Strawberry Wine

by E. Jamie

  “You need to calm down,” the doctor ordered them out into the hall.

  “Look, I promised that I wouldn't—”

  Caleb felt like he'd been sucker punched. He grabbed Karl's collar and pushed him up against the wall. “You promised? How long have you known?”

  “Whoa! Relax!” Karl pushed back, making Caleb almost trip backwards. “It's not like you went out of your way to find out what happened to her after she left.”

  “Hey! Knock it off, both of you!” the doctor demanded.

  Caleb felt the color drain out of his face, and his stomach churned with the threat of nausea. “She was pregnant when she left?”

  “You need to talk to Laura when she wakes up,” Karl repeated.

  “Oh God... Oh my God!” He covered his mouth, tears springing to his eyes. He lost his footing and fell against the wall. All these years, she'd kept it from him, something so important and she’d never said a word. Caleb couldn't breathe. “I have to...God...I have to go. I can't...” A baby. There had been a baby. Now it was gone, and there was another to take its place. “I need some air,” he said through a blur of tears as he rushed out of the room.

  ****

  Laura opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was Karl's worried face. She turned her head in the opposite direction, expecting to see Caleb. He was not there. She turned back to her friend. The somber look on his face worried her, and for a moment she was terrified she had lost this baby as well. Her hands went instantly to her belly.

  Seeing her gesture, Karl quickly assured her the baby was fine.

  That could only leave one other option. Her stomach knotted with a strange clench of apprehension. “Where is he?”

  Karl glanced up at the doctor, who shook his head.

  “Don't shake your head at him. Where the hell is Caleb?” She started to panic. Something was wrong. Caleb had gone out on the job, and something had happened to him. He was dead. He'd been shot. Oh God...Would he be this cruel? Just when Laura was about to get everything she'd ever wanted, would God take Caleb?

  “Laura...” Karl began, and the doctor threw up his hands.

  “Fine, but if she has a heart attack, it's on your head.”

  Laura reached up and grabbed the doctor’s white coat, bringing him down to her face. “Where the hell is Caleb?”

  “He knows, Laura,” Karl said softly.

  His voice was so sad that she couldn’t believe he was talking about the doctor.

  Caleb knew.

  “Knows what?” she asked, her voice hitching while her throat closed up with panic when realization dawned like ice in her stomach. Please, no. Please.

  “They called Caleb after you passed out. The doctor told him there might be problems with this baby because of your heart meds and scarring from your earlier pregnancy.”

  Laura's eyes widened, and she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I have to talk to him. I have to see him. No! Nononono! I have, I have...” She’d been surprised that so far, this pregnancy hadn't given her much in the way of morning sickness. But now her stomach lurched. She covered her mouth, and Karl grabbed the small bedpan, holding it under her chin seconds before she threw up.

  ****

  Caleb didn’t stop driving until he found himself outside Laura’s old apartment, the one she’d had above Greeley’s garage where she worked all through high school. God must be enjoying himself screwing around with him. This was the last place he wanted to be. The place where he and Laura had first loved each other, where everything had been perfect and he’d still believed in their bright shiny future.

  Now the decrepit building mirrored the truth. There was no future; perfect dreams were a joke. Greeley had long been out of business, and the apartment upstairs hadn’t been rented in years.

  She’d lied to him! This whole goddamned time! For years! Caleb had opened himself to her completely, allowed himself to trust her again, and she’d lived with him, made love to him, all with this lie in her eyes.

  He kicked the door to her apartment open and let out a scream of rage as he punched the wall, sending a fiery pain through his hand and up his forearm. It distracted him from the ache in his heart so he did it again, cracking the white paint. Tears streamed down his face when he finally stopped and pressed his forehead against the wall, breathless. He’d had a baby. His baby had died, and he’d never had a chance to mourn. A son? A daughter? A tiny innocent life that was his, and Laura had lied and kept that from him. If she had told him about the baby, he could have kept her safe, kept his baby safe.

  “You're going to have to pay for the damage, you know?” His mother’s soft but firm voice penetrated Caleb's red haze of rage.

  Her brown eyes were sad when they met his, and he knew that she had heard about what had happened.

  Caleb took a few deep breaths to try and calm down. “Sorry.”

  “Come. Sit.” She walked toward the window seat and motioned for him to join her.

  Caleb wiped his face and dropped next to her. “Look, I'm not really in the mood to hear about how I should forgive her.” He shuddered and shook his head as bitterness filled him. “She lied to me. Laura was pregnant years ago, and she lost my baby and instead of telling me about it, she ran. Left me with no explanation. I hated her for years.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Caroline remarked, her voice dripping with skepticism.

  “Okay, I tried to hate her,” he admitted with a shrug. “All this time, she's kept the death of my baby a secret. If it weren't for the fact that she got pregnant now, I would have never known my baby died to begin with. I found out from Karl, of all people! How can I forgive her for that? We've worked through so much shit and I've opened myself back up to her, and she's torn it all to shreds all over again!”

