolates or candied fruit when she mentioned craving sweets.
How fascinating to know that the prospect of a child could make a man so biddable.
She imagined he’d been very solicitous of his wife, in turn. But then she’d plagued him with girls rather than the son he coveted.
She would give him a son. And in giving, would reap the benefits for the rest of her life.
A bigger house to start, she decided. Clothes, jewels, furs, a new carriage—perhaps a small country house as well. He could afford it. Reginald Harper would spare no expense for his son, even his bastard son, she was sure.
As the mother of that son, she would never have to seek out another protector, never have to flirt and seduce and bargain with the men of wealth and position, offering sex and comfort in exchange for the mode of life she craved. Deserved. Earned.
She rose from the dressing table, and hair shining gold, jewels glittering white and red, gown sweeping silver, she turned in the chevel glass.
This was her exchange now. This bulge of the belly. Look how odd and awkward, how fat and unfashionable she looked, despite the gown. And yet, Reginald doted. He would stroke that bulge, even during passion. And in passion, he was kinder, gentler than she’d ever known him to be. She could almost love him during those times, when his hands were tender instead of demanding. Almost.
But love was not part of the game, and a game was all it was. This bartering pleasure for style. How could she love what was so weak, so deceitful, so arrogant? A ridiculous notion, as ridiculous as feeling pity for the wives they betrayed with her. Women who folded their thin lips and pretended not to know. Who passed her on the street with their noses in the air. Or women like her mother who slaved for them for pennies.
She was meant for bigger things, she thought, and lifted a heavy crystal decanter to stroke scent on her throat. She was meant for silks and diamonds.
When Reginald arrived, she would pout, just a little. And tell him of the diamond broach she’d seen that afternoon. How she would pine without it.
Pining wasn’t good for the child. She imagined the broach would be hers within a day.
She gave a light laugh, a little turn.
Then stopped, went still. Her hand trembled as she lifted it to press over her belly.
It had moved.
Inside her a flutter, a stretch. Little wings beating.
The glass reflected her as she stood in her shimmering gown, her fingers spread over the slight bulge as if she would guard what was inside.
Inside her. Alive. Her son.
Hers.
HAYLEY REMEMBERED IT vividly. Even in the morning there was nothing of the fragmented or misty quality of a dream.
“It was, I think it was, a kind of a bid for sympathy. More for empathy.” She held her cup in both hands as she sipped coffee in the breakfast nook.
“How so?” Mitch had his tape recorder and notebook as she’d requested. “Did she speak directly to you at some point?”
“No, because it wasn’t her, it was me. Or it was both of us. I wasn’t dreaming so much as I was there. I felt, I saw, I thought. She wasn’t just showing me, but reliving. If that makes sense.”
“Eat your eggs, sweetie-pie,” David urged her. “You look peaked.”
She scooped some up obediently. “She was beautiful. Not like the way we’ve seen her, really. Vibrant and drop-dead—excuse the term. There was so much going through her head—my head—I don’t know. Irritation about the changes in her body, the inconvenience, plots and plans to get more out of Reginald, surprise at his reaction to her condition, disgust for men like him, for their wives, envy, greed. It all just kept rolling around in a big mass.”
She paused, breathed. “I think she was already a little bit crazy.”
“And how was that a bid for sympathy?” Harper asked her. “Why would you feel sorry for someone like that?”
“It was the change. It was feeling the baby move. I felt it, too. That shock of feeling, the sudden realization that there’s life inside you. And there’s this wave of love along with it. In that moment, the baby was hers. Not a ploy or an inconvenience, but her child, and she loved it.” She looked at Roz.
“Yes.”
“So she was showing me. I loved my child, wanted it. And the man, the kind of man who’d use a woman like me, took it from me. She was wearing the bracelet. The heart bracelet. And I did feel for her. I don’t think she was a good person, certainly not a nice one, and even then, before the rest happened, I don’t think she was balanced. But she loved the child, wanted it. I think what she showed me was real, and she showed me because I’d understand it more than anyone else. Yeah, I felt sorry for her.”
“Sympathy is fine,” Mitch said. “But you can’t let down your guard. She’s using you, Hayley.”
“I know, and I won’t. I can feel for her, but I don’t have to trust her.”
DAYS PASSED, AND she waited for the next move, the next experience, but August boiled quietly toward September. The most wrenching experience was having her ancient car break down between work and the sitter’s, and finally having to accept it was time to replace it.
“It’s not just the money,” she told Harper as she strolled Lily through the used-car lot. “It’s one of my last links to childhood, I guess. My daddy bought that car, secondhand. I learned to drive with it.”
“It’ll go to a good home.”
“Hell, Harper, it’s going on the scrap heap, and we both know it. Poor, pitiful old thing. I know I’ve got to be sensible, too. I can’t be hauling Lily around in an unreliable car. I’ll be lucky if that salesman who took it off for appraisal doesn’t come back and say I owe him just for dumping it on him.”
“Just let me handle it.”
