by Emma Miller
“We’ll go get the car and pull it around to the door,” her father said, darting toward the church exit with his wife at his side. “David, you help her out.”
Everyone in the church moved into action. Brother Henry and Mary rushed to open the doors as David guided Laura down the aisle and outside. His parents followed Laura’s folks out so they could also head to the hospital. And David held his arm around Laura as she slowly progressed toward the vehicle.
Another hard contraction slammed her when they were merely feet from the car, and she latched on to David and yelled through the onslaught. It killed him to see her in so much pain, but what hurt even more were her words, directed to him in the midst of that horrible contraction.
As her faced flexed with pain, her arms clung to David and tears fell freely, Laura asked, “What—what happened to us?”
Marjorie, holding the back car door open for her daughter, locked eyes with David, her mouth flattening and her eyes suddenly filled with sorrow. Obviously she’d heard Laura’s question, even though her daughter’s yelp with yet another contraction kept David from having to answer.
He eased her into the backseat, and Marjorie slid in to sit beside her, draping her arm around Laura and still looking at David as though she didn’t understand.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, closing the door without addressing Marjorie’s questioning eyes. And without answering Laura’s question.
Because he didn’t understand, either.
Chapter Twenty
“They’re beautiful,” David’s mother said, standing beside him at the nursery window while Grace and Joy slept peacefully in their pink blanket cocoons. Laura had said the names came easily after she went into labor in the church on Christmas day.
“They are, aren’t they?” he agreed. The girls came two weeks early but were perfectly healthy. And now, merely two days old, they were doing great.
“What a Christmas present,” she said.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Zeb said as he neared the nursery. “How’s the little mama?” he asked.
“She’s amazing,” David said. And she was. Laura had endured four hours of labor before delivering Grace and then three minutes later, Joy. Seeing her hold the baby girls, talk to them and love them over the past two days had touched David’s heart like nothing he’d ever witnessed before and he wanted to tell her, but the timing had never been right. Someone was always in the room, and then on top of that, David kept wondering when Jared would show up to see his new daughters. If David were a smart man, he wouldn’t stick around waiting for the inevitable, when another man waltzed in and claimed what he wanted so much. But David couldn’t help himself; he wanted to be near Laura.
Zeb had been at the hospital several times over the past couple of days, not only to check on Laura but also to see all of the kids on the children’s floor for Christmas. David had gone down to see them, as well, and had taken photos of the babies along. All of the kids had made cards for Laura, and they were displayed in her room. Zeb nudged David. “Whatever is going on between you two needs to be fixed.”
“What?” David asked, but he knew exactly what the older man referred to.
“You and Miss Laura. You were meant to be together, and I think you know it. You two—” he pointed to the babies “—and those two.” He nodded for emphasis. “Together.”
“Zeb, you don’t know what’s happened,” David said, and he didn’t want to discuss the girls’ daddy now, especially since Laura’s parents were walking toward them.
“Laura still sleeping?” Marjorie asked as they joined David and Zeb at the window.
“I think so.” David looked at the couple, their arms around each other as if they were newlyweds. Then again, in a way, they were.
Marjorie held up a bag. “I’ve got a gift. Why don’t you walk with me and we can go see if she’s up? I think she’s going to like this.” She gave her husband a look that told David this “walk with me” thing was a setup. Obviously she wanted to talk to David alone, and all of the people huddled around the nursery window apparently knew it...and went along with it.
David looked again at the babies, their little mouths open as they slept with tiny fists near their lips. He’d been surprised Marjorie hadn’t already asked him about Laura’s comment on the way to the hospital, but again, the past two days had been a flurry of emotion with hardly any chances for private conversations. Until now. He prayed he was ready. “Okay.”
They turned the corner and walked far enough away from the nursery that the group couldn’t hear, and then Marjorie slowed her steps. “Laura is supposed to leave the hospital in an hour,” she said.
“I know.”
“Well, then, I think it’s time we figure out where she’s going, don’t you?” She raised one intimidating brow to David.
“Where she’s going?”
“Yes. Is she going home with us...or staying here with you?” Before David could respond, she added, “She asked you what happened to the two of you, and from what I can tell, you still haven’t given her an answer.”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to her privately since we got here,” David said, feeling like a kid who’d been called into the principal’s office.
She handed over the gift. “Here. You can deliver my gift, and you can talk to her. Now. This is your chance. Because as much as I’d love for her to live with us, I refuse to drive her back to Nashville when I honestly believe her heart is—and will always be—in Claremont.”
“What about Jared?” David knew he shouldn’t have asked, but the question came out before he had a chance to filter his thoughts.
