by Lilian Darcy
They sure needed a more stable arrangement than that, for their own sakes but most especially the baby’s. Kids were so sensitive to tensions. He’d learned that from his nieces and nephews. They had built-in radar for an upset parent.
As he watched Edie sleep, he felt an unwanted wave of tenderness, something he hadn’t felt often in his life except with his wives. And nothing quite this strong, maybe because a baby had never been involved before.
Hell, he’d been hard on her and probably should apologize. She had reasons to be dubious. Hadn’t he himself called his father and asked him how men like them transitioned to fatherhood?
Everything in his life had trained him in a way that hardly seemed likely to create a good father. Fatherhood would require a whole different set of mental and emotional muscles, and he was sure some of them had been stunted by training and experience.
Could he nurture them fast enough, well enough?
Maybe he should trust Edie’s concerns about him. They shared a lot of experience, but despite all the risks she had taken and the dangers she had flown into, she hadn’t visited the same dark boxes of the human mind and soul. She probably had every right to be worried about him.
He looked away toward the mountains again, asking himself questions, searching deep inside, trying to measure himself against the father who had raised him and the father he had found later. Could he really live up to that? He was determined to, and there was very little he made up his mind to do that he hadn’t accomplished.
But this was different. Was having two good examples enough?
One thing he was sure of, he couldn’t afford to mess this up. Edie and their baby were too important. Lives were at stake, as simple as that. Futures.
This was, without a doubt, the most important undertaking of his entire life.
“Seth?”
Edie’s sleepy voice reached him. She was still curled up with the blanket wrapped around her. At once he stretched out beside her on the grass, looking into her drowsy face.
“I’m here. Are you getting cold?”
“A tiny bit, but I’m fine.” Those blue eyes opened, still drowsy. “I’m sorry I made you mad.”
“You didn’t really make me mad. I think you scared me.”
A tiny smile curved her lips. “You? Scared?”
“I have an intimate acquaintance with fear at all levels and of all kinds. A frequent companion.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too, for coming on like gangbusters. You need time, and you have every right to work things through.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve been working through all the wrong things.” She sighed. Her eyes drooped closed, then slowly opened again. “I’m thinking, Seth. I promise I’m thinking. About myself. About what exactly I’m doing and why. You made a good point.”
He shook his head a little. “I’ve got no business analyzing you.”
“Sure you do. I’m the mother of your son.”
With amazement, he felt his heart squeeze. “Yes, you are. And I’m glad you are.”
She sighed. “Dang, I’m hungry again. I can’t believe it. And I need the facilities. Again.”
His mood lifted a bit. “I know a great tree. And lunch is in the car. Or we can head home and get you warm.”
She surprised him then, seizing his hand for the first time to pull it beneath the blanket and press it to her belly. She’d never done that before. She smiled. “He’s happy.”
Seth sure as hell hoped so, but he started smiling, too, as he felt the little prods. “How impatient are you?”
“Not terribly yet. It’s still a long way. But others have told me the last month will seem endless.”
“I can imagine.”
She opted for the tree, obviously, but also decided to have a picnic lunch. “It’s beautiful here. I hope we can come again sometime.”
Well, that was a change, he thought, feeling lighter yet. This was her first mention of something she wanted to do with him down the road. A good sign? Maybe they were getting over the first hump? Which still left some mountains to climb, he reminded himself. In fact, a whole damn range of them.
The day began to grow colder, so shortly after they finished their sandwiches, they headed back to town. He asked if she wanted to do something, but she shook her head.
“I’ve got some heavy-duty thinking to do.”
And that’s what she did. She withdrew to some place inside herself, sitting in the recliner or going out to walk alone. Leaving him wondering what the hell was in the offing. At least she wasn’t packing her duffel.
Yet.
* * *
Edie had no intention of packing her duffel, although she had little idea what decisions she was going to make about everything else. Reaching all the way back in her memory, she tried to figure out how she had gotten to this point. She needed to figure it out for the sake of her son. How could she be a good mother if she didn’t know what fears were holding her back?
Because Seth was right about that. She wasn’t afraid of him. Not as if he were some kind of threat to the baby. It had nothing to do with him being a SEAL, but everything to do with some part of her.
She didn’t have to think very hard about the obstacles. She knew she was a control freak. She’d committed to only two things in her life: the air force and CSAR. Big commitments, but very much under her control.
She couldn’t control Seth, and all too soon she wouldn’t be able to control the baby, either. But why did she feel that need to be in charge, to be able to handle so much of life with surety and a plan?
Yeah, she could roll with the punches. She’d had to on many occasions, but there was always that sense of control, of knowing she could deal with the unexpected that came up on a mission.