“I will not.” She stopped by a hatchback, kicked its tires. “You know what I hate? I hate that a lot of car salesmen and mechanics and that whole breed treat women who come in like brainless bimbos just because they don’t have a penis. Like all the automotive data and know-it-all is stored in their dicks.”
“Jesus, Hayley.” He had to laugh, even as he winced.
“It’s true. So, I’ve done my research. I know what I want and how much I should have to pay. He doesn’t want to deal with me, then I’ll just take my business elsewhere.”
She stopped by a sedan, braced one hand on the fender and waved the other in front of her face. “God almighty, it’s hot. Feel like every fluid in my body’s boiled away.”
“You look a little pale. Why don’t we go inside, sit down for a minute?”
“I’m okay. Just not resting well. Even when I sleep, I feel like I’m on alert, like the first few weeks after Lily was born. Makes me draggy and irritable. So if I end up snapping at you, try to bear with me.”
He rubbed the small of her back. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I appreciate you coming with me today, I really do. But don’t feel like you’ve got to step in.”
“Ever bought a car?”
She sent him a sidelong, annoyed look as she continued to push Lily’s stroller. “Just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean I’m some rube down from the hills
. I’ve bought lots of other things, and I can guarantee I know more about negotiating prices than you. Rich boy.”
He grinned. “I’m just a working gardener.”
“You may work for a living, but you’ve got a few silver spoons tucked away for rainy days. Now here’s what I’m after.”
She stopped to study a sturdy-looking five-door Chevy. “It’s got plenty of room, but it’s not big and bulky, and it’s clean. It’s bound to get better mileage than my old car and it’s not flashy.”
She frowned over the listed price. “I’ll just get him to come down a bit, and it’ll be in my range. Sort of.”
“Don’t tell him you—”
“Harper.”
“Backing off.” He shook his head, stuck his hands in his pockets.
And had to saw his tongue in half when the salesman came out, big smiles, and announced the meager offer on the trade-in.
“Oh, is that all?” Hayley widened her baby blues and fluttered her lashes. “I guess sentiment doesn’t count, does it? But maybe, maybe you could just ease that up, a little bit, depending on what I buy. This one’s pretty. I like the color.”
Playing him, Harper realized, noting how she’d bumped up her accent. He went along for the ride as the salesman steered her toward a couple of pricier options, watched her chew her lip, flash her smile, and steer him right back to what she wanted.
Guy’s toast, he decided as she finagled the price down, took Lily out of the stroller to sit with her behind the wheel. Harper concluded nobody could resist the pair of them.
Two hours later, they were driving off the lot with Lily dozing in her carseat and Hayley beaming behind the wheel.
“ ‘Oh, Mr. Tanner, I just don’t know a thing about cars. You’re so sweet to help me out this way.’ ” Harper shook his head. “When we were sitting in there doing the paperwork I wanted to warn him to lift up his feet. It was sure getting deep.”
“He made a nice sale, got his commission, and I got what I went in for. That’s what counts.” But she let out a hoot of laughter. “I liked when he tried to bring you into it, showed you under the hood and you just scratched your head like you were looking at a cruise missile or something. I think we made him feel good, like he was giving me what I needed for the price I could pay. And that counts, too. Next time I have to buy, I’d go right back to Mr. Tanner.”
“Didn’t hurt for you to tear up a couple times.”
“That was real. I was sad to sell that old heap—and don’t think these car payments aren’t going to sting some.” More, she thought, it had put an ache in her throat when Mr. Tanner had assumed they were a family.
“If you need some help—”
“Don’t go there, Harper.” But she reached over to pat his hand, to show she appreciated the offer. “We’ll be fine, Lily and me.”
“Why don’t I take you out to lunch to celebrate then?”
“That’s a deal. I’m starving.”
They had looked like a family, she thought. A normal young family buying a secondhand car, having lunch in a diner, treating the baby to a cup of ice cream.
But putting them there was rushing it, for all of them. They were a man and a single mother who were romantically involved. Not a unit.
At home, she decided to take advantage of the rest of her day off by curling up with Lily for an afternoon nap.
“We’re all right, aren’t we, baby?” she murmured as Lily played with her mother’s hair, her big eyes heavy, her pretty mouth going slack. “I’m doing right by you? I’m sure trying.”
She snuggled down a little closer. “I’m so tired. Got a million things I ought to be doing, but I’m so tired. I’ll get them all done sooner or later, right?”
She closed her eyes, started to calculate her finances in her head, juggling funds, changing weekly deposits. But her brain wouldn’t focus.
It drifted back to the used-car lot, and Mr. Tanner shaking hands with her before she drove off. How he’d smiled at her and wished her and her charming family well.
Drifted to sitting out on her terrace with Harper, drinking cold wine in the heat-soaked night.
Dancing with him in the shimmering romance of the suite at the Peabody.
Working with him in the grafting house.
Watching him lift Lily onto his shoulders.
It should be easier to be in love, she thought sleepily. It should be simpler. It shouldn’t make you want more when love was everything.
