“You need to leave us alone.” Jack’s words were clipped. “Seeing you just upsets him more.”
“He wants me. If I could just spend a little time with him—”
“That just stretches out his pain.” Jack’s voice was cold, but his eyes were tortured.
“Look, I know how angry you must be, but we need to talk soon about some kind of an arrangement—”
He held up a hand, shaking his head, cutting her off. “We’re not making an arrangement.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “You’re not going to let me see him?”
“That’s right. It’s a closed adoption. You signed away your parental rights.”
His words, each distinctly articulated, hammered her like steel.
“I need for you to leave. Now.”
Arianna’s heart seemed to stretch out toward her son, crying in Jack’s arms. She could comfort him, she knew she could. “Please, Jack—”
“Don’t make me be cruel.”
Still, she stood there, staring, trying to memorize Sammy’s little face, to remember what it felt like to hold him in her arms. Trying to memorize Jack’s face, too, because she didn’t know when she’d see it again.
“Arianna. Go.”
She shook her head miserably. “I can’t.”
Jack closed the door, not with a slam but gently. The click of the lock, though, was decisive.
She stood staring at the closed door for a long moment and then set the cookies down on his porch. She walked back toward her apartment but found she couldn’t bear to go back inside. Instead, she headed for a trail that led up into the foothills, walking faster and faster and then running, her throat thick and aching. Soon, tears were pouring down her face, making it hard to see, but she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t stop running away from the worst mistake of her life.
* * *
It was late afternoon when Arianna came down from the foothills and trudged back to the ranch. Her eyes were dry now. Her soul was dry, too.
She’d had the undeniable urge to just keep walking, walking into the mountain as the night grew colder, as storm clouds gathered. Her purpose in life, whatever purpose she’d had, was gone.
She couldn’t see her son. Couldn’t help Jack raise him.
She was so overwhelmed with shame and guilt that her forearms kept going across her stomach, as if she were going to fall apart if she didn’t literally hold herself together.
Still, some survival instinct brought her back to the ranch. That same instinct told her not to go up to her apartment and spend the evening alone.
She needed help.
She’d poured her soul out to God on that mountain, but God had stayed silent. Maybe she wasn’t praying right. She wasn’t an experienced Christian.
She wanted to talk to Penny, or maybe to Daniela, but she didn’t have Jack’s permission to share the story of Sammy, and it wouldn’t be right to start telling people something so private. She wouldn’t add insult to the injury she’d already done Jack by spreading Sammy’s story around town.
But there was one person that she could tell. She got in her car and drove carefully down the mountain road, staying well under the speed limit because she knew how close to the edge she was emotionally. Forty minutes later, she pulled into Pastor Carson Blair’s driveway, parked her car and knocked on his front door.
Lily answered. “Arianna! Come in.” She peered at Arianna’s face. “You look awful. Is Sammy okay?”
Arianna licked dry lips. “Do you think Carson would be willing to talk to me in confidence?”
“Of course he can. Come in.” Lily opened the door and ushered her in, then walked her through the house to Carson’s study with an arm around her shoulders.
The unquestioning kindness made Arianna’s throat thicken with unshed tears.
Lily tapped on the door and spoke to Carson in a low voice, and then he opened the door wider and reached out a hand to Arianna. “Come in. Make yourself comfortable.”
Arianna looked at Lily. “This needs to be confidential,” she choked out, “but I’d like it if you could stay and hear what I have to say, on those terms.”
Lily bit her lip and looked at Carson. “Come help me make some tea and bring in something to eat, and we’ll talk about it. Just relax, Arianna, and one or both of us will be right back.”
Arianna sat in the comfortable chair in front of Carson’s battered desk and let her forehead rest on her hand. She had no idea of what to do, how to handle any of this, but Carson was wise. Carson would help. Carson would pray with her.
There was a snuffling around her legs, and a heavyset, low-slung dog nosed at her hand. Almost immediately, another equally odd-looking dog rushed in, barking.
