by Lilian Darcy
He’d spent more than two months with Maggie. Two long months of slow, slow torture. Thinking about her every minute, staying just a few feet from her for hours and hours of every day, watching every breath, every movement, every figure on her monitors and in her charts.
He’d loved her so much, poured so much love into her that he’d astonished himself at the capacity he had for it. To love a baby that much. To love a creature who hadn’t even existed eight months ago that much. To love someone who couldn’t even smile.
And what the hell good had it done? For Maggie, or for Reba or for Lucas himself?
And if it didn’t do any good, if all that painful, hardworking, totally committed, faithful, optimistic, exhausting love had had zero power to help her when it came to the crunch, if the only things that had helped her—and then had cruelly let her down—were simply modern medicine and blind luck, then why the hell put himself through it any more? Why the hell put Maggie through it? Maybe she’d hated having him sitting there, hour after hour, bombarding her with all that stressed out, useless love.
So why not go to Hawaii?
Yeah.
He’d never been, and he’d heard it was a pretty nice place. Beaches. Jungles. Volcanoes. Beautiful women wearing hula skirts on their hips and strings of flowers round their necks. Big, punch-packing candy-flavored drinks in hollowed out pineapples with colorful bendy straws and paper umbrellas sticking out the top.
Yeah.
Some of that, thanks.
Enough with love.
I’m going to enjoy my fine selection of European cheeses and watch the movie of my choice.
Yeah.
And I don’t know when I’m coming back.
Angela stood back a little, once she’d gotten Maggie safely positioned in Reba’s arms. Lactation consultant Sarah Emery would be helping mother and baby learn to breastfeed successfully, today, following the hiatus during Maggie’s latest illness, and Angela knew that Sarah was very good at what she did.
“She should be here in a couple of minutes,” she told Reba. “She got delayed on the phone.”
Maggie’s infection had cleared up beautifully, over the past couple of days. Looking at her, you wouldn’t have known she’d been such a sick baby girl just four days earlier. Another day or two, and Dr. Charleson would probably downgrade her from one-to-one nursing status and move her to another section of the unit. Another week or two, and they’d start to talk about her discharge.
In fact, the setback had taken its toll on Reba and Lucas far more than on their daughter.
Lucas had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth, and Reba seemed painfully split between anger and concern. The inevitable exhaustion, too. With Lucas absent, she only ever left the hospital to snatch a few hours sleep overnight. Angela planned to order her back to the hotel for a decent lunch and a nap, once this feeding session was over.
Reba was clearly thinking about Lucas right now, her face dropped into a narrow-eyed, tight-mouthed shape that tore at Angela’s heart. She could have yelled at Lucas…if she hadn’t understood that he was probably already doing himself quite a lot more damage than mere yelling from a nurse would inflict.
As if Reba could read minds, she looked up from the little bundle that was Maggie, and said to Angela in a shaky voice, “I mean, does this happen? Do preemie dads do this? Is it a—a syndrome, or something? I want it to be. I’m just like Lucas! I want to look it up on the Internet and print out pages of relevant data. Vanishingpreemiedads.net or something. All the statistics. The relationship survival rate. The percentage of dads who show up after three days. The percentage who never come back at all. Or is he the only one who’s ever done it?”
One of those questions no nursing degree could ever qualify you to answer. As usual, because you just had to, Angela tried to answer it anyhow.
“We do get parents who disappear, sometimes,” she said carefully. The ones who were young, scared and alone. The ones with problems. The ones with addictions. “Moms and dads. But not fathers like Lucas. He was so involved with Maggie, Reba, I can’t see him turning into a long-term dead-beat dad, just like that. He’ll be back. Question is when.”
“Question is, am I angry!”
“Well, sure you’re angry.”
Reba let out a breathy sound. “Oh. Angela. Thanks for saying it!” She blinked back tears. “Thanks so much for just coming right out and saying it! Yes. I’m angry. I’m angry,” she repeated, as if the license to speak the words out loud was the best freedom she’d been given in days.
