chapter SEVENTEEN
“SET UP?” RICHARD ECHOED.
“Give me a minute.” Molly sounded grim.
He watched as she typed a text on her phone. She turned it so he could see what she’d written before she touched Send.
Did you pay for half the flowers?
He liked that she bothered with the question mark.
When he suggested going out to the pickup, she shook her head. “Wait.”
The response came no more than a minute or two later.
Ummm yes you mad
She typed:
Yes
No punctuation this time.
“Please take me home.”
She didn’t say a word on the way. Richard used the time to think.
Trevor’s car still wasn’t outside Molly’s house. This time, Richard pulled to the curb, set the brake and looked at her. “May I come in?”
She didn’t seem to want to meet his eyes, but finally gave an awkward shrug. “Fine. I suppose we’d better talk about this.”
“Cait?” she called, the minute she’d opened the front door.
No answer.
“She’s past her curfew,” Molly muttered.
Richard grunted a laugh. “If only that was the worst thing she ever did.”
Molly huffed. “Do you want a cup of something?”
No, but he said, “Please.” It gave him an excuse to stay longer. As he leaned against the counter in the kitchen and watched her refill the teakettle and put it back on the stove, he felt something inside himself relax. This felt…normal. Plus, he loved the sight of Molly, even if she was stomping around and emitting occasional sounds that sounded like compressed steam.
“Hey,” he finally said in amusement. “They’re good kids. They were trying to help.”
“They don’t understand.”
Okay, his relaxed pose was more pretense than reality. Tension coiled in his gut. “Do you?” he asked after a minute.
Molly gave him a quick glance. Her eyes weren’t soft; they stormed with emotion. “I suppose I do owe you an explanation.”
“I owe you one, too.”
The kettle let out a first squawk, and she occupied herself pouring two cups of tea. She added sugar then handed him his cup. Taking a saucer, he presumed for the tea bags, she led the way to the dining room table. He understood that she needed the formality of sitting across from each other instead of more comfortably on the sofa.
He sat and put down his cup. “Me first, I think.”
Molly bit her lip, then nodded. Head slightly bent, she seemed to be concentrating on the unnecessary act of stirring her tea.
“I was angry,” Richard said abruptly. “Mostly, I was hurt that you hadn’t talked to me. It doesn’t say anything good about me, but I think I wanted to hurt you.”
She still didn’t meet his eyes. “You did.”
He nodded. God. Maybe he’d been right, what he’d said to Trevor. Maybe there was no going back.
“I still don’t understand,” he said finally. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were thinking, Molly?”
She did look at him now, and there was such desperation in her eyes, Richard felt a lurch in his chest. He never wanted to see her so unhappy.
“I’ve thought about nothing else since,” she admitted. “First, you have to realize I wasn’t thinking about keeping the baby. Not until a couple days before I asked Cait. Not consciously, anyway.”
He nodded.
She took a deep breath, then told him how she’d been Christmas shopping and had found herself surrounded by baby clothes in a department store. “It was…excruciating,” she said softly. “I told you about the endometriosis.”
“Yes.”
“What I didn’t tell you is that I had to have a hysterectomy.”
Hell. He’d noticed the scar, thin and obviously not recent, and not asked about it. He guessed he’d vaguely thought she’d lost her appendix.
“There I was,” she continued, “not even twenty-five, and I could never have another baby. It hit me really hard.” Her gaze searched his, burrowed beneath his skin. “I mourned as if I’d had a late-term miscarriage. I hadn’t known how deep the assumption had been that I’d have more children.”
Richard couldn’t help himself. He reached across the table for her hand. She returned the clasp, he thought unconsciously.
“Eventually I told myself I’d moved past it. But I think now I hadn’t. I’d only buried the feelings. I told myself how ridiculous it was. I was lucky to have a wonderful daughter. I certainly didn’t want any more children with Colt by then. Cait was enough for me.”