  “Well, first of all, you keep saying 'my baby.' It was Laura's baby too. She carried it inside of her, nurtured it with her body. How do you think it felt to have that taken away? Especially knowing what a wounded child that woman is? I'd suggest you try and look at this from her point of view. You say she's pregnant again?”

  Caleb nodded, feeling a frightening prickle of hope in his heart. “What do I do, Mom? I have no damned clue what the right thing to do here is. Do I forgive her again? Then what happens the next time she gets scared and lies to me? Do I forgive her again and again? I can’t keep letting her doing this to me.” He shook his head and clenched his fists tight at his sides.

  “Seems to me that God is giving you another chance, sweetheart. You two love each other in a way that is so rare. That is to be cherished, but we are imperfect creations. Always learning and changing. The way we learn is by being forgiven for the mistakes

  we make. You have fought long and hard to get to where you are. Are you willing to toss that away because of fear?”

  “I've done everything I could to assure her she has nothing to be afraid of anymore. I've given her so many chances to trust me—”

  “I'm not talking about her, Caleb,” she insisted, staring at him. “There is a new little life depending on the both of you to get your acts together. Seems to me you've got a lot of thinking to do, my sweet boy.” Caroline pulled him in close and wrapped her arms around him. For a little while, Caleb let himself need his mom and just lay his head on her shoulder.

  ****

  “You've seen him?” Laura asked Caroline urgently when his mother visited her at Caleb’s apartment. He wasn’t there when she was released from the hospital as she had been praying he would be and had now been gone for a whole day. Laura was terrified that he was going to give up on them for good. Give up on her. “Where? Where is he? William told me he’d left for a while, but he didn't tell me where.”

  “I asked William not to say anything.”

  Laura felt like Caroline had smacked her in the face. “Why the—I need to see him, damn it! I need to explain.”

  “No, you need to give him some time. He's had quite a shock, and he needs time to work through it all.”

  Laura
lowered her head, and tears sprung to her eyes. “What if he wants nothing to do with me anymore? After everything...what if this is just too much? I need to see him. Please.”

  “That man loves you something stupid, Laura. You have such little faith. Give him the time he needs. Have faith that your love for each other will get you through this. It got you this far, didn't it? Now you have a new little one to think about. Focus on that for now. This child is a gift from God.”

  Laura leaned her head against the back of the couch and gritted her teeth. “How much time?”

  “You'll know,” Caleb’s mother assured her with a cryptic smile.

  ****

  “Okay, that's it! It's been two days. He hasn't called. He hasn't come back. Enough is enough. He's left me here like some godforsaken fishwife!” Laura growled in exasperation while she zipped up her jacket.

  “Laura, this is a bad idea. I mean, bad like the king of bad ideas. Leave it alone,” Karl warned, following her toward her car.

  “No! Laura Thatcher waits for no man. Got it? I'm going to track him down, beat his ass and bring him home, or beat his ass and leave him there.”

  She’d managed to track Caleb’s whereabouts to his mother’s house and figured she should have guessed he would return home. She admitted to herself that maybe, deep

  Down, she had known he would come here and had just been too frightened to follow him until now. Laura fought her own doubts to believe that Caleb would bring her back to the city. That they'd come back together.

  She pushed past him when Caleb opened the front door. “You lying bastard!” Laura yelled before he could open his mouth.

  “Me?” Caleb asked, openmouthed and caught off guard. “Me?” His jaw was dark with stubble, and it gave her a small measure of satisfaction to know that he probably hadn’t slept any better than she had lately.

  “'Trust me,’ you said. 'Believe in what we feel for each other.' 'We can work through anything as long as we love each other.' Then what happens? You find out the truth and you run!”

  “Oh, you mean like you did?” Caleb shot back, clenching his fists at his sides.

  “Instead of letting me explain, you copped out. All you proved was that I was right to run the first time because I knew you would never forgive me.” Laura turned away from him.

  “No!” Caleb grabbed her and turned her around to face him.

  Laura braced herself for his anger, but instead he cupped her face in his hands.

  “But you're right about this. I should have stayed to listen to what you had to say. It just threw me. We had a baby and that baby died, and you didn't trust me enough to tell me. Now we're having another baby, and I needed to figure out how to deal with it all. I got scared.”

  “What, and you think I'm not?” Laura replied, shaking.

  He released her and took a step back. “Will you tell me now?” Caleb asked. “I know I was a coward to run, and I know I should have kept my word to you. We need to work through things if we have a hope in hell here, so tell me.” He sat on the couch, his eyes hopeful. “My mom is out, so we have some time to ourselves.”

