Ghost in His Eyes

by Carrie Aarons

  “So Blake, Carson tells me you’re doing some graphic work for the company?” Mickey asks and then puts a piece of steak in his mouth.

  I nod, taking a sip of wine. “I am, it’s very fulfilling. I love the horses, so it’s great to be able to work with them and for them.”

  “I’d love to see some of your work, I love those graphics you made up for the Blue Lagoon restaurant.” Jaclyn smiles at me like a proud mama bear.

  My skin prickles, and I can’t sit here for one more minute feeling like another shoe is about to drop. My social skills and anxiety aren’t equipped for polite, fake conversations.

  “I’m sorry … can we … this feels awkward.” I take a relieved breath because the elephant is finally acknowledged.

  “Oh good, someone said it.” Mickey put his silverware down.

  Carson clears his throat. “Uh, babe …”

  “No, she’s right, son. There is some big tensions sitting in the middle of this table and it needs to be talked about.” His dad pats his hand.

  I take a deep breath, because I need to say my part. “I want to apologize first and foremost. For a lot of years, I held a lot of anger and pain towards your son. After my brother died, I was the one who banished him from our home, the reason why he left. I feel responsible for that. I feel responsible for a lot of things. But … we have been trying to move past that. And I hope … I hope you can forgive me for that. I hope that we can be as close as we once were, because … well, I love Carson.

  When I look up, Jaclyn’s eyes are teary. “No, honey. Don’t apologize. Please. We are the ones who should be apologizing. I have felt guilty every day of the last ten years. We were the adults, we should have patched things up. I should have insisted Carson come home, made him speak to you. In any case, I should have never left you alone. I should have pushed, I should have tried to remain in your life. You were like a daughter to me, and I abandoned you. I feel guilty every day for that.”

  She blots her eyes with a napkin, and realization blooms in my chest. I had no idea she felt this way.

  “Neither of you are guilty. You are human. Life happens, and so does regret. But dwelling on it will do nothing, and I want us to use this time to heal and get to know one and other again. Not that I thought it would happen this soon.” Carson smiles at me. “But I’m glad you’re finding a voice, babe.”

  There are a few sniffles between Jaclyn and I as we regroup.

  I look around the table. “I’d like that. Truly.”

  “As would I.” She reaches for my hand.

  “Good, now can I go back to my steak. It looks much more appetizing without the elephant sitting in the corner of the room.” Mickey digs back into his plate.

  Carson laughs. “You always did know just the right thing to say, Dad.”

  31

  Blake

  Sometime around mid-December, I’d started to feel odd. Not sick per se, but different in my own body.

  My skin felt tighter, my stomach was upset, headaches came on swiftly and passed with just as little time. These were weird sensations, ones I hadn’t felt before. But they came infrequently, and I chalked it up to the cold or the seasons changing. I was, after all, a summer girl at heart and the winters had always been rough on me.

  The bell rang over the door of the Chinese restaurant in Corolla, basically the only one on the whole north side of the Outer Banks. It was empty for a Thursday in December, but the owner was as cheery as usual.

  “Shrimp and broccoli with a side of lo mein, yes?” She always knew me by my order.

  I nodded. “That’s right, thank you!”

  Ringing up my total and then taking my card, she set the takeout bag on the counter for me to take after signing the receipt. After setting the pen down, a gust of wind blew at me when another customer opened the door.

  My jacket bustled open, the cold air hitting my stomach.

  “Oh my gosh, you expecting baby?” Her lilted accent stunned my ears.

  “What? No! Oh I think it was just the air, no, I’m not expecting a baby.” I laughed it off, but thought to myself that maybe I had gained weight or something.

  “Oh okay, maybe soon!” She winked at me like she knew my intentions.

  I felt like telling her that was so not the case, but I didn’t have the heart. Taking my food, I walked to the car and drove towards home. Except … as I kept driving, her words nagged at me. Pregnant. Well, I had been feeling weird. And I was having sex for the first time in years, which was a bittersweet thought. And we hadn’t been using condoms, the times we’d come together were always too filled with passion and love that we didn’t bother to stop for protection.

  I wasn’t a dumb woman, I knew that it only took one time.

  I was nearing the beach highway to Carova, and a sudden impulse took control of my body. Swiftly, and without measuring where the car was, I took a sharp turn into the Harris Teeter parking lot.

  The same grocery store that I’d first seen Carson in only months ago.

  My feet seemed to carry me without restraint, and I was a woman on a mission. Searching the shelves I grabbed four pregnancy tests, the digital kind, and hid them under my coat as I made my way to the register. I knew way too many people in this town for rumors to start buzzing.

  Opting for the self-checkout, I rang myself up and threw the tests into a plastic bag faster than the speed of light. I strode quickly out like I was a thief and the police were on my heels.

  I could barely exercise calm breathing as I parked my Jeep and ran into the house. My nerves were shot, and my emotions were swinging from extreme to extreme. Rhett licked at my boots as I dashed into the first floor bathroom.

  “Calm down, calm down.” I looked at myself in the mirror, and a younger face from decades ago stared back at me. I remembered telling myself the same thing hours before I was about to lose my virginity.

