The Cliff House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Turn it up,” Shane said.

  Bea fumbled with the remote and everyone went quiet as they watched the spot that showed several families playing together, laughing together, enjoying the end-of-summer picnic while statistics about the grim foster care situation flashed across the screen. The increasing numbers of children who needed placements and the decreasing numbers of families stepping up to provide them. Finally, Stella came on screen talking about Open Hearts and their goal and mission.

  The bit ended with more shots of the families together—a father watching the baseball game while cradling a sleeping toddler, a mother leaning down to push a joy-filled child on the swings, a couple of teenage girls, arm in arm as they laughed in the sunlight.

  It was emotional and compelling and so much better than it had looked on her small computer screen at school.

  “He is so good,” Bea breathed.

  “Get ready for the donations to start pouring in,” Daisy said. Her tone might be prosaic but Stella saw rare emotions brimming in her eyes.

  “You looked great, Aunt Stella,” Mari said. “I couldn’t even tell that you were sick that day.”

  “She’s right. Great job.” Ed’s smile was filled with pride and love, and she wanted to soak it in.

  “Thank you, everyone. Not just for coming to watch and support us but for everything you have done over the past five years since we started Open Hearts. I don’t know what I would have done without you all.”

  The tears that always seemed close to the surface right now started to spill over and she knew she had to get away to compose herself. As she rose, the ache in her back and the hard, painful cramps stole her breath.

  “There are refreshments. Enjoy. Excuse me, won’t you?”

  She hurried from the room. Just as she reached the hallway, the ache turned into a stabbing pain and she felt a warm gush between her legs.

  Please no. Please no. Please no.

  The words bubbled out of her, a mantra, a prayer, a plea, as she stumbled to the guest bathroom next to the media room.

  She couldn’t lose this baby. Not after she had tried so very hard to get pregnant.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  * * *

  “Stella?” Ed’s voice sounded outside the bathroom door five minutes later.

  She should probably open it, but she couldn’t make herself move. She couldn’t answer. Could barely even breathe. She was frozen. Numb. Everything inside her ached.

  “Stella,” he called with more urgency in his voice.

  She was going to have to say something, do something, or he was going to break down the door. Bea wouldn’t like that sort of damage to her lovely guest bathroom.

  She was fairly certain she would never be able to walk into this bathroom again. Maybe not even the whole house.

  “Are you okay?”

  She was not okay. She wasn’t going to be okay ever again. She sobbed, a harsh, guttural sound that seemed to well up somewhere deep inside her. All her dreams, all her hopes, everything she had worked and fought and prayed for over the past year was gone in a moment.

  She didn’t have absolute proof she had lost the baby, only a large amount of blood, but somehow she knew.

  She could hear a flurry of sound outside the door but she couldn’t seem to summon the energy to care. Her grief was too huge, too overwhelming.

  Bea and Daisy both came through the door a moment later. She wasn’t sure how they did it. Bea must know the secret to unlocking it. This was her house, after all. Bea, in particular, had never been good at accepting locked doors or cabinets or drawers.

  “Aunt Stella? Are you all right?” Daisy was the first to speak, her voice hesitant. “Dr. Clayton said he knocked and you wouldn’t answer. He’s... We’re all worried about you.”

  She couldn’t answer them. If she spoke, she would start sobbing, and once she started, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop.

  “Is it...is it the baby?” Bea asked.

  She nodded slightly, the tiny movement followed by a sob she couldn’t contain.

  At the sound, Ed pushed his way in, past the girls. “You’re bleeding. Oh, babe.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and the grim finality in his voice confirmed just what she suspected. He was an OB-GYN. He would know the signs of a miscarriage better than anyone else.

  “I think I’m losing the baby.”

  She couldn’t hold back the sobs then, wrenching, heartbroken sobs that came from the very depths of her soul.

  29

  DAISY

  She wasn’t sure she had ever been so very heartsick.

  After spending the evening in the waiting room of Ed and Jo Chen’s offices until after midnight, where the doctors had confirmed there was no longer a heartbeat and Stella had indeed lost the baby, Ed had taken Stella home and Daisy had run home only long enough to grab Louie and take him back to Three Oaks.

  She and the dog had slept curled up together on the sofa outside Stella’s bedroom. She was unwilling to leave her aunt alone. She had wanted to sleep on the floor beside her bed, as she and Bea had done in those first days and weeks after Stella had found them and adopted them, but her aunt wouldn’t hear of it.

  Stella was in a strange place, a place where Daisy wasn’t sure she would be able to reach her.

  After that first initial burst of despair, her aunt had been brisk and almost detached as Ed ushered her out to his car and drove her to the clinic, where Dr. Chen met them. She hadn’t wanted them back in the exam room with her. Ed could stay, Stella said.

  Apparently, the two of them were a thing now. Under other circumstances, Bea would be happy to know her suspicions were confirmed, though Daisy had a feeling none of them would be able to find much to be happy about for a while.

