The Baby Gift

by Bethany Campbell

“It was a simple break. I was lucky. The collarbone’s the worst. It’s jammed up against an artery or something. How’s Nealie? How’s the baby?”

  “Nealie’s good. The baby’s fine and kicking harder every day. Oh, Josh, do you think they’ll let you get on that ship?”

  “If they don’t take me by longboat,” he said, “I’ll swim out to the damn thing. I’ll hang on its side like a barnacle. I’ll be back to you, Briana. You and the kids. Come hell or high water. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, her throat constricting. Then someone, the nurse from the sound of it, made him give up the phone. She had only time to tell him goodbye.

  But he was true to his word.

  He arrived in Auckland on the second day of August.

  One day later, Glenda had her baby, a seven-pound five-ounce boy. They named him Leo Joshua Hanlon.

  JOSH SPENT over two months in New Zealand, in and out of hospitals.

  Ironically, the source of his misery was the injury that had first seemed most minor, his broken collarbone. The fractured bone had lacerated nerves and abraded a major artery, and as the bone tried to heal, a callus formed that pressed on both nerve and artery. The pain was intense and circulation to his right arm impaired.

  The damage could be repaired—to an extent—but never completely undone. He might have to have more operations in the States. Josh was going to pay for Pitcairn for the rest of his life.

  He got back to the States toward the end of September, still feeling rocky, but he wanted to be with Briana and Nealie. He’d lost nineteen pounds; and on the last leg of his long flight, he hurt like crazy because he refused to dull himself with pain pills and was dazed by jet lag.

  But when he landed in St. Louis and saw Briana and Nealie waiting for him, the haze lifted from his mind, and the aches vanished from his body.

  Briana was bulging with pregnancy and had never looked more beautiful to him. She flung herself into his arms. It should have hurt his collarbone like the devil, but he didn’t feel a thing except joy. Nealie clung to his legs happily crying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

  She tried to climb him as if he were a tree, and she knocked her big glasses askew, so finally he scooped her up in his good arm, and he and Briana leaned on each other all the way to the parking garage as if they were drunk with love.

  Inga had driven Briana and Nealie to the airport. She’d thought Briana was too pregnant to make the trip alone. But she also knew Briana and Josh and Nealie needed privacy. Harve and Penny had followed her so she could ride home with them. Josh had assured Briana he could drive to Illyria even with one aching arm.

  In Briana’s truck, he held her and kissed her repeatedly, and Nealie climbed all over him, and he kissed her, too, although she was starting to send lightning bolts of pain though his shoulder.

  “Ouch! Ouch! Take it easy,” he pleaded. “Your old man’s banged up. I’ve got pain imps sticking pitchforks in me.”

  “We’ll make them go away,” Nealie promised. “But Mommy and I are going to take such good care of you that you’ll never go away again.”

  For the first time, a tiny cloud of darkness fell across his mind. He would be going away again. He would always be going away. But from now on, he had promised himself, it would be different.

  On the road, Briana and Nealie peppered him with news and questions.

  “The ride in the longboat to the Russian ship,” Nealie said. “Did it hurt? Did it hurt when you were on the ship?”

  “Not much,” he lied. The trip in the longboat had been pure hell. He’d thought he’d die. The voyage in the Russian ship was excruciating, but nothing compared to being carried to the longboat and tossed about in it. He had passed out three times.

  “So why do you have pain imps?” Nealie persisted. She was almost eating him up with her eyes.

  “I should have got to the hospital faster,” he said. “These things happen.”

  “Like when Harve’s house burned down?”

  “Yes. Like that. Stuff just happens.”

  “Harve’s new house is all built,” Nealie said. “It’s pretty. Inga moved back in with him.”

  “Your mother told me,” Josh said. He had his bad arm draped around Briana’s shoulder. She’d said little. She looked at him with a glow on her face. The seat belt curved over the sweet roundness of her belly.

  “I miss Inga,” Nealie announced, suddenly serious. “I wish she’d come back and stay at Grandpa’s. At first I didn’t think I liked her much, but now I do.”

  Briana spoke, a smile on her lips. “She was like a rock for us. I don’t know if I could have made it through this without her.”

  “Inga makes the best potato pancakes in the world,” Nealie said. “And Harve is going to propose to Penny.”

  Briana laughed and put her finger to Nealie’s lips. “Shh. That’s supposed to be a secret until Thanksgiving.”

  “Everybody knows it,” Nealie said in self-defense.

  Josh looked at Briana and lifted an eyebrow. “My rival gave up?”

  “Your rival found his true love,” she said. She laid her head against his aching shoulder, and somehow she made it feel better.

