Home to Laura

chapter EIGHTEEN



NICK SAT IN HIS HOME office going over documents that had been sent to him by a client. Since the contracts leaned far too far in the client’s favor, Nick’s pen hadn’t stopped marking them up in the past ten minutes.

He didn’t know where the autumn was going. It was already late November and he hadn’t finished work on the Fellows contract let alone starting work on the new O’Connor deal.

His door slammed open, startling him.

“Dad! I know you told me not to bother you, but I have to.” Emily ran into the room clutching the telephone.

“What’s wrong, Emily?”

“It’s Uncle Ty on the phone. He needs to talk to you. Right now. He sounds really tense.”

Nick took the phone. To avoid interruptions, he purposely hadn’t put one in the office. It allowed him to get through whatever work he had to bring home more efficiently so he could spend more time with Emily.

“Ty? What’s up?”

“You might want to get down here. Laura’s in the hospital.”

Nick had been leaning back in his seat, but shot forward. “Why?”

“Something to do with the baby. I don’t know if she’s losing it or what, but an ambulance was called to the bakery. Apparently, there was blood on the floor in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He handed the phone to Emily. “I have to go to Accord.”

“I’ll come, too.”

“Not this time, Emily. You have school.”

She followed him upstairs to his room. He took a carry-on out of the closet and tossed in jeans and a couple of sweaters and underwear.

“Why are you going?” Emily asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Laura is in the hospital.”

“So what?”

“I don’t know. I think there’s a problem with her baby.”

“So why does she need you there?”

“She doesn’t need me.” She really didn’t. She was strong. She would survive whatever happened, but he didn’t want her in pain. She didn’t need more sorrow and grief. She’d been through enough. He didn’t want anything to happen to her. He didn’t want her to lose her baby.

“So if she doesn’t need you, why are you going?”

“She might lose the baby.”

“So what? That would solve all of our problems.”

His pulse lurched. He didn’t want that kind of solution to this problem.

“It would devastate Laura.” She would need a friend. Despite his asinine behavior at Ty’s wedding, he didn’t want Laura hurting. He did want to support her.

Besides, he’d slept with her that one night. He hadn’t planned it and, with the different perspective that time and distance allowed, he knew she hadn’t planned it, either.

He wasn’t a man to sleep around easily. She wasn’t a woman who slept around. They didn’t do one-night stands. So, in effect, for that one night, they’d become involved with each other. They’d had a relationship.

He’d wanted her. Not just any woman. Her.

As far as he could tell, Laura had wanted him. Not just any man. Not a father for her baby. She’d wanted a deep, strong, emotional, insanely hot relationship with him. In the nature of their relationship with each other, it had lasted one night.

Because their night together had been more than a one-night stand, because they knew each other and cared in their screwed-up way, he had to go to her now.

“I have to go,” he said.

Emily started to cry and left the room.

He couldn’t go to her or he would miss the only flight going out to Denver today.

He phoned Mort to ask him to come stay with her. He said he would head right over.

The flight to Denver took too long, as did the drive to the hospital outside of Accord.

At Information, he asked to see Laura. She’d been admitted and he took the elevator to the second floor.

He rounded a corner and found the correct room.

Laura lay in a bed hooked up to an IV, looking pale and tired.

Her hands were swollen. He touched one. She woke up. When she saw him, her eyes widened.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I was only dozing.”

“What happened?”

“I started to go into labor.”

Because Marsha had handled all of the details of her pregnancy while Nick established himself in her father’s company, he knew little about pregnancy and complications.

“Isn’t it too early?” he asked, figuring that much out at least.

She nodded. In her eyes lurked fear. She’d had a miscarriage before. She must be scared to death to lose this baby.

“What are you doing in Accord?” she asked.

Nick frowned. “I came to see you. Ty called. He thought you might be losing the baby.”

“You came for this?”

“Of course.”

Her fingers tightened perceptibly in his. “I thought you hated me.”

He felt a lot of things for her, a weird amalgam of affection and resentment and who knew what else. He never did look at those kinds of things too closely.

“I don’t hate you and I don’t want you to lose the baby.”

“I don’t want to, either, Nick.”

