The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

“I’d never screamed like that at anyone before,” she said, her voice soft, her tone questioning. As though, even then, she couldn’t believe how she’d sounded to herself in the car that day.

“I told him that I wanted a divorce...”

Her tears came swiftly then. Accompanied by broken sobs. “In a spur-of-the-moment conversation, I was willing to throw away the only family I had for what I wanted...”

Yep. He’d known it wasn’t going to be good. Or miraculous.

And he knew she had to finish explaining why she was so afraid of being selfish, of taking care of her own needs. Which was the only reason he wasn’t hauling her up into his arms and showing her that she wasn’t alone right then. Promising her that she’d never be alone again.

It wasn’t a promise she’d be able to believe.

“And that’s why he was staring at me in complete disbelief, in utter shock, when another car, driving in the wrong lane, suddenly veered toward us. I screamed again, trying to alert him and get him to look at the road, but it apparently only sounded like more of the same to him. He glanced up. He saw the car. The look on his face... He turned the wheel sharply, putting his side of the car more completely in front of the other car. And protecting me... I’ll never forget that look on his face. He knew he was likely going to die.

“And I think, in that

split second, he chose to die, because my remark about divorce had done him in...”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. And there’s no way I ever will, for sure. But I knew Peter...”

“And loved him for all you were worth for many years.” And ever since her husband’s death there’d apparently never been any voice but her own condemning one, talking to her about what really happened that day.

Maybe she hadn’t allowed there to be one. She was alive and Peter was not. Her last words to him hadn’t been what she’d ever choose them to be.

But his death didn’t wipe away the damage some of his actions had done. It didn’t wipe away his own culpability in the fight they’d had that day. Greg wasn’t into damning a dead man—a man with what sounded like some great qualities. But he’d be tempted to deck the guy one if he showed up alive in that moment.

And something occurred to him. “Maybe Peter made the choice he did, sparing you, because in those last seconds, he’d wanted to give his life for yours. He knew you had more to do, because he knew he’d robbed you of any chance to live your dreams, too, being married to him.”

She sniffled. Wiped her nose with a tissue she’d pulled out of the end table drawer beside her.

“Maybe you honor that choice by doing what you’ve been saying you’re ready to do—living fully again. Otherwise, what was his sacrifice for?”

“Maybe.”

He heard the word. And heard the lack of conviction in her tone, too.

Elaina had been living too long in her silent pool of guilt to suddenly swim to shore and climb out. He fully understood that. The demons there with her were set on robbing her of a future life.

He could only hope that her talking to him was one step forward, like she was calling out from within the pool. Letting someone know she was there.

So she had a light toward which to swim.

He hoped against hope that he and the baby would be that light.

Chapter Eighteen

The baby wasn’t positioned in a way that made gender detection possible, they discovered the next day. For all of her angst about finding out whether she was having a boy or a girl, Elaina was hugely disappointed when the ultrasound didn’t give them an answer.

Whatever Greg was feeling, he didn’t say. He’d sat with her the night before until she’d fallen asleep sitting up on the couch after her confession. And when she’d woken, he’d still been there, dozing. She’d stood, thinking she wouldn’t wake him, but he’d stirred awake, as well, and with a “Get some sleep,” he’d given her a light brush of his lips on her brow and headed down the hall toward his suite.

He’d left her...feeling as though she was enough. For the first time in a long, long while. He’d left her, but not really. He’d given her space she needed to work things out in her own mind, to come to terms with what she’d told him. With the perspective he’d added to what had been a one-sided mental rhetoric for far too long. But he hadn’t gone away. He’d merely walked down the hall.

He’d been gone by the time she came out to make her tea that morning, and had come into the clinic just as they were being called back to the ultrasound.

From down in the darkness, she wondered if he was avoiding her. Didn’t blame him. But there was a shimmer of light now, too, deep down inside. It wasn’t all bad anymore. Maybe she’d let out some bad and made room for some good. Maybe she’d let it in when she’d cracked the night before.

Maybe, she’d let him in.