You didn’t get my message. I had a hunch, the detective had muttered.
Sebastien had dressed and left in five minutes. Now as he glanced down he noted that he’d misaligned the buttons of the short ivory cardigan he’d thrown on over his bare chest. He wore his dress loafers with no socks.
She’ll get a grand laugh from the way I look. He needed to hear her laugh, even though he was angry and frightened. Why had she run away without him? He knew, deep within his conscience, that it was because he’d lost her trust. Now he was intent on regaining it. Frowning, he stepped into the cottage and shoved the door shut. The slamming of it echoed through the cool stone rooms.
His hands shook. “Dear Miracle,” he called sternly, looking down the central hallway. “You had better come here right now and see what a state you’ve put me in.” From the open doorway to the master bedroom came a muffled cry. The pain in it galvanized him. He ran to the room and halted, staring in disbelief at the scene on his bed.
She stared back with glazed eyes, her hands twisting the pillow casing beneath her head, her face haggard, her hair drenched in sweat. Her updrawn legs made a tent of the sheet, but her swollen belly heaved against the fabric. A low, keening sound came from her throat.
Sebastien was beside her in two long strides, jerking the sheet back, looking in despair at the straining body covered only in an old shirt he recognized as his. It was bunched under her breasts. He heard himself groan with frustration and fear. Quickly he knelt beside her and, cupping her face in his hand, kissed her. She cried out and raised her mouth to his with desperate welcome.
He frantically smoothed damp hair from her forehead. Her head moved from side to side. Her eyes scanned him with misery. “I wanted to wait until the babies were born, so that you’d see that they were fine, just fine, and then you could love them. But … everything’s gone wrong! I went into labor last night, and I’m only eight months, and I thought I could hold out until you got here, and …” Her voice trailed off as she searched his eyes. “And I don’t want you to hate me if I die.”
“Listen to me! Listen! All I could think about was finding you! You’re going to get through this and then we’ll forget it ever happened!”
Sinews strained in her neck. Fighting pain, she said between clenched teeth, “You don’t want … the babies.”
He stroked her flushed skin and struggled to keep his voice calm. “I’m going to carry you out to the car—”
“It’s too late.” She gasped for breath.
“Sssh. Here. I’m going to lift you. We’ll find a hospital—”
“It’s too late!” Even as she spoke her head tilted back. She bit her lip and moaned in a deep, primal expression of pain. “I’m having contractions … every minute … have to push. Ah. Push.”
Sebastien pulled her upright and sat down behind her, bracing her against his chest. She grasped his hands hard. He wrapped his arms around her. “Breathe, love. Breathe through the pain.”
She panted and nodded. “Through it … under it … inside it … it’s everywhere.”
Sebastien cursed helplessly. His life had been devoted to winning battles such as this. Now twenty years of medical training mocked him. Once again he could only watch in agony as someone he loved suffered. The old fury grew inside him, laughing at him for thinking that he could correct the mistakes that had begun before his own birth. And had now led to this.
When the contraction passed she sobbed and pushed weakly at his arms. “You don’t want the babies. There’s nothing you can do to help if you still don’t love ’em.”
“I love you. Do you think I want you to suffer?” He leapt to his feet. “Now we get to work,” he told Amy. “Together.”
He ran to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands. Slinging water from then, he returned to the bedroom and knelt between her feet on the bed. “I’m going to examine you.”
She clung to the sheet beneath her, twisting it into wads. “Something’s wrong. The first baby should have been born by now. I’m too tired to go on much longer.”
“Easy, love, easy. I’m putting my hand inside you. All right? Does that hurt?”
“Everything hurts.”
He slipped his hand upwards and probbed with careful fingertips. “Nothing wrong here, or here. Very good dilation, love. You’re doing very well.”
“Save the babies. Please, save them. Even if you don’t love ’em. Please. For me.”
He bent his head to one of her knees and made a hoarse sound of grief. “Do you think I won’t try to save all three of you?”
Her answer was unintelligible as new pain cut through it. She screamed. Sebastien explored inside her frantically, praying that his fingers would touch the smooth, curving surface of a baby’s head. Shivers went through him when they found tiny feet instead.
“What’s wrong?” she begged, panting. “I can tell by the look … on your face … something terrible—”
“The first baby is turned the wrong way.”
She cried out. “I’m so sorry, Doc! Please … don’t hate … our babies for this.”
“Hate them? Hate them? Goddammit, they’re innocent victims. The same as you. I only wish that I had prevented this.”
“Don’t say that! You make it sound like you did something wrong! You didn’t! And the only way you can hurt me, or the babies, is by not loving us now! What … what are you doing?”
He rotated his hand palm up and latched his fingers around the baby’s ankles. “Concentrate on breathing. I’m going to pull very slowly.”
“Can the baby … come out this way?”
“Yes.”
She made guttural sounds of pain. “Y-yes, I g-guess it can. I feel it!”
“You’re doing beautifully. Just another few seconds.” He was dizzy with fear.
“Will it be alive?”
“I don’t … of course. Of course. I wouldn’t let it be any other way.”
“Arrogance. I like that. Good.”
Shaking his head, he watched delicate feet and legs emerge, covered with the waxy coating typical of newborns. He pulled steadily and felt the baby begin to slip free. He thought his heart would burst with agony when Amy screamed again.
