"Whatever do you mean?" Catherine asked, completely confounded.
"The only way she learns anything is by doing little experiments. Like any good scientist, she has to do them often enough, and under varied conditions, to make sure the results aren’t just a fluke."
"What is she testing now?" Catherine asked, her dark eyes holding a hint of challenge.
"I think she’s trying to prove that the block gets to the floor because of her actions. She’s just at the very beginning of understanding cause and effect. It looks to me like she’s just discovered that she is the cause of the block hitting the floor. I honestly don’t think the effect is all that important to her yet."
"Don’t try to argue with her about scientific theories, Mom. She’ll make your head throb," Jamie advised.
"I’m sure of that," she agreed gamely as Ryan bent to pick up the block one more time. She was obviously unable to concede the point, however, because she pointed out, "Why does she look at you after she throws it, if she’s not trying to make you retrieve it?"
"She does watch me, but watch
how
she watches me," Ryan instructed. All three women kept a close watch on exactly where Caitlin focused during the next round.
"It looks like she’s watching your face," Jamie observed.
"Precisely!" Ryan agreed. "I think she’s watching to see if I share her joy about this new discovery. If she was just trying to make me do something, I think she would watch the toy—but she seems to lose interest in the toy as soon as she releases it. See," she said, handing the block back again, "as soon as she tosses it, she looks at me. When I smile back at her to encourage her, she gets excited. I really think we’re sharing a moment."
Catherine shook her head for a moment before she turned to Jamie. "Does she put this much thought into everything?"
"Yep," she conceded as she shot her lover an affectionate glance. "I don’t think she does anything that she hasn’t considered thoroughly."
"I think Da might disagree with you, Honey," Ryan gently reminded her. "I think his most common question wh
en I was growing up was, ‘Siobha
n, do you
ever
think before you act?’ "
Ryan hadn’t even bothered to ask where they were staying, and she was a bit surprised to find that they headed into the Disneyland Hotel. She had secretly thought they’d be staying in some elegant little hotel and taking a cab to the park, and she was pleased to find that they were going to be right in the midst of things.
As a bellman unloaded their bags, Ryan removed the car seat with Caitlin still in it. It wasn’t the easiest thing to carry the baby in the seat, but she thought it made more sense than carrying both separately, especially given how crowded the lobby was. When they got inside, Catherine assessed the situation quickly spotting a sign that said "Concierge Check-In". "Be right back," she instructed, setting off confidently.
Cait wanted out of her restraints to join the dozens of kids lounging on the floor in front of a very large screen television watching "The Mighty Ducks," but Ryan knew that was a loser bet, so she tried to distract her while they waited. Thankfully, Catherine handled things quickly, and she was back in a few moments, bearing plastic key cards for each of them.
Their rooms were on the top floor of the Sierra building, and Ryan was impressed to find that Catherine had reserved a suite. The two bedrooms flanking the common living room were both generously sized, and one held a roll-away crib. "You’ve done well here, Catherine," Ryan complimented her as she went to the room with the crib.
"Ryan, why don’t you let me sleep with the baby?" the older woman asked.
After she argued with herself for just a moment, Ryan’s good sense won out and she shook her head. "That’s beyond generous of you to offer, but she’s often a little frightened when she wakes in the middle of the night. I think it would freak her out if I wasn’t there when she wakes."
"I just thought you girls could use some alone time," she persisted, knowing that she was getting into some personal issues, but wanting to make sure that her guests enjoyed themselves.
"We’re fine, Catherine," she insisted. "Really." Jamie was quiet during this interchange, knowing that Ryan understood Caitlin’s needs better than she. She really didn’t mind having the baby in their room—had, in fact, expected it--but she was touched that her mother was so generously offering to watch her through the night.
"All right, Dear, I’m sure you know best. I just hope that you’ll take some time to be alone if you need it."
"We will," Jamie piped up. "Thanks, Mom."
After a quick reassurance call to Annie and Tommy, Ryan spent a good deal of time carrying Caitlin around to investigate every nook and cranny of their rooms. When she came back into the large communal living area she nearly shrieked with delight when she spied the large basket filled with fruit, wine, cheese, and chocolate. "Jamie, look! They left us food!"
