Marriage by Contract

by Sandra Steffen

  He had Annie’s blue eyes.

  Beth’s heart screamed in protest against being sliced wide open, but there was one thing she had to know. “How is Annie, Florence?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, followed by a slowly drawn breath. “Are you asking me if she’s capable of caring for Christopher?”

  A sob lodged sideways in Beth’s throat, so that she could only make an affirmative sound into the telephone.

  “She’s thin, but she’s neat and clean, and old beyond her years. She said she’d take a drug test if we wanted her to.”

  Beth and Tony had started locking their doors for fear that Annie, or someone who looked like her, might try to snatch Christopher while they were sleeping. How silly they’d been. Annie had never intended to steal him away in the night, just as she hadn’t abandoned him, at least not in her mind, and not forever. She’d always planned to come back for him.

  Annie Moore hadn’t had to give Christopher life. She hadn’t had to endure the pain of having him, and she hadn’t had to name him after her beloved sister. Yet she had. Beth had wanted to believe that something magic had been in the air the night Christopher was born. She’d wanted to believe it had all been predestined, preordained. She’d needed a baby. Christopher had needed a mother. It had seemed so simple, so fair, so true.

  Whose baby was Christopher? Beth had asked. The answer broke her heart all the way.

  “Beth?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Bring her over.”

  “Oh, honey, I hate to make you go through this. I can hold her off, give you and Dr. Petrocelli time to talk, time to come to terms with her request, and time to make your decision.”

  “If we drag this out, I’ll never have the strength to go through with it.”

  “All right. We’ll be there in an hour.”

  An hour.

  The phone fell to the floor just as Beth’s knees gave out, sending her slumping into a chair. As if sensing her distress, Christopher’s bottom lip pouted and quivered. Seconds later, he started to cry. Holding him close to her heart, Beth cried along with him.

  * * *

  Minutes flew and stood still at the same time.

  She tried to reach Tony at the hospital, and nearly sobbed all over again when the woman at the switchboard informed her that he was performing a very dangerous emergency C-section and couldn’t be disturbed. She wanted to scream into the phone that she needed Tony more, and so did Christopher. Aching for the way Tony was going to feel when he found out what had happened, she imposed an iron will upon herself. Praying that Tony would come home before Annie took Christopher, she pulled herself together and saw to the baby’s needs. She warmed a bottle and fed him, never taking her eyes off him, never laying him down.

  The wind had picked up, rattling shutters and howling through the eaves outside. Inside, the house was strangely silent. Beth sat in the rocking chair, but she didn’t rock. She held perfectly still, memorizing the color of Christopher’s skin in the dimming evening light, the curl of his dark lashes, the bow of his little mouth, the weight of him in her arms, and in her heart.

  She didn’t jump when the doorbell chimed. She’d heard the car pull up. She just sat there, staring at the duck-shaped night-light in Christopher’s room, her thoughts screaming inside her skull.

  I can’t do this. I thought I could. But I can’t. I love him. Please. I’m not strong enough to give him up. Don’t ask me to. Please.

  The wind howled. The doorbell rang again. And Beth rose to her feet. She descended the stairs on wooden legs. She opened the door and came face-to-face with the girl who was going to break her heart.

  Annie’s eyes were the same vivid blue that Beth remembered, but her face was thinner. The girl’s hair had been wet the last time Beth had seen her, first from the rain, and later from sweat and tears. Today it was dry and clean and shone with a healthiness and darkness that fleetingly made Bethany wonder if there could have been some Italian in Annie’s ancestry—and therefore in Christopher’s. Tony would have liked that.

  “He’s grown so much I hardly recognize him,” Annie said in a voice thick with awe.

  Beth’s arms tightened around the sleeping child. Please don’t take him, Annie. I’m older and more able to provide him with a stable home. There’s nothing you can say to make me believe that he doesn’t belong with me.

  Mrs. Donahue closed the door, then stood unobtrusively to one side. Annie looked decidedly ill at ease. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the baby. Finally, with great effort, she raised her gaze to Beth. “I love him. He’s all I have.”

