The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

Little arrows of something good shot off inside her.

“You aren’t sorry?” Wanting to be a father, she got that. But what about the rest of it? Finding out he was a father with a woman he wasn’t even in a relationship with? A woman he didn’t love?

“Hell no! How could I be? I’ve just been given back something that I thought was lost to me forever. My biggest disappointment, a life sentence, has been miraculously overturned. I’m still in the process of believing it’s real. I mean the chances of a healthy sperm getting past my army of haters...”

Smiling for a minute, she absorbed his pleasure. Happy with his happiness. And wished that they could stay just like that.

But life didn’t work that way. No one got to just keep their happiness forever. Each moment brought another move. Some good. Some so horrible they stopped you in your tracks.

Some were just...perplexing. Like her finally having a plan, being ready to have Peter’s baby, and getting pregnant by an infertile man.

Not quite infertile, as it turned out.

“How do you feel about the fact that I’m the mother?” she asked him.

Her question didn’t change his expression much. She got another shrug. “I’m fine with you as the mother,” he said, though she couldn’t tell if he was being kind, practical or completely honest. “I do find it ironic that I couldn’t impregnate my wife, and then manage to successfully plant my seed in a woman who just broke up with me...”

There it was—the truth, out in the open. And he was still kind of grinning.

“Just like I find it ironic that you were in the process of trying to have your deceased husband’s child when you found out you were pregnant with mine.”

She didn’t grin but nodded. She couldn’t refute the facts.

“So we go on from here,” she said. Nothing had been resolved about their situation, and yet, it felt as though she was no longer frozen in place.

“We go on from here.” He’d pushed his plate to the side but didn’t reach for her hand. Instead, he folded his hands together on the table in front of him.

A prayer?

A blessing?

A sign that he had no intention of holding hands with her, even in the sense of a friend helping a friend across the street?

She could get to the other side just fine by herself. It was time she took pride in her own abilities.

“I’m not sure how we incorporate you being a father who lives in LA with the baby not having two bedrooms, two sets of routines, two sets of boundaries...” How could she keep her mind on the future, how could she plan, if she had no end in mind? No final picture to envision?

Shaking his head, he threw up a hand. And she pushed aside what was left of the mammoth salad she’d been delivered.

“I’m not sure, either,” he said. “Right now, I’m not sure about anything, in terms of practical planning where all of this is concerned. But I think I can’t go to LA. At least not right now. Not while you’re pregnant. I need to be here...to help where I can. That’s my role, my duty and my right as that baby’s father. I want to feel him kicking. To have him hear my voice. I want to carry your groceries when you’re so big carrying our child that your back is aching. To do what I can to ease the burdens of everyday chores when pregnancy fatigue hits. Or if you suffer from morning sickness.”

He paused, his eyes widening. “I haven’t asked... You’re almost eight weeks now...have you experienced any discomfort in that area? Nausea and such?”

She hadn’t. Was feeling a bit warm...thankful...and simultaneously alarmed, by his invasiveness. “No.”

“And if there’s a problem, I need to be here, to do what I can to help you get our child through it,” he was continuing. “I need to be here when you go into labor. To make the process as smooth for you as I possibly can.”

She’d been thinking his fatherhood would start when there was a child in the world to father.

His take was completely different.

And didn’t seem unfair. Or wrong. She was already being a mother—in her food choices, her need for rest, her lack of a glass of wine at dinner, wearing protective gear at work when she did her radiological scans. She knew no one would’ve known the difference or guessed the reason. She was already falling in love with the being inside her body. He had a right to be a father, too.

“What about your job in LA?”

“I’ll call tomorrow. Tell them I’ve had a change of plans.”

Shaking her head, she couldn’t believe how quickly he was moving—changing his entire career plan.