She sank back on the pillows, groaning. “It’s here. It’s here.”
“Almost.” Suddenly the hips and torso appeared. Sebastien cupped the body in his hand. “A boy,” he said numbly.
“A son,” she whispered.
Sebastien worked the baby’s arms free, thinking frantically, The color is good. The cord isn’t choking him. Please, please, let him be alive. “Push, love,” he urged. “Push his head free.”
She pushed and he pulled, and a second later their son lay in his hands.
“Is he all right?” Amy asked, trying to sit up. “He’s so little!”
Sebastien felt dazed. He laid the tiny form on Amy’s thigh and desperately began checking him. “His pulse is strong. His reflexes are good.”
“He moved! He tried to lift his head!”
Crying, she stretched a hand around her bulging abdomen, trying to reach the baby. “Is he all right? Please tell me that he’s all right!”
Sebastien cut the cord and quickly tied the stump with a shoe lace. Then he placed the baby on her stomach so that she could stroke his head. Sebastien probbed and cleaned and tested. “I can’t tell, I can’t tell,” he said raggedly. “So much could be wrong! I’m sure there must be something!”
“Don’t say that! There isn’t any curse here! Just love us, Doc, love us! I want these babies to feel wanted. Not like when you and I were born. Wanted. Don’t repeat the only mistake that matters.”
“I’m trying to make everything right! I swear to you, I’m trying.”
“The only mistake … that matters! Don’t do it to us!”
He kissed their son’s head with quick, desperate apology. “I love you. I love your sister. I love your mother. I’ll never let any of you suffer.” He looked at Amy. “Believe me. Give me a chance
to prove it.”
She searched his face for a moment, and a look of wonder lit her eyes. Their son made a strong mewling sound. His arms and legs moved, testing the freedom of his new world. Amy’s weak hands fluttered over him, stroking the waxy, wrinkled skin. “I guess he was just waitin’ to hear you say that,” she whispered. “Now he’s glad to be alive.”
Now she and Sebastien shared the wonder. Her pain-glazed eyes had an empyreal glow. “He really is all right, Doc. And his sister will be, too. We’re safe because you came to help us. You saved us. You saved our lives. That’s powerful magic. Trust me. You and me together, Doc. We’ve got a future, and so do our babies. Because of you.”
She met his outstretched hand with her own.
Their daughter was born a few minutes later, ruddy and active and bearing a cap of auburn hair very much like Amy’s. Sebastien put her alongside her brother on Amy’s stomach. He bowed his head between them. Amy stroked the side of his face tenderly as he cried. He was finally complete, and the burden was gone. She understood. There were no mistakes here, none at all.
Amy stood quietly for a moment, lifting her face to the spring breeze, gathering her thoughts as she studied the unfurling white blossoms on a dogwood. There was so much to say, and so much that she couldn’t even put into words. I wish you had been at the wedding. I wish you could see your grandchildren. I wish I knew what you thought of me now. And what you’ll think of me in the future.
She decided to talk about the easy things. “I got a part in a television show. It films close to home, my home out in California, you know. So I won’t have to be away from the babies or Doc. That’s the way I wanted it. The part—it’s the lead. I’m the star. How about that? Guess I surprised you. Surprised myself.”
She looked down at the orange day lily in her hands, idly turning it while she swallowed bitterness. The lily had come from the old home place. It was both ordinary and beautiful. “I guess I had to work twice as hard as anybody else to get ahead. But maybe I’ve gone twice as far.”
Kneeling, she put the lily beside the grave’s granite headstone. “I’ll never forgive you, but I don’t need to hate you anymore. I can survive anything because I know I survived you.”
She allowed herself to cry for him, for the anger and pain that had twisted him into such an unhappy human being. Then she stood and shook the fresh earth of the grave from the hem of her dress. “I’ve got a long way to go, Pop. I won’t be coming back here. I don’t owe you anything.”
Her head bent in thought, she turned from the grave and descended the grassy hill toward a paved drive below. The sound of a car door made her look up. Sebastien stepped from the backseat of their limousine and stood beside the open door, waiting for her, his expression grim as he glanced around the cemetery.
There are no ghosts here, she told him silently. And no curses. He tilted his head and arched a brow at her as if questioning such confidence. She brought her chin up and swung her arms, sashaying down the hill in gentle defiance. Trust me. See? Ghosts know better than to mess with the two of us as long as we’re together.
She felt lighter. There would always be bad memories, but those would never be as powerful as the good ones she and he were creating every day. He had become a loving father to his children, the kind of father that neither he nor she had ever had. The love he gave to her and received full in return had made the kind of marriage that would nurture itself more with each year. She had the confidence to walk toward him now with absolute freedom from the memories she had finally buried, buried without reconciliation but also without regret.
She smiled at him as she crossed the remaining few yards, the moment merging the years behind with the years ahead. The wind pushed a cloud in front of the sun. A shadow moved over him, clung to him, and made her catch her breath. There would always be shadows. But then he held out his hands to her, and the darkness slipped away.
About the Author
A former newspaper editor and multiple award winner for her novels and contemporary romances, DEBORAH SMITH lives in the mountains of Georgia, where she is working on her next novel.
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