Christmas Miracle: A Family (13 page)

“Did anybody ever help you learn to deal with it?”

She shook her head, too close to tears to speak.

“Talk to me, Fallon. Tell me what I need to know, what you need to say. It’s driving me crazy. I see it there, see it in your eyes, and don’t understand it. And I want to.”

“What I need to say? Like, I was thrown away just like Tyler was? To be honest, James, that’s all there is to say.
It hurts, and you never stop wondering why the ones who should love you the most don’t.” She drew in a ragged breath, swiped away a tear. “But you can help him get past that. And that’s what he needs the most. Someone fighting for him, someone who loves him so much he’ll never give up.”

“The way I love you, Fallon. The way I won’t give up, even though you keep trying to push me away?”

She thrust out her hand to stop him. “Don’t, James. I keep telling you, over and over, that I can’t deal with it any more.”

“Why?” he asked. “You owe me that much. Tell me why, Fallon. The truth… I deserve to know what’s keeping us apart. Because, I can’t, for the life of me, figure it out, and I want to. And I won’t move on until I know.”

She laid her hands across her belly, could almost feel the barrenness under her fingertips. There was no fight left in her any more. James was right. “I guess you do deserve that closure, don’t you?” She drew in a deep breath, braced herself. Felt surprisingly calm about it. Now that the moment had arrived, it seemed surreal, finally knowing that this would end it…end the relationship, end them, end the dreams. Permanently. But she loved this man more than anything she’d ever known, and she owed him this one, final truth. “I suppose the simple answer would be that one of my surgeries was a hysterectomy. I can’t have children. Can’t give you all those children we’d planned on having.”

He arched his eyebrows in surprise, but didn’t get overly emotional. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“No. Because I…because I…” The words were so difficult to find. She’d rehearsed them a million times all these months, known exactly what she would say when
the time came. But now she couldn’t find them. “I was afraid, I suppose.”

“A hysterectomy doesn’t matter, Fallon. We can deal with that! If we want children, we can adopt. Or concentrate on raising the one I hope we’re about to get custody of.”

“I know that, and for a while that’s what I told myself. Tell James about the hysterectomy and leave it at that. But the hysterectomy is the simple part, James. It’s what came before.” She wouldn’t look at him for this. Couldn’t look at what she knew she would see on his face. “Before we…before the plane crash…I discovered I was pregnant.”

“Oh, my God!” he whispered. The emotion was rising now. He wasn’t holding it back. “Fallon, I don’t…don’t know what to say…” Anguished words. So much pain in them already. The pain she’d never wanted to cause.

“It’s not what you need to say, James. It’s what I need to say, what I’ve needed to say for such a long time, and couldn’t. I knew about my pregnancy for a few weeks be fore the plane crash, and I kept it to myself. You were under so much stress at the time with your job, and I wanted to find the perfect time to tell you. I had these visions of what that perfect time would be like, but you were struggling so much, always on edge, that I kept putting it off, telling myself I’d tell you tomorrow, or the day after that. But it never seemed like the right time. I should have just come right out and told you, but in the back of my mind I saw something so nice. Not like what happened with my mother, who never even knew who my father was.

“Also, I was nervous because we really hadn’t been together very long. We’d had a couple of intense months and I knew we had deep feelings, but I think I was afraid that we might be mistaking physical passion for the real
thing. Whatever the case, I kept it to myself, always thinking that we had tomorrow. And I’m so sorry I did.”

“So am I. I would have liked knowing. Liked to experience it with you. But I do understand your confusion.”

She turned her head to look at him. “See, that’s the thing. Maybe you think you understand right now, but what happens after it’s sunk in, after you’re not in shock? After you’ve had time to think about what I did…to you. James, I don’t want you being so nice to me. I don’t deserve it. Don’t want it!”

“You want me to be angry because you miscarried in the plane crash? It wasn’t your fault, Fallon! You’re right, I may be angry after I’ve absorbed that you weren’t ready to tell me, but I’d never blame you for how it turned out.”

“The thing is, James, I didn’t miscarry. I came through the crash, badly injured, with my pregnancy intact. Had so many surgeries afterwards. The surgeries, the anesthesia…”

“No,” he choked. “I don’t understand. You didn’t miscarry and you still didn’t tell me?”

