by Amy Andrews
‘Girl or boy, do you know?’ Miranda asked.
‘Little girl,’ Diane, the mother, confirmed, adjusting her nasal prongs.
‘Little Faith,’ Darryl, the father, confirmed. He was dressed in scrubs and a mask and cap like everyone else and holding his wife’s hand tightly. ‘She may have her problems but she’s our little blessing in disguise and we love her.’
He kissed Diane gently on the forehead as Miranda surreptitiously checked the chart. The baby had been diagnosed on amniocentesis as having Down’s syndrome.
Diane smiled at her husband as the surgeon announced he was making the first incision. ‘We’re so lucky,’ she said. ‘We gave up on life for a while there with Darryl’s cancer coming back so soon after his remission, but then we thought, screw it, love’s a gift, right?’
Miranda watched with a lump in her throat as Darryl stroked Diane’s face and she beamed at him. She felt a huge crack in the boulder in her chest.
‘So we got married and we got pregnant and we’ll just take every day as it comes. Things aren’t perfect but there aren’t any guarantees in life, are there, so why not be happy while you can?’
Miranda blinked back threatening tears. She could hear the sucker in the background suctioning away the amniotic fluid but it felt as if it was sucking out the knot in her stomach, splitting her belly wide open.
Before her were two people who had been through the mill. Darryl had cancer with what sounded like a poor prognosis and they were about to welcome a new baby who had Down’s syndrome.
Their lives were hard and imperfect and messy and complicated. But they could still love.
And five minutes later, when little Faith’s lusty first cry sliced through the expectant hush, Miranda finally let go of what she’d been holding back for so long.
She loved Patrick.
She loved him.
And it wasn’t like the impetuousness she’d experienced with Mal. Or the desperate, girlish desire to play house with Neil. It was just there, sure and steady and real. Like her breath. Like her heartbeat.
And it was hard and imperfect and messy and complicated, and she suddenly didn’t care.
Diane was crying, Darryl was crying and she joined them.
* * *
An hour later she’d texted Patrick to tell him she’d pick Ruby up from school. And half an hour after that she was on his doorstep, the girls tearing inside and heading straight for the kitchen and the smell of baking biscuits that had wafted out to greet them.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Helen asked as Miranda hovered on the doorstep.
‘Is Patrick here?’
‘He’s out in the back yard, doing some mulching.’ She smiled. ‘Why don’t you go on through?’
Miranda nodded, suddenly nervous. It was great to see Helen so happy and relaxed now but it just seemed to amplify her own nerves. She entered the house and slowly made her way through to the back. She’d been so busy with the logistics of getting to his place as fast as possible that she hadn’t given a lot of thought to what she was going to say.
What if she’d blown it with him?
She followed the path that led to the sandpit and there he was, shovelling mulch from a wheelbarrow onto a garden bed. It was a warm day and the sun glistened on beads of sweat on his neck, forehead and forearms, his shirt stuck to the small of his back.
It wasn’t pink scrubs but it was sexy and earthy and her heart broke open even more.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Just watched him, drank in the sight of him. The firm muscles in his arms not contained by his T-shirt bunched with each movement, as did the thick slabs of his quadriceps.
‘Hello, Patrick,’ she called.
Patrick turned to find Miranda in loose yoga-style pants and a T-shirt standing in his yard. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. That she was a mirage shimmering in the sun conjured up by his overactive imagination because, God knew, he’d thought of her almost constantly these last couple of months.
But then she smiled at him and he knew she was real. ‘Miranda?’
Miranda panicked. What could she say to make up for abandoning him when things had got tough? For chickening out when he’d needed her? ‘I’ve been an idiot,’ she said.
Patrick held his ground. ‘Yes.’
Miranda gave a half-laugh. ‘You’re hell on a girl’s ego.’
Patrick wasn’t sure what she was doing there, looking at him with eyes that seemed to say things that she’d been denying for months. But whatever it was, she should just cut to the chase. ‘What do you want, Miranda?’
Miranda’s smile died as his voice left her in no doubt this was not the time for jokes. ‘You.’
Her voice wobbled and she cleared her throat. ‘I’ve been trying to deny how I’ve felt about you for months and months and months because I was too scared to take a risk on anything that wasn’t perfect. I’m sorry. I know my childhood kind of messed me up but, God, Patrick...it really was hell and I didn’t want that for Lola, and I guess that affected me more than I ever really knew, and you and our relationship were a casualty of that. Another casualty.’
He was just standing there looking at her and she wished he’d say something.
‘I knew that you loved me but I couldn’t let myself feel that for you. I couldn’t risk it because ever since I was little I wanted to have a man sweep me away and live in his castle with him happily ever after, and the version you were offering, our version of that, was not romantic or perfect and I was determined to reject it.’
