by Valery Parv
"Meggs?"
"After the Australian cartoon character, Ginger Meggs. The character is red-haired and my dog's coat was rusty-red-speckled."
"What happened to him?"
Such a long silence followed that she wondered if he was going to answer, then he said, "The same thing that happened to me. He was given away when my mother got tired of playing happy family with us."
Her hand went to his arm and she felt his muscles tense under the formal suit. "Oh, Zeke, that's terrible."
"At the time, I thought it was normal for a mother to get tired of having a kid around. But I did think she could have kept the dog."
"You must have missed him," She had condemned him this afternoon for being cut adrift from his feelings but how could he not be? He had learned from bitter experience that attachments didn't last. Eventually, he had stopped making them. She should know by now that she couldn't change his thinking.
"Why do you think I bid on Mungo?" he asked.
She felt her eyebrows lift. "Mungo? Is that going to be his name?"
He nodded. "It's Aboriginal for silent. The fuss of the charity auction must have bewildered a six-week-old puppy, but he didn't whimper or bark all evening."
She had thought he was extraordinarily well-behaved and said so.
"Blue Heelers are the most loyal, affectionate, hardworking animals in the world if you treat them right, aren't you, Mungo?" Zeke said.
As if to disprove his name, the puppy sat up and barked, an eager, high-pitched sound that made Tara laugh. "Won't he be a bit restricted in an apartment?" she asked.
"I'm looking around for a house with a garden." He didn't add "where I can put down roots" because he wouldn't see it that way. But she did. Too late, too late, her heart cried. They had talked about buying a house when they were together, but he had shied away from the commitment.
She had understood his reluctance to set up house with her, when all his experience told him it wouldn't last, but it hurt to think he would do it for his dog. What did that say about their relationship?
They didn't have one, she reminded herself on a heavy outrush of breath. All they'd had was good sex and a pleasant, if stilted, evening in each other's company. "Thank you for escorting me to the auction," she said formally.
He glanced sideways at her. "I'm sure you wouldn't have had to attend alone."
She'd had invitations, but nothing she was prepared to share with him, because they meant nothing to her. Affecting a shrug, she said, "Maybe, but your enthusiasm for the auction made it more enjoyable."
"I love auctions, the excitement, the challenge, the competitive atmosphere."
She laughed but felt uneasy because the appeals he listed didn't sit well with her own beliefs. "This was for charity, not life and death," she said lightly.
He turned serious. "I had another reason for wanting to be there. Mrs. Beresford-Davis."
"I thought I saw you talking with her during the cocktails," Tara commented. "She was probably avoiding me because she felt guilty for letting Model Children down after saying she would support us."
"I think you'll find she's changed her opinion," he said, surprising her.
"How do you know?"
"Let's say I twisted her arm a little." After Tara had told him what happened when the woman read the column, he had been determined to fix things. He went on, "I wanted to set the record straight, so I assured her that I consider your charity above reproach."
"Oh, Zeke, thank you."
"No need, since I created the problem in the first place."
It was an extraordinary admission. "The column wasn't particularly kind to charities, but you only said what you believe."
"I still believe it. The world is full of do-gooders whose main beneficiary is themselves. I don't resile from that, but I concede that your group isn't among them."
She felt herself tense. "Because it's my group?"
"Because I've investigated, and every cent your people raise goes directly to help the kids who need it. Not all organizations can say the same."
It was a small victory but she rejoiced in it nonetheless. It wouldn't change his opinion about their relationship, but it was something.
"Zeke, turn left here," she said on a sudden impulse.
He looked at her with a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "We're almost at your place."
"I know, but I want to show you something."
"You do know it's after midnight?"
She nodded, well aware of the time. She had a 9:00 a.m. appointment with a photographer to take publicity photos of her with a school group who were donating their pocket money to Model Children. It wouldn't do to turn up with shadows under her eyes, but the detour was worth it.
With a mutter that sounded suspiciously like "women," he spun the wheel around. Soon they were cruising along a darkened avenue toward a small park with an arched entryway.
"Pull up beside the archway," she instructed.
Mercifully asking no more questions, Zeke complied. She glanced into the back seat, pleased to see that the puppy had gone to sleep.
When she got out of the car, Zeke followed and she led him under the arch. It was too narrow for two people to pass without touching, and her senses rocketed to alert as soon as his hard body brushed hers.
She had dressed for the charity auction and dinner in a flowing Aloys Gada gown of fuchsia silk that left her shoulders bare except for an amethyst pendant encircling her throat. The pendant had been a gift from Zeke and she had hesitated before putting it on. She needn't have worried. If he noticed or even remembered giving it to her on the first anniversary of their meeting, he hadn't commented.
He was aware of her touch, she noticed, because he snapped away from her as if burned. A tiny flame of satisfaction leaped inside her until she forcibly quelled it. This afternoon had given her ample proof of how much he still desired her. But as long as it was all they shared, it would never be enough.
