Having the Soldier's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

He probably wanted to talk about the divorce.

  She was trying to watch her red meat intake, but protein was good for the baby.

  “That sounds good,” she told him, and was surprised that the pain mixed in there, wasn’t debilitating her.

  Maybe they really would find a way to be friends forever.

  * * *

  He knew where the candles were. The china Emily had insisted he help choose when they registered for their wedding. He found a decent tablecloth. And did a little cleaning, too, to fill the place with the lavender scent that was now showing up everywhere in the house—even the cleaning fluids.

  He’d changed out of his khakis into the black jeans and pullover shirt that had been Emily’s favorites, way back when. She’d purchased them for him the Christmas before he’d left for ground training.

  He thought about changing the sheets, too, but didn’t want to give her the wrong impression. This wasn’t a seduction he was setting up.

  As hungry as his body had grown for his wife’s, he’d tamp down those urges forever if it meant he got to be in her life for that long.

  By the time she got home, he’d worked himself into a bit of a manic state, completely unlike the man he’d ever been—before or after the desert.

  It wasn’t a seduction plan. He knew that much. But what kind of plan was it?

  Fate wasn’t being kind to him—not so that he could see, at any rate. He was presenting himself, standing front and center in the midst of the mess he’d made, trusting her to come up with a plan.

  Emily pulled into the garage, and he had nothing but steaks on the grill and a salad in the fridge. She changed, into the leggings and loose comfortable shirt that had apparently become her new at-home wardrobe.

  Maybe someone—him—should take her shopping for some maternity clothes. With nothing else coming to him, he suggested as much over his candlelit steak dinner that was going nowhere, solving nothing, with no goal in mind and what could only be billed as a failed mission.

  “I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on clothes I’m only going to wear for a few months,” she told him. “I really think I’ll be able to get through most of this with just leggings. Plus, they’re really comfortable.”

  The failed suggestion pretty much fit the rest of the mission. So much for fate.

  “If I were going to have more kids, you know, like we’d originally thought, then, yeah, I’ve seen some cute things I might be tempted to buy, but as it is...”

  “Do you want more kids?” What the hell? They’d known since they were fifteen that they wanted four. They’d each written down the number on a piece of paper, not showing the other, and had both written the same number.

  And now here he was talking to her like he didn’t know that?

  He dropped his fork. Stared at her. She wasn’t eating much. Had her napkin in both hands, just holding it. And was looking right back at him.

  “We...were something, weren’t we?” he asked, trying to get them out of the hell into which he’d just inadvertently plummeted them.

  “Yes, we were.”

  He’d gone for levity. Her tone was as serious as his had been. Another fail.

  It was time to be Winston Hannigan. A soldier. A man who put his life on the line for what mattered most.

  “I think it’s possible that we still are,” he told her.

  Hands clearly shaking, she put her napkin on her plate. “Oh, Winston, let’s not go there...”

  “I’m not going, Em,” he told her. “I am there. Truth is, I don’t think I ever left. I shut down. But I never left.” Listening to Danny’s letter the day before had completely crushed the barrier that putting on the soldier’s clothes had given him. Stripped him bare to the nude, determined but frightened man he’d been that day in the desert when he’d changed clothes on his way to turning himself in to the enemy.

  Tears in her eyes, she pushed away from the table. Shaking her head. “It’s too late, Winston. I sat around here for months, waiting, and...it’s too late.”

  It had to be because of Afsoon. The one thing he’d known would break them. It wasn’t something he could undo.

  He could never return to being the man who knew the feel of only his wife’s body wrapped around him.

  Armed with that knowledge, the plan became clear. He even understood now why fate had left him hanging high and dry. He had to go.

  Had to do what he’d been telling himself all along.

  Had to leave her to find a man with whom she could be happy. Where old vows didn’t haunt her. And new ones would be keepable. And kept.

  Gathering his keys, he headed toward the door.

  “Where in the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Her words stopped him in his tracks. He noticed a new, somewhat shrill tone come to her voice a time or two since she’d become pregnant. It had reached new levels.

  “You think you’re ever going to walk out on me again, Winston Hannigan, you just better think again.”

  He turned around. “But...you said...”

  “I said it’s too late for me to be back where we were,” she said. “I didn’t say give up and walk out the door before we could figure out what or where that leaves us.”

  There was sense in that. He heard it. But more, he heard the sense in his own brain that was telling him to sit back down and wait.