Jamie gave her a high wattage grin as she came over to offer a hug. "Good food, too, from the looks of it," she agreed. Turning to her mother, she asked suspiciously, "How did you manage to get this great room in the middle of the summer with one day’s notice?"
"Oh, I have some contacts in the Disney organization," she said lightly as she carried her bag into the smaller of the two bedrooms.
"Mother…," Jamie said in a threatening tone, "spill it!"
"Okay," she agreed as she came back into the main room. "I worked to help secure funding for the new symphony hall being built in L.A. I made some friends through my work who were able to help me pull a few strings."
"Is that your complete statement?" she asked, imitating her father.
"Yes, dear, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it," Catherine declared. "Now let’s get some lunch."
"Isn’t this lunch?" Ryan asked as she busily sorted all of the foodstuffs located in the big basket. "We’ve got enough wine to get us well oiled, plus soakage!"
Seeing Catherine’s puzzled look, Jamie knowledgably informed her, "She throws in an Irish expression every once in a while just to keep you on your toes. I think that one means we’ve got food and drink."
"Mighty!" Ryan agreed enthusiastically.
"It’s hard enough to keep up with her when she’s speaking English!"
Catherine moaned.
They decided to go to the PCH Grill for lunch, and Ryan brought all of the brochures and documents that Catherine had been given at check-in. She pored over the material as though she was drawing up plans to invade a foreign country, finally coming up with a master plan that she was happy with.
Ryan folded her hands on the table, looking at each of her adult companions with an expectant look on her handsome face. "Well?" Jamie asked, knowing that her partner wanted to share, but that she liked to be cajoled a bit.
"Well, what?" The dark head cocked slightly, bright blue eyes shimmering with impish pleasure.
"Spill it, General Schwartzkopf! I know you have every minute planned."
"Not every minute," Ryan huffed. "I’ve allowed for one hour a day for personal time. You may spend that as you wish."
"Buffy…" Jamie threatened, narrowing her gaze.
"Okay," Ryan said excitedly. "Here’s the plan. We wait until Bitsy is ready for her nap. Then we go on the ‘Welcome to Disneyland Tour’ that’s part of the package. I don’t think the baby would like it, and it’s only an hour and a half, so we could go and be back while she sleeps. This presupposes that you don’t mind watching her," Ryan said, addressing Catherine.
"Of course not," Catherine agreed. "I could use a nap as well."
"Okay, we’re set," Ryan declared, smiling at the server as lunch was delivered.
"That’s it?" Jamie asked. "That’s all you’ve planned?"
"Nope. The rest is on a need-to-know basis," she decreed, giving her partner a fiendish grin.
Caitlin was pretty riled up after lunch, and Ryan decided that she needed some cuddling and calming to get ready to nap. So she took the baby into their room and sat on a comfortable chair to read to her from one of her storybooks.
The Evans women sat in the living room and chatted while Ryan performed her "sand man" act.
They had been chatting for just a few minutes when Catherine’s cell phone rang. Finding the little device, she hit the button and said, "Hello."
Jamie’s brow furrowed when her mother’s face fell, a pained look crossing her features for just a moment before a familiar mask of studied indifference settled there. "I didn’t have plans to do this before, Jim," she said as she got up to go to her room. "You don’t need to speak to me in that tone," she snapped as the door closed, preventing Jamie from hearing the rest.
She was gone only a few minutes, her composure back in place when she re-entered the living room. "I’m sorry about that, Honey. I don’t like for you to hear that type of bickering."
Jamie looked up, focusing her eyes on her mother’s face as the older woman sat back down. "Mom, will you level with me?" she asked softly.
Catherine blinked a few times, finally nodding her head slowly. "Of course, Dear. What do you want to know?"
"Is my relationship putting stress on your marriage? I…I couldn’t stand it if I thought you were having trouble because of me."
"Come here, Jamie," Catherine said softly, patting the cushion next to her. The younger woman crossed the room and sat next to her mother, automatically leaning her head on her shoulder. "Yes, your father and I are having problems. No, it’s not because of you."
"But it certainly seems more than coincidental, Mom," Jamie insisted. "I mean, I’ve never heard you argue about things…"
"Jamie, just because we didn’t argue doesn’t mean that everything was all right. A little arguing is a good sign, Honey. It shows that you care enough to feel hurt."