“I know. Tell me what’s happening.” Without letting go of her—he didn’t think she would let him—he hooked a chair with his foot and dragged it over to the bed before sitting down.

“It’s premature labor. Oh, Nick, if the baby were born now, it would be so tiny. It would have to fight for its life.”

He tried to imagine being so small and helpless, hooked up to machines for survival. Right now, it was where it was supposed to be, inside the safety of Laura’s warm and giving body.

“What can we do about it?” he asked. “How can we prevent it from coming so early?”

Her fingers tightened their grip on his. “Bed rest.”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked, responding to the bitterness in her voice.

“I’ve got a grand opening scheduled for two weeks before Christmas. I’m closing for a week to take that dividing wall down and to finish the place and to bake like there’s no tomorrow. I’m big and I’m slow and tired all of the time and now I’ve got to stay in bed.”

He kissed her fingers. “It’s for the baby’s health.”

“I know. I’ll do anything for the baby, but I don’t know what to do about my other obligations. I’ve hired all of these servers who think they have jobs starting on Opening Day.”

She stared at the ceiling. “I was trying to get it all done before the baby arrived.”

“Who is the doctor taking care of you?”

She gave him a name.

“I’m going to talk to her.”

She nodded, her eyelids drooping. In a minute or two, she would be asleep.

While he watched, something...happened. Under the thin sheet, her belly moved, a bump rippled along under her skin.

He placed his palm on the huge mound that was her pregnant stomach, and a second later, a tiny elbow or knee brushed his hand.

He snatched it back, the wonder of it backing up in his throat. He put his hand on her again and the baby brushed against him, as though they were communicating, as though the baby were saying, “Daddy, play with me!”

All of those missed times with Emily came back to haunt him, all of those moments when he’d been too busy for her.

Another child would be born and would live through all of those missed moments, through opportunities squandered.

All hail the god of commerce and business.

It was his life, though. He didn’t know how to leave it, didn’t know who to be without it. In his office, in his world, he felt real, needed, useful.

This was real, too. This baby he’d thought of as a tiny amorphous thing was real, was “talking” to him from the uterus. He was overwhelmed by the responsibility.

He might not be able to help the unborn baby, knew he would spend the rest of his life missing her growing up, but he could help her mother. And he would.

He went in search of her doctor and finally found her.

“Can you tell me what’s going on with Laura Cameron?”

“It depends. Who are you?”

“Nick Jordan. The baby’s father.”

The doctor nodded. She was only a few years older than him, trim and tall with short dark curls and eyes that had seen a lot.

“Laura is in preterm labor.”

“What does that mean?” Nick asked.

“In layman’s terms, premature labor.”

“What will happen?”

“If she gives birth now, the baby will be very small and at risk.”

“Meaning it could die?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How can you change it? If her body wants to give birth now, how do you stop it?”

“I’ve put her on a tocolytic to suppress labor and inhibit contractions. In case she does deliver, she’s also on a corticosteroid to help the baby’s lungs mature. We want to give the baby a fighting chance.”

“So, will she be hospitalized until she gives birth?”

“No. We’ll keep her overnight for observation and then send her home. She will be bedridden, though. We don’t want to take chances.”

“But she’s got a business to run.”

The doctor stiffened so subtly, Nick almost missed the movement.

“She’ll have to make a choice between the baby and the business.”

“No contest,” he said. “She’ll choose the baby.”

The doctor seemed to relax. “Good. She’ll need support in the coming weeks. Despite our best efforts, anything could still happen.”

“Okay. I’ll stay to help her until the baby’s born.”

Once more, Accord beckoned, and once more, he answered the call.

He phoned Emily and explained what was happening.

“You’re going to stay there?” Her nose sounded stuffy. Had she been crying all this time? “For how long?”

“I don’t know. Until Laura seems stable, I guess.”

“Come home soon.”

“I will. Guess what. I felt the baby today. It moved against my hand.”

Silence.

He cursed. He’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the baby. She especially didn’t want to hear him express anything that remotely resembled happiness.

* * *

NICK WAS IN a foul mood.

He phoned Ty. He needed to talk to him. “Do you mind if I stay at your place tonight? Or should I go to the B and B?”

“Go to my place. I’ll pick up something for dinner.”