“Boomer! No, Boomer!” Sunny, one of Carson’s twins, ran in and grabbed the barking dog.
Her sister, Skye, came in, too, and knelt by the quieter dog. She looked up at Arianna, and her head tilted to one side. “I’m sorry you’re sad.”
“She’s sad?” Sunny looked up from her efforts to hold her squirming dog. “Aww. She is sad.”
The twins looked at each other, seeming to communicate without words. Then Sunny pulled a large dog biscuit out of her pocket and broke it in half.
Instantly, the little dogs sat at attention, silent and alert.
“Now, be quiet. We have to talk to Miss Arianna.” Sunny’s tone was severe. She handed half of the biscuit to each dog, and they went to opposite corners of the room to eat them.
Still kneeling on the floor, Skye reached up and took Arianna’s hand. “I’m sad sometimes, too,” she confided.
Not to be outdone, Sunny leaned against Arianna’s knees. “Do you need a hug?”
The identical, upturned faces were so full of sweet sympathy that Arianna couldn’t help smiling through her tears. “Of course, a hug from you girls would really help,” she said, sliding down onto the floor so they could all sit next to each other. The dogs, having finished their biscuits, trotted over and climbed into their three adjoining laps, sniffing pockets, looking for more treats. And then, as the girls told Arianna about their own problems, how they’d started a new school year and were in separate classrooms for the first time, Arianna listened and nodded her sympathy, and a tiny measure of peace rose in her heart.
There was still sweetness and caring in the world. And no, she wasn’t going to get the kind she craved, from the person she craved it from, but it still existed, in good friends like Carson and Lily, and in sweet children like Sunny and Skye.
Lily and Carson came back in, Lily carrying a teapot and cups, and Carson a tray piled with cookies and chocolates and cupcakes.
“Girls,” Lily said as she set down the teapot, “did you ask if Miss Arianna wanted company? She might need some time alone.”
“She doesn’t, Mommy,” Skye said.
Sunny shook her head. “She’s sad, but we made her feel better.”
“It’s true.” Arianna tightened an arm around each girl’s shoulders. “They’ve been so sweet.” She wanted to say more, but her voice was catching.
“Actually, girls,” Lily said, “there’s a new princess movie. For a special treat, would you like to watch it?”
“Yes!” Sunny jumped up.
“Can Miss Arianna watch it, too, with us?” Skye asked.
“No, she needs to talk with Daddy and me,” Lily said. “You girls run along. It’s all set up, you just have to push Play. And I put a bowl of popcorn up high, where the dogs can’t reach it. Will you be very careful to keep the people food away from the dogs?”
Both girls nodded vigorously.
“Okay, then, off you go,” Lily said, and the two girls rushed out of the room, the little dogs following after them.
“They are so adorable,” Arianna said. “And so kind and sweet. And you’re such
a good mom, Lily.”
Lily flushed with obvious pleasure, and Arianna thought about how fully Lily had become a mother to the twins. Indistinguishable from a biological mother, really.
She wondered whether Jack would meet someone soon, give some woman an opportunity to become a mother to Sammy. It was more than likely; he was a handsome, kind, good man. Any single woman in town would be happy to go out with him.
Her stomach burned at the thought. She didn’t want anyone else to fill that role in Jack’s life; she wanted to be the one. Had stood a chance of it until he’d found out the truth.
Pastor Carson smiled and took a seat across from her, and Lily sat down at his side, pouring cups of tea. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” he suggested. “I can see that you’re very upset.”
So she told them, with a lot of pauses and a few tears. Told them about getting pregnant with Sammy, and about Chloe’s proposition, and how she had decided to accept it.
“Why did Chloe want to keep it a secret from her husband?” Lily asked.
“It’s complicated,” Arianna said. “So complicated that I don’t completely understand it. She struggled with some mental health issues, anxiety and depression. And...” She trailed off, thinking.