"Are you hurt, Mom?" she asked with concern, reaching over to grasp her mother’s hand.
"Yes, Dear, I’m hurt, and I’m sure that your father is, too. He wouldn’t behave as he has been if he wasn’t acting out of fear and pain."
Jamie’s brow furrowed as she thought that her father had no reason to feel anything other than shame for the way he treated Ryan. "Why is he hurt?"
"I doubt that you look at it this way, Dear, but he’s had to deal with some very big changes in the last six months, and he hasn’t handled them well. I think it really shook him when you broke up with Jack, even though I doubt that he ever told you that."
"No, no he didn’t," she said, shaking her head a little. "But why…?"
"I think he liked the path you were on, Jamie. It mirrored the choices he would have made for you. I think he felt that he’d done his job as a parent, and now you would go on your way and give credence to his choices by making the same ones for yourself."
The younger woman nodded, realizing for the first time that her breaking up with Jack might have seemed like a slap in the face to her father.
"Your falling in love with Ryan put a fine point on your decision to follow your own path, Jamie. This isn’t what he wants for you, and it isn’t who he thinks that you are. It’s made him question your entire relationship, Honey. As angry as I’ve been with him, I still have some empathy for how this has hurt him, and I hope that you can find some of that in your heart, too, Jamie."
"It will take a while, Mom," she said, feeling the need to be totally honest. "He’s going to have to back off from harassing Ryan, or I’ll never forgive him."
Catherine nodded slowly, knowing that Jamie had just as hard a time forgiving people as her father did.
"So why is he angry with you, Mom? You didn’t encourage my choices."
"Of course I did, Honey," Catherine corrected. "Not at first, of course, but as time goes on, and I’ve realized how right this is for you, I’m very supportive. I would honestly say that this is the first time in our relationship that I have openly defied him. It’s not easy for him to take, Jamie, and he’s lashing out."
"So it is my fault," the younger woman moaned. "I knew that he was angry with me and taking it out on you."
"Not true, Dear," Catherine assured her. "It’s about time we had a disagreement. We’ve been like business partners for years now, but I was the silent partner, letting him make all of the decisions. I think this will either make us examine our marriage and try to fix it or…" she trailed off, not wanting to say the words, but knowing that Jamie understood her message.
Jamie released her hold and slumped back onto the sofa. "I just didn’t have any idea…" she said slowly. "I thought you were happy."
"We weren’t unhappy, Dear," she assured her. "We’ve each played our part, and kept up the façade, but we haven’t had any emotional spark in a long, long while."
"How long?" she asked tentatively, not having any idea when things had changed for her parents..
Catherine looked like she was not going to answer but she finally said, "I’d say at least 15 years."
"15 years!" Jamie cried. "You’ve only been married 22 years! What happened? How does the emotion just leave a marriage?"
Catherine patted her thigh in a comforting manner as she said, "Maybe some day we can talk about this. But I don’t think this is the time."
Jamie looked over at her with her face full of unanswered questions. "But hearing this makes me worry, Mom. Now I feel that I need to be the peacemaker so that you and Daddy don’t divorce." Her stomach was pulsing in a knot of tension, and she knew that she was moments from being sick.
Catherine saw the warning signs on her daughter’s pale face with the slightly green cast beneath her pallor. She knew that she needed to reassure her, but she didn’t want to lie to her, so she was torn about what to say.
Not getting her answers fast enough, Jamie tried again. "You say that you’ve had trouble for over 15 years, Mom. Do you think you got married too young? Is that part of the problem?"
"I’m certain of it, Dear," Catherine said in an unguarded moment, the truth of the question hitting her hard. "It was too soon, and too rapid, especially for your father."
"Then why did you do it so soon? It’s not like you had to…"
Catherine didn’t respond directly. She just gazed at her daughter's pain-filled features and felt like her heart would break at the anguish she saw reflected in the watery green eyes. Jamie held her gaze until the answer became obvious to her. "You…had to."
An almost imperceptible nod was her answer. Catherine looked down at the floor with a look of shame as she admitted, "I think he’s always blamed me for that."
Jamie was too stunned to move at this point. She heard Ryan open the door from their room, but it closed again just a few seconds later. Catherine scooted closer and slid her arms around her daughter as she whispered, "You were the best mistake I’ve ever made, Honey. Both of us were overjoyed to have you. It was just a little earlier than we had planned."
