AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about a girl’s name?” Jordan asked.
“Bethany Marie.” If Jeffrey had been a girl, they’d planned on the name Lori Jo. They’d studied baby name books for weeks before arriving at their final decisions.
Jordan smiled. “That has a nice sound to it. Are you naming her after anyone in particular?”
“Marie was my mother’s middle name, and I’ve always liked the name Bethany.”
“I do, too,” he said and opened the door.
It seemed to take him a long time to leave. Theminute she could, Molly threw aside the covering and rushed into the bathroom. She didn’t know if she’d taken a turn for the worse or if this bout of vomiting was the result of yet another nerve-wracking encounter with Jordan.
* * *
A month passed and Jordan didn’t hear a word from Molly. Not that he’d thought he would. But he’d hoped.
Thanks to Ian and Doug, he received regular updates on Molly’s condition and savored each report about Bethany Marie’s progress. He drilled Doug with so many questions that his friend had eventually handed him a book on what to expect during the last trimester of pregnancy. Jordan read it twice.
Thanksgiving was lonely. He flew to Arizona and spent the holiday with his mother, who’d retired there several years earlier. She was pleased to have him there. He hadn’t been to visit her since Jeffrey’s birth. His father had died years earlier while he was in high school, and his sister lived in Oregon.
When he arrived at his mother’s home, one of the first things Jordan saw was a framed photograph of Jeffrey on the foyer wall. It disconcerted him so badly that he had to ask her to put it away.
He felt bad about that later, when he returned to Chicago, to an empty house and an emptier life. Molly and Bethany had been constantly on his mind. He wondered how she’d spent the holiday and was tempted to call Ian and ask.
He rummaged around the house and resisted the urge to phone, knowing he’d made a regular pest of himself recently. He was tired from the weekend travel and thecraziness that was involved in flying during a major holiday.
He listened to his messages and checked his email. Nothing important. No one he needed to get back to. No word from Molly.
Walking up the stairs, Jordan passed the room that had once been Jeffrey’s nursery. He hadn’t gone in there in more than four years. Not since the day he’d taken away everything that had been their son’s. Not since he’d attempted to wipe out every piece of evidence that Jeffrey had ever lived.
The fight he’d had with Molly that terrible afternoon would forever stay with him. And with her, too, he guessed. He’d carried down the baby furniture and she’d come crying after him, begging him not to give Jeffrey’s things away. She was rooting through the boxes, sobbing hysterically, when the truck driver arrived for the charity pickup.
The man had sat down on the steps with Molly and talked to her gently. Jordan had stood in the doorway demanding that the agency remove everything. It appalled him now that a stranger had been more sensitive to Molly’s pain than he’d been.
Some force he couldn’t name directed him to Jeffrey’s room. He opened the door and walked inside. The floor was bare. As were the walls. The one thing that remained was Molly’s rocking chair.
He’d forgotten about that. She used to nurse Jeffrey by the fireplace in their bedroom. After his death, she’d moved the chair into his room and sat in there alone for hours on end.
Often he’d come home from work and find her sittingin that chair, staring into space, tears streaking her face. He guessed she’d spent the entire day there.
Stepping into the bedroom, Jordan sat down in the chair. He placed his hands on the wide arms and rocked back and forth. He closed his eyes and recalled Molly holding Jeffrey, talking softly while she rocked. Sometimes she sang to him in a soft voice that vibrated with her love.
It was like a childhood remembrance—something that had happened years and years earlier. A dream from his youth.
Jordan thought again about Doug and Mary Anderson’s sons, and how he’d pictured Jeffrey as a young man, had he lived.
“You’re going to have a sister,” he whispered.
The sound of his own voice shocked him, and he pressed his lips together. It was the loneliness, he decided, that had made him talk to a baby who was long dead.
“I have a younger sister, too,” Jordan whispered, then surprised himself by laughing out loud. “She was a pest from the moment she was born. The very bane of my existence until I was a high school senior.” He stopped rocking, remembering how fortunate he’d been to have a younger sister who was an “in” for him with the sophomore girls.
Caught up in the memories of his childhood years, Jordan glanced out the window to the manicured grounds of their yard. Perhaps he was simply tired from the trip, he didn’t know, but he wanted something to blame for what happened next.
He could see his seven-year-old son running around,flying a kite. Bethany, barely old enough to stand, was reaching toward the sky, laughing with glee. The vision left him as quickly as it had come.
Was he losing his mind?
He didn’t know what was going on, but all at once his chest felt as if he were being shoved against a concrete wall. His heart thudded; he felt every beat as it pounded and pulsed.