“Is there something else?” Carson asked gently.
Arianna drew in a breath. “We grew up with a lot of shame,” she said slowly. “I’ve always felt shame about my body, my weight. Chloe didn’t have that issue, but I wonder if she was ashamed that her body wouldn’t do what she wanted. She couldn’t make a baby.”
“That could definitely be the case,” Lily said. “She could have felt like an inadequate woman.”
“There’s biblical precedent for that,” Carson said. “In ancient cultures, and in some cultures today, unfortunately, a woman’s fertility is all tangled up in her sense of worth.”
“I could have a baby and she couldn’t.” Arianna took a cookie and broke it in half. “I never really thought about how jealous that must have made her feel. I was so caught up in what I did wrong, getting pregnant without being married, that I didn’t really consider how it must have made Chloe feel.” Her heart ached for the sister she’d once been close to. There would be no more opportunity to mend the relationship, to talk about what it had all meant to them. Not on this earth anyway.
Carson and Lily looked at each other. Lily raised an eyebrow, as if asking her husband a question, and Carson gave a nod.
“You may have come to some of the only people who could really understand what you’re talking about.” Lily took a sip of tea and swallowed. “I kept a big, big secret from Carson when we first met. It had to do with his wife, who was my friend and who died. I thought keeping the manner of her death a secret was a kindness to Carson, but it actually caused us terrible problems.”
“I didn’t know that.” And it made Arianna feel a little better, knowing she wasn’t the only person who’d made the mistake of being too secretive.
Lily had even gotten through it and found love and a family.
“Secrets are almost always toxic,” Carson said. “Even when they’re kept as a mercy to someone else, it almost always backfires.”
Arianna nodded. “I know that now. But at that time, I was so desperate, I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I hurt Jack so badly. He—” her throat tightened, but she choked it out “—he doesn’t want me to ever see Sammy again.”
Lily put a hand on Arianna’s arm. “Oh, honey, that has to hurt so bad,” she said. The sympathy in her voice threatened to open the floodgates of Arianna’s heart. She didn’t dare speak; she only nodded.
“You know,” Carson said, “we all make an awful lot of mistakes in this life. It’s part of being human.”
Arianna drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “I guess that’s true. I hate that I hurt Jack so badly, though, and that...that Sammy will suffer.” Again, she had to force the words out through a thick throat. “He keeps crying.”
“And Jack won’t let you see him?”
She shook her head. “I feel like it can’t be fixed. Like it’s an impossible situation.”
Lily glanced over at her husband, a tiny smile pulling up one corner of her mouth. “Carson kind of specializes in those.”
“Correction—Jesus specializes in those.” Carson reached for a Bible that sat at the center of his desk. “I’d like to read some Scripture with you, if you don’t mind.”
Lily patted Arianna’s arm. “I need to check on the girls and on dinner,” she said. “Will you stay? In fact, why don’t you stay the night with us?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “I need to...” Her heart turned over in a low darkness. “Actually, since I’m out of a job, I guess I don’t have to do anything.”
“Then stay. I’ll set an extra place at the table and make sure the guest room has clean sheets.”
Arianna spent the next hour with Carson, reading passages he showed her from Scripture. They prayed together, sometimes aloud and sometimes silently. And they talked: about Arianna’s childhood, her parents, the things that had led her to get too involved with Nathan.
Every time she felt discouraged, every time she cried, he was able to pull out a Bible passage that addressed what she was feeling. Not that he made her feel bad about crying, but he had real answers.
When Lily knocked and told them that dinner was about ready, Arianna went to the bathroom and splashed her face with water. She felt exhausted, but also clearer and cleaner. The tears she’d cried had been bottled up inside her since way before Jack had gotten angry at her, probably since Sammy’s birth. A part of the heavy burden she’d been carrying since then had lifted. Thank You, Jesus, she thought. She checked herself in the mirror—impossibly red eyes, but that couldn’t be helped—and went out to join the family for dinner.