  Stella had wanted this baby so much. If ever there was a woman who deserved her wish of having a healthy child, Daisy would put her aunt at the top of the list.

  It broke her heart that Stella had to go through losing this child, after she’d tried hard to become pregnant.

  She opened her aunt’s door carefully without knocking. It was almost noon but every time she had peeked in previously, Stella had been sound asleep... Or at least pretending to be. Now, in the small sliver of light filtering in through the closed blinds, she could see her aunt’s eyes were open. She was lying in her bed, gazing at nothing.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” Daisy asked carefully. “Some toast or a banana or something?”

  “No. I’m all right. You really don’t need to stay with me.”

  “I’m here, along with Louie. I’ve got a briefcase full of work and my laptop. We are here for the duration.”

  “The duration of what?” Stella’s voice was hard, flat. Daisy didn’t have an answer for her. How could she say until your heart begins to heal? For all she knew, Stella’s heart would never heal.

  She left for a moment and returned with a tray. “I’ve brought you some juice and crackers. They’re your favorite kind, the buttery ones.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You have to drink something, at least. Dr. Clayton says you need a lot of fluids.”

  “I don’t need fluids. I don’t need anything.”

  Daisy didn’t know how to respond to this shadowy, withdrawn version of her aunt, who was usually so energetic and vibrant.

  This listless, broken woman was completely out of her experience.

  “You’re being irrational,” she said, trying for a stern voice when all she wanted to do was gather her aunt in her arms and weep with her. “You know you need fluids to live. Come on, Stella. Drink some juice.”

  After a moment her aunt reached for the juice glass and sipped it with an air of almost defiance before she set it down on the tray. “There. I drank. You can report back to Dr. Clayt
on that I did what I was told, like a good girl. I’m tired now. I need to rest.”

  She’d been sleeping all morning—or at least pretending to. Daisy didn’t know what else to do but leave her to it.

  She was doing a load of Stella’s laundry when Bea showed up.

  “How is she?”

  “Shattered,” Daisy said. “She’s heartbroken and a little numb, I think. She’s slept most of the morning.

  She didn’t know what to do for her aunt and she hated this helpless feeling, knowing someone she loved was hurting over something Daisy was unable to fix.

  Bea’s eyes were red-rimmed and sad. “Poor thing. Has Ed been by today?”

  Daisy nodded. “He stopped first thing before going into the clinic. She was asleep and wouldn’t open her eyes, even when he came into her room.”

  She had a feeling Stella had known he was there but she hadn’t acknowledged him. Was it because she didn’t want to share her grief with him?

  “I’m here now,” Bea said. “I can be here all day, until Mari gets home, if you would like to trade off. I’m sure you have things to do in the office.”

  Only a few hundred of them, but right now her aunt needed her.

  “I’ll stay. It might comfort her to have both of us here.”

  She wasn’t sure if it did or not, since Stella barely reacted to either of them. She and Bea sat outside their aunt’s room, mostly in silence. Bea brought a sketchbook and set of charcoals and was drawing various things around the room. Daisy’s fingers itched to do the same but she tried to focus on work until lunchtime, when she and Bea worked together to make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, the comfort food of their childhood.

  “Why do you think she wants to have a baby so much?” Daisy asked while she ladled soup into three bowls. “It’s not as if she doesn’t have children in her life already. She has fostered dozens of kids in need, plus she teaches school all day. Two hundred different kids every semester. I would think she’d have her fill.”

  Bea gave her a somewhat pitying look. “It’s not the same as when you hold your own baby in your arms. You’ll do anything for them. Fight any battle, slay any dragons, vanquish any monsters.”

  “Get back together with your ex-husband because you think it might be in your child’s best interest?”

  Bea stared. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done that.”

  “You’re considering it, though, aren’t you?”

  “I... No.”

  Bea’s hesitation was its own answer. She really hoped her sister wasn’t that foolish. Cruz Romero had been a terrible husband, and Daisy knew the years since the divorce wouldn’t have changed that.

  “Don’t do it, BeaBea,” she said softly. The childhood nickname made her sister blink.

  “We’re not talking about me,” she said stiffly. “We’re talking about Stella. Do you think she’ll try again?”

  Daisy had been wondering that very thing all morning. Now she shook her head. “I think she had poured everything into this pregnancy. I’m not sure she’ll want to open herself up to that kind of pain again.”

  “She has to be devastated,” Bea said softly.

  Louie, who had been sweet as could be all day, started whining suddenly. “He needs to go out. We both could use some air. Do you mind if I take him for a walk?”

  “Good idea. You really don’t have to stay. I’m not going anywhere, except to go pick up Mari after school.”

  “We’ll walk around the neighborhood a little bit. If she wakes up, try to get her to eat and push fluids. Dr. Clayton said she needs plenty.”

  Bea nodded and returned to her sketchbook. Daisy hooked the leash on Louie and the two of them headed outside.

