The Mommy Plan

by Susan Gable

  “I’m sorry about your son, Rachel.”

  The image of his face blurred and she swallowed hard. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Will you tell me about him?”

  “I—I need a tissue.” She sniffed to illustrate her point. “Oh, look at your shirt.”

  He glanced down at the trails of moisture, then smiled at her. “It’ll wash.”

  She tried to force an answering smile for him. God knew, he deserved it. Cradled in his arms, she felt safe, protected, comforted. No one had ever held her like this and allowed her to weep all over them, not Roman, certainly not her father.

  A new sense of loss washed over her when he gently lifted her from his lap and set her in the corner of the sofa. He climbed to his feet.

  “Don’t go!” She reached for his hand.

  “I’m not.” He squeezed her fingers reassuringly. “I’m just going to get you that tissue.”

  What a mess she’d made of things, not counting his shirt. Now they all knew about Daniel. She’d broken down in front of a group of strangers. How would she face them again?

  James returned from the bathroom with a box of tissues and a warm, wet washcloth. “Here, wipe your face. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Not to mention look better. I probably have mascara tracks down my face and look like hell, don’t I?”

  “That’s one of those questions a sane man knows not to answer.” He took the washcloth back from her. “Here, let me.” He knelt in front of her, then swiped the cloth across her cheeks. “There.” He tossed the wet terry-cloth onto the glass end table.

  James lowered himself to the sofa at her side. “Now, you were going to tell me about your son.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Are you trying to counsel me?”

  “Do you think you need a counselor?”

  She considered it for a moment. Maybe it was time. “Probably. But…I think I need a friend more.”

  Something ominous, like a thunderhead, crossed his expression, darkening his face for the slightest moment before he inhaled deeply and sighed.

  She averted her eyes. “I’m sorry. That was rather presumptuous of me.”

  “No!” His fingers cupped her chin and lifted it until their gazes met. “I’d like that very much, Rachel.”

  His thumb grazed the underside of her lower lip, setting off sparks deep in her belly. The weight of his gaze on her mouth birthed the irrational hope that he would kiss her. Maybe the pain would go away. Or at least be forgotten for a moment.

  “I want…” he murmured.

  “Want what?”

  “I want—” he lowered his hand “—to help you.”

  She smothered her disappointment and shifted on the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her legs. She yanked the sunflower pillow from behind her back and clutched it in her lap. Of course he didn’t want to kiss her, she looked a fright and she’d collapsed like a babbling baby in his presence. Her cheeks tingled as she studied a piece of lint stuck to the black center of the pillow.

  “Will you let me help?”

  She nodded.

  “Then tell me about Daniel,” he urged softly.

  “How he died?” She hadn’t been there at the time of the accident on the playground. It had been Roman’s weekend with Daniel, but she’d pictured the scene enough times in her mind. Still, she didn’t know if she could actually talk about it.

  “First tell me how he lived.”

  Warmth flooded Rachel’s chest as she allowed the memories of Daniel to escape their hiding place. A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “Always on the move. Daniel was all boy. I swear, the only time he relaxed was when he was asleep.”

  “Must have been hard to keep up with him.”

  “There were days when I fell asleep about ten minutes after he did.”

  James groped for the right words, the words that would help her see how much her bravery in Daniel’s death had meant to others. “Molly was rarely like that before the transplant. In fact, there were days when all she did was sleep. Her body just didn’t have the strength for being a regular kid.”

  “Poor thing,” Rachel murmured. “She has so much zip now.”

  “Exactly. And that’s because someone out there had the courage, just like you, to donate a beloved heart so my little girl could live, and have a chance to be a kid.” He leaned forward and took her hand. “Rachel, what you did was a wonderfully brave and unselfish thing. You and Daniel are heroes. You saved lives.”

  An ember of fire appeared in her blue eyes. “I wasn’t being brave and unselfish, only logical. And you know what? The only life I wanted to save, I couldn’t.”