Now she saw the anger. It was awful, she hated it, but this was the way it had to be. And every time he looked at her, she’d be the reminder of something bad, something filled with indescribable pain. The secret he couldn’t forgive. “How could I? I was fighting to stay alive, fighting to keep my baby alive, and you…”

“I was busy with Tyler.” With this his anger turned to agony. “I thought you were strong enough, took you for granted, and I wasn’t there the way you needed me to be.”

“Tyler needed you. I always understood that. You’d told me he was going through a hard time. And he was…was my baby’s brother. I couldn’t let you divide yourself!

“And, James, I really thought that I would tell you about
our baby when my physical condition improved, when you weren’t fighting so many battles. But nothing got better. I had so many complications, and I knew that if you found out what I was going through, you’d be with me, stay with me, never leave my side. You couldn’t do that, though. Don’t you see? I couldn’t take you away from Tyler. He wasn’t part of me but he was part of you…part of our child. And I was a mother too. A mother fighting to save her baby…a mother with a baby inside her who needed her to fight for him the way you needed to fight for Tyler. That’s the way it had to be, James. You had to take care of Tyler, not me.”

“What happened?” he choked, his voice so hoarse the words barely came out. “To the…to our baby?”

“I had our baby…stillbirth. I was just over six months along.”

“Six months?” he gasped. “You were six months along and didn’t tell me? How could you do that, Fallon? I had the right to know.”

“You did. I always knew that, and felt so guilty. But the longer I didn’t tell you, the more I didn’t know how. And my lawyer… He checked in on you, told me about your situation with Tyler. You had him, he was taken away. Then you got him again… And I was so…so confused. So hurt.” She drew in a steadying breath. “For the longest time I had this fantasy that our baby would be fine. That one day I’d call you to come visit us, and I’d introduce you to him. In retrospect, I know I was kidding myself about the outcome, because I did know how bad the situation was. But I’d fantasize that I’d get to the end of the pregnancy, give birth, then…

“But the other part of me, the pragmatist, knew that you were in such a dark place, and it hurt me. I truly didn’t want to burden you with more, and I’d convinced
myself that not telling you was protecting you from even more pain.

“Then when my mind started to clear up, I felt so…guilty. Knew I should have told you even then. But it was too late. The doctor told me the odds of my baby surviving were overwhelmingly slim, and that my odds of survival were almost none if I somehow managed to go to term, or even close to it. Still, I wasn’t going to abort my baby, no matter what. I had to fight for him, and that’s why I left. Why I wouldn’t tell you where I was. Because if you knew…”

“You should have told me, Fallon. If your life was at risk…”

She shook her head, almost violently. “See, that’s what I knew you’d say. That’s what I knew I’d have to fight, and I just couldn’t fight anything else. You would have won, James. You would have connected with the nurse in me, and won. I always knew that, and that’s why I didn’t take your calls, wouldn’t let you come see me. I couldn’t let you win because if you won, if you’d have convinced me to save myself and not our baby… But in the end, none of it mattered. I lost our baby anyway. And when he died I just couldn’t face you. Because I know how wrong I’d been, leaving you out. You deserved to know him, to be part of him for that short time…”

“He?” James choked.

“We had a little boy.” She swiped at the tears rolling down her cheeks. “And when they let me hold him, that’s when I knew it was too late. That there was no going back. I cheated you of your son. You didn’t get to hold him, James. You didn’t get to…”

James swiped at his own tears. “Fallon, I’m so…” His words broke off. He sucked in a sharp breath. “I wouldn’t have hated you. Couldn’t have…”

“I hated myself, James. Don’t you see? All these months I’ve hated myself, because I wasn’t strong enough to keep him alive. Because I wasn’t strong enough to tell you and fight the fight to keep our baby, if that’s what I had to do. It was just easier to be alone. But you deserved better. Then, and now. I’ve watched you with Tyler. You’re such a good father. A great father, and you love being a father. You need all those children, James. And I can’t be the one to give them to you. Couldn’t even be the one to give you
our
son.”

“Did he have a name, Fallon? Our son, did he have a name?”

