Moments In Time: The Complete Novella Collection (30 page)

Melisa gazed into his dark eyes and saw a
mix of love and pain. She knew then she had to tell him, that she’d
never forgive herself if she didn’t. Yes, she would tell him and
then she would leave. He wouldn’t want her to stay. “There’s
something you need to know,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I
need to tell you something, but please listen long enough to allow
me a chance to explain.”

Heat clasped his hand around hers and led
her to an armchair. He sat her on his lap. “You can tell me
anything.”

Beating around the bush wouldn’t cut it, so
Melisa decided to go right out and say it. “We have a child. A
teenage son. The night we spent together in high school... we made
a baby.”

Silence fell over them, and between them,
the calm after a storm. The only sound Melisa heard was the
thumping of her own heart, and it was getting louder.

When Heat spoke, his voice was low and
loaded. “Where’s my child?”

“In Madison. I gave him up for... for
adoption.” Every word was an arrow to Melisa’s heart.

Heat’s breathing became labored and he
shifted. Next thing Melisa knew, she was on her feet and so was he.
In his eyes was a volcano on the verge of exploding. But she
waited, and it didn’t. Not immediately. First he walked over to the
bed and sat on the edge with his eyes closed. “You’re fuckin’
kidding me, right?” His eyes flew open again. “Tell me this is all
a stupid joke.”

Melisa shifted to a nearby wall and leaned
on it for support. “I’m so sorry.”

Heat shot to his feet and crossed the room
to where she stood. He hovered over her. “You’re sorry?” His voice
was louder now. “Really? Fifteen years and all you can say is
sorry
?” He raked a hand through his hair and turned away
from her. When he faced her gain, his eyes sparkled. “My son is
being raised by strangers and all you can say is sorry?”

“I couldn’t offer him anything. I was a
teenager, for goodness sake, and I had a terrible example of a
mother. And you...”

“Never gave me a chance. I grew up without a
father. I would have given up everything for my child. Had I know
he existed.”

Sudden anger swirled inside Melisa and she
moved toward him. “I know now that I made a big mistake... not
telling you. But I made what I thought was the right decision for
him at the time. The right decision for his future. He deserved to
grow up in a home with two parents who loved each other. How was I
to know you loved me then? How could I have been sure you would
want the child?”

Heat fixed his gaze on her face and the
words that came out of his mouth were as ice cold as his eyes. “You
would have known if you had told me. Instead, you made yourself the
only parent in the equation—” He stopped midsentence. “Wait a
minute. Did you think having a baby now would replace the one you
gave away? Would that have washed away your guilt? How long did you
plan to keep this secret? Forever?”

“I...” Melisa’s knees buckled and she
perched on the edge of the bed as tears streamed down her
cheeks.

“What kind of person would do that? I can’t
believe the woman I love did this to me.”

“Heat,” Melisa clutched at quickly
disappearing straws. “Please try to understand. Let’s work through
this.”

“Not now,” he said through clenched teeth
and strode to the wardrobe. “Right now I need time to myself. You
stay here. I’ll go.”

“For good?” How ironic. A few minutes ago
she was the one planning to leave.

“I’ll call you when I know,” he said simply.
Ten minutes later, he’d packed a bag and showered, but didn’t
bother to shave. Before he walked out the door, he peered back at
her. “Do you know his name?”

“Boy. Ben is his name.” It was the only
information the adoption agency could give her years ago.

Heat walked out.

Melisa wanted to run after him, to beg for
his forgiveness. But her feet wouldn’t move. Maybe because her
heart and mind warned her not to go after him. He needed time, not
only to digest information she should have given him years ago, but
also to decide how to deal with it. Of course it terrified her; his
decisions might not please her, but at this point, she was ready to
deal with the consequences of her actions.

There was only one thing to do. She would
try to lessen the blow the best she could.

Melisa paced the room for a long time,
rubbing her temples. “I messed up. I messed up,” she said over and
over. “I need to find a way for him to see Ben... He’s our son,”
she said to Carlene, who, after she called, showed up at Melisa’s
doorstep with chocolate chip ice cream.