“But she wasn’t.”
Molly frowned. “I don’t think it’s really that. It’s…something more primal. I don’t know how else to explain it. I wasn’t a woman anymore. My arms ached to hold a baby.” The ache was in her voice, too.
Richard tightened his hand.
“I found myself staring at other people’s babies. Even…” Shame colored her cheeks. “Once, I was shopping and saw this really tiny baby in a stroller. The mother had her back turned, talking to a sales clerk, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the baby. He was wearing a blue cap, so I knew he was a little boy. I wanted that baby.” Her mouth quirked and she met his gaze, uncertainty in hers. He could see what she was thinking. Have I horrified you? “I wasn’t quite crazy enough to consider stealing a baby, you understand. It was part of my mourning, I guess.”
“I wish you’d told me.” His voice came out hoarse.
“Told you what?” she asked, looking perplexed.
“All of this. How much impact the subject of babies had on you. That you’d had the hysterectomy. That another pregnancy wasn’t unlikely, it was impossible.” He wanted like he’d never wanted anything to be holding her, but knew it was too soon.
If it ever happened. If she could forgive him.
“What you must have felt when we discussed abortion as a possibility,” he concluded.
Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears. “I didn’t know you initially. And later, well, I thought I’d come to terms with all of it. I tried so hard not to influence Caitlyn too much.”
“It would have killed you if she’d had that abortion.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “The terrible thing is, I still think that might have been best for her. I know she’s carrying the baby to term because of me. Because she imagines I was heroic for not having an abortion when I got pregnant in college.”
“Look at me, Molly.” When she did, Richard said, “Trevor is standing beside Cait because of me. Because he thinks I was heroic for marrying his mother. For not demanding she have an abortion. Is that a bad thing? He’s acting like a decent human being because I did, or, at least, that’s how he sees it. It’s ironic that Cait’s pregnancy has been his salvation. He had to face responsibility and he grew up.”
“So… You’re saying it’s not so bad that Cait made the choice she did because of my influence.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Don’t feel guilty, Molly.”
Her fingers trembled in his. “Thank you.”
“I was wrong, the things I said.” He had to get this out, but she was already shaking her head.
“No. You were right. I was selfish.”
“No.”
“Yes. Listen to me. Please.” Her voice shook. She wrenched her hand free.
“All right,” he said, pitching his voice to be soothing. “I’m listening.”
“Keeping the baby may be the right thing. In fact—” her chin tilted “—I think it’s too late for me to tell Cait and Trevor that I can’t. Won’t.”
He nodded, but wasn’t sure she even saw. Her focus was inward.
“The thing is, I made the offer for the wrong reasons. Because I wanted—needed—this baby. Because I broke down looking at size newborn sleepers. I wasn’t being noble, or reasonable. It was all about me.” Finally, her frantic gaze connected with his. Her chest heaved. She had to be damn close to breaking down again.
As far as he was concerned, everything she’d said was nonsense. She’d been right; he’d been wrong. Keeping this baby—family—was best for all of them. But he didn’t put any of that into words yet.
Instead, he said, “That doesn’t explain why you didn’t say anything to me. Why you sprang it on me that way.”
“I was going to tell you. It didn’t occur to me that Trevor…” Her gaze slid away. “It should have, of course.”
“Why, Molly?” He wrapped his hand around the now-cool mug of tea. The fingers of his other hand flexed against his thigh.
“I made excuses.” She gave a self-deprecating smile that trembled. She seemed unconscious of the fact that she was now crying. Teardrops clung to her dark auburn eyelashes. “I convinced myself that there wasn’t any point in talking to you until I was sure what I wanted to do. But I’ve realized since that I knew you wouldn’t want the baby. I thought…I suppose I thought I could have my cake and eat it, too.” She made a face. “Horrible saying.” The tears now formed rivulets down her cheeks. She licked some off her lips but didn’t so much as lift a hand to swipe at them. “I didn’t know…well, what you meant when you said you loved me. Whether you were thinking about…about marriage or…”
“I was. Of course I was.” I am.