  Laura rubbed her arms and took a seat next to him “You were right—I should have never gone to see my mother.” Her eyes glistened while the memories came hard and fast. “I told you that I wanted to somehow make my peace with her. I was getting everything I’d ever wanted, and I felt like if I didn’t go, then I’d have that dark cloud over me that said I had let my mom die without trying to make things right between us. How could I raise our baby the right way if I did that? You didn’t want me to go, and I went anyway.”

  Caleb sighed. “You were trying to do a good thing with an evil woman.”

  Laura nodded. “And God, she was evil. She said awful things, Caleb. She said that I was garbage and that I could never raise a baby. But I held on to you, to us, in my heart, and I said my peace and left. I felt like I had done what I’d come to do, and I was kind of proud that I’d managed to give her what for, ya know?”

  He leaned over and wiped her cheeks. “I hope she’s burning in hell.”

  Laura took a shaky breath. “I guess I was distracted, because I didn’t see the car coming. The driver was speeding and had jumped the curb.”

  Caleb closed his eyes, and grief stabbed through him, but he took Laura’s hands tight in his own.

  “If Karl hadn’t been in the passenger’s side of the car, I might have died there on that sidewalk.”

  “Karl?”

  “Yeah. He saved my life, and he helped me disappear. When I came to and learned the baby was dead, all I could think was that you had begged me not to go and I had gone, and now our baby was dead. Because of me.”

  “Jesus Christ, Laura. That wasn’t your fault.” He cupped her face in his hands.

  “Wasn’t it, though? If you had been there in the hospital instead of Karl and the doctor had told you our baby was gone, wouldn’t you have thought that if I hadn’t been on that curb, our baby would still be alive?” Laura lowered her head. “Even though no one could have known the car accident was going to happen, it was my fault I went against you and was standing on that curb.”

  Caleb shook his head. “Okay, maybe yes, in my grief, for a second I would have thought that if you hadn’t gone to see your mother, our baby would be alive. But damn it, Laura, we would have worked through that. You should have given us more credit!”

  It took all his willpower not to shake her and make her see that if she’d just trusted him, they could have saved themselves so much heartache. But the past few days had given him a lot of time to think. He knew the world of fear Laura came from. He knew the hate she lived with from her mother. It was easy for him to say that she should have trusted him, but besides his loving her, where was the proof that she could? The first time she’d needed that trust; he'd let her go. Let her disappear, because he had been so lost in his own rage and humiliation.

  The second time she’d needed to trust him, to believe that they really were strong enough to work through their difficulties, he'd run here and left her. They both needed to learn to trust each other. His mother was right, Caleb thought. They had something so amazing, but they didn't have the courage to live it. Day by day, through the ups and downs. Or they once didn't, he amended, feeling a new sense of purpose. From now on, he would be stronger for her. Stronger for their baby.

  When Laura finished, the tears were streaming off her face and falling onto their joined hands.

  He leaned in and kissed her forehead, drawing her into his lap. “I'm sorry I didn't look for you,” he whispered, holding her close to him.

  “I forgive you.” Laura buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

  Caleb gave a short laugh through his own tears and tightened his arms around her. “I forgive you too.” He felt a weight lift from inside his chest. He left a note for his Mom, telling her they’d gone home.

  ****

  They lay side beside each other in the dark, on top of the blankets, still in their clothes.

  Laura told him the day that would have been their first baby's birthday was the same day Mike had died. “I light a candle for them both. I never gave him a name.... Do you want to?” Laura asked in a low voice.

  He wiped a tear rolling onto his nose. “You think it was a boy?”

  “I do. Just like I think this one is a girl,”

  “Really?” Caleb asked, awe evident in his voice. He lowered his hand to her stomach. God truly had given them a second chance. He was so grateful. He ran his hand down the side of Laura's face.

  “You remember little Jamie? That kid who wanted to marry you?” he asked with a soft note of amusement. “How about that? Jamie?”

  “I like that a lot. I'd like to have a service for him too.”

  “I'd like that,” Caleb said. “Jamie Michael McKinney?”

  “Oh,” Laura sniffled, fiddling with the collar of his gray t-shirt. “That’s a good name.”

  ****

  They sat acros
s from each other in the private dining room at the restaurant. The strength of their love and, finally, the trust in that love shone in their eyes. They knew they'd screw up again. Argue. Furniture would probably be broken, but they were strong enough now to hold on.

  “I have something for you,” Laura said and reached into her purse and placed the small velvet box on the table.

  He cocked an eyebrow, but then his breath caught when he lifted it open and recognized the simple solitaire diamond set in the gold band. He looked from the ring up to Laura’s face. “I was afraid to ask if you still had it.”

  She nodded, a lump of sadness in her throat. “I couldn’t bring myself to mail it back to you from wherever I was at the time. Maybe I was afraid you’d take it and give it to someone else.”

  He shook his head. “There was never anyone else, Laura Thatcher. Not to say there weren’t attempts, but I meant it when I said you’re it for me. For better or worse.”