Now both brows popped up, her eyes widened and then she shook her head for good measure. “That’s what this is about?” She gave him a small shove toward Laura’s room. “Oh, you definitely need to go talk to my daughter. And in the future, that’s the way the two of you should handle things. Talk things out. I went more than two decades keeping my thoughts and fears from Thomas. I was stupid. And you are, too, if you don’t figure out what’s what.” Then she abruptly turned on her heel and started back toward the nursery.
While David, not knowing what was about to happen, continued toward Laura’s room.
She was sitting up in the bed and smiling at her phone when he entered, and David felt a sharp stab of jealousy wondering whether Jared had texted something that made her smile like that.
She glanced up and that confused look that had crossed her face every time she’d seen him since Jared came to town returned. Then she cleared her throat, turned the phone so he could see the image of the babies on the screen and said, “I love all of the pictures everyone has already put up of the girls.”
David mentally kicked himself for, as Marjorie said, being stupid. He had to stop assuming things and start asking what he wanted to know. Starting right now. “They’re beautiful.” He held up the gift bag. “Your mom sent another gift.”
Laura reached for the bag, and David handed it over, their fingers touching in the exchange. She hesitated as skin met skin, looked at him and then slowly took the gift. Peeking inside, she said, “These are the kind of pacifiers the nurse said the girls like best.”
David nodded, his thoughts more focused on what he was about to say than on Marjorie’s gift, and Laura seemed to understand. She placed the bag on the nightstand and then watched him pull a chair near the bed and sit down.
“So, are you going to tell me now?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, as though she also dreaded this conversation. “What happened?”
David hated seeing her upset because of him, but the whole point of sending her to Nashville was to give her what she wanted and make certain she was happy. “I know how much you loved Jared, how you wanted him to marry you and the two of you to raise Grace and Joy together.
And I know how much it hurt you when he didn’t,” he said.
“David...”
He shook his head. “Let me finish. I’ve held this in, and I should have told you when I saw the two of you together again.”
“Oh, wait, David, you don’t—”
“Laura, please,” he said, and she stopped. David glanced at the door, still closed, and was thankful they finally had the privacy he needed to tell her everything in his heart. “I saw him leaving the bookstore and the way you looked at him. I could see that you love him, and I could also see that the two of you appeared to be working things out. Which is great. For the girls. I know that’s what you want, and I won’t stand in your way of that.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “I just wish you’d have told me.”
A different look came over her face, one David couldn’t read, and then finally, she asked, “Why?”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Yes, why do you wish I’d have told you? Why would you care that Jared came to see me? And on top of that, why did you show up at the bookstore, barely speak to me and treat me as though you couldn’t stand to look at me ever since? Why?” When he didn’t readily answer, she persisted, “You said you’ve held it in ever since that day. You didn’t tell me what you wanted to say, what I believe you were about to say that morning before you left. Why?”
David had no choice but to answer. “Because I couldn’t stand to see him with you.”
She blinked. And the fire that’d been in her eyes merely a second ago converted to a warmth as she looked at him. Then she seemed to fight a smile as she asked once more, “Why?”
David decided he might as well go for broke. He’d already started down the rabbit hole, might as well fall in. “Because I know you love him, Laura, and I wanted...”
“You wanted what?” She reached for his hand and tenderly laced her fingers between his. “What is it that you wanted, David?”
“I wanted you to love me.”
Her eyes glistened, and several tears fell free. “Oh, David,” she said. “I will always care for Jared because he’s the girls’ father. But his life is with Anita, and with the baby she’s carrying.”
“With the baby she’s carrying?”
Laura nodded, her tears still falling, but her smile sending them in awkward paths along her cheeks and neck. “That’s why he came, to tell me that he’s changed and that he wants to be a part of the girls’ lives. He wants to help financially, too, and he said he’ll help me out until I can find a job. And a lot of the change in him was due to Anita. She was determined to help him regain his faith, and he’s trying to get his life right. He wants to help support the babies and be a part of their lives.”
David felt like an idiot. If he’d only asked, this is what she’d have told him. “Aw, man. I thought that you wanted him again.”
Her smile crept up a little higher, and she blinked through the tears. “I have one more question,” she said, her thumb moving in tender circles across the top of his hand as she spoke.
“Anything,” he said. “I promise I’ll answer.”
“You said you wanted me to love you.” Her eyes locked with his, and the compassion David saw almost moved him to tears, as well. “Why?”
He didn’t have to think about his answer. He gave her the truth. “Because of how much I love you.”
She eased forward in the bed, moved her face toward his and said, “I do love you, David. I love you so much that it killed me to think about leaving you. I don’t want to leave Claremont. I don’t want to leave you. Ever.”
Their last kiss had been timid, tender and sweet. But this one held the intensity of the emotion passing between them, the promise of a future together, the eagerness of beginning their life together and loving each other forever.
“Now that’s more like it,” Marjorie said, entering the room with a smile stretching into both cheeks and with Shea Farmer following in her wake.