  A sob stuck in Beth’s throat. Biting her lip until it hurt, she realized she’d been wrong. There was one thing Annie could have said, after all. I love him. He’s all I have.

  When Beth had at least partially regained control of her emotions, she turned to Mrs. Donahue.

  The older woman nodded sadly. “I’ve spoken to Annie’s employer and her landlady, Beth. She has a means of support and a place to live. She’s worked real hard, and she says that everything she’s done, she’s done for Christopher. I’m sorry. If you would like, I’ll help gather his things.”

  “No,” Beth answered. “I’ll do it.”

  Annie felt her lips quiver, and hated herself for it. She saw a tear roll down Beth’s face. And hated herself for that, too.

  She may have been young, but she’d seen a lot of houses, and none of them had looked more inviting than this one did. She followed Beth up the stairs, into a pale yellow room decorated with clowns and ducks. The rocking chair looked well used, the crib expensive, the mobile brightly colored. There was a quilt in one corner, a rocking horse in another. Hardening her heart against it all, she said, “All this stuff is nice, but he’s mine.”

  She almost wished Beth would scream at her, yell obscenities at the top of her lungs, rant and rave. The other woman’s silent pain was much more difficult to endure, the tremble in her fingertips impossible to ignore.

  “He’ll need all these diapers. And these sleepers, too. Oh, and he always sleeps with this blanket.”

  Bethany had moved Christopher, who was still sound asleep, to one arm, placing his things into a cloth bag with the other. Annie yearned to hold her baby. She almost cried out with the need to snatch him into her own arms. But she didn’t want to hurt Beth any more than she was already hurting. So Annie listened as Beth told her about Christopher’s schedule, how he liked to have his back rubbed in soft half circles after he ate, how long he slept, how he was beginning to like his bath, and how much formula he drank at each feeding.

  Flexing her fingers at the end of her empty arms, Annie said, “I woulda breast-fed him, but my milk’s gone.”

  Beth turned around, her cotton skirt swishing into place around her legs, her hand flying to her trembling lips. Giving up on the tears rolling down her cheeks, she said, “I always wished I could have had that connection with him, too.”

  They stared at each other for interminable moments, these adversaries who might have been friends under different circumstances, soul mates in another lifetime. They both turned at the sound of footsteps in the doorway. Mrs. Donahue stood there, her face mirroring their own sadness.

  Taking a deep breath, she bustled into the room, filling her arms with Christopher’s favorite things. “I took the liberty of gathering the bottles of formula from your refrigerator. Is that all right with you, Bethany?”

  Beth stared at the other woman, wishing there was something she could say, something she could do to keep this from happening.

  “Beth?” Mrs. Donahue repeated. “Is that all right?”

  “That’s fine, Florence.”

  Too soon, a lifetime too soon, Annie held out her hands. “I’ll take him now.”

  Beth closed her eyes, praying for strength. A sob wrenched from a place deep in her chest. Tears coursed down her face. Her entire body shook as she kissed Christopher,
then slowly placed him in Annie’s arms.

  Annie sobbed, too, but she held him to her, soaking up his warmth and sweet baby smell. Turning, she hurried, surefooted and agile, down the stairs and through the old house.

  “Annie, wait!”

  All Annie wanted to do was escape this place, flee from this feeling of guilt and inadequacy. All she wanted to do was take her baby and make a life for the two of them. Somehow, she managed to hold her head high and turn around, but there wasn’t anything she could do about the distrust narrowing her eyes. She was all ready to say “Yeah?” in that snide way that rankled people in authority, but she saw the way Beth was shaking, and the comment died on her lips.

  “It’s November.”

  Annie lifted one shoulder. “So?”

  Through narrowed eyes, she watched Beth stride to the closet. Bethany Kent’s auburn hair had been in a braid the night Christopher was born. Today her hair was long and loose around her shoulders. Her hands had been calm that night. Today they shook as she reached inside the closet, taking a plain, expensive-looking brown coat from a hanger.

