“Why do you say that?”
He looked at her, raised his wrapped wrist and let it fall to his leg. “Honestly, I don’t know. You tell me where you are, what you’re doing, but not with your usual insights. It’s more like a travel log than the Eliza flair I’m used to.”
Her eyes flooded with tears. Something she’d decided from the very beginning was not going to happen. She had to be the strong one here. She was the one who knew the truth. Who’d made the choice. Who’d kept the secret.
Pierce was the injured party.
“I had a baby, Pierce.” The words were pressed out of her by the emotion building inside. “I had a baby.” Tears choked her. Engulfed her. She shook her head. Looked at him as though he’d have answers enough for both of them, while knowing it was far too late. “I had a baby.” She wailed.
It was as though, once she’d let out the truth, she couldn’t stop. She was going to sit there and confess as many times as she’d refused, over the years, to let the truth free.
“I had a baby... I...” she hiccupped. Choked for air. “I had a...” She couldn’t breathe. “I hadda...”
Pierce’s good arm came around her and, sobbing, Eliza collapsed against him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
USED TO DEALING with traumatic situations, Pierce didn’t feel much of anything at first.
Eliza was crying. Comforting her was what he did. Anytime he could.
I had a baby. I had a baby. I had a baby.
Was she out of her mind?
She’d gone to California for the first time in her life less than a month ago. She couldn’t have given birth there.
She was crying so hard she was struggling for breath. He rubbed her back. Kissed the top of her head. Had to calm her down first.
At the moment, he wouldn’t be able to get through to her, and she wouldn’t be able to communicate with him even if he did.
A cop looking for answers, he had scenarios running through his mind. Had she arranged to adopt a child behind his back? In California? She’d tried to talk to him about adoption right after her first trip out. Had she had a kid lined up and had to back out because of him?
He didn’t know a lot about the process, but he knew enough to know that even private adoptions took time. Background checks. He knew because sometimes law enforcement was called if there was a questionable report. He’d taken such a call once. He’d been on desk duty...
Eliza sniffled hard and, searching for anything that could double as a tissue, Pierce grabbed the linen doily from beneath the flower arrangement on the coffee table and wiped at her face. Like a child, she let him.
He could feel the change come over her, a ripple running up her backbone. She straightened.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I...had no right to...”
Whatever else Pierce knew, he was sure of this. “You always have the right to feel your feelings, Eliza. They got the better of you for a reason.” What he needed to know was why.
And he needed to know soon.
Before she left town again.
He’d been planning for a rough night. Had already planned to take one of the sleeping pills the doctor had given him the other night before he left the hospital. To protect Eliza from any residual nighttime horror he might put them both through after he told her what he’d brought her out there to tell her.
He still hadn’t been sure exactly what that would be.
Not the whole thing, for sure. He couldn’t break the pact without talking to someone first. Either a counselor or the other three men in his unit who were keeping it with him.
Men he hadn’t spoken to since he got out.
He had no idea where they were, what they’d done with their lives. Wasn’t even sure they were alive.
But he’d thought about looking them up. On Facebook first.
Using the police database to search for possible priors on people who had reason to sabotage his wife, while out of his jurisdiction, hadn’t been completely against policy.
Using it for his own personal needs...was.
He didn’t like it at all when she pulled away from him completely, sat up and turned to face him.
Until that moment, while he’d been worried about her, he hadn’t been afraid for...them. At least, not due to whatever she had to tell him. Not since she’d assured him there was no one else.
“What’s going on, Liza?” He didn’t use the pet name much anymore. And had used it twice recently. It had been all he’d called her when they’d been in high school. It was like he had to pull her back to him in any way he could. The thought disgusted him.
Disappointed him. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
“I already told you. I had a baby.” Her eyes teared up again as she looked at him, but they were strong and steady, too.
She seemed completely lucid. Didn’t repeat herself this time.
He shook his head. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“I had a baby, Pierce.” She said the words slowly. Distinctly.
“I know what you said. I don’t understand what you mean. When? When did you have this baby?”
He’d been back in her life for seven, almost eight years. Had seen her almost every day of that time...
“Seventeen years ago.” She was frowning. Looking confused.
He waited for cold, harsh reality to take root.
“Seventeen years ago.” He repeated the words. His heart in deep chill. Deep, deep chill. Lifting his injured hand, he let it fall to his lap. Felt a twinge of pain. And wondered that he could feel anything at all.