  “So much happened while you were gone,” she said. “I think Poppa and Inga are in love. I think they’re waiting until everything’s settled down before telling people.”

  Everybody in this family tries to keep secrets, Josh thought. They thought they were protecting each other. Maybe they were. He never wanted Briana or Nealie to know what he had suffered getting back from Pitcairn. What good would it do them to know?

  “I’ll finally get to have a grandma,” Nealie said proudly. “And a baby sister. Almost all at once.”

  “You might have a baby brother,” Briana cautioned. “We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  “I know,” said Nealie.

  Josh smiled. It was good to hear his daughter’s chatter again. It was good beyond belief.

  “I know because I talk to her all the time,” said Nealie. “She talks to me, too. She’s coming soon. And she wants her name to be Julia Ann.”

  “Julia Ann,” Josh mused. “That’s a nice name. I could live with that. What about you, Mom?”

  “I guess,” Briana said. “But if it’s a boy, I want to name him after that Russian doctor.”

  “Rotislav Ivanovich Smirdnekov?” Josh said.

  “He brought you home,” she said and nuzzled his shoulder.

  Involuntarily, he flinched.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, drawing back. “Did I hurt you?”

  “It hurt good,” he said. “Do it again.”

  He gazed at the Missouri countryside. In its way, it was as strange as Siberia or Tasmania or Pitcairn Island.

  But it was also home, because Briana was there. And wherever she was, that was the place his heart lived.

  INGA HAD DECREED a small celebration, and when Inga decreed something, it was done. Josh saw the rest of the family and was amazed that they seemed glad to see him. Leo hugged him in welcome. It hurt.

  Larry was so accepting, he slapped Josh on the back. That hurt worse. Harve pumped his hand endlessly, and by this time, Josh’s whole arm hurt like Hades. Penny seized him by both shoulders—this hurt, of course—and kissed him on the cheek.

  Glenda wept with happiness and relief on his shoulder. That, too, hurt, but not as much.

  Josh had to hold the new baby, Leo Joshua. The infant was a small, red-faced morsel who wet on him. For some stupid reason, Josh didn’t mind. It felt good to hold new life.

  But toward the end of the party, Nealie’s nose started to bleed. Josh seized her in his arms, regardless of the pain that flashed through him.

  Inga and Briana helped him stop the bleeding. When it was over and Nealie’s face was wiped clean, Inga softly said in his ear, “Enough is enough, dear boy. Go home with your family. We’re so glad you’re back. And so thankful.”

  She, too, kissed his cheek. It didn’t hurt at all. />
  But the sight of Nealie, pale and exhausted by emotion, did.

  BRIANA SETTLED onto the couch, snuggling against Josh. She reveled in the solid reality of him, the touch and firmness and heft of his body beside hers. She had a tumbler of apple cider and had poured him a glass of wine for home-coming.

  He was solemn. “Nealie,” he said, “how is she? You haven’t been holding out on me, have you? Tell me the truth, for God’s sake.”

  She touched her fingertips to his jaw. “She’s holding steady, Josh. Honestly. I think she just got overexcited by you coming back. We were all so worried about you. Your collarbone—how is it? Really? I thought I saw you wince tonight more than once.”

  “I’ll live,” he said and kissed her ear. “But this is going to slow me down.”

  Her heartbeat speeded. “You mean you’ll take it a little easier?” Is it possible? she thought, Can he shake off his wanderlust even a little bit?

  He put his good hand on the curve of her stomach. “Oh, Briana, for a while on Pitcairn it was like I stood in front of two doors. One led to you and Nealie and this little person—”

  He caressed the soft mound of her belly where their unborn child rested. He was silent a moment. “The other door led to someplace else. I think that place was death.”

  She shuddered and put her hand atop his. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I have to,” he said. “I had a lot of time on that Russian freighter. I had even longer in Auckland. There was nothing to do but think. I thought about us. I thought about me. I thought about what I’ve done and why I’ve done it and why I was the one who let things come between us.”

  She was overwhelmed by his generosity. She took his face between her hands. “Oh, Josh, it wasn’t just you. It was me, too. I thought if I left my family, it would fall apart, and all the bad things that happened would be my fault. I thought I was more important than I am.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t understand family at all. I never had one. I never understood the hold it can have on you, how it can tie knots around a person’s heart.”

  She leaned closer to him, glorying in touching his well-loved face after all these months. She said, “And I never understood that I was looking backward. When I married you, I promised to commit to you and our future. To make a new family. Not to cling to the past and the family I grew up with.”

  He surprised her by laying his face against her shoulder. “What happened to me when I was a kid…” he murmured.

  “You mean that man,” she said, caressing his hair. “The one who did things to you. You mean that.”

