Her Soldier's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She paused, and his mind took a couple of steps back. “That’s what you meant when you said your father agreed to let you live with your grandmother. He let you come here to have the baby instead of going back where everyone knew us...”

  “No.”

  The wind blew her hair, and he wanted to wrap an arm around her. She should have grabbed a sweater before coming to join him.

  “My father insisted that I come here to have the baby, as soon as I knew I was pregnant, before I started to show. He didn’t want anyone to know.”

  But...

  “What about your junior year? You had to attend school. So the kids in your school here knew...” The realization brought a hint of relief.

  “Grandma homeschooled me. She was a retired teacher.”

  He’d probably known that—the teacher part. When they were kids, Eliza had told him everything. From what she ate when they weren’t together to what she wrote in her diary. They’d had no secrets.

  Seemed forever ago. Another life.

  He had to live in this one. Deal with this one. “So what did you mean when you said you made a deal with your father to stay with your grandmother?”

  “After the baby was born...” The catch in her throat nearly undid him.

  He was determined not to let that happen. If nothing else, he’d take this like a man.

  “When I got pregnant, they sold the house and moved to Florida. I was supposed to follow them there. To finish high school there. I didn’t want to live with them again. Especially after all the pressure they put on me to give away the baby. I begged them to let me live with Grandma. And they did.”

  They weren’t all bad. They loved her. And even then, their acquiescence had come at great cost to her. To live as though she’d never had a child? Pierce was piecing together a more complete picture.

  The view was making him sick. And angry. And...

  “I’m sorry.” Sorrier than she’d ever know. Sorrier than he could ever tell her. So, so sorry. For so much.

  In the past. And in the present, too. They weren’t done yet.

  “So, where is he?”

  “I don’t know, Pierce. What I do know is that he was adopted through a sister agency in Anaheim.”

  “He’s in California?”

  “I don’t know that for sure. His adoptive parents lived there when they adopted him.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  “Nothing.”

  He didn’t want to hear any more.

  Of any of it.

  “I’m guessing your father knows?”

  “I don’t think so. We didn’t vet them. We hired the agency to do so. I know there was an extensive, three-month background check on the receiving family. I know the couple was married and able to provide him with a good life.”

  Nervous again, Pierce looked out at the ocean. The tide was low, barely making a sound save for a soft rustle as water lapped gently at the sand, and it eased his pain just enough to keep him there. Made no sense, but he concentrated on the sound.

  He said what he’d been trying not to think. “There’s a connection between your trips to Palm Desert and your sudden need to speak with me about adoption.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I got a letter...just before Christmas...from the agency here in Charleston. It was forwarded from the address I’d lived at with Grandma, to Rose Harbor, as back then the inn was listed as her place of business...”

  He wanted every detail. Wanted the space in between hearing and knowing...

  Wanted to prolong finding out what he didn’t want to know.

  “He contacted the agency in California.” The words, no matter how expected, were a shock to his system. “He wanted to know my contact information.”

  The boy, their boy, was looking for his mother? For Eliza?

  This was huge. Huger than he’d ever imagined.

  Or feared.

  He’d killed a boy. Was not cut out to be a father. Most especially not to a boy.

  Eliza loved him. But she’d leave him for her baby.

  He had a son. He who could never father another child had a flesh-and-blood biological son.

  She was telling him about the private adoption and all its stipulations. About visiting the agency. About not being able to obtain any information about their son. About being able to give the agency her current contact information, but holding off until she’d told him—Pierce—that he’d fathered a child.

  The fact that she’d put him first humbled him. Moved him. Deeply.

  And confused him, too. Why was he thinking of himself at a time like this?

  But how could he not? What was he supposed to do with any of this? “You’re going to give them the go-ahead tomorrow, right?” First and foremost, that had to happen.

  The boy wouldn’t be asking for information unless he had questions. Or needed something he thought Eliza could give him.

  Could just be some biological history.

  He had a son. With a head full of hair and blue eyes.

  A son with a different adoptive father. A son Pierce couldn’t hurt...

  “I’m not going to Palm Desert, Pierce. There’s no way I’m leaving now.”

  “There’s no way you aren’t,” he told her. He wasn’t her boss. He couldn’t physically force her on that plane. Nor would he try. But he knew, deep down, she wanted to go.

  He was on the verge of telling her that if she didn’t go, he would leave her. He couldn’t be responsible for her not following through with what she needed. But he stopped.

  “I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing to say.” Her cop an attitude phrase still stung.

  “Thank you.”

  “Now.” He turned her toward him, his hands resting on her shoulders. “Look at me.”

  She did. By the light of the moon. And she had never looked so beautiful to him. Tendrils of her hair were blowing lightly in the breeze. Her face was raw and open.