“You had a baby a year after I left?” She’d found someone else that soon? What had all that been about her never finding anyone to replace him? About never having fallen in love again?
About...
“Nine months after you left.”
The distinction seemed really important to her.
And then he knew.
It had taken him a while. Too long, probably.
“You had my baby.”
Eliza had had his baby. His baby.
Oh, God. Take me now. This instant.
He’d left her...barely out of childhood...to deal with that all alone...
He stared at her, fire ripping through him, thawing the chill, burning him with searing hopelessness. “You had my baby?”
She nodded, looking frightened.
Her fear confused him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t come back.”
Her words echoed the ones she’d said the other night. You didn’t come back. Suffused with more input than he could process, Pierce stared at her.
“When I did come back. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
The truth occurred to him. She’d lost the baby.
He hadn’t given her a chance to let him know that. No wonder she was struggling. She wanted a family. With him. The family she’d lost...
“Because I’d let myself believe that it was best...afterward...if I started a new life without carrying around what I couldn’t change. My father insisted, as part of his agreement to let me live with Grandma, that I not tell anyone.”
Her father. Pierce wasn’t much for hate. Especially involving a family member. But he was close in that moment to hating Jonathan Maxwell. Eliza’s dad had too much to answer for.
If not for him, Pierce would have been back. He would have known.
He might not have been able to prevent what happened to the baby, but at least he’d have known. And been there to help Eliza...
The intensity in her tears was fully understandable to him. By God, she’d carried around that grief for seventeen years?
What kind of animal asked his daughter to keep som
ething like that buried deep inside?
To him, in his case, the whole thing made sense. He’d broken the law—a legal adult, he’d made love to someone who was, by law, underage. Never mind that Eliza would have been sixteen in less than a week. But the truth was, he’d known at the time that it was wrong. Too soon.
He’d just been so afraid to go. Afraid he wouldn’t make it back. Afraid that she wouldn’t wait for him. He’d needed the memory of her to keep him alive.
He’d been just what her father had called him. A self-serving punk.
And after what he’d done in the Middle East, killing that boy, he didn’t deserve to know the joy of having a child of his own.
But Eliza...
Her only sin had been to love him too much.
“I’m not proud of what I did, Pierce. I know now that it was wrong. Completely, horribly wrong to deny the existence of our child to the point of pretending like it never happened...”
He wanted to take away her pain. Feared that he was many years too late.
“My father was right,” she said now, a hint of bitterness in the sharp chuckle that escaped her. “I’d have been branded if I’d gone to my new school here in the South as the girl who’d been pregnant. It was much easier to pretend it had never happened, because losing him had just about killed me and...”
Him. Him?
His insides started to tremble.
“It was a boy?” He didn’t recognize his own voice. Felt like he was choking, but didn’t even cough.
A boy for a boy. It made sense to him. He deserved that.
But did she?
Surely no fate would require her to pay that ultimate price for having picked him to love. Even Pierce, in his most maudlin state, couldn’t make that one work.
She nodded. Teared up again as she looked at him. “I’m told he had a head full of hair. And blue eyes. But babies are often born with blue eyes and then they change...” Her lips turned, like she was trying to smile through her tears. They turned downward instead as her chin puckered.
How could she have kept this inside her all these years?
How could he not have known?
One thing was for certain. Eliza was much stronger than he’d ever known. Stronger than she gave herself credit for.
When she was calm again, he asked, “What happened?”
Best to get it all out now. He didn’t want her to have to go through this again.
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“With the baby. You said losing him just about killed you. Did you hemorrhage? How far along were you?” Where is he buried? What did you name him?
A look of inexplicable horror crossed her face, and Pierce cursed himself for pushing her too far. How could he possibly know what was best?
“The baby didn’t die, Pierce.”
It took a few seconds for her words to register. He heard them again. In his mind. And then again. An echo that he had to resist.
And couldn’t deny.
Her horror had entered him. Taken him over.
“Are you telling me that we have a son? Out there?” He welcomed the sharp pain that shot up his arm and through his shoulder and beyond as he flung his bad hand toward the yard.
“He’s alive. Yes.” The three words changed everything. Everything.
Now nothing made sense. Jumping up, he left the gazebo. Needed air. Space.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said, not even sure she heard him. He didn’t give her a chance to reply.
He just strode off and left her all alone.
Again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IF IT HADN’T been so late, Eliza would have called Natasha Stevens. Not that it was all that late in California. But it was after business hours. And her conversation with the other woman, while horribly personal to Eliza, was really just business.