This was very different. A whole new world. Life had begun throwing curveballs, and they just kept coming. Worse, the curveballs involved other people. You might be able to control most of what happened with a mechanical failure or a weather problem, or even when being shot at, but you couldn’t control other people. Ever.
Which made all of this one big scary unknown.
So yeah, she was afraid. Of herself. Of the future. Of not having an ironclad plan. And how silly to think she could have made one that would last any length of time.
Seth had pointed out a couple of times that she kept threatening to run. She couldn’t deny it. She kept wanting to go back to her familiar world, however messed up it was at the moment.
She sat on a park bench during one of her long walks the next day, trying to sort out a whole bunch of feelings, trying to find their source. Seth had been giving her space, even to the point of sleeping in the other room, but so far she had gotten nowhere useful.
What was it she really feared?
The lack of control or something else?
Abandonment.
The word floated up out of her subconscious and froze her as if a spike had just driven into her mind.
Abandonment.
She jumped up from the bench and started walking as fast as she could without making herself too breathless. Evidently it disturbed the baby because she felt a couple of serious kicks, so she slowed down a little.
“No.” She spoke aloud to herself. Not that. Really?
The day was beginning to darken, but she ignored it, determined to fight this demon, whether imagined or real.
She’d been living a long time with the fact that her mother had left to sink into a world of drug addiction and eventually death. There was nothing there she hadn’t been dealing with for a long time, and she knew how lucky she had been to have a grandmother who had loved her and cared for her.
But then her grandmother had died. Well, elderly people die, right? Surely that hadn’t added to he
r sense of abandonment.
Her insides clenched a little as she looked at herself through this new lens. True? Not true? Had she somehow developed some ridiculous notion that everyone she cared about would leave her sooner or later, so it was wise not to care?
Look at Seth. He’d lost two wives, but he was prepared to jump in with both feet for this baby. Surely, he had lost buddies and friends as she had. He hadn’t turned it into some kind of psychological trauma. He still had made deep connections with his new family. Nor was he running from this child, which must have landed in his lap like an unexpected grenade. No, he was committed even to the point of entering into a loveless marriage for the sake of their son.
Damn. He hadn’t wavered. She was the one doing all the wavering, but she sure as hell was the one who was going to deliver a baby in four months and become a mother for the rest of her days, not a job that could be shirked or evaded. Not unless she wanted to be like her mother.
Once again she froze, midstep. Like her mother?
Confusion swamped her for a minute. Like her mother? No way was she like her mother. She’d already decided to keep this child and raise it the best way she could manage. No, she would not abandon her baby.
But she had resented some of the sacrifices she would have to make. Had that roused her fears that she might fail? Or was the fear something else?
She realized she was close to the Tates’ house and, for a second, just a second, considered stopping to talk to Marge. But Marge had her own agenda, and had experienced all of this under a very different set of circumstances. Talking with her might be more confusing than helpful, and anyway, she needed to reach her own answers and conclusions.
Turning, she traced her steps back to Seth’s. If abandonment was her real issue, she didn’t have a foggy idea of how to deal with it. Nor did she have any idea how to address it with Seth. There were some promises people could make, with the best of intentions, but no guarantees they’d be able to keep them.
There lay the entire crux of the matter. For a risk-taker, she was showing herself to be one hell of a coward.
Warm lights shone through the windows as she approached the house. When she opened the front door, delicious aromas filled the air, emanating from the kitchen. She followed them and found Seth making a salad while something baked in the oven.
“Smells wonderful,” she said.
He turned with a smile. “Baked ziti. I may even be able to manage garlic bread. Take a seat. Coffee? Milk?”
“Coffee,” she said as she sat and slipped her jacket off.
He didn’t question her, didn’t press her. He just brought her the coffee and remarked that he could feel the chill all around her. “Need a blanket?”
“I’ll be fine in just a minute. I didn’t get that cold.”
“Well, we do know the cold, don’t we?”
Remembering Afghanistan, she knew he was right. It really got cold up in those mountains. She wondered how many nights he’d endured in those frigid temperatures and the deep snow, but didn’t ask. Redacted.
But she liked the way he said we. It sounded especially good, coming from him.
“Do you need a nibble? Dinner won’t be ready for about forty-five minutes.”
“Apple?” she asked.
“Coming up.”
So common, so ordinary, so casual. So damn normal, even while she could almost feel the storm hovering overhead. Good storm or bad storm she didn’t know, but until decisions were made, conclusions reached, that black cloud would continue to hover.
She ate half the apple before she spoke, while he finished the salad and started putting garlic butter on a baguette.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
His answer sounded light, although she thought she saw tension tighten his shoulders. “I gathered that.”
“I told you I’m a control freak.”
“I’d be surprised if you weren’t, given what you do. I pretty much am, too, I guess.”
“Maybe. But I think with me it isn’t a trained response.”