Molly nodded, looking hopeless. “I wanted you both. And I thought, I knew, if I talked to you, you’d say no. And then…and then I’d never have another baby. I would have lost this baby. Cait’s baby. And I’d be plunged back into mourning, and I didn’t know if I could help being so mad at you it would ruin everything.”
Somewhere in the middle of that speech, Richard had gone completely still. He’d have sworn even his heart quit beating as he absorbed the real meaning.
If he’d said, no, I love you, I want to marry you but I can’t start another family, she’d have let Cait’s baby go. Despite everything she’d told him, despite a need so primal even she admitted she didn’t understand it, she would have chosen him.
“God, I love you,” he said, shoving back his chair and rising to his feet.
Staring up at him in disbelief, her face tear-soaked, Molly stood, too. They reached for each other, stumbled into each other’s arms. She pressed her face against his neck, and he turned his mouth against her hair.
“How could you think…?” he mumbled. “I was an idiot, but I’m so damned in love with you, of course I would have listened! Of course I would have.”
“I didn’t think…” She wept.
“I love you.” He kept saying it, and finally she did, too. He rocked her and felt tears burn his own eyes. His down vest might need to go to the dry cleaners when she was done with it, but he’d never felt happiness so painful as he did when she sobbed out her fear against him, while she held on to him as tightly as she could.
It was a long time before her body began to relax against his. She hiccuped and laughed and snuffled and hiccuped again and finally mumbled, “I think I’d better do some cleanup.” Hic.
“Maybe I should scare you,” he murmured in her ear, and she giggled.
Another hiccup.
She stepped back. “You won’t leave?”
The simple fear in the words caused another spasm beneath his breastbone. He shook his head, and she fled.
By the time she came back, face scrubbed clean but pink and blotchy, eyes puffy and shy, hiccups apparently vanquished, he’d dumped out their untouched tea, dropped the bags in the trash can beneath the sink, rinsed the cups and put them in the dishwasher.
She hovered at the entrance to the kitchen, so much doubt in her expression he went swiftly to her and gripped her hands. “Now what are you worried about?”
“I trapped you into something you don’t want.”
Richard half laughed and shook his head. “Oh, sweetheart. I have a confession to make, too.”
“What?”
“You know I was panicked about the baby thing from the beginning.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Weren’t we all.”
Well, yeah. That was safe to say. His panic might have been the least of all theirs. Cait and Trevor had both been flat-out terrified.
“Can we go sit down?” he asked.
Molly agreed, and this time he led her to the living room and their more familiar seats on the sofa. He chose the corner, let her take the middle cushion. She curled one leg beneath herself and looked at him, waiting.
He took her hand, because he had to be touching her. “There was the déjà vu factor. An unplanned pregnancy ruined my life, or so I’d always told myself. Now it was going to ruin Trevor’s, too.”
She nodded. Of all people, she understood that.
“I’ve always waged an internal war. How could I think my life was ruined when that pregnancy, my marriage, our decision to have a second child, also gave me the two people I loved most in the world?”
Deep thought always crinkled her forehead and pursed her lips. “You loved them too much to regret what happened and the choices you made.”
“That’s what I told myself. But I also think…” He took a deep breath. This was the hard part. “Maybe on some level, I decided love was what had ruined my life. I hadn’t been able to follow my dreams. I would have been able to if I didn’t love my children so much.”
Molly’s lashes fluttered. “That sort of makes sense.”
Richard laughed. “Sort of about covers it.” The burst of humor died. “None of this was conscious, you understand.”
“But it kept you from letting yourself love anyone else.”
“As it happened, the issue never arose.” He gave a half smile. “Until you. Falling for you didn’t trip the switch, either. No, it was any thought at all about the baby that did it. That baby could not become real to me.” He made sure she heard how deadly serious he was. “Because if it did, if I loved that kid, I was screwed. I didn’t know how or why, only that I couldn’t, didn’t dare.”