It probably was.
The NICU could feel like a prison, sometimes.
A parent’s emotions could feel like one, too.
And Lucas was a prison escapee.
“Do you think that’s permanent, honey?” Angela asked. “Will you forgive him, when he shows up? How strong is your love?”
“I’m so sorry,” Sarah Emery said, arriving at that moment. “I couldn’t cut short that call. Is she still awake? Oh, sweetheart, yes, you’re looking wonderfully alert and ready for this, aren’t you, little girl? Let’s get started.”
Over Sarah’s head, as she bent toward Maggie, Angela saw Reba scrape her teeth across her bottom lip, then turn down her mouth and give a tight little shrug that seemed to say, “How strong is my love? I wish I knew.”
They looked like a painting of the Madonna and Child, Lucas thought, as soon as he saw Reba and Maggie.
Beautiful.
Perfect.
It had taken him a full minute to find them, because Maggie’s isolette had been moved. When he’d first looked over to the familiar corner, on entering the unit, and had seen a different baby there—a very sick baby—with a different nurse in attendance, he’d experienced instant darkness across his vision and had almost blacked out.
But then the nurse had looked up, taken in the way he was gripping the nearest chair-back with desperate fingers and told him, “You’re Maggie’s Dad, right? She’s on the far side of the unit, now. She doesn’t need this level of care anymore.”
“Because she’s—” His husky voice had dried up completely.
“Doing so well.”
And she was. He could see it from here. They were both doing so well. Reba had the baby’s mouth at her breast and was smiling down at her. Maggie had her eyes closed, but her little cheeks were moving rhythmically as she sucked, and if that wasn’t bliss on her face, then the word had no meaning in any dictionary.
Reba hadn’t seen him yet, even though he’d moved closer. She was too absorbed. She had her finger resting lightly against Maggie’s cheek and she was smiling, so happy.
Complete.
The two of them looked so complete together, and Lucas’s heart twisted and climbed into the back of his throat. Painful. Uncomfortable. Nauseating.
What had he done?
He’d gone away, abandoned them.
Five whole days.
Five days of tramping Hawaiian beaches, brooding into black cups of coffee at outdoor tropical cafes. He’d even climbed a volcano.
Because why not climb a volcano, when love had no power?
Except he’d discovered that it did. He still…almost…didn’t want it to, but it just did.
Love might not do Maggie or Reba or himself any good, but it burned inside him night and day anyhow, and it wouldn’t go away, and against all logic and good sense it was important—vitally, agonizingly important—and in the end he’d checked out of his private eco-cabin at the most luxurious resort on Oahu and taken the first flight he could get, back to Denver, to the two people he loved most in the world.
One of them might not have survived his absence.
The other might never forgive it.
But here he was.
He cleared his throat.
“Hi, Reba, hi, Maggie,” he said.
Reba’s face drained of both color and expression, and she didn’t speak. They looked at each other, frozen, and he knew that all he could do was try to
tell her the truth—and doing that depended completely on her willingness to hear him out.
“I bailed, didn’t I?” he began.
Her eyes narrowed, and she looked angry, vulnerable, searching, all at the same time. “Are you going to tell me about it?” she said, with less emotion than he’d expected.
“If you’ll listen.”
“I’m not going anywhere, right now, with a baby on my lap.”
“She looks fabulous. Bigger. She’s feeding, and she’s not choking.”
“We’ve been having lessons. We’re A students, now.”
His voice shrank to a whisper. “I’ve missed her so much. Missed you, even more.”
“Funny, I don’t remember the postcard in which you mentioned that.”
“I tore up the postcard.”
“You actually wrote one?”
“I wanted to write about a hundred. Couldn’t pick up a pen or a telephone or—Reba, I cracked. I was so angry at the universe for playing such terrible tricks on my heart. All that love I poured into her, and she got sick again, and I just filled up with stubbornness and despair. I wasn’t going to love her, damn it, if that was the reward. I wasn’t going to love you, because some day I’d get rewarded for that in the same terrible, painful way.”