  “I understand. I felt helpless with Molly, too.”

  “You don’t understand.” She yanked her hand free and jumped from the couch, hurling the pillow into the corner she’d vacated. “Your child lived! Mine didn’t. Why? Do you ever ask yourself that?”

  “I do.” He rose to his feet but kept his distance from her. “The hardest thing about being a transplant parent is sitting at your child’s bed, praying for a miracle, and yet knowing the price for that miracle is the death of someone else’s child.” They paced the small living room in parallel. “I really am sorry about Daniel, Rachel.”

  “You want to know the hardest thing about being a donor parent?”

  Hell no! He had enough guilt over the whole thing without knowing. But she needed to tell him. “Yes.”

  “The hardest thing for me was letting him go when he still had a beating heart. I knew in my head he was gone already, but my own heart just couldn’t seem to accept it. He was gone, but he didn’t look gone. My dad took me to the chapel, and then they took Daniel away. I kept picturing him on a cold operating room table, surrounded by doctors and nurses who didn’t know him, who didn’t love him.” Tears trickled slowly down her cheeks again. “Oh, he’d been declared dead before that, but they needed to keep his heart beating.”

  So it could be transplanted into someone like Molly.

  Though grateful for Rachel’s—and all the others’ like her—courage, he would have preferred to live the rest of his life without the image of her small son on that operating table while she wrestled with her grief in a lonely hospital chapel.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE IMAGE OF HER LITTLE BOY still haunted him several hours later as he sat before a roaring camp fire behind his cabin. Nolan and the girls were out on the road in front, catching lightning bugs in plastic cups, and Tyler slept in a baby seat behind his mother’s chair. Moonlight flickered through the trees and frogs honked in a throaty chorus down near the lake.

  “Do you ever think about it, Michelle?” James asked, leaning forward in the webbed lawn chair, prodding the bonfire embers with a long stick.

  “I wondered when you were going to talk,” she said. “Think about what, exactly?”

  “The donors. Their families.”

  “Every day.”

  “So do I. But not like I did today.” James stirred the red coals. “Usually I just think about how wonderful it was for them to help someone else in a time of tragedy. And I’m grateful. And I hope they’ve found peace with their loss. But today…”

  The frogs broke into another throaty refrain, and faint laughter drifted from the front of the cabin, filling the hole in the conversation.

  “Today you ran smack into another parent’s grief and it scared the hell out of you.”

  The stick slipped from his hand and dropped into the dirt at his feet. “I can’t wait to see your bill for this session,” he murmured, bending over to retrieve it. “You know, I don’t practice cosmetology, and you shouldn’t dabble in psychology.”

  “Ha! Shows what you know. In my neck of the woods in North Carolina, a beautician is a woman’s sounding board, just like the bartender is for the men.”

  “And here I thought all you women did in a beauty salon was gossip.”

  “James…” Michelle folded her arm
s across her chest. “You can’t fool me.”

  Probably not. They’d spent a lot of time together in the hospital when both girls were waiting for hearts. Many cups of lousy coffee and late-night chats had led to a valuable friendship. He’d rejoiced with her when Cherish had gotten her heart, and held her when she’d cried over her daughter’s early bout of rejection.

  But that didn’t mean he wanted to hear her analysis of him.

  He glanced over at the next cabin. No lights burned inside, and he could imagine Rachel sitting in the dark, alone, trying to deal with the emotions they’d stirred up earlier. “She didn’t come to dinner. Maybe I should go and check on her.”

  He cracked the stick in half over his knee and tossed the pieces into the fire, then rose to his feet.

  Michelle reached for his hand as he passed. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “She’s dealing with this alone. No matter how bad things got for us, we were never alone. We had a support network at the hospital. I had my parents, you had Nolan. Who does she have?”

  “You’re supposed to be here for Molly and you, not someone else. On vacation, remember? No psychoanalyzing?”