  “Tell me that, in your heart of hearts, you don’t want to go.” Heart of hearts. Those were her words.

  “I...”

  “Eliza. We have to be honest with each other. We promised.”

  She nodded. “Part of me wants to go.”

  “And you’ll give them the go-ahead regarding your contact information?”

  “I think he might already have some of it,” she said. A gust of cooler air swept off the ocean, and instead of cuddling up to him, Eliza hugged herself.

  That hurt him. But he knew he couldn’t let it.

  She said, “I think that call last Friday, the unidentified one from Palm Desert...”

  Had been from his son? He still had the number. Could call it back...

  But he wouldn’t.

  “You think he’s in Palm Desert?” Pierce asked.

  “I don’t know where he is. But... I was thinking...we should call back that number. You said you looked it up.”

  She knew he had the number.

  And he had no reason not to give it to her.

  “That’s why you told me now, isn’t it? Because you’re afraid he might call again and I might answer?”

  “I was going to tell you anyway, Pierce. I tried the first week after I met with the agency.”

  But she’d known about the letter for months.

  About the boy for almost eighteen years.

  He’d have bet his life that Eliza had no secrets from him. He’d truly believed that she couldn’t. That the feelings she had for him were that pure. That she was that pure.

  He was being unfair. He knew it.

  And had never been more disillusioned.

  Looking down at the top of his wife’s head, he wanted to pull
her close. To lose himself in her.

  And saw a stranger. A mother.

  Did he really even know her?

  “I love you.” He didn’t blame her for needing to go. In some ways, he wanted her to do so.

  Tears filled her eyes again. “I love you, too.”

  They gave each other everything they had.

  Pierce thought it inevitable that it wouldn’t be enough.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IT WAS THREE hours earlier in Palm Desert. Not yet eight o’clock. She and Pierce had walked back together, separately. Until the last block, when he’d taken her hand.

  She’d held on for dear life.

  Pierce did not want to be a father. She got that. Even talking about being a father brought on his nightmares.

  He’d tried.

  Going to war changed people. It had most clearly changed him from a warm young man who poured out his heart to her, to an intensely private, mostly quiet man who still poured his heart into her.

  War had damaged his body. And his psyche.

  She loved him all the more for it.

  And believed in him, too. They could get around this if he’d be willing to try.

  “It’s not like he’s a boy,” she said as they climbed the steps to their private entrance. She was glad to see she’d closed the door. And was eager to get inside to her sweater.

  And to the phone.

  “I cannot be an example to someone who has biological reason to believe he is like me.”

  “He’d be like you were before you went into the army. What the army did to you...that wasn’t biological.”

  He didn’t say any more. But the firm expression on his face told her that her words hadn’t swayed him.

  Pierce didn’t talk much about his time in the Middle East. Except to say that it was best for both of them if he didn’t talk about it. Best if he didn’t relive it.

  As long as he continued to seek professional help when he was struggling, she was willing to abide by his edict.

  Or she had been. Until their son had opened a door that she’d thought permanently closed.

  Whatever had happened to Pierce, whatever he’d seen...they were going to have to deal with it. They’d already lost the chance to raise their only biological child. They couldn’t lose the chance to have contact with him.

  Or rather, she couldn’t.

  And if Pierce could...

  “Let’s try that number,” she said as soon as they were inside, afraid she was poking him with a hot iron, but unable to stop.

  They weren’t going to make it if they couldn’t deal with this situation.

  “Please, Pierce. What if he calls back again when I’m gone?” She’d lunged for the inn’s phone every time it had rung that week. And thought Pierce had probably noticed.

  Without a word, he went to the internet, looked up his history and got the number. Jotting it on a scrap of paper, he handed it to her and headed toward the door.

  “Aren’t you going to do this with me? What if he answers? We need to do this together...” She was begging.

  For their marriage.

  They were on a downhill trajectory that they couldn’t stop. But they could hold on to each other. And land together at the bottom.

  Pierce went out back. She could see him heading toward the gazebo.

  Picking up her cell, she considered taking the call outside to him. But she wasn’t sure anymore.

  Since she’d told him her secret, he’d been different.

  Understandably so. The man had just discovered he had a son.

  She’d been prepared for anger, but that’s not how he’d reacted at all. He’d been understanding. Loving and kind. Like the Pierce she’d fallen in love with so many years before.

  But unlike that young man, he wasn’t sharing his feelings with her. Or his thoughts.

  She looked at the number. At her cell phone. Put both down. Stood at the window in their small living room and looked out at Pierce.

  She wasn’t going to lose him.

  Was she?

  It was getting later in Palm Desert.

  With shaking hands, Eliza picked up the phone. Dialed. Pushed Send.

  Heard a click and almost dropped the phone.

