by Anna Adams
Noah offered Brett his hand. Brett shook it. “Megan’s contractions have stopped,” Noah said. “We’re hoping the baby will wait a few more weeks.”
“My daughter told me you came with her.”
Noah nodded. “Emma got her to my office where we all worked hard to calm down and not have a baby.”
Brett had never looked more uncomfortable. Not even back in the old days.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know,” Brett said. “It’s your job.”
Noah shook his head. Stiff-necked Candlers. They jumped to conclusions faster than anyone had a right or reason to. “I like Megan. I care that your baby arrives safely.”
“I’m sorry. I seem to...”
“No problem.” Noah stepped aside. “Your wife’s waiting behind that door at the end of the treatment rooms. Good luck.”
“I’m hoping we won’t need that, now that she’s here.”
Noah would never know how he restrained himself from jumping on the irony of that statement.
He opened the doors to the waiting area, only to hear running feet, sneakers squeaking on the polished marble floors. He walked into the dark green hall as Emma skidded into the information desk, her light wavy hair flying over her shoulders.
Seeing him, she hurried toward him, her eyes begging for reassurance.
“Is she in there? That was the longest drive of my life. Are they okay?”
He caught her upper arms, and his hands tightened as he pulled her closer than he’d meant to. Wisps of heated memory wafted through his mind. That kiss. The longing she made him feel...
“Megan’s fine. The baby’s fine. Your dad’s in there now.”
“Thank goodness.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. She brought up her hands and dashed them away, looking brave and young and tender, and for a moment she held his life, his only hope, in her hands again. Without making him wish he was more.
He let her go. It was that, or pull her to him and admit she gave him joy and hope.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually cry. You know that.”
“I do.” She’d always held herself in check, as if tears were against all the rules of living.
In his house, reason had always been the first trait to leave the building when the arguments flared.
“I’m so relieved,” Emma said. “At first, I tried to do the right thing for Dad, but then I found Megan so easy to love. And the baby. I’m glad at the prospect of a little sister, but she never seemed real until today.”
“Didn’t seem real?” he asked with a laugh that lifted strands of her hair.
She smiled slightly and smoothed her hair, as if she were used to such simple intimacy. He was not, but he wanted more of these moments where they talked to each other. Where they heard each other.
“I know Megan’s carrying a baby, but I’ve never been around small children or even pregnant women. Until today, my baby sister was sort of abstract.”
“Like kittens,” he suggested, teasing. “I had a patient once who dreamed she’d had a litter of kittens.”
She grinned widely, her mouth curving, implicit with trust. Not on guard. Not hiding. “Kind of. Obviously, not kittens, but Megan is really having a baby.”
He lifted one hand to her cheek, to soft, soft skin that made him want to press his lips to the high, beautiful contour. The door at her back edged open. Her father leaned through.
“I thought I heard your voice, Em. Megan wants to see you.”
“Okay.” She laid her hand on Noah’s arm, just below his rolled-up sleeve, and his nerve endings memorized the shape of her fingers. He felt an unexpected wave of comfort move through him. He hadn’t realized he needed comfort. “I won’t stay long,” she said.
“Take your time.”
He turned to the circle of chairs set around a circular table. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he opened the first text and tried to read, but the words seemed to move, as if they were dancing. He kept seeing Emma’s face in front of them.
She might swear she was leaving Bliss, but every day she wove herself more deeply into the fabric of the town. She was all caught up in his life. He needed her.
“Noah?”
He stood without looking at her. He needed a moment to take cover behind his own guard. She was the one who’d pulled away when they’d kissed. This time there was no mistake. He’d always cared for her. He’d loved her and wanted to marry her, but he’d let her down so many times, she didn’t want him anymore.
“You were quick,” he said.
“She’s tired. They want her to sleep. I never heard anything that sounded as beautiful as her baby’s heartbeat.”
“Me neither,” he said. “Except the lack of contractions being tracked on that monitor.”
“She’s staying here a few days. They told her she could go home after she finishes the medicine you started and the steroids, and they’re sure the labor has stopped. Dad said no. He wants her where she doesn’t have to fly in for help.”
“Maybe he’ll buy her a house in town.”
Emma turned her head to look at him, her green eyes questioning, vulnerable. “You’re being sarcastic?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just when we were getting along.”
She looked at him as if she didn’t know what to expect next.
“I could eat,” he said. “And I owe you dinner for driving me home.”
“You don’t owe me. My family is going to owe you for the rest of our lives. And I would have driven over here anyway. I find I’m glad to have your company.” She turned toward the information desk and the elevator beyond, clearly assuming he’d follow her. “I have an idea. You might even like it.”
“I am in your hands.”
The words felt good as he said them. It wasn’t the way he usually lived.
* * *
NOAH’S EASY CONFIDENCE in her had waned as she’d piled a shopping cart full of edibles in the market. The afternoon sun lengthened as they loaded their purchases into the back of her car.