  The directions blurred in front of my eyes, but I got the gist as I peed on the sticks, lining them up on the counter. It was a little cruel to have to wait three minutes to learn my fate, and Rhett cried at me from outside the bathroom door.

  My pulse hammered as I considered all of the possibilities. As life flashed before my eyes, of everything that had been and everything that could be.

  Squeezing my lids shut, starry patterns formed in front of my irises as I waited another minute. I had to open them, I knew the answer was there, but for just one more minute I needed to live in blissful ignorance.

  And there, staring at me when I opened them, was a plus sign and the word yes.

  My heart dropped and I clutched my mouth.

  I was … pregnant.

  Laughter bubbled up inside of me, spilling out of my mouth in long uncontrollable fits. I doubled over, putting my hand over my stomach as if I could feel anything now.

  Despite my earlier worries and doubts, the only thing that pulsed through me when I saw that positive test was pure happiness. I opened the door and Rhett came bounding at me, and I caught him in a hug. How ironic that the woman at the Chinese restaurant would say, almost as if she knew? I would have to check the back of her store for a crystal ball or something.

  “I can’t believe it,” I whispered to him like he understood.

  After all of the heartache and sadness, there was a shining light of hope trying to burst from me. Emotion drenched me, making me feel all of life’s experiences at once.

  I wondered what Carson would say, if he would be as happy as I was. Since he’d come back, I’d learned to live once again. He’d given me back a piece of myself that was essential to finally moving on from the past. And now he’d given me this. Even if he wasn’t ready, I found deep within myself, that I was. If I was being true to myself, bringing another life into this world, a life that had come from me, was what I had been searching for, for a long time. The fact that it was half Carson’s was just … a miracle.

  And so if he was upset, or couldn’t handle this … yes, it would be crushing. But I could survive it
. Because now, I had a life to live for that was something other than my own.

  32

  Carson

  With holiday season in full swing, the office kind of shut down.

  It was our slowest time of the year, and I wanted to let everyone work remotely from back home with their families. Our company wasn’t just a business, we really looked at our employees like they were our brothers and sisters. I wasn’t going to be the type of boss who made people stay until five o’clock on Christmas Eve.

  But down time also meant busy time for me. For two weeks, I’d been up and down the East Coast, attending seminars and visiting with other leading horse researchers to get some insight for our company and the practices that we put into place.

  Which meant that since before Thanksgiving, I’d only seen Blake maybe three times. She’d spent Thanksgiving in Texas with Carolyn and her family, and I’d called her that night to tell her all the ways I was thankful for her.

  When we were together, those visits had been spent in bed, working out all of our passion and missing each other. I’d stayed awake long after she’d gone to sleep, scratching her back as the moonlight painted white streaks in her light hair.

  I missed her so much, and the phone calls and text messages hadn’t been enough. So as my car rolled back into town, I didn’t even bother stopping at my rental house. Nope, I headed straight for the beach highway, straight for the woman I loved.

  The tires on my car were probably still rolling when I jumped out and bounded up the steps, running for Blake. Before I even got to the top step, the door was thrown open and there she stood.

  Blue eyes, happy and twinkling, stared me down. I couldn’t wait another minute to taste those full, peach-colored lips. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks, but God, she was practically glowing.

  I grab for her, picking her up and kissing her as her legs come around my hips. Walking us into the house, I press her up against the wall as I did the night that the injured horse laid outside her porch in the sand.

  “God, I missed you.” My hands explore her face like I haven’t seen her in years.

  It’s true. My body has ached for her, needed her touch and smell so badly that I’d lie awake at night, willing her to fill the other side of the bed.

  “I guess that means you’re getting used to my snoring,” she jokes as I put her down.

  “I did miss that heavy breathing in my ear at two a.m.” Rhett bounds up to me, licking at my boots. “Hey, big guy … yes, I missed you too.”

  Blake kisses me again, a peck on my mouth. “Are you hungry? How was the drive home?”

  I stretch my neck and pull at it. “Tiring and long, but I’m happy to be home. Happy to come home to you. I ate some fast food on the road. But I could use a massage.”

  She raises an eyebrow at me. “It just so happens that I am an expert masseuse. But only if you come into the bedroom.”

  God yes, that sounded like just the medicine I needed right now. Dropping my bag in the foyer, I take her outstretched hand and follow her up the stairs to the bedroom.

  “What have you been up to while I was gone?” I rub her arm with my fingers as we walk.

  “Lots of last minute fourth quarter filing, and just getting people’s books in order before the holidays. I signed two new authors for book covers, so I’m having a ton of fun working on those. Just missing you, basically.”

  We made it to her master bedroom, an oasis of beige and white that always instantly relaxed me. It was her sanctuary, she’d told me, but it had also become mine. The main reason being, it had her.

  The minute we walked in, I couldn’t help but bundle up all of the excited energy I have inside, and throw her on the bed.

  “God, you’re gorgeous.” I frame her face with my hands and just look into those pale blue eyes.