“Oh, Richard.” She leaned against him. “My turn. Don’t feel guilty. We can’t be responsible for our subterranean emotions. How can we be? You can’t reason with what you don’t know you’re feeling.”
“Easy excuse.”
“But true.”
“There’s more,” he admitted. “This part was more conscious, although it took me a while to get at it. It was fear. I loved Trevor and Brianna, and they were snatched away from me. I didn’t want to hurt like that again.”
She touched his cheek, her hand cupped and gentle. “We were all afraid of loving this baby and having to say goodbye.”
“But you had the guts to realize we didn’t have to.”
Molly pulled back, her eyes searching his, her expression troubled. “Richard…starting all over when the kids we have are almost college-age isn’t going to be easy. I truly can’t blame you if you don’t want to do it. I meant it when I said I don’t want to trap you. You’re feeling obligated now. But we won’t be happy if this isn’t what you wanted at all.”
Swallowing didn’t seem to reduce the huge lump in his throat. Richard bent forward and pressed his forehead against hers. He breathed in the scent of soap, salty tears and Molly. “I do want it. You, the baby, everything. Please, Molly. I want it all,” he managed to whisper.
Her body shook. Not, he saw when he lifted his head, with new tears. With hope, maybe. He needed to think that’s what it was.
“Molly, even if I had doubts about starting with a newborn, I still wouldn’t hesitate. This is something you need. Something that will make you happy, and me?” His voice was stripped to pure intensity. “What I need is for you to be happy.”
Her wobbly smile felt to him like the sun coming up, bright and warm. “Do you know what I’ve always told Cait?”
Richard shook his head.
“By the time she turned thirteen, she was rolling her eyes every time I said it. But the last time, she cried.”
Damn. He was about ready to cry.
“I always told her that I loved her no matter what. If she failed at something, if she was a brat, if she was mean to me....”
“If she got pregnant,” he realized.
She sniffed and nodded. “I kept saying, ‘I love you....’”
“No matter what.” His heart didn’t quite fit in there where it belonged anymore, but that was okay with him. Uncomfortable, but…good, too. “That’s how I love you, Molly Callahan. Will you marry me?”
The smile spread, became glorious. “Yes, I will.”
* * *
“GOD, MOM’S GOING TO kill me,” Cait said dismally.
She sat next to Trevor’s bed, her back to it. Lounging on his side on the bed, head propped up on his hand, he could only see her face in profile.
Trevor looked at his phone. “It’s midnight.”
“She is so going to kill me.”
“She won’t. She wants your baby.”
Cait turned on him like a tigress. “Don’t say that! Mom’s not like that. Take it back!”
“Okay, okay.” Holding his hands up, he rolled off the bed to his feet. “Look, Dad’s not home yet. Which probably means he’s still at your house.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Waiting for us.”
“Yeah. I think I should take you home.”
She heaved a sigh. “Oh, fine.” She rose to her feet with the grace all her physical movements had.
For the first time, though, Trevor noticed some rounding in front. Not that much, but it was there. A sort of shiver passed through him as he stared.
Our baby.
Cait saw where he was looking. “I’m getting fat.”
“No. You’re… Wow.”
“I’m pregnant.” She screwed her face up. “By the time I go back after Christmas break, everyone will be able to tell.”
Like they didn’t already know? But there was a distinction, he understood. The unseen could be ignored; the visible couldn’t.
He only nodded and took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze before he let go. “Let’s go.”
The drive was too short. Cait huddled in the passenger seat like he was taking her to her doom. He felt a little shaky about facing their parents, too. They were going to be majorly pissed. Maybe this whole thing hadn’t been such a good idea. He wanted to be indignant, because it hadn’t been his idea, after all, but couldn’t. He’d gone along with it, hadn’t he? He’d ordered the flowers, written the note.