“I thought you were in my hands,” Emma said. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d worry about eating alfresco on a November day that had turned sunny and slightly warmer. “Maybe a do-it-yourself picnic isn’t sophisticated enough for you now.”
She was immediately sorry. He looked put off, and she felt petty.
She felt worse, watching him swallow the reply in kind he’d obviously caught on the tip of his tongue.
“Wouldn’t you rather eat in a restaurant? I’d spring for something tastier than sandwiches.”
She threw old resentments into the wind. “We had good news. Why not choose to be happy in Nan’s and my favorite picnic spot?”
“Where would that be?” he asked.
“Nan was a big believer in the Sunday drive, and she always packed a lunch because the mountain air made us so hungry. I wouldn’t share this place with just anyone,” she said, too happy to be careful.
“How do I not know about this perfect spot?”
“You were always too busy for a Sunday drive.”
She got back on the road and pointed her car toward the mountains, refusing to worry that another argument would ruin their afternoon.
Along the interstate, brown park signs alerted travelers to overlooks and trails. Her favorites were the ones where drivers could leave their cars and walk into the woods. About fifteen minutes before they reached home, she pulled off into the Bliss Motor Trail. The narrow road led into dense vegetation.
“It’s one-way,” Emma said. “We’ll come out a little farther west on the interstate.”
“I’ve been here before.”
Tension made his deep
voice husky. She glanced at him, but he refused to say more.
“We can drive on through,” she said. “We don’t have to stop.”
“Stop,” he said, and then gathered himself. “Wherever you planned to.”
She didn’t offer again.
“Everything’s fine, Emma.”
She smiled, but their pattern was too familiar. She suggested something they might do together. The attraction between them was like a lie she wanted to believe, that they could be close. She floated along on hope and the cold, irresistible promise of lost dreams. Then Noah found a reason to throw up an obstacle. Some argument she couldn’t resist.
“It’s just a picnic,” she said. “No commitment implied.”
He didn’t answer. She didn’t dwell on the possible reasons behind his bad temper.
Around them, the trees dropped damp leaves. Branches waved their bony, beckoning fingers. Emma answered their invitation, arrowing into a small parking space she wouldn’t have recognized if it hadn’t been part of her and Nan’s ritual for picnicking.
“Here we are. There’s a table about a hundred feet up that trail.”
“I don’t actually see the trail anymore.”
He really had been here? “Fortunately, I do see it.” She pulled the keys from her ignition and pushed the button that raised the hatchback.
Noah reached it before she did and began unloading the shopping bags. All he left for Emma were two tall bottles of water.
At this altitude, the wind was cooler and stronger. Some of the leaves felt like wet velvet as they brushed her skin. Some felt like the pages of an old notebook, well studied. Soft and smooth.
“It might rain again,” Emma said.
“Do you want to get back in the car?”
“I’d like to know what’s bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “For once, believe me, Emma.”
He was lying, but she’d get nowhere if she pressured him. “If you point your toes inward, you won’t slip so much as you climb.”
He hadn’t clambered up these trails, she thought. He hadn’t had as much playtime as she, and he hadn’t been Nan’s grandson.
“Maybe I don’t need to advise you on how to walk, Noah.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t bother to look back. With his neck and shoulders stiff, he led the way up the trail. Fortunately, it rose high enough to silence them both as they climbed.
“Doctor’s hours have me out of shape,” Noah said.
Was he admitting a weakness? She almost tumbled back down to the car. “Same here,” she said. “I sit for hours to work. Sometimes I forget to move. Maybe I should ask Owen to build me one of those treadmill desks. You know? You walk while you work?”
“You could concentrate?”
“Sure. Probably better. I’m calmer when I exercise regularly.” She stretched, lifting the bottles. “Like tonight when I work, I’ll be too tired to listen to all the tasks shouting in my head to get done.”
“Is this the spot?”
He’d stopped, but she’d been looking down at her feet as they’d walked over half-buried limestone, and she walked straight into Noah’s back. Rubbing her forehead, she moved around him, into a clearing where three tables and three well-used grills perched, waiting to be used.
“It looks the same.” Her breath caught in the back of her throat. She might manage to be mostly civil with her mother. Time might heal her relationship with her father. But she could simply be with memories of her grandmother.
She walked to the table she and Nan always chose and set the water on the concrete. As always, she ran to the splintered fence that protected curious old and young from the cliff that dropped down to a wide, stony, rushing stream. In rainy times, it swelled partway up that cliff. Right now, it was just above normal, with the lichen-draped stones barely poking above the water.
“They look like rhinos,” Emma said. “Or crocodiles, lurking.”
She realized she hadn’t heard the sound of movement behind her and turned. Noah was carrying the last two bags to the table, but his face was set. Closed. Not angry, not wary, certainly not happy.
“Do you—” She stopped. She wouldn’t ask him again if something was wrong. “Want to eat now, or wait?”