By the time he got to Ty’s, his mood wasn’t any better and he guessed that the root of his mood was fear. He was smart enough to figure that much out. The doctor had scared the daylights out of him. The baby could die. They should have got rid of it right at the beginning.

Wasn’t it funny that neither he nor Laura had ever thought of that? They had accepted that she was pregnant and that she would have the baby and that was that.

They would do what they had to do to keep the baby alive and inside of Laura for as long as possible. So why this foul mood?

Was it because Emily didn’t want to accept the baby? So what? Neither did Nick, not really, despite those moments of magical touch with the baby still in Laura’s womb.

The plan hadn’t changed. He would give her child support and that was it. The purpose of this trip? He was here to help a friend.

He took a beer out of the fridge, but his hands shook when he tried to open it. He slammed it onto the counter.

What if the baby died? How on earth could Laura lose another baby? He’d seen her grief at the cemetery his first afternoon in Accord.

Ty walked in, his arms full of grocery bags with the organic market’s logo on them.

“If you’re going to buy organic,” Nick said, his tone peevish, “you should use your own reusable bags.”

He couldn’t stand anything illogical in life.

Ty put the bags on the counter, crossed his arms and stared at Nick.

“What’s wrong with Laura?”

Nick handed the can of beer to Ty. “Open this.”

Ty did and gave it back to him.

Nick took a long draw on it and then said, “Preterm labor.”

Tammy walked into the kitchen with her baby on her hip. She’d given birth a week after the wedding. That’s what Nick called cutting it close.

The baby stared at Nick, wide-eyed. It wore a pink polka-dot sleeper.

“Laura? Oh, that’s far too early,” Tammy said. “Is she still in the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go visit her tomorrow.” She kissed Ty.

“You manage to get a nap while Rebecca napped?” he asked.

Tammy nodded. “That’s what I was doing when I heard Nick come in.”

“Sorry if I scared you when I barged in,” he said.

“You didn’t. Ty called to warn me you were coming to town and would probably stay with us.”

She sat down at the kitchen table. The baby had been fussing. Tammy threw a small blanket over her shoulder then reached up under the top she wore and fooled around with something.

To Nick’s horror, he realized she was getting ready to breast-feed the baby. Didn’t women do things like that in private? He spun around and glared out the window at Ty’s backyard.

“What’s really wrong?” Ty asked. “You seem madder than you should be that there are complications in the pregnancy.”

“Yes,” Tammy said while tiny snuffling noises came from her chest area. Nick peeked over his shoulder. The baby, and Tammy’s breast, were hidden under the blanket, thank God. “Preterm labor is bad, but you seem more angry than worried.”

Nick felt bile rise into his throat just thinking about it. “What if the baby dies?”

“Nick, the baby won’t die. Preterm labor doesn’t have to be a death sentence,” Tammy said, watching him carefully. “Wait a minute. You’re worried about Laura, aren’t you?”

“She’s already lost one baby. It would kill her to lose another.”

“It’s more than that. You’re afraid for Laura’s health, too, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“The doctors will take care of her. She’ll take care of herself. She’ll do everything to keep her baby safe.”

“Who will keep her safe?”

“You?” Tammy asked.

Him. What a responsibility.

Still she watched him steadily while the baby made snuffling noises under the blanket.

“What?” he asked. “Why are you staring at me?”

“You love her.”

“No!” he shouted, rounding on her, breast-feeding be damned. “I don’t. I really don’t. I’m just worried. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“That’s it,” Ty said, grabbing his shirt and manhandling him into the living room. “I get that you’re angry and worried about the situation with Laura, but you can’t take it out on Tammy.”

“I wasn’t taking it out on her.”

“You raised your voice to her.”

“Sorry,” Nick mumbled. He brought his temper under control. “This has got me tied up in knots. I don’t know why.”

He paced from one end of the room to the other. “I handle everything life throws at me. I have control of my business, and trust me, there’s a lot of stress there. I mean, these are million- and billion-dollar deals. I handle it all. I can’t take this, though. I don’t know why.”

“Were you this stressed when Emily was born?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t around that much. Marsha handled the pregnancy and the birth on her own.”