She nodded. But her lips only formed the words as her voice failed her. “James Allen Galbraith, Junior.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. Just sat in the chair across from her and stared out the window, for which she was grateful, because she didn’t want to be in his arms, didn’t want to feel the pain that would surely radiate from him, pain she had caused. So they sat in silence, for half an hour, or an hour…she didn’t know. Time passed and she was too numb to feel it. But finally James cleared his throat, squared his shoulders. He stood. And she knew that once he walked out of the room, he might never come back. At least, not emotionally.

It’s what she deserved. What she’d known all along would happen. But being right about it didn’t make her feel any better, didn’t bring her any relief.

She couldn’t watch him go, however. So she shut her eyes, blocked it all out. Held her breath until she heard the door close behind him.

But it didn’t close. Yet she waited. Dear God, she waited for ever, then finally opened her eyes, only to find James kneeling in front of her, the pain on his face so acute she wasn’t sure either of them could get through this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Fallon, I’m so sorry. What you did… I don’t blame you for anything. How could I?”

“But you should. And in time you will. You should have known about the baby at the beginning so you could have celebrated the happy days with me, and at the end mourned the loss. You should have held him in your arms the way I did, and stood next to me at the grave when I…when I buried him. It was your right… He was
your
son and I took that away from you.” She reached out tenderly to brush a tear from his cheek. “I was so confused…”

He took hold of her hand and kissed it. “I know you were. But, Fallon, I do understand that you did what you thought was right for me, and for Tyler. How could I ever be angry about that?”

“Don’t you understand, James? I’m the one who’s angry. I thought you might be, tried to convince myself you would be, but in my heart of hearts I always knew you’d forgive me. But I’m the one who’s angry. So damned angry.”

“At me?”

She shook her head. “At me. For not being strong enough. See, I didn’t
ever
want to tell you. At first I thought that I’d never tell you, and that maybe we could get back together and simply go on. You’d never have to know. But after a while I knew that I couldn’t go through with that because I can’t lie to you, and not telling you the truth was lying. But I didn’t want you to suffer the pain I had. Or suffer even more pain because I hadn’t included you. Yet I knew that I was bound to tell you everything if we stayed together long enough, and I didn’t want to hurt you. So I’ve been trying to push you away, James. Not because I hated you but because I loved you. But I couldn’t do it. I was too…weak.”

“You’re not weak, Fallon. You’re the strongest person
I’ve ever known. And what you perceive as weakness is truly strength.”

“Then I hate being strong.” She sniffled. “And all this time when you’ve said you made a mess of things…it was always me. I knew that, and I kept on letting you think it was you because I was still trying to find a way to keep my secret. I was right about one thing, though. When I told you that you don’t need me, you don’t. Now that you know the truth, you can move on. Start over.”

“How the hell can you tell me what I need, Fallon? How the hell can you tell me to move on when you know it’s breaking my heart? Everything you’re telling me is breaking my heart. You are breaking my heart. But I still love you, and I don’t want to walk away.”

“Do you honestly think you could look at me every day for the rest of our lives and not think about what I did to you? You’ll think about it for a while…days, months, years. Convince yourself that you’re not angry. But then one morning, out of the blue, you’ll wake up, look at me, and finally realize you hate me. And every time you’ll look at me you’ll remember what I did…and I can’t bear that. Can’t even look in a mirror at myself and not think about what I did, so how can I expect you to simply think it will go away? Right now, it’s so raw, you don’t know…but I’ve lived with it. I do know. That’s why you and Tyler… You have each other and you can get on with your lives, and in time you’ll both forget…”

“We’ll forget you? Is that what you think? Tyler loves you, I love you, and you really believe that we’ll just get over you because you tell us to?”

“Because you need to,” she said, her voice breaking. “You need to, for both your sakes.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about what I need. Not a damn thing.” He shut his eyes, trying to rein in the
emotion. It wasn’t sinking in yet. Oh, he understood the words. Every last, ugly one of them. And he even understood why Fallon had made the choices she had. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she’d gone through all those months, and the pain of realizing how she’d gone through it alone was nearly as bad as the pain of losing his son. So maybe she was right. Maybe in time, when it all made more sense, his feelings, his reactions would change.