  “What are you doing?” Annie asked.

  “It’s November,” Beth whispered again, tucking the coat around Annie’s slender shoulders. “I don’t want you to be cold.”

  Annie Moore had always considered herself tough. She wasn’t afraid to run, and she wasn’t afraid to fight. She’d seen horrors most kids her age only glimpsed in the movies. She’d seen the bruises on her dying sister’s slender body, and she’d known what the leers her mother’s latest boyfriend used to give her had meant. She’d been beaten up a time or two, and had accepted the fact that her boyfriend hadn’t wanted anything to do with being a father. She’d born the pain of childbirth alone, but Annie didn’t know what to do about the shaking in her knees right now, or the warmth seeping into her shoulders beneath Beth’s coat.

  In that instant, she knew what people meant when they said they were being killed with kindness. Before she slid into a heap on the floor, she nodded at Beth, covered Christopher with a warm blanket and motioned for the middle-aged lady with the frizzy hair to open the door. “Thanks,” she mumbled, without meeting anybody’s eyes.

  Beth watched them walk away, across the porch and down the steps and on out to the car. The wind pressed the coat against Annie’s back, the outside light penetrating the darkness. Florence looked up at her before getting in on the driver’s side, but as far as Beth could tell, Annie never looked back.

  The car inched its way down the driveway, then slowly pulled out onto the quiet street. When it had disappeared from sight, Beth turned and walked aimlessly back into the house. Leaning against the door, she listened to the sound of silence. The sound of her world falling apart.

  * * *

  Tony fit his key into the lock on the side door. The whistle died on his lips when the door opened before he’d turned the key. He strode inside, his eyes automatically taking in the uncharacteristic messiness. Water dripped from the tap that hadn’t been thoroughly turned off, cupboard doors hung open. There was a pile of unfolded baby items on the table. Reaching for a little shirt Beth had had specially made, Tony smiled to himself, reading the words printed across the front. My Daddy’s a Doctor. What’s Yours?

  A low, beeping sound drew his eyes to the floor where the telephone had been dropped. An ominous sense of foreboding lengthened his stride.

  “Beth?”

  Silence.

  “Beth? Where are you?”

  He took the stairs three at a time, bursting into Christopher’s room on a run. Drawers were open there, too, blankets hanging half in, half out. The musical mobile Chris loved to watch was gone. The crib was empty.

  “Bethany, where are you?”

  “I’m here, Tony.”

  Beth’s voice had come from the other side of the hall, and she had spoken so softly he’d barely heard her. He spun on his heel and was across the hall in an instant.

  She looked up at him from the other side of the bed. Her eyes were red-rimmed, swollen by tears.

  “Where’s Christopher?”

  The way her throat convulsed on a swallow caused the knot in his gut to tighten. She finished folding a blouse and had placed it in a suitcase before answering. “He’s gone, Tony.”

  Her voice had been as soft as tears and so full of dashed hopes that dread dropped to his stomach like lead. “What do you mean?”

  She took a shuddering breath. “Annie came for him. More than two hours ago.”

  “And you let her take him?” he shouted.

  He saw the instant squeezing hurt in her eyes and wanted to call back his words. He saw the desolation in her every feature, and he wanted to hit something.

  “Annie and her sister Christie had been abused as children. Christie died, and Annie ran away. Her mother wants her back. Today is Annie’s eighteenth birthday. She’s an adult, free of her mother, and free to claim her child. I tried to reach you, Tony. You were in surgery.”

  The entire explanation took ten seconds. It said more than he’d ever wanted to hear. Weariness washed over him. And desolation. While he’d been bringing someone else’s child into the world, Christopher was being taken from his. The horrible, twisted irony nearly buckled his knees.

  So Annie had been here in Grand Springs all this time. He remembered the night he’d first seen her. He’d introduced himself and asked her how old she was. Her face had been contorted in pain, but she’d still found the strength to say, “I’m seventeen. How old are you?”

  The girl had spunk. She’d been too young to have a baby—she was just a kid herself—but she’d had Christopher, and now she’d come for him.