Her face stayed still and watchful. “So you left.”
“I left. I went to Hawaii. Climbed a volcano.”
“Lovely!”
“It wasn’t. Well, it is. It’s beautiful. But it was hell for me.”
Reba exploded, as much as a woman could explode when she had a tiny, precious baby on her lap. “Hell for you?” she mouthed, like someone shouting on TV with the sound turned down. “Do you have the slightest idea what it’s been like for me?”
“Yes. Yes, sweetheart, I do. Impossible. Agonizing. I know. The same agony of not knowing that we’ve both endured for more than two months, and that made me crack up in the end, that made me just refuse to do it any more.”
“To do what?”
“To feel the love. I was fighting so hard. I didn’t want to feel any of this. For five whole days I tried to force myself not to feel it, but…” He spread his hands. “I just do feel it, Reba. I love her. And I love you. So much. You remember when we were at the cabin I said you got swept up in currents of emotion and had no control over where you were washed up?”
“I remember,” she admitted.
“That same current swept me up and carried me along and washed me up…just loving you, loving both of you. Loving you until my heart almost shattered with it. And I want it, now. I can’t live without it. Can you forgive what I had to do, to find that out?”
Oh, could she? After an explanation like that?
Reba didn’t quite know if she was laughing or crying. So Lucas thought that she was the emotional one? He had to climb a volcano in Hawaii in order to understand his own heart, and he thought she was the emotional one?
“Yes, I can forgive you,” she said, because she had no choice. She’d had no choice from day one, where this man was concerned! The current of her emotions had brought her to this point weeks ago. She loved him, and as he did, she had no say in the matter at all. “I forgive you, Lucas. I love you. So much. My heart is bursting.”
Okay, so she was crying. She must be, because he was brushing tears from her face, and his eyes glistened and blurred and brimmed just like hers did.
“Marry me, too?” he whispered. “Make us a family—you, Maggie and me?”
“On the advice of your lawyer, the way it was before?”
“No, to save my heart, because it’s bursting, too.”
“Then I’d better say yes.”
“Can I hear it? Can you say it?”
“Yes, Lucas. Oh, yes, I’ll marry you as soon as you want!”
He bent toward her, because they both wanted to seal the moment with a kiss, but Maggie had something to say about that. She choked on her milk and started to splutter, so Reba gently eased her breast away, lifted the baby up, checked that she could breathe, and wiped her mouth.
“Better now, sweetheart?” she whispered, smiling at Maggie because she just couldn’t stop smiling at Maggie, lately. “Sorry about that, little girl. But your mommy and daddy have decided to get married, which feels pretty nice, and, well— Oh!”
Maggie was smiling back.
She was.
An unmistakable, wide-mouthed, bright-eyed, milky, beautiful, heavenly smile.
“Angela?” Lucas said in a shaky voice, and the nurse came over. “Is this possible? Look, Maggie’s smiling! Surely that’s not possible. In gestational age, she’s still not born yet.”
“It’s perfectly possible, and she’s definitely doing it,” Angela said. “Preemies see smiling faces when other babies are still in the womb. They learn from what they see, and so they start early. Was Mommy smiling at you, sweetheart? Is Mommy feeling good about something right now?”
“I was smiling at her. I am. I can’t stop. I’m so happy,” Reba said. “We’re getting married, Angela! We’re giving Maggie a family.”
Angela grinned. “Oh, we’ve been hoping! Honey, excuse me, I’m going to go put that on Maggie’s chart! I’m so thrilled for you both!”
Maggie seemed pretty happy about it, too. Absolutely beaming, with a twinkle like starlight in her eyes.
Lucas put his arm around both of them and told his daughter, “Your mommy and I are going to kiss each other now. You can keep smiling or you can stop, but you can’t splutter another mouthful of milk, because I haven’t kissed Mommy for nearly a week and that’s way too long.” He brushed Reba’s lips with his and she closed her eyes, giving herself to the touch and taste she loved. “Way, way too long…” he whispered, then he deepened the kiss until time stopped.