  Stella’s house was a few blocks from the ocean and her steps inevitably led to the beach. It was an incongruously beautiful day for all the personal sorrow consuming her family, with high, patchy clouds drifting across the cornflower-blue sky. She could not replicate that exact color in her artwork, no matter how hard she tried. Nothing was ever quite like the pure beauty of a sunny California afternoon.

  Louie was happy to be out of the house and toddled along, sniffing at every rock or piece of driftwood along the beach.

  She loved this little dog. In a few short weeks he had become so much a part of her life, she couldn’t remember a time before him.

  She felt the same way about Gabe.

  Had he left town permanently? She couldn’t blame him. She had been so cruel to him the last time she saw him, out on her terrace. She cringed when she thought of how self-protective and suspicious she had been.

  She hated that about herself. She wanted to be generous and open and loving, like Bea, but she didn’t know how to start.

  After half an hour Louie started acting tired, so she headed back toward Three Oaks. They had just turned onto Stella’s street when her phone rang.

  She looked at the caller ID and her heart started racing. Gabe. Almost as if he knew she had been thinking about him.

  “Hi,” she answered, somewhat breathlessly. “I thought you were out of town.”

  “I’m coming back early.” There was a note in his voice, something strange and ominous. “I have...news.”

  Something in his tone filled her with dread and she suddenly didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She wanted to hang up the phone without even saying goodbye.

  What more could go wrong in this horrible week?

  She wasn’t sure she could take any more stress right now. But she had learned a long time ago from hard experience that she couldn’t bury her head in the sand simply because she didn’t want to hear bad news. It always found you anyway. Far better to be prepared when it did.

  “What is it?”

  “I think I’d better come tell you in person. Are you at home? I can come by. I’m driving now and should be there in a few hours.”

  “I’m at Stella’s. She lost the baby last night.”

  There was a long pause and then Gabe swore. “I’m sorry. So sorry. How is she?”

  “Heartbroken. Probably about what you would expect. She wanted the baby very much.”

  “I’m so very sorry,” he said again. “It’s a bad time for this. I wish my news could wait but I’m afraid it can’t. Should I come there?”

  Daisy felt so wrung out, she wasn’t sure she could face seeing him today, especially not after the way things had ended between them.

  “Stella isn’t really in the mood for visitors. She doesn’t want anyone here, not even Bea or me, but we’re sticking around anyway. Whatever you have to tell me, you should probably just do it over the phone.”

  He was silent for a long time, so long she almost thought she had lost the connection until she heard his sigh. “It’s about Louie. Or I guess I should call him Blue. That’s his real name, which he must have thought sounded close enough to Louie. I got a call an hour ago from his family. The Johnsons. Joe and Emily. They’ve been looking for him and want to come pick him up tomorrow.”

  She sat down on the steps of Stella’s porch, shock and dismay crashing over her. Louie came over to her and licked her hand and she felt as if tiny cracks were spreading across her heart.

  “Now? After all this time? It’s been weeks!”

  “Yes. They live in Redding. How Louie or Blue ended up all the way out here, I have no idea. The owners apparently have been in Europe on an extended trip for the past six weeks and he’s been in the care of a house sitter, who dropped the ball. He ran away and she never told the family until they returned from their trip.”

  She couldn’t believe it. It was impossible! She pulled the little dog into her lap and clutched him close, wishing she could tuck him under her shirt and hide him away.

  “How can you know for sure Louie is the dog they lost? They could just be saying that, like
the other people who have called. It makes no sense that he could get from Redding to here on his own.”

  “I had my own doubts that it was the same dog but they emailed me pictures, a whole album of them, with a dog who looks exactly like him. Same color fur, same white patch on his chest, same little nick out of his ear, which they told me came when he was attacked by a much larger dog while he was trying to protect their daughter when he was just a puppy.”

  Of course he would do that. Because Louie was the most amazing dog in the world.

  “It can’t be him.” She wanted to cry. It was ridiculous, she knew. Stella had lost a baby, and here Daisy was, wanting to weep over a dog she had only been fostering for a few weeks.

  “The house sitter says he ran away three weeks ago. I wonder if someone picked him up, intending to keep or resell him, since French bulldogs can be valuable, and he somehow escaped from them and ended up on that cliffside. It doesn’t really matter how he got here. The point is, this is his family and they have been distraught that he’s gone.”

  How could they be distraught? They left him for six weeks with a stranger! Louie wriggled to get down. She let him but held tight to his leash. She didn’t want him to get away.

  “They’ve been searching for him since they returned and found him missing. They called every shelter within a hundred miles and finally reached the one we called in Weaverville.”

  They couldn’t have him. They hadn’t taken the right care of him, hadn’t found a responsible person to watch over him. As far as Daisy was concerned, they had relinquished all rights to care for him. She wanted to say so. The words crowded in her throat, tumbling over themselves to come out.

  She couldn’t. She looked at the little dog, happily sniffing the flowers in Stella’s garden. Her heart ached. She couldn’t do it. How could she just turn him over to strangers? He had become so dear to her over the past few weeks.

  “When...?” She had to clear her throat before she could go on. “When are they coming?”