  “She needs a friend, Michelle. Just like we both did at Children’s Hospital.”

  “But do you need a friend with that much baggage?”

  “We’ve all got baggage, but some people’s is heavier than others’.”

  He gave Michelle’s hand a quick squeeze and released it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Let Molly know if she comes looking for me, okay?”

  She sighed. “All right. But I’m telling you, this is a mistake.”

  Was it? He pondered while he trudged toward Rachel’s cabin. As a psychologist, he knew he could be of assistance. As the father of a transplant kid, he felt a sense of obligation. He might never meet Molly’s donor family, but he could express his gratitude to this surrogate. As a man…

  That was where he got into trouble.

  The memory of her soft curves pressed tightly against him as he cradled her in his arms provoked a flash of heat.

  Maybe Michelle was right. Maybe this was a mistake.

  “Dad! Dad! Lookit!”

  James turned. Molly hurtled in his direction, white T-shirt easily discernible in the moonlit night. “Don’t run in the dark! You’ll fall. And don’t roll your eyes at me.”

  Her laughter as she slowed to a trot confirmed what he hadn’t seen, but had guessed correctly.

  “Lookit.” She shoved a plastic cup covered with cling wrap into his hands. “I caught four lightning bugs.”

  He lowered himself to one knee and studied her offering. The tiny creatures flickered yellow neon pulses from their tails.

  “Aren’t they cool?”

  “They sure are. Are you going to keep them in here?”

  “Nah, we’ll let them go in a bit. Did you know you can make a wish when you set them free, and if they light up, your wish will come true?”

  “No, I didn’t. Who told you that?”

  “Trudy and Don. That’s why they named the camp Firefly Wishes.”

  He grabbed the end of her ponytail and gave it a gentle tug. “And what will you wish for, Unsinkable?”

  “Da-a-ad.” She groaned. “First, I’ll wish for you to stop calling me that.” Then she grinned at him. “And I’m not telling you what else. It’s a secret.”

  “Okay.” James handed his daughter the bug container.

  Molly glanced over his shoulder at the nearby cabin. “Are you going to Miss Rachel’s?”

  “Just for a few minutes. I want to check on her. She had kind of a rough afternoon.”

  Molly nodded. “I know. I heard about her little boy.”

  He gripped her shoulder. “How did you hear about that?”

  “It’s all over camp, Dad. Everyone is talking about it.”

  James sighed. He did his best to shelter her from stories like that, but she’d seen far more death than any eight-year-old should have.

  “Here.” Molly pressed the cup back into his hand. “Maybe these will help. She probably needs some wishes.”

  “Don’t you want them?”

  “I’ll catch more. There’s a bunch of them over in the bushes on the other side of the road.”

  “That’s very sweet, tiger. You go ahead, because it’s almost that time.”

  Molly groaned. “Don’t I get to stay up later? It’s camp!”

  “It’s already past your usual bedtime and you need your rest.” He gave her a quick hug. “Go on.”

  “All right.” She scampered off in the direction of their cabin.

  “Don’t run!” He shook his head. Kids. They never listened to words of warning.

  But then, sometimes neither did their fathers.

  The weathered boards of Rachel’s porch steps creaked beneath his feet, and the screen door’s hinges squeaked. He paused outside the main entrance, tilted his head and listened.

  Nothing.

  She didn’t respond to his rapping, either, so he cracked open the door and took a cautious step inside. “Rachel? It’s me, James.”

  Silence, broken only by the rattle of the ceiling fan in her living room. His stomach tightened as her words of the afternoon came back to him. Dammit, doesn’t anyone care that I’m not ready for this? Had they pushed her too far, too fast?

  “Rachel?” He checked the bathroom first, and loudly exhaled his relief upon not finding her there. Too many possibilities for doing harm to oneself in a bathroom. The bedroom door stood slightly ajar, and he swung it open, his relief complete.