  He followed orders.

  “So...” She sat back down, picked up her knife and fork, cut a piece of what had to be cold steak, and ate it. “Where does that leave us?” she asked.

  He wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or if he was supposed to come up with an answer. The way she’d asked, and was paying more attention to eating...

  After another couple of bites, she pushed her plate away. “Where does that leave us?” she repeated.

  He’d had a better chance of coming up with a plan in the desert. He couldn’t think straight, with her sitting there, giving him a chance to have a life with her again.

  He remembered being fourteen, tripping over himself to get to her every day. Afraid to say something she’d think stupid and have her move on to the next guy. He’d told her so. She said she’d been feeling the exact same way about him. They’d talked for hours.

  Become best friends.

  Forever.

  “I think we were right, Em. I think that some couples are predestined to be together. I think Clara and Harold are like that, too. Some souls, they leave wherever they came from, with a connection so close there that they have to live this life together.”

  She teared up. And shook her head.

  “But I think we were wrong to think that that connection was protected. That it would keep us safe from whatever challenges life gave us. I might die too young, Em. Or you might. We might not be able to have a second child, let alone four. I’m called to put my life on the line, to protect others, whether I’m a solider, a special agent or something else. I have to risk my life. But it doesn’t mean that my heart is anywhere—first, foremost and always—other than right here with you. That’s what I think.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks. She was shaking her head.

  He’d put it all on the line. Had nothing else.

  Except.

  “I love you, Emily. Every moment of every day since the second I met you, I’ve loved you. I can promise you that. I loved you so much I changed clothes with another soldier. And when I was with Afsoon—” he had to get it out there, whether he lost her or not “—the only way I could get my body to respond was to close my eyes and think of you. You asked me how it was with her. Truth is... I have no idea. I was so far into you, pretending I was lying with you, remembering you, that I have no idea how she felt...”

  Sobbing, Emily reached out her arms to him and Winston realized he needed no plan. He picked her up, even had sense about him to
blow out the candles, and took her back to their room, to their bed, to hold her until they could both start to believe that they had each other back.

  That the war was over.

  At least for them.

  “I love you so much, Winston. This morning, when you came racing up like that, I was so scared you were losing it. I’m scared to death of losing you. I know what it feels like now and I just... But...living without you is even worse.”

  “You were okay, Em. Sad. Lonely. But you were okay. You had the strength of my love, I see that now. As I had yours. Our love gave me the strength to survive, and it did the same for you, too, you know. You took our love to the fertility clinic and made a life that would make you happy. That’s what finally came to me. Our love is real, Em. It’s so real its strength continues even if our physical bodies don’t. That’s what the Garrisons know. And why they’re still okay, even with Danny gone. Because the love doesn’t leave. It never will. Ever.”

  He held her while she cried. He cried some, too. They talked a lot. He told her how petrified he’d been when she’d first mentioned an active shooter that morning. About all the nights in the desert when he had lain not sleeping, able to stay awake because those were the hours he could spend with her uninterrupted. How he’d suddenly remember little moments that had long been forgotten.

  And then they made love. Long, slow, tender love that ended with a single thrust home. It was all he had, one thrust, and he exploded inside her. Something else he’d never done with Afsoon—come inside her. Someday he’d share that with Emily, too, but not then.

  He didn’t want the other woman anywhere near Emily again that night.

  He wasn’t just imagining Emily’s arms. He was in them.

  “I was thinking,” he said, sometime past three in the morning. They’d yet to sleep. He didn’t even feel tired.

  “What?” she asked, grinning, as she propped herself up on his chest and looked at him expectantly. His Emily. Always open to whatever he had to say.

  “That maybe we should name our baby Danny.”

  Tears filled her eyes again. “Our baby,” she said.

  “Our baby,” he agreed, his hand reaching down to cup her stomach. “My son.”

  “Daniel Harold Hannigan,” she said, sniffling and smiling. “I love it.”

  He did, too. And fully believed that Danny would approve, wherever he might be.

  Looking around the room, seeing mostly the night’s shadows, Winston gave a nod to the powers he couldn’t see. Fate was out there, someplace. Working hard to bring happiness to others.

  With another silent nod, an inner smile, he saluted her.

  Mission accomplished.

  * * *

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  For Their Child’s Sake

  by Jules Bennett

  Chapter One

  “Just tell us the prognosis.”