“Wouldn’t that make it worse?” Carlene
asked, handing Melisa a spoon.

Melisa scooped out a portion of ice cream
and ate it while gazing into space. “I have to do something,” she
said finally. “The secret is exposed; there’s no way for me to
cover it up again. I can’t ignore what happened. I need to make
things right. I need to find Ben, or a photo of him, so Heat knows
what our son looks like.” Even if it would tear both of them apart
to see Ben and not be able to call him theirs.

Carlene placed sleeping Daria inside her
Moses basket and pushed herself up off the couch. She went to place
her hand on Melisa’s arm until she calmed down and came to sit down
again. “Beating yourself up about what happened won’t change
anything. Let’s talk about how you can make it better.”

Melisa perked up. “You’re so right,” she
said. “What do I do?”

Carlene lifted her legs onto the couch.
“Maybe Heat does need to see Ben. Is that at all possible? I mean,
I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but it could help give
him closure.”

“Or it might remind him of what he’s
missing.” Melisa had always thought it best not to meet him; if she
did, she’d go crazy not being allowed to hold her son. “Anyway, it
won’t work. The adoption agency might not be allowed to tell me
where Ben is.”

“You’d never know unless you try. There are
always loopholes.”

“Thing is, I did try. When Scott died, I
thought I’d lost everyone I loved. Then one day I realized I
hadn’t. I still had Ben, and I was at the point in my life where I
could afford to give him a home.”

Carlene hugged her knees and rested her chin
on them. “You wanted him back? Was it even a possibility?”

Melisa shrugged. “I didn’t think about that.
I just wanted my baby. So, I contacted the adoption agency. Of
course they refused to give me any information.” She sighed. “It
hit me hard, and the next thing I knew, I started to drink.”

“That’s what pushed you over the edge?”

“It was as if with Scott’s death and the
miscarriage, a bubble had formed. When the adoption agency refused
to help me see my son, it burst. I pestered them for weeks but
always got turned down.”

Carlene gathered Melisa into a hug and
whispered to her, “I’m so sorry for what you went through. Maybe
your son will come looking for you one day.” When Carlene drew
back, her cheeks were stained with tears.

Melisa smiled bitterly. “Maybe he’ll somehow
get to read my letters. I begged the agency to send them to him.
I’m not sure they did, though. I sent letters to that agency every
year while at Oasis.”

“You never know. So, do you want to try
again? I’m here if you need the support.”

“Yes, I want to find a way for Heat to see
our son, even from a distance.”

The orphanage in Madison was uncooperative
this time as well. Melisa didn’t blame them. The woman who had
promised to pass on her letters a few years ago no longer worked
there, and the one they talked to had only been working there for a
month and knew nothing about any letters. Without bothering to
check, she kept insisting it had been a closed adoption, even
though Melisa knew very well it had been semi-open. Ben’s adoptive
parents had allowed her to write him a letter every year on the
condition that the adoption agency would be the one to transfer the
letters, and there was no guarantee of a response.

The woman talked to Melisa and Carlene for
five minutes, then shoved them out the door. In her short time
there, she probably had to deal with these kinds of situations
often. Mothers who willingly gave up their children, had a change
of heart, and begged to see them or have them back.

“Maybe the letters still managed to reach
him and he knows how you feel about him,” Carlene said later in the
Chinese restaurant where they were grabbing lunch before heading
back to Serendipity.

“I doubt it. Even if the old employee
forwarded the letters to the family, I find it hard to believe the
adoptive parents would give them to him. I didn’t really believe
Ben would get them, I just had to do something.” Melisa sipped her
grape juice. Her hands were shaking slightly and her eyes were
blank, empty. She had lost everything. Or had it never been hers?
Could it be some people weren’t meant to have a happy ending? Maybe
she was one of the unlucky few who were allowed only a small slice
of happiness before it was snatched away from them.

Carlene swept aside the unopened fortune
cookies and reached for Melisa’s hand. “Don’t lose hope. You never
know what the future holds.”