  She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, clutching a pillow in her arms. He flipped the light switch.

  She flinched, blinked hard against the sudden brightness, then swiveled until her back faced him.

  Clothes littered the room. Khaki shorts and pastel shirts were draped across the open suitcase on the luggage stand; jeans cluttered the nearby floor. The dresser drawers hung at odd angles, most of them empty, one in the apparent process of being emptied.

  “You going somewhere?” He leaned against the doorjamb and shoved his right hand in his pocket, the left clutched Molly’s lightning bugs.

  “I thought about it.”

  “I didn’t take you for a coward, Rachel. Running won’t make the pain go away.” The bugs flickered in their makeshift holding cell, iridescent yellow flashes of hope. I’d wish it away for you, if I could.

  “What will?”

  “Facing it is a good start. Time will help.”

  “How long, James? How long will it take to fill the hole in my heart?”

  He didn’t dare tell her there’d always be a hole, though smaller than the one now threatening to consume her. “I don’t know. How long has it been since Daniel died?”

  She rose off the far side of the bed and tossed the pillow at the headboard. “Heading on a year and a half.” She rubbed her temples. “Or maybe it’s been forever. Sometimes I get confused.”

  With an empty chuckle, she crossed to the suitcase, retrieved a turquoise blouse and began to fold it. “They sent me for tests, you know.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “My father. Jerry. The people who love me.”

  “Tests?” Now he was the confused one.

  “Yeah. Because of the forgetfulness. They did a CAT scan, an MRI, an EEG. Alphabet soup of tests. They thought something was wrong because I was never like that before.” The shirt landed in the dresser drawer and she picked up another. “Of course something was wrong! My son was dead.”

  He set the plastic cup on her night table and moved closer. “Didn’t anyone treat you for depression, Rachel?”

  She snorted. “Shows what you know, Dr. McClain. Thompsons don’t get depressed. They don’t take pills in bad times. They lace their combat boots tighter and carry on like good soldiers do.”

  “No one had to know. Just you. And not all treatments mean pills.”

  A lemony-smelling shirt wrapped itself around his
face, and he clawed at it.

  “Make yourself useful and fold that.” She straightened the dresser drawer. “I live in a very small town, James. Everyone knows everyone, and their business. The doc wouldn’t blab, and probably not the pharmacist, but the bigmouthed women who work in the drugstore are another matter entirely. Why, they’re so bad, practically nobody buys birth control in town.” This time her laugh had a genuine hint of humor in it. “The condoms there have a longer shelf life than Spam.”

  James stepped closer to her, offering the folded garment. “That’s usually not a good thing.”

  “Tell me about it.” The half smile she gave him faltered, and her lower lip quivered slightly. “That’s how I got Daniel.”

  He put on his best nonjudgmental face, one he’d had a lot of practice with in his office. “So, Daniel was—”

  “A surprise! A delightful, wonderful surprise.” The final piece of clothing vanished into the dresser and she slammed the drawer shut, then turned to face him. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “Because I’m your friend. We established that this afternoon, remember?”

  “I have other friends, James McClain. I don’t talk to them about this.”

  “And there’s your problem. Which I told you the first night. You can’t hold all that stuff inside you without something happening. Like forgetfulness. Or ulcers. Or a bunch of other stress-related illnesses.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Sunshine.” Her blue eyes pleaded for something from him. Reassurance?

  “I have something for you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Actually, it’s from Molly. Come outside with me and I’ll give it to you.” He retrieved the plastic cup from the night table and cradled it in his hands, hiding it from her view. He left the bedroom and headed for the front of the cabin.

  “What is it?” she asked from behind him. “Hey, at least give me a hint.”

  “No hints.” He flipped on the porch light as he passed the switch, then led her out the screened door and down the steps. “Okay, close your eyes.” He waited a moment. “Are they closed?”

  “I don’t think I know you well enough to close my eyes.”

  “For crying out loud, Rachel, just do it.”