Belonging (36 page)

But that was when the trouble really
started, because no matter how many times she tried to envision
herself with a baby in her arms—Neil's baby—all she could see was
another.

She drew a deep, unsteady breath as she
continued to gaze vacantly at the Gulf. There would come a day when
she could remember Robbie without this hurting, empty ache inside,
but when? When?

She couldn't hide things from Neil any more
than she could continue to deceive herself, and the matter had
finally come to a head a few hours ago. Neil had come for dinner,
and it was after they had cleared the table that he drew her down
beside him on the couch.

His fingers slid beneath her hair to knead
the taut muscles of her shoulders. "Something's bothering you,
Jenna," he remarked softly. "Tell me what's wrong."

Jenna sat silent for a long time, her
fingers clasped tightly in her lap. For an instant she considered
telling him the truth—"the whole truth, nothing but the truth." The
phrase rang like a death sentence through her mind. Still, given
the same set of circumstances again, she knew she'd have done
exactly the same thing as she'd decided before. But would Neil
understand? Would he forgive her? Yet what was there to forgive?
She'd done nothing wrong; she had nothing to be ashamed of. She had
given two people what they had desperately longed for, all they'd
ever wanted in the world, and it was a gift more precious than
gold.

She had once promised herself there would be
no regrets, no dwelling on the past or on what might have been.

"You've been acting strangely ever since I
showed you the house." Despite his soothing touch on the muscles of
her shoulders, there was a trace of impatience in his voice. "I
thought you liked it."

A sigh escaped her lips and she smiled
weakly. "I love the house, Neil."

When she hesitated, he pressed on. "Then
what is it?" His eyes on her averted profile, he frowned, and then
comprehension suddenly dawned. "It's what I said about having a
baby, isn't it?"

Jenna nodded, then hesitated. "I'm not sure
we should rush into it right away," she said slowly. "It would be
nice to have some time to ourselves for a while."

"We've known each other for two years
already, Jenna," he reasoned calmly. "And we'd have almost another
year even if you got pregnant right away."

She turned away from his eyes, unable to
bear his piercingly direct regard. Somehow she realized she'd
secretly been nursing the hope that his desire to have a baby so
soon was perhaps a moment of whimsy, a fanciful notion. After all,
they'd been standing in what he hoped to see as their home, looking
into the future.

She shifted uneasily on the cushions. "Yes,
that's true, but..." She stopped, unsure of what she wanted to say,
unsure of what was driving her. She and Neil were about to start a
life together. Why was she suddenly plagued by doubt and senseless
fears? What was wrong with her?

"I don't think you realize how strongly I
feel about this, Jenna," he told her with a hint of obstinacy. "So
I'd like to have a baby. What's the problem?"

"That's all well and good, Neil," she said
in a carefully neutral tone. "But you seem to be forgetting I have
a voice in this, as well."

Neil drew back from her abruptly. "I'm not
trying to force you into anything," he said coldly. "But I'm
thirty-six years old. I want to have a family while I'm young
enough to enjoy it. I want to be able to run and play with my
children—I don't want to be resigned to sitting on the sidelines
because I'm too damned old to have a little fun."

Jenna prickled like a cat at his sharp tone.
"You're exaggerating," she countered swiftly. "You're as fit as any
twenty-year old—and you're making it sound as if you're about to
fall over dead any day now!"

His mouth tightened angrily. "I suppose it
never occurred to you that not only would I like to be around for
my children, but I'd like to be here to see my grandchildren,
too!"

Her lips puckered with annoyance, she stared
at him as he paced around the room. He was being completely
unreasonable—wasn't he? How many couples did she know who elected
to have a baby right after they were married? Surely not many. If
it happened, more than likely the baby was on the way before they
were married. If only he hadn't mentioned that a family could be a
boon to his career. If only...

But suddenly she realized she was only
making excuses. No matter what his reasons, she should have had no
reservations about carrying Neil's baby, whether it was now or ten
years from now. Creating a child together was the ultimate
expression of love between a man and a woman, wasn't it? The
thought of having Neil's child should have held no doubts, no
uncertainties, but—God help her—it did. And she didn't know
why.