Dad’s pickup was in front. Trevor parked behind it and looked at the house. He and Dad hadn’t gotten a tree yet, but Ms. Callahan and Cait had set theirs up in the front window, and strung outside lights, too. They were on now, weirdly cheerful.
When he and Cait got out and slammed their doors, it sounded way loud, like gunfire. Trevor cringed. They met on the sidewalk, met each other’s eyes and turned in concert to face the music. Whatever that meant. Why would the music be so bad? Sappy Christmas carols, that’s why, he decided, thinking about the crap that was playing everywhere right now.
On the doorstep, Cait got as far as putting her hand on the doorknob before she hesitated, gulped—and finally opened the door. “Mom?”
“In the living room.”
At the first sight of their parents, Trevor’s anxiety morphed into stomach-clenching dread. Ms. Callahan sat on the sofa, while Dad stood on the far side of the room with his back to the fireplace, his arms crossed. Both looked at Trevor and Cait with these totally expressionless faces. Stern. God, Trevor thought. Had Dad paced the living room all evening? Had they talked at all?
“Nice flower arrangement,” Dad said.
Trevor swallowed. “Um, yeah.”
“I understand you forged my handwriting.”
“Um,” he said again. He shuffled his feet and looked down at them. “It wasn’t that hard. My handwriting’s not that different.”
“Good to know, before you decide to write yourself a check from my bank account.”
Oh, shit. Dad was really pissed.
“I suppose I should offer to pay for the flowers,” he said, and Trevor found the guts to look up. His father was grinning at him.
“Man! You were stringing us along,” Trevor accused.
Ms. Callahan laughed. “It was irresistible.”
“So, you’re not mad?” Cait asked in a small voice.
“I’m not mad.” Her mother held out her arms. “Come here, brat.”
Cait rounded the end of the sofa and half fell on her mom. Not graceful. “You always say…”
“No matter what. I know.” Weird that she was looking at Dad now, and they both had dippy smiles.
Trevor’s eyes narrowed as he studied them. Then he turned to his father. “You said you were sorry.”
“I did.”
“And…did you…?”
“I did.”
Cait lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder. “You did what?”
Well, duh. But Dad said, “I asked your mother to marry me.”
She tilted her head back and stared into her mom’s face. “And you said yes?”
“I said yes.” She hugged Cait exuberantly. “And no complaining allowed. You were asking for it.”
Trevor exclaimed, “Yes!” and pumped his fist. Dad held up a hand and they exchanged high-fives before Dad drew Trevor into a huge, back-pounding, guy-version of a hug.
“Guess what, kids. We’re family now,” Ms. Callahan said. No, Molly said. Trevor guessed he had to get used to thinking of her that way.
There was one shadow of worry in Cait’s eyes. “The baby?”
“Family, too,” Dad told her. He was smiling, a half quirk of his mouth. “A gift, Caitlyn.” He said it quietly, in a way that brought a lump to Trevor’s throat.
Cait lit up. String of Christmas lights bright. “Cool,” she declared. “This is so, utterly cool.”
“Of course, you are two hours past your curfew,” Molly remarked thoughtfully, then cackled. Totally evil, and kind of funny.
Cait pummeled her, and next thing Trevor knew Dad was sitting on the coffee table holding Molly’s hand, and Trevor had sprawled on the sofa beside Cait.
He had this strange sensation, sort of out-of-body. Not looking down on them all, but more…seeing past and present and future, and knowing that as much as he loved his mother, he’d never felt as if either of his stepdads were family, not the way this felt. Somehow he knew that, from now on, this was home.
Dad and Molly, Cait and him and their new baby sister or brother. Maybe Bree sometimes—she’d be here next week.
He took a breath, and saw Christmas Day this year and next and next, and he met Cait’s eyes and knew she saw the same picture and she was right. Utterly cool.
* * * * *