Jamie took a deep breath and asked the question that was burning in her mind. "Did you ever consider…aborting me?"
Catherine sat up in alarm as she cried, "NO! Not for a second! We never even discussed that with each other, Jamie!"
There was something in her mother’s statement that niggled in the back of her mind, and Jamie finally asked, "Who did discuss it? Did someone try to talk you into having an abortion?"
Catherine mentally cursed her daughter’s perceptiveness, wishing that she could lie and answer in the negative. But she knew that her face would betray her lie, and she didn’t want to perpetuate any more lies or half-truths with her daughter. She nodded slowly, her head moving almost imperceptibly.
"Who?" Jamie asked, her voice quiet, yet determined.
"My mother," Catherine finally whispered. "She felt that I was ruining my life to get married so young. She…she didn’t think of you as a person, Jamie, please believe that."
The younger woman nodded, understanding that an unplanned pregnancy could seem like nothing more than an inconvenience. "You thought of me as a person, didn’t you, Mom?’ she asked softly, somehow knowing the answer.
"From the first day," Catherine whispered, wrapping her in a bruising embrace. "As much tumult as it caused, I knew from the first day that you were going to be a gift to us, Jamie. I’ve never—not for one minute—regretted my decision to give birth to you." She sniffed a few times, her composure shot, as she added, "Neither has your father, Honey. He wasn’t really ready to get married, but he was never unhappy about you. It was just the timing that was hard for him."
She closed her eyes and nodded as she took in a deep breath. "I believe you, Mom. It’s just a shock for me. One of the things I always believed was that you were both very much in love, and that your decision to have me was just that…a decision. It’s hard to hear that my arrival caused you to decide to marry."
"You caused us to decide to marry sooner than we might have," Catherine corrected, "but I believe we would have done so anyway, Jamie, I really do. I loved your father and I really wanted to build a life with him. I can’t speak for him, but I believe he loved me too."
"Do you still love him?" she finally asked.
"Yes, I do," she replied without hesitation. "But I don’t like him much at the moment."
"I don’t like him much either," Jamie agreed, "but I don’t think I could ever stop loving him."
"He doesn’t make it easy sometimes, Jamie. He can be a difficult man to love."
They were quiet for a few moments, their arms still wrapped around each other, when Ryan’s dark head poked through the door again.
"Come on in, Honey," Jamie said, sitting up and extending a hand in Ryan’s direction. When the tall woman settled her frame onto the couch, Jamie leaned into her, placing her head on Ryan’s chest to allow for a much needed hug. The silence was uncomfortable, but Ryan wasn’t about to ask why both women had been crying. She just offered as much comfort as her body could convey, knowing that Jamie would tell her what was wrong when they were alone. "We’d better get going if we’re going to make it back before Caitlin wakes," Jamie reminded her partner as she regretfully pulled out of her grasp.
"I’m ready," Ryan said. "Are you sure you don’t mind this, Catherine?"
"I not only don’t mind, it’s what I choose," she assured her.
As they headed for the door Jamie reminded her, "I’ve got my phone on and I left the number right on the table. Call us if you need anything. Promise?"
"I promise," she said, sparing a fond smile for her daughter. "Now, go have fun!"
As they hopped onto the monorail for the short ride to the park, Ryan tried to contain her enthusiasm over the transportation in order to gently ask, "Wanna talk about it?"
A small nod preceded her answer. "My parents had to get married, and now they might get divorced," she said flatly.
"What!?! Did she say that in so many words?"
"Which part?" Jamie inquired.
"About getting divorced!" Ryan replied with alarm.
"Yes, basically she said that in so many words." After a beat she asked, "You’re not surprised that she was pregnant?"
Ryan blushed a little as she conceded, "Not really. I thought as much when you told me how young she was when they got married. I also saw those pictures of their wedding, and it looked like it was the middle of the summer. That didn’t add up to having you in February."
Jamie slapped herself in the forehead, muttering, "I’ve never known them to celebrate their anniversary. I have no idea when they got married."
"No big deal, Love. I also didn’t think it was that common for wealthy young women to get married when they’re 19 without some mitigating circumstance. But I’m shocked that they might get divorced! She just seemed so accepting of your dad’s behavior—like she was used to it."