  Blake’s face gets serious, her smile slipping a little. And then she sits up. “I have to … tell you something.”

  The worst comes to mind, she’s sick or she doesn’t want to be with me. My heart begins to gallop, and it’s telling that this woman holds the fate of my soul in her hands. Blake Sayer can make me fly, or make me fall, in the matter of seconds. But maybe that’s how love worked, you weren’t in control of your emotions or feelings anymore. The person you fell in love with dictated that.

  “Are you … okay?” My voice was tight.

  She smiled, a small gesture only to herself. “More than, actually … I’m pregnant.”

  I was about to say thank God after she said she was more than okay, but then she’d paused. And she … she was pregnant? My mind went completely blank for a second, and then a million short words crossed my mind, like it was malfunctioning.

  How? When? Mine? Happy. Shocked. Scared.

  Every single thing a person could experience in terms of emotional range, I think was going through me. My jaw was hanging open, and I don’t think I’d blinked in a minute because my eyes began to burn.

  “Carson?” Blake’s voice snapped me back to reality, her eyes searching mine for any sort of response.

  Pushing past all of the chatter in my brain, I closed my eyes and truly dug down to find the one thing I felt. And when I focused, and really came up with it … I was so purely happy that there wasn’t even a word for it.

  “I can’t believe it.” A million-watt smile split my face, and I hugged her against me, hard.

  “Does that mean you’re … not mad?” She laughed into my ear.

  Holding her shoulders and backing her up, I studied every aspect of her face. My eyes tracked down to her stomach, which looked no different and so different all at once.

  “Mad? Blake … maybe I’m a little shocked, but I could never be mad. I love you, and it wasn’t planned, but I plan on a future with you. My life and yours were intertwined way before this. Anything else, this pregnancy, is an added bonus.”

  We just stared at each other with big goofy smiles on our faces for a long time.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be a mom.” She looked at her stomach as if we could see or feel the tiny person inside yet.

  “I’m going to have to read so many dad books.” I laughed.

  “You’re going to be an incredible father.” Blake’s hand meets my cheek, and I can’t help but lean into her touch.

  “Where will we put the nursery?” The thought that we don’t live together pops into my head.

  She lies back on the bed, looking at her ceiling.

  “How about for right now, we don’t worry about the details? I feel like, for the past ten years, we’ve been mired in them, obsessing over them. Right now, let’s just bask in the glorious present, and be happy for exactly what we have and who we are in this very moment.”

  The girl I’d once known, the fly by the seat of her pants impulsive child, had just made a reappearance. And I could not be happier.

  “That sounds like the most perfect of plans to me.”

  Lying back with her, I pushed an arm under her head, and laid a hand on her stomach.

  Together, we looked up at the ceiling for hours, quietly thinking about the life we had just made, and the one we were about to start as a family.

  33

  Blake

  Holding my belly was my new favorite activity.

  To think that there was a person in there, a tiny human the size of an avocado just growing inside of me. The miracle of making a baby was just that; an incredibly life-changing event that seemed to happen with just faith and a little bit of magic.

  Not that Carson and I had been trying to make a baby, but like it always had, the universe just seemed to find ways to bring us together. And what was more anchoring than having a child together.

  Etta James’ “Sunday Kind of Love” crooned out of the record player in my living room, and I danced slowly with my hands splayed out on my tiny bump.

  It had been ten weeks since we’d found out we were having a baby, and at sixteen weeks, I was feeling good. Past all of the na
usea of my first trimester, and the fears of miscarrying, I was starting to enjoy my pregnancy and everything that came with it.

  “That kid needs some Van Halen. Don’t worry, bump, I’ll put some headphones on you tonight when mommy falls asleep.” Carson winks at me and kneels down so that he’s talking to my stomach, and the baby inside.

  “I can’t wait two more hours … I want to know now.” I knew I was whining, but when you wait four months to find out if your baby is going to be a boy or a girl, patience is kind of thin.

  “We’re almost there, baby. And whatever it is, all I care about is that he or she is happy and healthy.”

  “And that they throw lefty.” The sarcastic tone in my voice made him tickle me a little. “Oh, please don’t do that. I’m in the bathroom enough as it is, I don’t need laughter taking me there.”

  Over the past month, I’d been peeing like there was no end to it. This growing a baby stuff was tough, but so worth it.

  Since Carson had come back six months ago, things had changed so drastically that I looked at the last ten years without him and thought it was some sort of past life. The woman who I was, the recluse living out on an island surrounded by wild horses, I didn’t even know who she was. That broken, haunted person who refused to speak to anyone or acknowledge her grief … she was light-years away. Yes, we both had scars and echoes of the pain we had suffered, but in six months, he’d turned me back into the person I’d once known myself to be.

  Passing by the table in the hall and grabbing a light spring coat, I glanced at the hall table we’d set up when Carson had moved in. Yes, he’d given up the rental he’d loved and moved into my childhood home. There was no way I could have given it up … it reminded me of the family I missed so much. And I wanted our child to grow up in the house that had held so much love for me. Carson had been so open to it, and we’d slowly been melding our stuff together.