"In New York, this is called taking your life in your hands," he said as she led the way through the darkened park, skirting beds of roses that perfumed the night air.
"It probably is in Sydney, too," she admitted, although when he was at her side, she couldn't feel afraid of anything. "We're almost there."
She stopped alongside a sandstone wall studded with plaques and small niches, some filled with flowers. The wall was surrounded by roses. She breathed deeply, as much to steady her chaotic emotions as to enjoy the perfume. Her fingers brushed one of the plaques. "This is for Brendan."
Zeke made a low, choking sound. "What is this place?"
"My brother told me it was established by a group of women whose babies had died either through miscarriage or at birth. They wanted society to recognize their children as having lived, so they raised the funds for this memorial garden."
She turned to him. "After I lost the baby, my brother wanted me to join their group. I argued, thinking I could handle it alone, but I couldn't."
She bowed her head, remembering how low her spirits had needed to sink before she'd accepted even her brother's help, although as an obstetrician, he understood what she was going through. Containing her grief deep within her, she had refused to believe that talking would help. Her baby had died. There had been a service and a cremation. How could talking about it make a difference?
Then Ben had brought her to this beautiful, peaceful place to show her that she was far from alone. A dam had burst within her. She had finally shared her pain with him, and begun to heal. Placing Brendan's ashes here had given her the peace she'd needed.
She became aware of Zeke standing as still as a statue with his hands pressed against the wall. His shoulders were rigid. She knew better than anyone how he must feel. "It's all right," she said, knowing how inadequate it sounded. "It gets better."
He looked at her bleakly. "How did you stand it?"
"I didn't at first. Carol and Ben helped me. Ben told me about other patients who'd been through the same thing,
and then he brought me here. But in the end, you get through it by yourself, one day at a time."
He grimaced. "When you told me, I wanted to kill you for keeping it from me. This makes it painfully real, somehow."
"That's the whole point," she explained. "The loss will always be painful, but this memorial proves that our child existed. One of the mothers in the support group Ben runs told him she hated people telling her how lucky she is to have two healthy children, as if they compensate for the one she lost to miscarriage. She loves her living children dearly, but she sees herself as a mother of three, not two."
"Is that how you see yourself, as a mother?"
"I was for a time," she said simply.
He bent and studied the plaque that read, simply, Brendan, and his birth year. When he straightened, his eyes glittered and his chest heaved with the effort of containing his emotions. For a heartbeat she wondered if he might share with her what he was feeling.
Then he released a long, shuddering sigh and she saw the shutters come down again. Disappointment threaded through her. It wasn't going to happen.
What had she expected? she asked herself angrily. That visiting the memorial would allow him to truly connect with her? She may as well wish for the moon.
He surprised her by asking, "What do you think our son could have been? A doctor curing cancer? A rocket scientist?"
"A journalist like his dad?" she added, choking as her throat threatened to close. A glimmer of hope tried to shimmer through her but she rejected it. Zeke was what he was. No amount of wishful thinking was going to change reality.
He looked pensive. "His dad. That sounds so strange."
"It's not strange. You would have made a good dad."
"How do you know, when I don't?" The fierceness in his voice brought her head snapping up. "How could I be a father to anyone, when I never had a father of my own as a role model?"
"Zeke, I didn't mean…"
She reached for him but he shrugged off her hand. Bringing him here had affected him, she saw, but not in the way she had hoped. She saw sadness for the child he would never know, but also anger directed at himself. "It wasn't your fault your father wasn't there for you," she said.
"Before you tell me there was nothing I could have done, don't you think I've told myself so a million times? As a grown man, I know better than to think if I'd been a better child, my dad might have wanted me."
She heard what he didn't say, that inside him lived a little boy who would never be convinced. "I shouldn't have showed you this," she said regretfully.
He gestured in negation. "It's a fitting memorial for a brief life." His voice began to break. "I only wish I'd been here."
"Me, too." No amount of saying she was sorry was going to give him back that opportunity. All they could do was go on.
Suddenly he bent over the memorial to retrieve something. "Do you come here very much?"
"I haven't for a couple of weeks. Why?"
He held up a single rose, its stem encased in a narrow tube, the kind florists used to keep individual blooms fresh. "Then you didn't leave this in the niche beside Brendan's plaque?"
"I don't usually bring flowers. Maybe it slipped from another plaque."
He shook his head. "It was too firmly lodged. It was placed there deliberately."
A chill traveled down her spine. "Placed by whom?"
"Someone who knows you?"
"Hardly anyone knows about the baby, except my brother and his wife and the medical staff. And my mother. I told her about the baby, but not about this place."
"Curiouser and curiouser," he quoted. "It's either a case of mistaken identity, someone leaving the flower at the wrong plaque, or we're not the only ones mourning our child."
"It has to be a mistake," she insisted. Anything else was too bizarre to contemplate. "What other explanation can there be?"
His fingers tightened around the rose's slender stem. "I don't know, but I intend to find out."
