Who needed that in their life?
Carefully I took a step toward Cocoa, and when she didn’t move, I began to stroke her in time with Mandy.
“What brings you here on a holiday?” she asked. “I haven’t told anyone about Nibs yet.”
“No, I just came to visit them. I had a couple of things I wanted to think over and I thought this might be a nice place to do it.”
Mandy nodded. “So the doctor’s visit didn’t go well?”
I sighed. “Not exactly.”
“But they can’t tell you anything until they run the tests. So now you wait and wonder, right?”
I nodded. “How’d you know?”
She offered me a small, sad smile. “Because I’ve been there.”
“You…?” I asked and she nodded.
“A year after I got married, we decided we wanted to start a family, but…” She shrugged. “Well, things didn’t happen like we thought they would. It took us seven years and several miscarriages to conceive. It was awful at the time, obviously. I felt like I’d let my husband down.”
“I’m so sorry, Mandy. I can’t believe you never told me,” I said.
She shrugged. “It was a hard string of years, but it all worked out for us in the end.”
I took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Mason just wants a baby so damn bad.”
“Is that what he said when you told him?”
“No.” I didn’t meet her eyes, because deep down, I knew I was just using my questionable fertility to wall myself off from something that terrified me. Love. A future. “I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want to see his expression. Don’t want his pity.”
“What about the sympathy?” Mandy asked.
“Is there a difference?”
“Only one way to find out,” Mandy said, then led Cocoa onto my lap and dusted herself off. “Look, I’ve got to get going. Make sure you lock up when you leave, all right?”
I nodded, watching her go, but then she turned around again and said, “You can’t live your life in fear, kid.”
“What if it’s the only thing distracting me from how my heart is breaking?” I asked, and her eyes turned soft.
“Sometimes, you have to let it break. That’s the only way it’s going to heal. Like a hangnail. Rip it off and let the skin grow back.”
I laughed, a hollow sound. “That’s a terrible metaphor.”
“They don’t pay me to be a wordsmith.” She backed out of the enclosure, and I stared down at the cheetah in my lap for another long moment, stroking her fur as she mewled sadly.
First I’d lost my father. Now I might have lost the chance to become a mother myself—the chance to ever have a family of my own that would be full and happy and complete.
The impulse to languish and dissolve into my predicament, just like my mother had done, was strong, almost overwhelming. But then, my mother had allowed herself to dive into her grief, and what had it done for her? Even now, years later, she was letting life drift past her, unlived.
Grieving was a process, not a life sentence and, no matter what the doctor said, I was going to have to face the facts of my father’s death and my own ability to be a mother.
But I didn’t have to do it alone.
Not for the first time, I thought of Mason that day in the sand, my hand in his as he asked me to be his wife. He’d booked a trip just for me. He’d gone out of his way over and over again for my sake.
And what had I done for him? Nothing. I hadn’t even done him the courtesy of letting him know how I felt.
That was something I could change, though.
And for the first time in my life? I wanted to talk about it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mason
This was it. The end of the line.
After everything we’d been through—all the ways I’d thought fate had led her to me—Bren had walked away like I’d been nothing to her. Slowly, like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, I walked back into my office and asked my assistant to hold my calls until further notice.
Then, when I was sure I was completely and totally alone, I slid open the top drawer of my desk and pulled out the ring box I’d gotten just this morning. Inside, the diamond solitaire sparkled up at me and I studied the intricate silver filigree of the band, all while trying my hardest not to toss the damn thing across the room. My stomach cramped and I let out a snarl.
How could I have been so stupid?
She’d given me every indication she wasn’t ready, throwing up flags in every shade of red on the color wheel. And I’d chosen to ignore them all. Gritting my teeth, I shoved the ring back in my desk and stalked toward the door. I couldn’t see patients today, not like this, and there was only one place I knew I could go to calm down.
“Cancel my appointments. I’m not feeling well today,” I said to my assistant, then headed out the door and toward my car without looking a single person in the eye.
Revving the engine, I pulled onto the interstate, following the familiar highway exits until I pulled up in front of the brick building I knew so well. The trees in front of the place swayed in the wind, and I glanced at them briefly. Then I made my way to the door and used the knocker.
First once, then again, I raised the heavy gold handle and let it drop, waiting to hear footfalls on the other side of the door. On the third try, I finally heard the light pitter-patter of someone’s feet on the wood floor, so I took a step back and waited for my mother to open the door.
When she did, there was no way I could hold back a moment longer.
“I have to talk to you.”
She led me inside, and before she’d even begun to pour the coffee I was admitting to the entire sordid tale. The way I’d looked for Bren after our one-night stand, the imagined pregnancy, the trip I’d planned. Even things most men might not admit to their mothers, I told her, if only so that she might unearth some small detail I’d overlooked so I could make things right.
“Wow, this girl really seems like something,” my mother said when I was finally finished.
“She’s not just something—she’s everything.”
Mom smiled sadly. “That was a lot for one person to take in in one sitting. I didn’t know I was almost a grandma, after all.”
I nodded. “I just don’t understand why she’d make an appointment with Marlene Thomas instead of me and then not tell me about it.”
My mother raised her eyebrows. “That’s the part you can’t figure out?”
“Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “Is there something else?”
“Are you serious?” She took a long sip of her coffee, surveying me over the top of her mug. “Sometimes you really are your father’s son, you know that?”
“I’m guessing that’s not a compliment given the impending divorce, huh?”
My mother smiled. “Your father is kind and smart and funny in all the best ways. But when it comes to women…well, frankly, when he told me what he did for a living, I couldn’t believe it.”