“I’ll set everything out,” he said. “You catch up with old trees and squirrels and whatever.”
“I won’t talk to you about irritating stuff like feelings. Come look at the water.”
“I’ve seen the water,” he said, as if he didn’t plan to waste time, but she was welcome to it.
“Really, look at the stream.”
“I’ve seen mountain streams before, Emma. They’re beautiful.”
“Noah.”
He looked at her. Out here in the woods, away from town, away from friends and family, where the land was almost pristine and the air was as fresh as air could be, she felt lucky to be with him, no matter how unwilling he was to be taken for a mountain picnic.
At last, he laid the bags on their sides on the table and came toward her.
She felt him searching her with his too-quiet eyes. She didn’t look away. She wasn’t afraid. What she wanted she asked for, or she earned. She no longer clung to love with fear.
Not that she loved him still.
“See?” She turned, leaning over the rail.
“Careful.” His hands at her waist eased her back. He pointed at a couple of bent nails, popping out of the swollen wood. “Rusty.”
“You’re not allowed to be a doctor here.” She turned to the water, the beautiful dark green stream foaming between rocks. Music and energy and life that made her happy. “This place is a gift from Nan for me, but it makes you unhappy... I hoped you’d love it, too.”
He didn’t answer. That was his choice, to keep another secret and protect himself. She was on the verge of giving up when the creak of his leather jacket exposed his movement.
“I don’t love this place like you do,” he said.
She turned to him, and the strands of her hair blew across her face, tickling her lips. He looked at her mouth as she fingered them away. She shivered, aware of him, but more aware of pain that iced his stark gaze, and tension that turned him to stone.
“What happened to you, Noah?”
“I’ve seen this mountain stream before and these tables. My father brought us here. It was supposed to be a good day.” He turned from her, making no bones about hiding his feelings from her. “Our house wasn’t a constant horror show. There were times when I thought, ‘this is what it’s like at other people’s homes.’ At your house, Emma.” He flicked a quick glance her way.
To him, her home life must have been a fairy tale.
“We also came up here with a picnic. You know how great my mom’s cooking is. My dad threw a ball with us kids while Mom laid out lunch. We laughed. We teased each other. We even teased Dad because Owen and I could already throw harder, and catch better.” He glanced back at the table, but he wasn’t seeing their collection of store-bought picnic supplies. His thoughts were back in the long ago. “He threw a ball to Celia and she jumped, she was so determined to catch like Owen and Chad and me, but she landed against the fence and it sprang back. She wasn’t in any danger, unless she’d skidded through the fence, but it scared Mom.”
“I don’t blame her.”
His smile barely tipped one corner of his mouth. “She yelled at Dad. She asked him why he couldn’t think twice before he took chances. Obviously, she wasn’t only talking about throwing a ball Celia couldn’t reach. He immediately got angry, but he didn’t say a word.”
Emma shrank back, feeling every rough splinter in the fence at her side. She didn’t want to hear his father had hit his mother.
“He walked
straight at her—like in a movie. With every step, he went faster. There are—what—thirty steps between here and the tables? By the time he reached her, I was standing between them.” Noah’s face had gone pale. His eyes were splinters of marble in their sockets. Unseeing, impervious. “I didn’t speak either, but I looked at him, long and hard, and he knew what I was saying. If he’d touched her, if he’d ever touched any of us again, I would hurt him just the way he hurt us.” Noah’s voice broke, dropping to a thready whisper. “I hate who I was at that moment because I was him. I’ve spent every day since trying to forget.”
Emma choked when she tried to speak. She cleared her throat. Finally, she took his sleeve between her fingers. When he didn’t snatch himself free of her grasp, she took his hands.
It was like stepping back in time, but this time his hands were so familiar to her. Fingers, long and knobby still, as if he were the adolescent whose palm had once sweated against hers. He let her hold on.
“You were a child,” she finally said, “and you had no other way to protect your mother and your brothers and sister. You never laid a hand on your father. Maybe you never would have.”
“I don’t know that. I believe if he’d hurt one more person I loved, I might have.”
“He hurt you, Noah, because he made you think you’re some thug, when you were just trying to stop the havoc he wreaked in your family. You had to protect yourself. Your mother couldn’t or wouldn’t. I don’t know why she made those choices, but you aren’t anyone to be ashamed of.”
“You weren’t here. You didn’t live through that day. We packed up without eating. We went home. He never touched us again, but there were never any more picnic days. Anger took over and we all forgot he’d ever been kind. And after that day, my father was afraid of me. It was as if everything he did, every drink, every woman who hurt my mother, was his proof that I couldn’t make him stop doing the things that broke our family.”
Emma looped her arms around his neck and held him tight. If only she could infuse some of her faith in him into his body, into his heart and soul. “You can’t hurt anyone. You’re spending all your time trying to make sure no one in Bliss goes without care. You’re no longer a boy who fought back against a violent man. Maybe what happened that day had to happen.”