The dogs begged and the twins were funny, and Carson and Lily were the warmest of hosts. Lily and the girls had made a cake earlier—“Just because,” Lily said, “but maybe we sensed you were coming”—and Arianna accepted a big piece without her usual agonizing about her figure.
In the grand scheme of things, looking model perfect didn’t matter. Carson and Lily accepted her. God accepted her.
It grieved her deeply that Jack didn’t accept her, and that her easy access to Sammy had ended. But with Carson’s help, she’d seen that there was a glimmer of a solution. Nothing had ever seemed so unsolvable by human standards, but according to Carson, that was usually where God stepped in.
Lily loaned her toiletries and a nightgown, and she went to bed early, prayed herself to sleep and slept all night without dreams.
* * *
Jack hadn’t slept well.
Sammy had been up several times, crying. His temperature was normal, and he didn’t seem physically sick, other than tired. But he kept making the “Aunt Arianna” sign.
Jack stood up from the breakfast table, where he was attempting to feed Sammy some eggs and toast, and looked out the window. He could tell himself he was looking for Mrs. Jennings, his reluctant substitute babysitter for the day. But the truth was, he was checking to see if Arianna had come home.
She hadn’t.
Which probably meant she was spending the time with Nathan. Even as he had the thought, one side of himself realized it was irrational. Arianna’s relationship with Nathan was in the past. He had believed her when she told him that, and nothing had changed really, not in Arianna and Nathan’s relationship.
What had changed was Jack and Arianna’s relationship, because she had lied to him.
Nathan was Sammy’s father. Arianna was his mother.
He stared bleakly at his son, finally calm and tapping a spoon on the tray of his high chair. He didn’t feel any less love for him, knowing his parentage. But the deception hurt.
Not only that, but Arianna and Nathan could so easily be the people raisi
ng Sammy, and maybe that would have been better for him. Nathan was incredibly successful on a scale that Jack, a small-town country vet, could never dream of. And Arianna... Well, Arianna was warm and loving and smart and creative, a mother anyone would like to have.
Except for the lying.
The sound of a car engine broke his concentration and he was ashamed of the way his heart rate picked up. Was it her?
But no, it was Mrs. Jennings, and Jack sighed as he looked around his messy home. Sammy’s tantrums and meltdowns meant that Jack hadn’t had a spare moment to clean up the place. The clutter, the spilled orange juice, the slight diaperish smell—all of it got to him, made him feel uncomfortable in his own home. In his own skin.
He still had feelings for Arianna. He couldn’t deny it. But he wasn’t going to act on them. Wasn’t going to let Sammy start to get reattached to her when she was likely to flit off to another adventure at any moment. They’d only had an agreement for the rest of the summer, and summer was nearly over. He’d been a fool to stop his nanny search, somehow trusting that Arianna would stick around. She wouldn’t, and even if she would, he wouldn’t have her.
Mrs. Jennings bustled in, full of stories about her grandkids. She set her purse on the floor and took off her jacket without even a slight break in her conversational flow. She’d always been like that, but her rate of speech seemed to have sped up now, and he realized she was nervous. He set out to reassure her, because he really couldn’t do without her, not now. She wasn’t the best with Sammy, but she was far, far from the worst. Sammy knew her, and that was important.
Mrs. Jennings looked around the room and raised an eyebrow. “I see why you wanted me to take care of him up here,” she said. “Looking for a little light cleaning in addition to childcare, are you?”
Jack was too tired to tell if she was joking or seriously annoyed. “I’ll pay you extra,” he promised, “if you can get the house into its usual shape.”
Sammy had gotten down from the table and was crawling directly toward Mrs. Jennings’s purse.
“Oh, he loves that thing,” she said, laughing. She didn’t stop Sammy from reaching inside.
The Nanny's Secret Baby--A Fresh-Start Family Romance Page 16