Silence. He was just watching her.
‘But today...today my heart cracked open like a big fault line and the love I’ve been hiding from came gushing out. And I can’t stop it, it just keeps filling me and filling me and filling me.’
Still he said nothing.
‘Patrick,’ she begged. ‘Please say something.’
Patrick didn’t want to say a word. He wanted to sweep her up into his arms and kiss her until they were both breathless, but he had the feeling she had more on her mind. ‘What happened to change your mind today?’
‘A patient,’ she said. ‘A couple in for a Casearean who have this messy, complicated life but who chose love anyway. And when that little baby girl cried it was like she unlocked everything I’d been hoarding away because I was too frightened to try.’
He didn’t say anything to that but that was okay because Miranda wasn’t finished. ‘I know my mother botched it up. So did my father. But we don’t have to, right? We can make it work. With us and the girls and Katie and Helen and Nan. I know it won’t be easy but if we all work together we can blend this family and do it well, right?’
Still nothing and finally his impassiveness was getting on her last nerve because she was really starting to think she had blown it.
‘God, please tell me I’m right, Patrick,’ she begged, her voice husky and cracking right at the end as a tear slipped from her eye.
For a moment he didn’t say or do anything and then he smiled at her and then he was striding towards her and pulling her into his arms and wrapping them around her.
‘Of course you’re right,’ he said, his lips brushing her hair. ‘It won’t be perfect, but we’ll make it work because we love each other and we’re committed to making it work.’
Miranda swallowed hard against the massive swelling in her throat as more tears threatened. ‘Oh, God, Patrick, you had me so worried.’ She pulled back slightly. ‘I’m so sorry I’ve been such an idiot. I thought for an awful moment you were going to tell me you didn’t love me any more.’
Patrick smiled down at Miranda, his heart so big in his chest he thought it might just burst through his ribcage. ‘From the day you dropped Pinky in the lift until right now I have loved you.’ He dropped a light kiss on the corner of her m
outh. ‘Even if you are an idiot.’
And then he grinned and kissed her again. And again and again. And it wasn’t until they heard two little giggles that they broke apart. ‘Are you going to marry my mummy?’ Lola asked.
Patrick nodded. ‘Yes, I am.’
The girls clapped and cheered, jumping up and down like they had springs on their feet. Ruby turned to look at Lola. ‘Now can we be flower-girlth?’ she asked.
‘Can we, Mummy?’ Lola asked, shifting from foot to foot.
‘Yes,’ Miranda said. ‘That would be perfect.’
And she smiled at Patrick as the girls ran to them and she embraced her different kind of perfect.
EPILOGUE
Five years later...
PATRICK LOOKED AT his very pregnant wife as the expected knock came at the expected time. Three-year-old Harrison who was drifting off to sleep on Patrick’s shoulder raised his sleepy head and said, ‘Door.’
Patrick kissed his son’s forehead. ‘Yes, someone’s at the door,’ he said absently as he watched Miranda nervously twisting her rings around and around her finger.
‘I’ll get it,’ Katie called from the lounge room.
Patrick ignored it. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
Miranda nodded. ‘Of course. I’m just nervous for Lola.’
Her gaze fell on the framed picture sitting on their bedside table of Lola and Ruby both resplendent in frothy pink dresses, wreaths of flowers in their hair, grinning at the camera almost five years ago. They’d all come a long way in that time but their girls were still inseparable.
‘He’s here,’ Katie said arriving in the bedroom doorway. ‘I took him through to the lounge. The table is set and I can serve up lunch whenever you’re ready.’
‘Where’s Lola?’ Patrick asked.
‘She and Ruby are still deciding what she should wear. I’ll hurry them along.’
Miranda smiled gratefully at Katie. ‘Thanks.’ If someone had told her five years ago that they’d all be living together—including Nan—in one big old house she’d have laughed. It felt a lot like she’d been plonked into the set of the Brady Bunch but somehow it just worked and Miranda wouldn’t have it any other way.
Patrick wandered over to Miranda and pulled her in close to his body with his spare arm. He dropped a kiss on her neck, his chest filling with love, his hand running over the round contours of her belly.
‘Mummy,’ Harrison murmured, reaching out a hand to touch her too.
Miranda smiled and kissed his little hand as Lola and Ruby appeared in the doorway then joined them for a hug.
‘Are we all ready?’ Patrick asked after a minute and was greeted with a murmur of affirmation.
Miranda squeezed Lola’s hand and smiled at her. ‘Let’s go meet your dad.’
And they headed out of the room to meet their next challenge, as a family.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460314272
Copyright © 2013 by Amy Andrews
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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