She sighed once, and told herself to enjoy what she had, and let the rest come.
And the pain was like knives in the belly, shocking, sharp, and horrid. Her whole body fought against them, and she screamed at the sensation of being ripped in two.
The heat, the pain. Unbearable. How could something so loved, so desired, punish her this way? She would die from it, surely she would die. And never see her son.
Sweat streamed off her, and the utter weariness was nearly as severe as the pain.
Blood and sweat and agony. All for her child, her son. Her world. No price too dear to pay for giving him life.
And as the pain sliced her, sent her tumbling toward the dark, she heard the thin cry of birth.
Hayley woke drenched in sweat, her body still radiating from the pain. And her own child blissfully asleep in the protective crook of her arm.
She eased free, fumbled for the bedside phone.
“Harper? Can you come?”
“Where are you?”
“In my room. Lily’s sleeping right here. I can’t leave her. We’re all right,” she said quickly. “We’re fine, but something just happened. Please can you come?”
“Two minutes.”
She made a wall of pillows around the baby, but knew even then she couldn’t leave the room. Lily might roll off somehow, or certainly climb over and fall. But she could pace, even on her weakened legs she could pace.
She flung open the doors even as Harper ran up the steps.
“They told her it was stillborn.” She swayed, and her knees nearly folded. “They told her her baby was dead.”
sixteen
IN THE PARLOR where the light was soft through gauzy curtains and the air was sweet with roses, Harper stood by the front window with his fists balled in his pockets.
“She was wrecked,” he said with his back to the room. “She just sort of folded up when I got there, and even when she pulled it together, she looked sick.”
“She wasn’t hurt.” Mitch held up a hand when Harper whirled. “I know how you feel. I do. But she wasn’t physically harmed, and that’s important.”
“This time,” he shot back. “It’s out of hand. All of this is fucking out of hand.”
“Only more reason for us to stick together, and stay calm.”
“I’ll be calm when she’s out of the house.”
“Amelia,” Logan asked, “or Hayley?”
“Right now? Both.”
“You know she can stay with us. And if I were in your shoes, I’d want to pack her up and haul her out. But from what I gather, you tried that once and it didn’t work. If you think you’ve got a better shot at it now, I’ll carry her suitcase.”
“She won’t budge. What the hell is wrong with these women?”
“They feel connected.” David spread his hands. “Even when they see Amelia at her worst, they feel attached. Engaged. Right or wrong, Harp, there’s a kind of solidarity.”
“And it’s her home,” Mitch added. “As much as yours now, or mine. She won’t walk out of it and leave this undone. Any more than you, or I, or any or us.” He glanced around the room. “So we finish it.”
Logic, even truth, didn’t settle Harper’s anger, or his worry. “You didn’t see her after it happened.”
“No, but I’ve got the gist from what you told me. She matters to me, too, Harper. To all of us.”
“All for one, great. I’m for it.” His gaze shifted to the parlor doors, and his mind traveled upstairs, to Hayley. “But she’s the one on the line
.”
“Agreed.” Mitch leaned forward in his chair to draw Harper’s attention back to him. “Let’s look at what happened for a minute. Hayley was taken through childbirth, and a traumatic aftermath when Amelia was told the baby was dead. And she went through this while she was napping with Lily. But Lily wasn’t disturbed. That tells me that there’s no intent to harm or even frighten the baby. If there were, how long do you think it would take Hayley to head out that door?”
“That may be true, but to get whatever it is she wants, Amelia’s going to keep using Hayley, and using her hard.”
“I agree.” Mitch nodded. “Because it works. Because this way she’s feeding us information we might not ever be able to find. We know now that not only was her child taken from her, but that she was told, cruelly, that it was dead. It’s hardly a wonder that her mind, which already seemed to be somewhat imbalanced, shattered.”
“We can assume she came here for him,” Logan suggested. “And died here.”
“Well, the kid’s dead, too. Dead as she is, dead as disco.” Harper slumped into a chair. “She’s not going to find him here.”
UPSTAIRS, HAYLEY WOKE from a light doze. The curtains were pulled so the light was dim but for a thin chink. She saw Roz sitting, reading a book in that narrow spear of light.
“Lily.”
Roz set the book aside and rose. “Stella has her. She took her and the boys over to the other wing to play so you’d have some quiet. How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted. A little raw inside yet.” But she sighed, comforted when Roz sat and stroked her hair. “It was harder than when I had Lily, rougher and longer. I know it was only a few minutes, really, but it seemed like hours. Hours and hours of pain and heat. Then this awful muzzy feeling toward the end. They gave her something, and it made her kind of float away, but it was almost worse.”
“Laudanum, I imagine. Nothing like a shot of opiate.”
“I heard the baby cry.” Struggling to relax, Hayley curled on her side, tilting her head up to keep Roz in her line of sight. “You know how it is, no matter what’s gone on in those hours before, everything inside you rising up when you hear your baby cry the first time.”