“Laura’s handling the pregnancy on her own. She’s willing to raise the baby on her own. She can, too. That woman can do anything she sets her mind to.”

“I know, but I feel more responsible this time.” He struggled to remember. “I don’t think I ever saw Marsha breast-feed Emily.”

“You don’t plan to be around for this, other than sending a monthly check, so I still don’t get what’s so different this time.”

Nick sat on the edge of an armchair and leaned his elbows on his knees. He dropped his face into his hands and rammed his fingers into his hair. “I guess I’ve come to care more for Laura than I did for Marsha, which is weird because I’ve spent a fraction of the time with her that I did with my wife.”

“I always thought Marsha was a means to an end with you.”

“Yeah, she was. I wanted to work for Mort.”

“Poor Marsha.”

“She knew what she was getting into. I never lied to her.”

“How about Emily?”

“Marsha wanted a child. I never had time for Emily when she was young. I’m making amends for that now. She seems happy with me.”

“Are you happy with her?”

“I couldn’t care for her more. I treasure our time together. I love her.”

“You could come to the same place with this baby.”

“I had Emily without thought. I know better now how much children deserve. I can’t give this new baby what it should have.”

“Our parents really did a number on us.”

Nick jumped up out of the chair. “What about our parents?”

“Look how much trouble Gabe and I had finally claiming some love for ourselves. Look how much trouble you’re having with this.”

This was what had been sending a chill down Nick’s spine the entire drive from the hospital to the ranch. “Something about our parents wasn’t right. I keep having these vague thoughts, memories. Darkness. What happened with them?”

He stared out the front window. “I mean, Dad wasn’t there. He climbed a lot and then he died when I was only five. What did he have to do with my life?”

“You need to hear some things so you understand this family better.”

Darkness rippled along Nick’s nerve endings. “Something happened before Dad went away the last time, didn’t it?”

“Do you remember what it was?” Ty asked.

“I remember yelling. I remember hiding in my room.”

“Five-year-olds don’t always understand what’s going on around them. What do you remember about Dad?”

“He was big, gregarious, fun. Everybody loved him. Right?”

“Right. He was more than that, though. He was driven and ambitious and inclined toward getting his own way. Made him hard to live with.”

“So what? Mom adored him.”

“Yes and no.”

“What the hell does that mean?” They’d had a good marriage. Nick knew it. Mom had idolized Dad. She’d told him so often enough.

“I mean exactly what I said. Dad could be incredibly hard for her to live with. I don’t know all of it. Gabe would know more. He was older. You should ask him about it sometime.”

Maybe he would talk to Gabe at some point, but Ty was here. Nick was here. He wanted answers now.

“Tell me what you know.”

“Dad’s climbing put a heavy load on our stretched resources. When he climbed Everest he paid $25,000 to the Nepalese government for a license. Do you know how much food that can buy a family of five? How many pairs of shoes that kids run through like they’re made of paper? That’s just the license. What about the cost of the gear? There was no point in going if he didn’t have the right gear to make sure he would survive.”

Good Lord, he’d never realized.

“While Dad was training and climbing, he wasn’t bringing in income. They fought about money. A lot. Loudly.”

Ty looked queasy, as though there were more to come that Nick wasn’t going to want to hear, that made Ty uncomfortable, too.

“The night before he left for Everest, she actually said, ‘If you leave tomorrow, don’t come back.’ He didn’t.”

A train might as well have flattened Nick. Oh, Mom. Oh, God. The guilt after Dad’s death, after saying something like that to him in anger, would have devastated her. No wonder she hadn’t coped well.

Ty had heard it all. No wonder he looked sick. Nick could imagine how loud the fight must have been in that small house. There would have been nowhere to hide from the angry voices, from the things Mom and Dad said, hurtful words hurled at each other like missiles. Nick suspected that part of the darkness inside of him was a room where those words still lived. After all, he had been only five. He would have been in the house. He would have heard that fight.

“Mom would have never meant it,” Nick whispered.

“No, but she would have lived with terrible guilt after he died up there.”

“She was scared about money.”

“Probably feared for his life, too. Was afraid that he’d be injured or die. Unfortunately for all of us, he died.”

“Knowing Mom, for the rest of her life, she would regret that instead of telling him she loved him, she told him to not come back.”