She knew only that in some twisted, jumbled
way deep in her soul it had something to do with Robbie. She closed
her eyes as a feeling of hopelessness rose inside her.

"Well, don't you have anything to say?"

Jenna flinched at Neil's angry bark, opening
her eyes to stare at him. His arms were crossed over his chest. She
could see frustration warring with anger in his dark blue eyes, and
something else, as well. The harsh and implacable look she detected
on his face stunned her.

Her mind whirled giddily. She had the
strangest sensation that she was seeing him for the first
time...and he wasn't the earnest, thoughtful man she had come to
know at all, but a stubborn one. Unyielding. She felt helpless,
suddenly drained, suddenly. .. so very empty inside.

Slowly she shook her head, her eyes dark and
cloudy as she looked at him. "I'm sorry, Neil," she said quietly.
"But this is something I'll have to work out for myself."

A tense silence settled over the room. When
Neil finally spoke, his voice was curiously flat and hollow
sounding. "So this is where we stand. You go your way and I go
mine." He paused. "Is this any way to start our marriage,
Jenna?"

* * *

Even now, hours later, his words caused an
empty ache and a feeling of frustration to well up inside her.
Jenna stirred on the chair and glanced at the luminous dial of her
watch. It was nearly midnight. She rose and stretched her cramped
muscles. In the time that she had known Neil and they had started
to date, they'd had the usual heated exchange every so often. But
he had never—never—walked out on her. She was sorely tempted to
call him.

As if on cue, her cell phone rang. Jenna
hurried to answer it, her voice rushed.

"Jenna. Were you asleep?"

Neil
. "No. I was just sitting outside... thinking." Her tone was
carefully neutral as she eased into a chair. Was he still angry?
Upset?

"Outside? You were outside at this time of
night?"

She nearly laughed at his sharp tone,
reminded of her earlier thoughts. "I'm fine, Neil," she said
softly.

He surprised her by pressing no further.
Instead he said in that brisk, no-nonsense way of his, "I had to
talk to you, Jenna. I called to apologize." When he cleared his
throat, she had the feeling that for once he was at a loss for
words. But when she made no response, he went on. "You were right,
Jenna. Having a baby is something we should decide together. When
we make up our minds to go ahead with it, I want it to be something
we both want. So..." He seemed to hesitate. "We'll put the idea on
hold for a while until you make up your mind."

Jenna sat quietly through the brief speech.
Perhaps she should have been relieved; she had won, hadn't she? He
wasn't going to try to force something on her she didn't want or
wasn't ready for. Neil had come through, after all.... As she had
known he would? She hadn't known that, and the thought was
jarring.

"I love you, Jenna."

Jenna opened her mouth—but nothing happened.
Her throat constricted tightly against the words uttered so easily
up until that moment. They simply refused to come, and it was
several seconds before she finally found her voice. "I—I love you,
too."

"Then I'm forgiven?"

Her fingers tightened on the receiver.
"Y-yes."

He didn't seem to notice the almost
imperceptible hesitation, and they went on to talk for several more
minutes. But while she was on the phone with Neil, the hazy shroud
of doubt that had plagued her these past few days at last began to
slip away, and she finally felt able to see her way clear through
the uncertainty, the shadow of the past

Her thoughts were a strange mixture of hope
and fear as she tumbled into bed that night. Later, she thought.
Later she would sort out this jumble of emotions about Neil, but
for now it would have to wait. Her marriage would have to wait.
Everything would have to wait. And she could only hope that Neil
would understand, because she had the feeling he would never have
brought up the subject of a child if he'd known what it would
trigger.

Because in the past few minutes Jenna had
come to a very important decision and a startling realization about
herself. She had once promised herself she would never look back,
but she couldn't go on any longer as she had been—floundering in
limbo, caught somewhere in time, trying to forget and never quite
being able to, not wanting to go back and yet afraid to take that
first step forward to sever all ties.

