A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

Chapter One

Okay, so we’re doing this?

The definitive answer, a yes, came in the sound of ocean waves as Dr. Jamison Howe pounded out his morning jog on the beach. Sand sprayed. His tennis shoes thudded a regular rhythm in the thick substance, rubbing against the small toe on his left foot.

And in the sunrise, he saw Emily’s grin, ear to ear, her eyes glinting with the happiness she’d never lost, even during the grueling brain surgeries she’d had to endure after her biking accident. She’d promised him, seconds before they’d put her under for that last surgery, that they were going to have their baby. Their family. She’d made him promise that that’s what he’d be thinking about while the surgeons worked on her.

The future. The baby they’d been trying so hard to conceive. It was going to happen, she’d told him. She’d been so certain that he’d really believed her. And had spent every second of those hours focused on a nonexistent baby. Imagining a boy or a girl. Playing with names. Picturing scenarios with a running or biking stroller, backpacks that held a little one.

Disneyland rides. Swimming lessons. He and Emily standing quietly, watching their baby sleep.

Which was why, when they’d told him she hadn’t made it through the surgery, he hadn’t believed them. Even after he’d been allowed in to see her lifeless body.

The truth had hit when he’d arrived home that night instead of sleeping in a recliner chair by her bedside at the hospital as they’d planned. When he’d climbed into their bed alone.

And he’d been bereft.

There was no baby. And no Emily, either.

Pounding feet. May sun half blinding him. Ocean breeze cooling his skin. Cloying humidity.

And still, yes.

* * *

Christine Elliott was not overly fond of exercise. It wasn’t that she hated physical activity, it was just that most forms of regular daily exertion—running, bike riding, machine incline exercises, weight lifting—bored her. As the owner of a prominent, privately run fertility clinic, she was in tune with the need for good health. But she’d just allowed any other responsibility in her life to take priority over time at the gym. Or on the streets.

Until she’d discovered racquetball. Not as a sport or a game, but as a solitary physical expenditure of energy. She was up to five days a week, any week that would allow the time, alone in the little high-ceilinged room, banging the little rubber ball off the walls. Again and again. She’d upped her shot over the past year. Purposely hitting it so it would be impossible to return and then racing to return it. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. But always trying. Always upping the ante on what she expected of herself.

Always needing to prove that she could do more. Do better.

Yeah, she got that this was a character flaw: her inability to accept herself as she was. The incessant need to always prove her worth to herself. Surrounded by doctors—psychiatrists and gynecologists—and counselors at her job, she knew all of the rhetoric.

And there was nothing wrong with loving her solitary racquetball time.

Except when she failed to set her alarm and she ended up late for her Tuesday afternoon appointment.

That wasn’t cool.

Nor was it completely true. The appointment existed, but she always built in extra time, and was only at her desk fifteen minutes before her four o’clock appointment was due to arrive, instead of the scheduled half hour.

Newly, though quickly, showered, and back in her tie-dyed sundress and heeled flip-flops, her shortish brown hair still slightly damp on the ends that curled up in the back, she opened the file on the top of her desk.

Dr. Jamison Howe. She remembered him and his wife, Emily. She’d attended high school with them, though, as they were both two years ahead of her, they didn’t know her. She hadn’t recognized them, either, when she’d met with them two years before. They’d been through all of the genetic testing, and while no apparent reason had presented for their inability to conceive, they’d wanted to speak with her about options offered through her clinic—The Parent Portal.

Reading the file, she instantly remembered details. The two, who’d been best friends since they were eight years old and too cute for words together, had decided to try in vitro fertilization after struggling with infertility. They’d gone through the embryonic process and had been due back into the clinic for implantation the day after Emily’s bicycle accident. They’d chosen to freeze her embryos, for use as soon as she was deemed well enough to sustain a healthy pregnancy, but that hadn’t happened. Emily Howe had died on the operating table the previous year.

The embryos had been in frozen storage ever since. Waiting to be destroyed, as was common practice in such situations.