She thought about phoning anyway and leaving a message. But didn’t think quitting the show was something she should do over voice mail.
Probably best to give herself some hours to collect herself before telling anyone anything. And to find out exactly what she’d be telling them.
Had Pierce left her or just gone for a walk like he’d said?
Would he be coming back?
Margie had long since left. And Eliza had made it a point never to go out into the public areas of the house after social hour. If she went out, her guests would think she was accessible. You have to set boundaries, Grandma had said.
She hadn’t been talking only about the rules of being a healthy innkeeper.
Eliza paced the backyard for a while—the walled-in part that was private for Pierce and her, not minding at all that the air had grown too chilly to be out without a sweater. She welcomed the cold on her overheated skin.
When she started to get headachy, she figured she was probably a bit dehydrated from all the crying and went in to get a bottle of water.
Being practical helped.
Brought her back to reality.
And the reality was, she was going to be just fine.
She was always just fine.
What other choice was there?
She was alive. So she would live. She breathed, so she would take breaths. Simple really. A truth she’d learned a long time ago.
Glancing out the window, she hoped she’d see Pierce on the front porch. He wasn’t there.
She didn’t blame him. Keeping the existence of a son from a sterile man had been wrong. Terribly wrong.
But it wasn’t like Pierce could have seen the boy. Or had any part in his life.
She hadn’t named Pierce on the birth certificate. Again, with advice from her father, advocated for by her mother. She couldn’t give the baby up for adoption without Pierce’s signature if she named him as the father, they’d said. And since he hadn’t contacted her, how was she going to get his signature?
They’d told her to grow up. Look at life realistically. An older high school boy had had his way with her his last night in town, and then he’d gone off to see the world, leaving her to bear the consequences alone.
She’d tried to believe them. Might have for a while. It was so hard to remember exactly what she’d thought during those frightening months. What she’d known for certain was that at sixteen, with no one to help her, she’d never have been able to give that baby a good life.
He’d have ended up like Pierce, only worse, living in a trailer, if they were lucky, with a mom who didn’t have it together enough to provide for him, let alone give him fair chances.
It’s the last thing Pierce would have wanted.
Pierce would have wanted...
What did Pierce want now? She paced another ten minutes. Through their private quarters. Out to their porch. And then down the steps to the walk. She stood in the front yard, looking up and down the street. A few late strollers were about. Balmy weather in March was a welcome respite from the winter’s cold. There were lights on down at the beach, restaurants and bars still open.
Was Pierce there? Making plans?
Eliza wasn’t sure when she started to get mad. But when the anger built, it didn’t seem to stop.
How dare he walk out on her again.
And if he thought she was just going to sit and take it...again...he was...
She didn’t really plan to walk down to the beach. Her feet just kept moving. One in front of the other, until she was a block away from home. She hadn’t locked the door. Wasn’t completely sure she’d shut it all the way.
But she kept walking. To the sand. And beyond. She wasn’t sure what she thought she was going to do. Couldn’t seem to find coherent thoughts enough to string together. She walked.
Until she saw him. Standing down by the ocean, hands in his poc
kets, the bandage bulging around his left wrist. Looking out to sea.
* * *
PIERCE DIDN’T QUESTION how Eliza came to be standing next to him. Nor did he look at her.
“Where is he?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Not an Eliza-type answer.
Pierce wasn’t sure what to say to her. He felt like he didn’t know her. And yet...loved her more than ever.
“I gave him up for adoption.”
He’d figured that much out. Even before the ocean air had cleared his head.
“Here? In Shelby Island?”
“In Charleston.”
“So he could be living close?” The intensity in his tone scared him. He could only imagine what it was doing to her.
What did she want? Had she ever even looked for the boy after she and Pierce had gotten back together?
Would she want to see him?
Or would it hurt too much? “He’s not.”
That made him mad. But the anger burned itself out before it was even fully ignited.
During his walk to the beach, two things became clear. He had no right to be angry.
And he didn’t blame Eliza for her choices. They’d both been manipulated by her father. And even he had probably acted for the right reasons. Wrong actions. No way Pierce could ever condone the way the man had played God with his and Eliza’s lives. But he was almost able to see that, as a father, Jonathan Maxwell had probably thought he was protecting his daughter’s future. Doing what was best for her in the long run.
And...wait...
“How do you know he’s not close if you don’t know where he is?”
“The agency I used was here. Well, in Charleston...”
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