He turned from buttering the bread to face her. “No?”
“No.” She stared at the apple. “One word surfaced, one I hadn’t thought about.”
“Which is?”
“Abandonment.”
“That’s heavy.”
She dared to glance at him and found him both waiting and watchful. But there was something more there. He didn’t appear to be a man poised for trouble. No, he looked a bit...sad?
“I guess,” she said. “I can’t figure it. I’ve been dealing with my mother’s desertion since I was old enough to know. My grandmother’s death was...well, hardly unexpected for a woman of her years. We all lose people we know in combat. So why an abandonment issue?”
He gave a little questioning shake of his head, but didn’t say anything.
“I mean, if anyone could have an issue like that, it would be you. You knew your whole life you were adopted.”
“True. If I had an issue with it, I don’t remember it. But I couldn’t tell you why.”
“I know. And I can’t tell you why I do. It’s just sitting there in the basement of my subconscious. It’s like a land mine waiting to be stepped on or something. I don’t know. I just know that I’ve only made two commitments in my adult life, and they were both to my job.”
“That bothers you?”
“It should. It does. But that’s why I kept threatening to leave. I’m safe in the air force, safe in my job. The rules are all clear-cut, the plans laid out and the air force won’t abandon me. Or at least they didn’t until I became pregnant.”
“They still haven’t,” he said quietly.
“Maybe not. But this new future I’m facing...” She shrugged and pushed the plate and apple away. “No guarantees. No plans. No reliability. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m going to have a child to care for, and I don’t even know if I’ll be a good mother. How the hell would I begin to know how?”
He came to her then, kneeling on the hard floor beside her chair and wrapping his arms around her. “Everybody starts out knowing very little about being a parent. It’s on-the-job training for most of us. But I think you have everything it takes, and you’re smart enough to learn what you need.”
“I sure hope so.” She sighed, then leaned toward him a bit to rest her forehead on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you since yesterday.”
“I got that heavy stuff was going on. I’m not totally dense.”
She gave a weak laugh. “You’re not dense at all. But all this brings us back to what’s right for this baby.”
“And for us,” he reminded her. “What’s right for both of us matters, too. I’ve been pretty insistent about being a father to this child. I mean it. But you have to be happy with the terms, too. I was thinking yesterday that a whole lot of tension between the two of us wouldn’t be a good thing for our son, either. So we work that out somehow. Anything short of telling me to get lost or visit only twice a year.”
She shook her head slightly against his shoulder. “That would be cruel to both of you. I’m not going there. I’m not even thinking about it anymore. No, we need something more stable.”
“Agreed. And you’re still feeling cold to me. How about I get you some more coffee or hot cocoa or something, and we eat? Important discussions are better when people aren’t cold, tired and hungry.”
He paused. “I’d suggest a hot shower, but that would likely cause us to ruin dinner, and this is my first attempt at baked ziti. I expect rave reviews.”
The strange sadness that had been filling her lifted, and she managed a laugh as he pulled away to finish dinner preparations.
“I do have one funny thing to tell you,” he said as he sprinkled some grated parmesan on the split loaf of
bread. “Mom called wanting to know if we’d made plans yet. I told her that I’d asked you for a marriage of convenience and was awaiting your answer.”
Edie clapped her hand to her mouth, torn between laughter and horror. “Seth, you didn’t!”
“I did.” He turned and gave her a devilish look. “I must say, I had the rare pleasure of rendering my mother speechless.”
“Oh. My...” Laughter won the day, and before she knew it, it tumbled out of her until she had to wrap her arms around herself. “Oh, Seth, you’re terrible.”
“I’m also a lot of fun. She’ll get over it.”
Edie wiped at her eyes and tried to catch her breath. “I almost stopped to talk to her a little while ago. I’m glad I didn’t. Can you just imagine?”
“It would have been a toss-up between raking me over the coals or pressuring you to accept. I can’t decide which. So yeah, it’s good you didn’t stop.”
Another thought had been occurring to her increasingly over the past day, but she kept it to herself while they ate. Thinking about the environment in which she wanted to raise this child...well, it had made her look at some things straight on. But they could talk later.
The ziti was wonderful, as were the bread and salad, and she spared no praise.
“Keep talking like that and I’ll cook for you every night,” he said finally.
“You’re welcome to it. Not my thing, I don’t think.”
“I’m discovering I like it.”
After they cleaned up and put the leftovers away, they retired to the living room, him with coffee, her with cocoa. She struggled with her boots and finally Seth pushed her hands away and did it for her. “I swear,” he said, “I am taking you shoe shopping tomorrow. No arguments.”
She offered none, because it kind of tickled her in some silly way.
“Want me to go get your slippers?”
“My socks will work for now.” She leaned back, putting her feet up. “This feels so good.”