Ten minutes later, Angela snatched a moment to make a rare phone call to Shirley and Helen at home, with the news about Maggie’s parents that she knew they wouldn’t want to wait to hear.
Just about two weeks after this, on a Saturday, Lucas and Reba took Maggie home. Because she wouldn’t be close to a hospital, she’d been kept in the unit until fully weaned from tube feeds and oxygen, but she was getting bigger and stronger so fast, now, that the weaning had happened over a matter of days.
They were heading for Reba’s little house in Biggins, but that wouldn’t count as home for long. Lucas had cashed in enough of his Halliday Corporation shares to buy the McConnell ranch and take over Seven Mile from his father. He’d put both purchases in motion the time they’d gone to the cabin to take a break two months ago, intending at minimum to create a stable home base for Maggie to grow up in, where her mom would be happy.
Now, his plans for the combined ranches had changed a little. He would maintain a role in the family corporation, but his home base would be at Seven Mile, where a Swiss-style chalet and an eight thousand square foot log cabin were no longer on the construction program.
Taking Maggie home took all day.
Lucas and Reba had to check out of their hotel suite, handle the hospital discharge formalities and say goodbye to some pretty important people before driving north. Maggie needed two stops for feeding on the way. When she was hungry, she sure let her parents know it! To Reba and Lucas, the strength and volume of her cry was almost like music. Both times, after she’d fed, she slept contentedly again, strapped in her infant seat.
Even after this, there were another two stops they’d planned to make—the local county clerk’s office to pick up their marriage license and change into their wedding clothes, and then the church in Biggins where they were going to be married.
Somehow, it had just seemed right that Maggie should arrive home to the ranch with her parents already man and wife, and had seemed completely unimportant, under the circumstances, for them to have a big, splashy wedding with a lot of guests in attendance.
Arriving at the church, they found a lot of guests in attendance anyhow.
“What has Carla done?” Reba murmured, as they pulled in
to the filled parking lot adjacent to the church.
Nervously, she took Lucas’s hand and felt his answering squeeze. It sent all the usual messages to her senses, and her nervousness subsided. Beside each other and united like this, an out-of-control wedding day hardly seemed like a problem.
Confusing, maybe, but not in a bad way.
“We asked her and Chris to come and act as our witnesses,” she went on, “but—”
“Seems like they’ve brought along a few witnesses of their own.”
“A few witnesses?” She started to laugh helplessly. “It looks like the whole town!”
She saw most of the staff from the Longhorn Steakhouse, the ranch hands and their girlfriends and wives, Carla and Chris, their kids and their parents. And then she saw Maggie’s nurses Shirley and Helen and Angela, dressed to the nines in outfits that definitely weren’t hospital scrubs and each on the arm of their husbands.
The crowd began to disappear inside the church as Reba and Lucas unstrapped Maggie from her car seat and nestled her into a soft pink cotton baby sling that would keep her snug and protected against Reba’s chest, precious girl.
There were just a few people still waiting outside as they approached, and to Reba’s astonishment she recognized Kate and Farrer Halliday, standing together and smiling, and that was…yes…Mom, in her wheelchair, right beside Dad.
They’d come all this way.
Carla must have spent hours on the phone.
“Waiting to take you down the aisle,” Dad told Reba as she came up the steps to greet him, with tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Dad!”
“So happy for all three of you. Who knew, last summer, when we first talked about selling, that it would turn out like this. Your mother and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”
Mom and Lucas’s parents went ahead to take their places in the church, and then Carla appeared, smiling and a little nervous, practically wringing her hands. “I know you said you wanted it simple, guys,” she said, “But it, um, didn’t turn out that way. I’ve booked out the steakhouse for a special meal later, and— Are you going to bite my head off, Reba?”