  God, Tony couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. It was his heart. There was something wrong with it, and with his lungs, and with his mind. There was something terribly wrong with his life.

  What would he do without his son? He hadn’t even been able to say goodbye.

  Gradually, he became aware of movements on the other side of the room. His vision cleared, and he saw that Beth was walking from the closet to the bed, carefully folding blouses and skirts before tucking them into a suitcase.

  “What are you doing?” It was an inane question, but he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “We married because of Christopher. There’s no reason for me to stay.”

  Tony’s shoulders shook from the effort to hold himself together. He stared across the room at Beth; he on one side of the bed, she on the other, a whole chasm of pain and sorrow stretching between them in the dimly lit room.

  She was so achingly beautiful he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her face was pale, her lashes brimming with tears. She loved Christopher so much.

  God. Christopher. His son. His boy was gone.

  Gone.

  It was amazing how blood and genetics and eye color made no difference when a man’s heart was breaking. If he could have his son back, he swore to God it would never make a difference again.

  He didn’t remember walking closer, didn’t recall skirting the edge of the bed or turning Beth to face him, but he’d never forget the wariness and the sadness on her face as she raised those watery eyes to his. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t give to take her sorrow away.

  “Don’t go. Please, Beth. It’s going to take both of us to get through the night.” He opened his arms, holding his breath as she closed her eyes.

  Beth didn’t know how much more of this she could stand. She’d thought she’d lived through the worst kind of pain imaginable when Barry had left her because she couldn’t conceive his child. At the time, she’d mourned the passing of their marriage. She’d mourned her chance of ever becoming a mother, too. Then she’d believed it was possible to miss something you never had, to mourn it as you would someone who had died. She’d been wrong. Realizing that she would never give birth to a child had been a horrible sadness. Barry’s departure had added insult to injury. But losing Christopher was so m
uch worse. She didn’t know how she was ever going to survive it, let alone recover with her heart even partially intact.

  Tony was waiting for her answer, waiting with open arms. There were a dozen reasons, all of them good, why she should finish packing and go. There was only one reason she didn’t. She loved this man who was hurting as she was hurting. She knew she would have to face the fact that their marriage was no longer necessary. But she didn’t have to face it tonight.

  She opened her eyes and walked into his arms.

  They held each other for a long time, not moving, not talking. There was nothing to say, nothing to think about except the past, which was filled with too many achingly sweet memories, and the future, which was filled with too much sadness and loneliness to fully comprehend or contemplate.

  When they both felt strong enough to stand alone, she said, “We have to tell our families.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you want to call them tonight?”

  He shook his head. “They’ll all be here as soon as I call. They’ll all want to help in any way they can. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

  “Then, you want to wait until morning?” she asked quietly.

  He covered his eyes with his hand and took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’ll call them in the morning.”

  Tony and Beth looked at each other. Neither of them said it, but neither of them knew how they were going to get through the long, lonely night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Time passed slowly. The house was too quiet, and so was the night. Tony turned the television on in the living room. Beth turned the radio on in the kitchen. The sound covered the quiet, but it couldn’t quiet their thoughts.

  Around midnight, Tony switched off the night-light in Christopher’s room. At two o’clock he found Beth standing in the dark doorway, tears streaming down her face. Her shoulders were stiff as he drew her away.

  Her voice raw with grief, she said, “I should have fought for him. I shouldn’t have let him go.”

  Tony had been plagued with the same thoughts, the same doubts, the same regrets, but in his heart he knew there had been no other way. “Would you really have been able to make Annie fight for him? Because if we had, the media would have turned our lives and Christopher’s into a three-ring circus. No matter how it turned out, we would have grown bitter. Nobody wins in those situations. Everyone loses. You said yourself that Annie had good reason for waiting to come forward. She’s been through so much, and whether we like it or not, blood is thicker than water. A judge very well could have granted custody to her. And then someday we’d open a magazine or turn on the television and see Christopher being asked how it all had affected his life. Is that what you think we should have done, Beth? Is it?”