“Well, I take a couple of days off, and you go and get the whole hospital excited about the beautiful twins on the fourth floor.” Shea held up a small paper red sack. “I did want to come up and see you and the babies, but I also needed to bring this. I’m not sure when it was left at the nurses’ station, but apparently, I’ve turned into something of an honorary elf for Secret Santa. He left this with a note asking me to deliver this to you.”
“Deliver what?” Marjorie asked.
“A candy cane for David and Laura, but you aren’t supposed to open it until you leave the hospital,” Shea said. “Wait...” She pulled a note out of her scrubs pocket and read it. “He said you’re supposed to read it after you leave the hospital but before you go home.”
“O-kay,” David said.
“I’ve got to get back down to the children’s floor,” Shea continued. “I’m glad I got to see all of you, and I’m very happy about the girls.”
“Us, too,” Laura said.
Shea had been gone only a few minutes when a different nurse came in. “Laura, your little ladies will be ready to go in about five minutes. We’re sending for a wheelchair for you now.”
“Wonderful.” She waited for the nurse to leave. “I wish I could have had a little more time to get the apartment ready. Mandy said she still had the cradles from when she and Mia were babies and would let me borrow them, but I haven’t even put them in my room yet. They’re still in one of her storage areas.” She looked at David. “I am staying here, aren’t I?”
“If you can forgive me for being a horse’s behind,” he said, which earned a tiny snort of a laugh from Marjorie.
“I think I can,” she said.
“And if you can live with the fact that I’m currently unemployed with no prospects whatsoever of a job.”
Marjorie emitted another laugh, but Laura reached for his hand. “We’ll sell the bookstore together, and we’ll find something for us to do together. I want to stay here, David. I want to be with you.”
Ten minutes later, all of Laura’s and the babies’ things were in the trunk, Grace and Joy were buckled into their infant carriers in the backseat and David helped Laura into the passenger’s seat. While everyone hovered around the car oohing and aahing over the scene and snapping photos right and left, David hovered over Laura to buckle her in and to steal a tender kiss.
She loved him, and she wanted to stay in Claremont. It’d be the perfect opportunity for him to give her the ring he still carried in his pocket...but he still didn’t know how he’d support a wife. And he couldn’t ask her to marry him without being able to take care of her. So he said a silent thank-you to God for giving him a beginning to the life he wanted, and he said another prayer for God to help them complete the story.
Then he circled the car, got in and prepared to drive her home. But Laura pointed to the candy cane sticking out of David’s shirt pocket. “Ready to read it?”
He nodded and withdrew it while the rest of their families headed to their cars so they could apparently get to the apartment before them and make sure the place was ready for the new arrivals.
“Go on, I can hardly wait,” she said, placing her hands together at her mouth as David peeled back the paper around the stem and silently read the note.
“I don’t get it.”
“What does it say?” She leaned over to see. “We’re supposed to go to that address?”
He nodded, dumbfounded. “I guess so.”
“Do you know where that is?”
“I know exactly where it is, and I...really don’t understand.”
Chapter Twenty-one
It took fifteen minutes for David to drive to the address Secret Santa provided. He turned down the familiar gravel pathway that he’d traveled often growing up but hadn’t seen in several months.
“Are those peach trees lining the road?” Laura asked.
“This is actually a driveway,” he said, “and yes, they are. The peaches are some of the best you’ll ever taste, too. I used to eat so many when I was little that my folks were afraid I’d get sick.”
“You’ve been here before?”
David pulled past the last trees lining the drive and then viewed the open fields that bordered the white farmhouse and red barn. “I own it,” he said, blinking to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. But they weren’t. The barn had a fresh coat of paint, as did the white fencing. But the barn and the fencing had nothing on the house. “That’s my grandmother’s house. My house now,” he said. “But the last time I saw it, the windows were boarded, and the house needed painting badly.”
“That’s your house? David, it’s beautiful! It looks like something out of a magazine.”
He’d dreamed of seeing the house look like this again. “I don’t understand how...” He stopped as a man exited the front door—the new red front door—and waved.
“Isn’t that Savannah’s daddy?” Laura asked.
David pulled the car up to park beneath the big oak in front of the house. “Yes, it is.” He got out as Titus Jameson walked to meet them.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s perfect timing. I just finished.” He looked into the backseat. “Oh, wow, they’re as pretty as I heard. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Laura said, also exiting the car but slowly.
David glanced her way. “Honey, you okay?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. That wheelchair was hospital policy, so I put up with it, but they’ve been having me walk for the past two days. I’m good to go.”
David smiled at her determination. He loved that about her, loved everything about her, in fact. “Okay,” he said, and then turned to the guy standing by the car. “Titus, what—well, what are you doing here?” he asked, opening the door to the backseat and unhooking Grace’s infant carrier so he could carry her inside.