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“What makes you think—” Of course she’d guessed. He swung his foot back up on the hammock. “You used to do that when we were kids, too, read my mind and then follow me right into my messes. Yeah, I did some reading, wanted to understand how to help you. Where’s the crime in that?”
“You can back off the defensive, Baker. I just wanted to confirm you have a core knowledge here.”
He gave her a simple nod. This was obviously tough enough for her. He didn’t want to make it worse by shoving his boot in his mouth.
“Then you know the more scar tissue that builds up, the more difficult it is to conceive, which explains how it was easier for me to become pregnant when I younger. But then in some cases with endometriosis, even if pregnancy occurs, the body—” she unfurled her fist and let the wind carry away the shredded leaf “—my body can be a hostile environment.
Miscarriage rates are higher.”
Hostile environment? He could hear too well the repeat of McRae’s propaganda.
“After three more miscarriages, I told Kent I’d had enough. Enough of the doctors and hormone injections and surgeries. I just wanted a baby. I really thought he was okay with adoption.” Her head fell back against the webbed ropes. “God, he had me fooled.”
Her eyes slid away from him for the first time, which should have been a warning to prepare himself. But thinking about himself was the least of his concerns right now. He lifted her cold hand from her side and linked their fingers. A paltry offering, but all he could think of at the moment.
“Kent swapped my birth control pills for placebos. I got pregnant.” Her flat tones carried on the wind, the hollow tones of a person with no tears left. “After all those treatments, I finally conceived on my own again. And then I made it past my first trimester. That had never happened before. The hope was…worse than anything else.”
His gut twisted. Tight. Already he could see where this was going. It hurt to breathe just thinking of what she’d been through. Images of their one lost baby had haunted him for a year. How much more had she suffered?
Alone.
“At twenty-four weeks, I gave birth to a stillborn son.”
Her words gut punched him. Even expecting it hadn’t prepped him for the silent ache radiating from her. Nothing could have.
Here he’d been arrogant in wondering if she could handle hearing about his job, and he was the one who couldn’t breathe. At least he had his head together enough to know she wasn’t ready for him to talk or ask questions. She needed him to listen. He could do that much.
He should have been in her life to do so much more, but he’d been too busy staying out of Savannah because he didn’t want to run into Mrs. Kent McRae.
“I overheard him with my traitorous doctor. Heard what they’d done to me with swapping the birth control pills.” Her voice faltered for the first time. “What they intended to try again.” One shaky breath and she continued, “I put on my clothes, walked out of the hospital and left Kent. Once the divorce was final, he tried to kill me.”
Rage, barely banked from the day before, exploded within him, riding a silent curse and vow to send Kent McRae straight to hell.
Her fingers tightened around his. “No, I really wasn’t in very good shape when I arrived in Rubistan. And your father just put his hand on my shoulder and told me it would be okay.”
Waves echoed in the background for five gushes, six, seven and with each one, Daniel thanked his father for giving her that calm acceptance, that quiet strength that he never would have been able to manage. Nothing else mattered.
“He seemed to know the right balance to strike between helping me and urging me to do for myself. Giving me room to heal, room to grow.” Her thumb brushed his wrist. “No offense my dear friend, but, Danny, you would have taken over, and I wouldn’t have been strong enough to stand up to you then. And maybe I was prideful in not wanting you to see me like that. Weak.”
His fingers tightened around hers. Forget about staying quiet. He wouldn’t let her buy into any more of McRae’s garbage. “Weak is the last word I would ever apply to you.”
“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand back. “I asked your father once why he never told you where I was. He said he’d learned the hard way about letting a person find their own path in the world.”
And in a flash of intuition Daniel had only just begun to acquire from his own brief stint at parenting the boys, he understood. His father had been making amends. Making peace through Mary Elise.
Daniel stopped fighting with his father’s shadow long enough to identify his own. “I’m glad he was there for you.”
And he meant it.
She nodded. Spent.
“Come here.” He opened his arms.
She smiled one of those gentle Mary Elise smiles he’d once thought whimsical. Now he knew they held more strength than most combat veterans. “I’m not about to fall apart, Danny.”
“I know. Come here, anyway.”
She crawled up the hammock until she tucked in beside him. Her head fell to rest on his shoulder, over his heart that wasn’t as numb as he’d thought.