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
As they headed back to the car, Zeke held the rose between thumb and forefinger as if protecting evidence, while Tara saw it for what it was, a flower left in the wrong place by mistake.
"Just let it go, please," she implored, hoarse with frustration. She held the tears back, refusing to break down in front of Zeke. She didn't know what she had expected from him, but it was a more emotional response than the one she was getting.
"You've just visited our child's memorial. Doesn't it mean any more to you than another piece of your precious puzzle?" she demanded.
"Not if there may be a connection," he said through clenched teeth.
"There isn't," she snapped as unshed tears burned the backs of her eyes. "I brought you here because I thought it would help give you some sort of closure, not to give you a new lead on your story."
In the park's dim lighting, his eyebrow canted upward, giving him a vaguely devilish look. "Closure? You've had months to mourn our child, yet you expect me to get over it just like that?"
"I didn't mean—"
"I think you did," he cut in dangerously. "You hate sharing this with me even now, don't you?"
She forced herself to meet his gaze. "That's crazy."
"Is it?" He made a sweeping gesture around them. "We shared something important, Tara. We made a baby together. I have to deal with that fact before I can begin to think of closure. You accused me of not sharing my emotions with you, and you're probably right. I haven't had much practice at it in my life. But this time you're the one who excluded me every step of the way."
Had she unconsciously tried to keep the baby to herself? She had told herself she was doing the right thing, but now she started to doubt. Had she kept silent because she didn't want to compel him to stay with her, or because she didn't want to share the experience? Not sure she could give him an honest answer, she said nothing.
"It's easier to accuse me of being cold and heartless than to accept that you didn't really want me sticking around at all," he said.
She was glad of the dim light to hide the coldness she felt invade her features. "It can't be true."
"Can't it? You told me you didn't have much of a relationship with your own father. You wouldn't have that problem if it was just you and the baby."
"I wanted my baby to have a father," she said in defense of herself.
"Your baby, Tara? It's an odd way to put it when I'm standing right here."
How well she knew it. Even in the face of the greatest mental turmoil she had experienced, she felt heat radiating from him into every part of her, making her ache for him. Telling herself she shouldn't want it didn't lessen the force of her desire.
She willed herself to calmness. "I never wanted to hurt you, Zeke."
"You didn't. What I feel since you told me is good, old-fashioned anger."
She couldn't blame him, although the intensity of it alarmed her. "You have the right, I suppose."
"You bet I do. After all we'd been to each other for over three years, I still don't understand how you could keep something as important as your pregnancy from me."
"Telling you felt as if I was trying to blackmail you into staying. Then afterward, I couldn't bring myself to admit how badly I'd failed."
A deep frown slashed across his forehead. "What do you mean, you failed?"
She lowered her lashes. "There had to be something I could have done differently."
His hands descended to her shoulders as if he wanted to shake her but was restraining himself. "That hardly sounds like a medical opinion."
"It isn't, it's my own."
"You must know it's crazy."
Her eyes flew open and she saw the hardness in his stance soften a fraction. "I do, but it doesn't stop the thoughts coming back. My father…"
Still frowning, Zeke turned her to look at him. "What does this have to do with your father?"
"If everything I did wasn't perfect … if I failed at something…" He
r voice trailed off and she clenched her teeth to stop them chattering. It wasn't cold in the park but she felt a chill reach out to her from long ago.
"Go on."
Confusingly, she felt warmth and strength flow into her from his touch. "He punished me to remind me that I could do better."
In the lamplight, she saw Zeke's face twist in dismay. "He beat you?"
She shook her head, emotions flooding through her, gripping her so that the park receded as memory took hold. "Nothing so straightforward. He would simply treat me as if I was invisible. He kept it up sometimes for days, until I promised never to disappoint him again, just to get him to acknowledge that I existed."
"How could a man treat his own child so cruelly?"
"He's a perfectionist."
"More like a bloody sadist. People like yours and mine shouldn't be allowed to have kids."
She shook her head in determined negation. "They're not all alike. My mother used to speak to me as soon as Dad was out of earshot. She refused to let me suffer."
"You did anyway," he said harshly. "Being treated as if you didn't exist would have hurt anyone, but especially an innocent child."
"It made me terrified of failing," she said, still finding it hard to admit.
Zeke shook his head. "What happened to our baby wasn't a failure on your part. There was nothing you could have done," he said fiercely, still holding her. She longed for him to crush her against him and let her feel the warmth of his arms around her.
At the same time, she knew why he didn't. He might deny that he held her accountable for the loss of their child, but how could he not? She knew he was entitled, and his reassurances didn't silence the nagging voice in her head.
She sensed that the little girl within her was still afraid of enduring the silent treatment. Afraid of being abandoned. The word resonated through her thoughts and she remembered how for weeks after Brendan's birth, she had felt an almost overwhelming urge to go back to the hospital for him, as if he was capable of feeling as lonely as she remembered feeling when her father behaved as if she didn't exist.