“She did love him. She told me so. I once asked her about that fight. She couldn’t talk about it much, but she did say that she’d loved Dad and regretted everything she’d said that night.”

It explained so much. So, all of those things Nick had offered her over the years, including a new house? She hadn’t been keeping the old one as a shrine to Dad. She hadn’t taken the things he’d offered because of her guilt. She’d been paying a penance in keeping things as they were, in thinking that she deserved no more than what she lived with.

Oh, Mom, you deserved.

Nick wished he’d known this information years earlier. Then again, he might not have been ready for it. He felt as if he was only just growing up now. Finally.

“Gabe had to do everything, Nick.”

“I know. He had to cook and clean and watch out for us.”

“No,” Ty said, his voice quiet. “I mean, immediately after we learned about Dad’s death, Gabe had to take over. Mom fell apart.”

“Can you blame her?” Nick asked sharply.

“No, but Gabe was only ten. He grew up overnight. He talked to a funeral director about organizing a service to celebrate Dad’s life. We needed something to aid our grieving. To bring closure. There was no body to bury. It was too dangerous to bring the body down from Everest. Besides, how could we have afforded to send an expedition up there to retrieve his body? Gabe arranged the service.”

Nick had always known Dad’s body was still up on top of Everest but had never thought about what that would have meant to the family immediately after his death.

“Gabe called neighbors, Mom’s friends, church ladies, anyone he thought might help, and asked if they would bring food to the house after the service. He bought paper plates and serviettes and plastic forks. Jesus, Nick, he was just a kid.”

Nick’s vision misted, for the first time his grief directed toward Gabe. Jesus, what a burden for a boy to bear.

Nick couldn’t deny that what Gabe had done was pretty miraculous for a boy his age. Saint Gabe, all right.

For the first time in his life, he regretted that he’d been so young when his father died. He would have helped Gabe with everything.

“What do you think that has to do with now?” Nick asked. “With Laura and the baby?”

“You must have been in the house that last night. Their fight was nuclear. You would have heard everything. My guess is you blocked it out, but it would have gone underground, Nick. You would still be carrying scars from that battle.”

“Yeah, but what scars?”

Ty shrugged. “I don’t know. I imagine they’re the same for all of us, but unique, too. Don’t forget that our lives changed in different ways after that. You became Mom’s favorite. I think that was good for you, but screwed you up, too. It kept you apart from me and Gabe. It made you think you deserved more in life than you had. It made you work pretty damn hard to make a lot of money. What a great marriage you entered into with Marsha, one in which you really didn’t have to care, which engaged none of your emotions. You sure do care about Laura, though, don’t you?”

Nick could only nod. What a mess.

He rubbed his temple where one of his old headaches was forming—the first one in months.

He wasn’t flying back to Seattle and leaving Laura in the lurch for the next month. Neither could he sit here for a month doing nothing.

He called Rachel. “Get down here to Accord.”

“But Thursday is Thanksgiving. I’m visiting my family in Olympia.”

Nick cursed. He’d forgotten about the holiday. “Go celebrate with your family, but send the most urgent work to me at the B and B. Go to my house and pack up the contracts on my desk and ship them to me.”

After he hung up, he sought out Ty and Tammy in the kitchen.

“I’m going to stay in town. I can’t leave Laura now, but I need to get a bunch of work done. Rachel’s going to ship work to the B and B.”

“You can have one of the bedrooms to use as an office.”

“Thanks, Ty, but it’s probably smart for me to be in town. Kristi has an office in the hotel that I can fax from. I can receive them there, too, in case there’s something urgent to be taken care of.”

Ty looked worried.

“Take it easy, Ty. I just don’t want to leave Laura in the lurch.”

“Tell her I can come right over if she needs me,” Tammy said then ran off to change a diaper that reeked.

“God, breast milk makes baby’s poop stink? It’s all natural. Shouldn’t that mean it’s pure, or something? That the poop should be pure and natural.”

Ty laughed at Nick’s expression. “It’s still shit, Nick.”

“Babies are messy.”

“Life is messy.”

After settling in at the B and B and spending a restless night, Nick drove to the hospital to pick up Laura.