Melisa sprinkled soy sauce over her duck
fried rice and sighed deeply. “Too late. I’ve already lost it. I’m
so sorry to drag you away from Daria all for nothing.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure Nick is
enjoying having her all to himself, taking care of her without me
looking over his shoulder to make sure he’s doing things right.”
Carlene stopped. “Anyway, I wanted to be here with you.”

“You’re an amazing friend. Thank you.”
Melisa forced a smile. “Now that I’ve lost my son forever, I guess
I’ve lost Heat too. Anyway, I still have Mel’s Delights.”

“How’s the business going, by the way?”

“It’s going so well that I need to hire two
people to help out instead of just one.”

“Why two? How about Josie?”

“She’s moving on. She wants to something
different. She and her five sisters want to start a wedding
planning business.”

“That sounds like loads of fun.”

“Yes, and it’s good for my business too,
because they’ll be sending the future brides my way.” Melisa’s cell
phone vibrated and she glanced at the screen, then rejected the
call. Her mother should really take a hint. Melisa had enough to
deal with and didn’t have enough energy to take on her mother’s
problems right now.

“Perfect.” Carlene gazed at Melisa for a
long time. “You know something?”

Melisa shook her head as she chewed her
food, which she didn’t even taste.

“When you reach rock bottom, the only
direction you can go after that is up.”

“That’s encouraging. I just hope there
aren’t different levels of rock bottom.”

On the day that marked one month since Heat
walked out on her, Melisa closed the bakery. She spent the day
cleaning every surface and corner until she was able to breathe
easier again. The last few days she’d called Heat dozens of times,
but her calls always went to voicemail. Two weeks had gone by and
she missed him terribly. Sometimes she called just to hear his
recorded voice. It kept her going day after day, along with
cleaning and baking.

After she finished cleaning, she went into
the kitchen and tied her apron around her waist. The next few hours
were spent preparing the cream batter, pouring it into three round
cake pans, and baking. Her favorite and most relaxing time of day
was late in the evening, when she frosted the three-tier cake with
buttercream frosting and decorated it with edible roses. The snow
white and dusty pink wedding cake she’d been asked to bake for
Sally Neely, the librarian at Serendipity Community Library, who
was getting married in two weeks, was done. And Melisa, though her
heart was still heavy, could breathe freely again, at least for one
more day.

She put her creation in the fridge and
switched off the lights. As she stood on the sidewalk and turned
the key in the lock, she heard a voice from behind her, a voice she
knew before she could even talk. She spun around.

“I see you have your bakery back,” Melisa’s
mother said. “I’m glad.”

Her mother had been angry when Melisa had
opened up Mel’s Delights using the small inheritance her
grandmother—the only woman who had ever shown her what love was—had
left her, with the instructions that she use it to follow her
dreams. Her mother was furious because she got nothing.

“Mom, what are you doing here?” Melisa kept
her voice firm but controlled. She wondered how long it would take
for an argument to break out. Melisa had to admit, her mother did
look better than the last time she saw her. In the evening light,
her eyes, which used to be bloodshot ninety percent of the time,
where white. Her curly hair, the same shade of red as Melisa’s,
hung loose on her shoulders, and it didn’t look greasy. Could she
have changed after all?

Her mother lifted her hands, palms facing
Melisa. “I didn’t come to fight. I came to ask for your
forgiveness. Please give me a moment of your time.” She blinked as
if trying to fight tears.

Melisa pulled the key out of the lock and
dropped it into her bag. “Mom, too much damage has been done. Let’s
not dig up the past.”

“Just one minute, please, Mel.”

Melisa felt suddenly dizzy and lightheaded.
She had been on her feet all day, working on no food, and she was
starting to feel the effects. “I’m exhausted and hungry and really
not in the mood to listen to what you have to say.” She walked
away, but as she approached a traffic light, her mother’s hurried
footsteps came up behind her.

“Mel, I’m sorry for everything. I know there
too many things to forgive.” She sounded like she was crying, but
Melisa kept right on walking.