  Sam Bailey had been on an emotional roller coaster the past two years. And now, huddled in a small consultation room at Mercy Hospital in Stonerock, Tennessee, waiting to hear the diagnosis of his five-year-old daughter while sitting next to the wife who’d left him...well, Sam’s nerves were flat-out shot.

  Dr. Benson displayed a glossy page with several images. “You can see on Marley’s CT scan that everything appears to be in good shape.”

  Actually, Sam couldn’t see that because he was an architect, not a doctor.

  “If things are good, then why did you bring us in here?” Tara asked. “I want to be with my daughter.”

  His wife sat too close, smelled too good and was clutching the strap of her purse like it was the only thing keeping her grounded. If they were a normal couple, he’d reach out and take her white-knuckled hand to offer support. If they were a normal couple, they would’ve driven here together when the school called and said that Marley had hit her head when she fell from the playground equipment at a party on the last day of a summer school program.

  If they were a normal couple, he wouldn’t have divorce papers waiting for his signature just below where his wife had already signed away their marriage.

  “Marley is a lively little girl. I can tell from the time I spent with her doing my assessment. This fall could have been much worse.” Dr. Benson shifted his focus from Sam to Tara. “A head trauma can cause multiple issues and some aren’t seen by simply looking at the outward appearance.”

  “Just say it,” Sam demanded. “What’s wrong with my daughter?”

  Technically, she was his adopted daughter. When he’d met Tara, Marley had just turned two. He’d fallen in love with both raven-haired beauties and quickly made them his family. Marley was his in every single way that mattered. Even if Sam and Tara’s marriage was one signature away from the end, Marley was still his.

  Sam couldn’t figure out what was actually wrong with her, though. He’d seen Marley, he’d talked to her. She showed him where her head hurt and the scrapes on her legs from the fall.

  She’d been talking just fine and even asked when they could go home. So why the cryptic chat in private?

  “I consulted with another colleague,” the doctor went on. “We both believe Marley has retrograde amnesia.”

  The doctor’s words took a moment to sink in. Sam wasn’t sure what retrograde amnesia was, but he sure as hell knew the term amnesia. Marley had fallen off the top of a slide and hit her head on the pole holding up the ladder. Amnesia? Wasn’t that a term used in movies? This was real life—this was his daughter’s life.

  “Amnesia?” Tara’s whispered question had an underlying hint of denial. “But I talked to her. She called me Mommy and talked like she always does. She didn’t seem confused.”

  The doctor nodded. “She’s not right now. Retrograde amnesia is where the patient is missing a portion of time, so unless you as
ked her about something specific, she wouldn’t know she was missing the memory. RA patients have retained information in their minds. In Marley’s case she knows her parents, where she lives, her favorite toy. Those are all things that have been a constant in her life. But she’s not aware she’s finished kindergarten. She remembers being in preschool, which isn’t part of the camp she’s in today. She remembers the two of you marrying—or, at least, the pictures from that day and memories you’ve discussed with her since she was little. She’s chatted quite a bit with me, but from listening, she’s lost the last year of her life.”

  An entire year? His daughter was only five years old and she’d lost twenty percent of her life? How did something as common as a fall on the playground result in his baby girl being robbed of her memories?

  Sam struggled to wrap his thoughts, his emotions, around this moment. How the hell had they landed here? How had he and Tara gone from the happiest, most loving couple to being separated and now dealing with Marley having amnesia? Life could spin out of control in an instant and he was more than done with the ride.

  An accident of his own had stolen the life he and Tara had created. Little by little, the addiction chipped away until he’d left Tara no choice but to leave and protect their daughter.

  And now look where they were. Him clean and sober for a year, holding down a steady job he was proud of, and desperately wanting his family to be whole again. He hadn’t even been sure that was possible, but now his baby girl...

  “We want another opinion,” Sam stated, shifting in his seat.

  Damn it. He’d gotten his life together; he’d overcome addiction and was ready to fight for his family, to get them back to where they used to be before pills destroyed them. He might have lost Tara, but that didn’t mean he was abandoning them. He planned on being a provider, damn it. He would make this up to them, even if he’d killed any chance of being Tara’s husband again.

  Panic stirred at the thought of his sweet Marley totally unaware of what she faced. His sole purpose and goal over the past year had been to repair his life, Tara’s and Marley’s lives. How the hell did he fix this? He was her father. He was supposed to fix things when she got hurt or was sad.