She was trapped and there was only one way
out. In her mind there was no right, no wrong, no past and no
future. There was only now . . .

And an overpowering need to see her son once
more.

The decision finally made, Jenna was left
feeling oddly at peace with herself. She slept the sleep of the
dead that night, awakening the next morning feeling far more
refreshed and revitalized than she had all week. She had never been
one to wallow in indecision for long; once her mind was made up,
she wasted no time making clear her intentions. "Willful" was what
her mother called her. She smiled a little as she showered and
slipped into jeans and a pale yellow T-shirt. Her father wasn't one
to mince words. "Pigheaded" was how he often referred to his
daughter.

She made several quick calls to the florist
and caterer. But once she sat down to address the wedding
invitations she'd started a week earlier, her brief respite of
peace began to shatter once more. She had to force herself to plod
through the remainder of the guest list. It was well after lunch
when she drove over to the post office, but once there, she stood
before the big blue mailbox outside for a full minute before slowly
dropping the bundles of envelopes inside. Without being consciously
aware of it, she found herself at her parents' house a short time
later.

She glanced up warily at the threatening
purple storm clouds gathering overhead as she switched off the car
engine. A gusty wind blowing in from the Gulf rattled the leaves of
the huge cottonwood tree bordering the sidewalk as she hurried
toward the white two-story house, wrapped on three sides by a wide
porch. Jenna had come to live in this house when she was five years
old, and even though she had been on her own since she'd finished
her nurse's training, this was the one place in the world she would
always think of as home.

A drenching sheet of rain began to fall just
before she reached the shelter of the porch. Mindful of her wet
feet, she ran around to the back entrance and slipped off her
sandals.

"Whew! Just in time!" she muttered, stomping
into the kitchen. She reached for a towel and smiled at her mother
as she wiped the moisture from her face.

Marie Bradford looked worriedly from her
daughter's rain-spattered cotton blouse to the moisture trickling
freely down the windowpanes. "Oh, dear," she murmured, "your father
will be dripping wet by the time he gets back."

"Dad's gotten lazy since he retired," Jenna
said with a shake of her head. "I suppose he's out fishing
again."

Her mother nodded. "I'll have to dig out the
hot water bottle before he comes home. His circulation isn't what
it used to be."

"Oh, come on, Mom," she said softly. Already
she could feel herself relaxing, and her lips twitched as she held
back a smile. "Can't you think of a better way to keep him
warm?"

"Like what?"

"Like body heat, for instance," she
murmured. "If it were my husband out there getting soaked to the
bone, that's the first thing I'd recommend. And as a nurse, I can't
think of a better remedy."

Marie Bradford turned to face her daughter
with her hands planted squarely on her hips. "I know what you're
trying to say, young lady, and I don't think I need to remind you
that you and Neil are half our age!"

Jenna didn't miss the amused glimmer in her
mother's brown eyes. She sat back and eyed her as she bustled
around the kitchen, wiping the counter and spooning fragrant
grounds into the coffeemaker. Her mother was in her mid-sixties,
and if it hadn't been for the snowy white hair that she wore in a
loose bun on her nape, she might have been taken for a woman twenty
years younger. Her skin was smooth and free of wrinkles, her brown
eyes snapping and vivacious.

"I hope Neil and I are as happy as you and
Dad have been all these years," she said suddenly, last night's
argument with Neil abruptly jumping into her thoughts. Her parents
had been married for forty-five years, and she couldn't help but
wonder—would her own marriage last that long?

There was a hint of wistfulness in her tone,
and Marie looked at her in surprise. "I'm sure you will be," she
said softly, moving to sit across from her daughter. "Dad and I
were happy and content before you came to us, but there was
something missing. I'll never forget how you looked the first time
we ever saw you. You were so tall and straight, and you tried to
look so brave—" She shook her head in remembrance. "But I could
sense how lost and alone you were." Her eyes lifted to Jenna's and
a soft smile lighted her face. "And I knew then how much joy you'd
bring into our lives."