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“Jake, I swear to you, she wanted the family to know. She thinks Leon needs support. She was hoping you guys would stop getting him to go out to drink all the time.”

“You know I have a problem with alcohol myself, Candy. I don’t try to get them to go out to drink. But anyway, I’m sorry I accused you of being a bigmouth.”

“Ha! Is that what you were accusing me of?”

“Sort of.”

“What can I help you with now that I’m exonerated?”

“Geri’s having a miscarriage. We don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Jake. I’m glad you called me. I promise not to repeat this. Can I talk to Geri?”

He handed his phone over. “She wants to talk to you.”

Geri explained everything and listened for a few minutes. Then she handed the phone back.

“Thank you, Candy,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later. We’ll be home about ten tonight.”

Ending the call, he went to Geri again. “What did she say?”

“I should save the little bit of tissue, that theproducts of conceptionshe called it will be in that. She said I’ll be okay until we get home unless I start hemorrhaging. She described what that would be like. In the meantime, she said to rest and force fluids. I can walk around the deck if I want, pretty much what we’ve been doing.”

“I can’t believe this,” Jake said.

“Jake, I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” he said sadly. “I can’t believe this. I’m afraid if I think about it too much, I can’t deal with it.”

“That’s grief,” Geri said, holding his hand. “We need to read up on that now. We lost a little baby, Jake. It’s so sad. I’m wondering how I’ll survive the loss.”

“I’ll help you,” he promised, reaching for toilet paper to blow his nose. “We’ll be together to get through it.”

They held each other for a long while, silently acknowledging that they were experiencing true intimacy. Grief would be a family affair. Geri confessed to Jake that she’d told Big Mike she was pregnant, so now she’d have to tell him the baby was gone, and it wasn’t fair to expect him to keep that burden to himself.

“We’ll have to tell Roberta and then give them permission to tell the rest of them,” Geri said.

“Are you going to tell your parents?” Jake asked.

“No, I don’t think so. It will just hurt them. I’ll tell them at another time.”

They made the sad phone call to Big Mike and Roberta. Geri’s heart ached again, watching Jake crying over the phone to his parents about the miscarriage.

After they landed in San Diego and disembarked, they looked up at the end of the gangplank, and there were Big Mike and Roberta, both distraught, waiting with open arms.

Their appearance at the dock, however brief, would end up making the situation so much easier. Having the compassion of his family helped her get through the homecoming, making things seem less bleak. She wasn’t actively bleeding now, so there would be no middle-of-the-night trip to the ER. In the morning, she’d contact her doctor.

After they said goodbye to Big Mike and Roberta, they drove toward home.

“I want to stay at your place,” Geri said when Jake said she shouldn’t be alone.

The shift had been subtle. OCD Jake and control-freak Geri had slowly morphed into what the other person needed for just that moment: flexible Jake and submissive Geri.

The following week, life tried to return to normal. After the bust of the Valentine’s Day cruise, Jake racked his brain to find a way to make it up to Geri. She seemed fine; the doctor said the miscarriage had been complete and no further treatment was necessary. But Jake thought she might be hiding her real feelings, which mirrored his: true devastation. They’d created a baby together and now it was gone.

Certain things made her sad. “I doubt if I’ll ever want to cruise again,” she admitted.

“That did suck,” Jake agreed.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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