  “I mean that,” he said, voice muffled. He put his arm around her, pulled her tighter. “It made me feel less than a man. So I’ve spent my whole life trying to out-macho anybody else. I thought to be a man I had to be rough, I had to keep grabbing danger, smacking it around, spitting in its eye. I was a lean, mean lone wolf. I couldn’t stay in one place. I couldn’t settle down. It would mean I was—weak.”

  “Oh, Josh,” she said, kissing his neck. “Oh, Josh—you, weak? Never. Never.”

  He raised his face and looked into her eyes, his expression pained. “Yeah. I was weak. And stupid. I thought the only way to prove myself was by taking chances other men wouldn’t. But the chance of my life—was you.”

  Again her hands framed his face. She said, “I should never have stayed behind when you went away. Now I know I don’t have to. I know you’ll always have to be on the move. But I don’t always have to be here.”

  A light flared deep in his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she said, “I thought I was indispensable. I’m not. Papa and Harve are talking about a partnership. Penny can take over most of what I do with the business. Inga can help her, and she’s good with the family. She’s doing better than I ever did. Together, they make me dispensable—and free. Nealie and I and the baby—we could go with you to California. We could have our own home.”

  He grinned in disbelief. “Just us? You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”

  “No,” she said with utter seriousness. “I’ve gone over this in my mind a thousand times. If we stay around here, people may start putting two and two together. It’s almost inevitable. I want our kids to have childhoods that are as normal as possible. I don’t want gossip about them, and the last thing I ever want is for the media to find out.”

  His smile grew speculative. “You mean that?”

  “Every word of it. It’s for Nealie’s good. And the baby’s. I’ve talked to Nealie about moving. I said it would be a lot easier for you to get home if we lived on the coast. She likes that idea. Besides, it would probably be good for her to live in a warmer climate.”

  “My God,” he said, “you really are something, you know that? I could buy you a little farm. In Salinas Valley or Napa Valley. You could run it. Grow things. Maybe even some sunflowers. The first time I saw you was in that field of sunflowers. You could still go visit your family whenever you wanted—”

  “You’re my family,” she said. “You and Nealie and this child.”

  The baby kicked, as if to emphasize she was right.

  “I’ll never take another dangerous assignment,” he told her, stroking her hair. “I’ll be gone sometimes. Sometimes for a more than a little while. But I’ll never take foolish chances again. I learned that, this trip. A married man, a man with kids—he’s got no business playing dice with death.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s scary playing dice with life, too.”

  “I think I’ve grown up enough to try,” he said. He kissed her, long and deep.

  THE BABY WAS BORN November nineteenth in St. Louis, Missouri. She was a strong, healthy baby, weighing eight pounds. She had her father’s pugnacious jaw and her mother’s jet black hair.

  Two months later, in St. Louis, blood from Julia’s umbilical cord was implanted into Nealie. Nealie hated being in the hospital and didn’t really understand what was happening. She thought she was having some strange operation to cure her allergies.

  A month later, the center tested Nealie and pronounced the operation a success. Her sister’s cells had taken hold. The anemia was arrested.

  Nobody knew of Julia Ann’s strange conception except the people at the center and Briana and Josh.

  A few other people may have suspected, and one knew because she had unerringly guessed. That person was Inga.

  After Nealie’s operation, she said to Briana, “I think I know what this is about. I understood when I asked Leo more about her illness. I remember a student I had. His name was Jason Castleman. He died of Yates’s anemia when he was fifteen.” Inga paused. “Science hadn’t learned how to save people like him yet. Now it can. I remembered reading news stories about cord blood and genetic testing. I started thinking about all those trips you were taking, the way you and Josh were acting, and it came together. I thank heaven that Nealie had a chance. And you were courageous enough to take it.”

  Briana felt a frisson of alarm. “I don’t want people to know.”

  “I understand. I’ll say nothing to anyone,” Inga promised. “Especially your father. He doesn’t need to know.”

  Ah, Poppa, Briana thought, you’ve got someone else to protect you now.

  “Thank you,” she said and embraced the older woman. Inga and Leo planned to be married at Easter, and Briana was glad for both.

  She and Josh and Nealie and Julia would move to an acreage in the Salinas Valley in California. There was no chance of anyone knowing their story there. They would be just another family. A woman who grew rare plants and seeds, a man who was often away on assignment photographing rare sights. A little girl who had once been fragile but was now growing strong.

  There would also be, of course, a baby, pretty and happy, nothing terribly unusual about her. She was just a seemingly ordinary baby whom all of them loved.

  And her name was Julia Ann.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-4367-5

  THE BABY GIFT
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  Copyright © 2002 by Bethany Campbell.

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