  Holding on with slippery fingers, she had no idea what to say.

  Hi, are you my son?

  Hi, you don’t know me, but I might have given birth to you...

  Is that you? Are you my baby?

  “You have reached Palm Desert Television Studios. Our offices are...”

  The studio.

  It wasn’t her son who’d called. It was someone from the studio. Why they hadn’t called back, she didn’t know. But didn’t really care.

  Sinking down to the floor, she put her head between her knees and started to shake in earnest. She’d wanted so badly for him to answer. For the waiting to be over.

  Finally, even if only for a moment, to get to be a mother to the baby she’d borne.

  I got a call from this number, but there was no message...

  That’s what she should have thought of to say. If she were rational, she would have thought of it.

  For a moment there, she’d thought she was going to connect with her son. And for that moment, nothing else had mattered.

  No one else had existed.

  She’d left Pierce standing out in the dark alone, and reached out by herself to the son she’d given away. She’d made a choice.

  Him over Pierce. The mother in her had won out over the wife.

  And for what? She didn’t even know if her son wanted to meet her. She knew for certain his father didn’t want to meet him.

  Which couldn’t possibly be a good thing for the boy.

  Hi, I’m your mom. I’m so, so, so thrilled finally to meet you. Oh, your father? Yes, I know where he is. I’m married to him, actually. No. No, he doesn’t want anything to do with you. But it’s not about you...

  It was quite possible, given the fact that they were dealing with a seventeen-year-old boy, that his request for contact had come out of a desire to know who his father was. He’d be at the age where he’d be defining himself as a man. And needed to know what kind of man he came from.

  An athlete? Someone with a head for business? A bald banker with a paunch?

  Raising her head, Eliza thought of Pierce out in their gazebo.

  Was he worrying about what was happening in the house? Imagining her speaking with the son he wouldn’t see?

  Her heart ached for him. Yearned for him. She ached for all three of them.

  What if Pierce had left again?

  She jumped up. Reassured herself that he was still outside. Probably giving her enough time to finish her call.

  Waiting for a sign from her that she was done?

  She was losing it here. Hugging herself around her shoulders, she knew she was in serious trouble.

  What was she going to do?

  Turn her back on Pierce? Unthinkable.

  Ignore her son’s plea? Impossible.

  Get a grip.

  For the first time since she’d left to go find Pierce, Eliza recognized herself.

  Yes. She was going to get a grip. It’s what she did. She’d pull it together. Act like the adult she was. She wasn’t a kid anymore.

  She’d made choices. Irrevocable choices.

  She just had to find a way to live with them.

  Somehow.

  * * *

  HE HEARD HER come outside. Could hear her steps in the grass as she crossed the yard toward him. He didn’t look up. Didn’t openly welcome her when she came into the gazebo and sat down in the rocker opposite the one he’d chosen.

  He was glad she
was there. Never in his life had there been a time when he hadn’t been glad to have Eliza nearby. Didn’t figure there’d ever be a time.

  He also didn’t figure he’d be at the inn much longer.

  “It wasn’t him.”

  He hated feeling the initial rush of relief that washed over him. The fact that he wasn’t overjoyed to know he had a son, especially in light of the fact that he was incapable of fathering another, proved that he was somehow lacking in the emotional health category.

  He’d known since the day he’d faced down an eight-year-old boy and pulled the trigger that there was something elementally wrong with him.

  And he hated himself for the small thrill that escaped from someplace inside him when it hit him—again—that he had a son in the world.

  “It was the studio.” Eliza sounded different. Distant. Almost like she was speaking with one of her guests, except less nurturing. “I have no idea why they didn’t call back, or why they were calling in the first place, but I suspect it might have been because I jumped in the town car that had been sent for the twins. Their flight was late and we were all there at the same time. I called to let the studio know, the driver said he’d let the other driver know, too, but lines of communication could easily have crossed with them.”

  He didn’t mind listening to her talk.

  “I’m going to go to the agency again tomorrow, Pierce. I intend to tell them to release my personal information. I’d like to add yours to the file, as well.”

  He could still hear the ocean in his mind. It was getting louder. It was one thing to think about having a son in the world, and entirely another to allow the boy to know who’d fathered him.

  Seventeen was an impressionable, crazy, hormonal age. He would not risk having a young man look up to him, or in any way think that what he’d done was okay. He couldn’t be that example...

  A lesson learned during his second marriage. He knew why the nightmares had come. Because he’d taken on a responsibility he couldn’t live up to. His life was not a good example for a young man to emulate.

  “I’d need your permission, Pierce. In writing.” If she knew that much, she must have already asked. She’d already been planning his involvement before he’d even known he was a father.

  Again, he wondered who she was. And how she could have had so much going on without him knowing.