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She guided my hand to the right spot and helped me cut the cord. The doctor held him up for another nurse to wrap in a blanket and take up to Rain for her to hold. She looked exhausted but beautiful as she held our baby and looked up toward me with her tired smile. I moved in beside her, reaching out and letting our son wrap his tiny fingers around my pinky. It was the most amazing feeling on the planet as we looked at his bright blue eyes and shock of wheat-colored hair, a perfect blend of the two of us.
“Rain, I’m going to make a couple of quick stitches and get things sorted back out down here. The nurse will take the baby to get him cleaned up and examined by the pediatrician on call while we finish up and get you taken up to a room to recover. After that, they’ll bring the baby in for you to spend some time with and feed. OK?”
“OK,” we both said simultaneously, as I quickly retreated to the top of the bed to hold her hand again.
She smiled up at me, and I patted her hand softly with mine.
“Do you have a name for the baby yet?” one of the nurses asked.
“Christopher Anthony Rayburn,” Rain told her.
“CAR,” I said with a laugh, and she groaned loudly. I couldn’t really be sure if it was a reaction to what the doctor was doing or my insistence on pointing out that the name we had chosen had the initials of a vehicle. It was something she had chosen to live with in order to name him after both her father and mine.
I couldn’t help but think that a lot had happened in the short span of just over a year. I had somehow managed to put my pitiful past behind me and get everything I had ever dreamed of. They say that into every life a little rain must fall, but I don’t think they had any idea of just how important it would be in my life. In fact, Rain was my life, and now, our son would be just as big a part of it as she always had been.
31
Rain
If anyone had told me a little more than a year ago that I would be back in Muskrat Creek, married to Jon Rayburn and the mother of a tiny human being, I’d have called them crazy. It was both a dream I’d had for a long time and one that I’d give up on a long time ago. Still, there I was. There we were. I was no longer a small-town girl in a big city but a small-town girl back in familiar surroundings, places I’d been running away from for a long time.
In Los Angeles, I’d felt alone most of the time and always somewhat like a fish out of water, but here, I fit right in with the rest of the people I had grown up with. There were memories here that could never be replaced, from times spent with my parents when I was a little girl to the pain of losing them while I was so young. Then, it had just been me and Grandma. She liked to call us two quirky birds in a forest of wrens. I was never quite sure what that meant, but I think it was her way of saying we were special.
Then there was Jon and that royal blue Barracuda with black fender walls. It was the envy of every boy in school, and when I rode in it with him, I was the envy of every girl. I had never felt like I was worthy and thus, not surprised at all when he had simply left me behind. It was hard to think that if my life hadn’t taken the turn it had, I might not have ever ended up back here and found out the truth.
Instead, I had everything a girl could ever ask for and so much more. My vet business was thriving, with both mobile units staying on the road a great deal of the time, tending both emergencies and routine farm care for the majority of the area. It was a busy life, but it suited me, and it seemed to suit Jon as well. With us all settled in at home and work, he had gone back to doing what he loved, flipping houses across the county, many of which I spotted during my trips out to remote farms.
As I stood at the kitchen sink, looking out over the back yard, I spotted him working by the tree that sat there. Though he had not said anything about it, he was replacing the rope on the old tire swing that hung from the big oak tree. I watched him as he carefully wound it through the tire and sliced out the old bit of rope before standing back to admire his handiwork.
