“I wanted to keep my first son.”
What in the hell was she doing?
Reaching for the door handle, Christine held on to it. Ready to get out. The hand on her stomach compelled her to stay.
She was there to help Jamie bond with his baby, and he was doing so in the most incredible way. There was no mistake that the fetus had chosen right then to kick for the first time. To reach up from the womb that was giving it sustenance for the moment to the hand that would feed it for a lifetime.
She would not make the moment about her. Had to focus on him. On the goal at hand...
“Did you tell anyone?” His voice, soft in the darkness, oozed over her like warm chocolate. Soothing. Sweet. A reminder of happier times.
Of childhood.
She’d been such a happy kid.
Which made the sadness that had followed seem so much more acute.
“Yeah,” she said. “My dad and his wife knew. I had my grandparents to consider, though. By my senior year they were both failing. If I wasn’t there, helping them, they’d have had to sell the family home and move into assisted living. I couldn’t do that to them. Not because I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t abandon them, or force them to live out the end of their lives in what would have been, to them, a prison, not after they’d spent their lives taking care of all of us. Taking care of me. They were both mentally sharp. I went to my dad for help, trying to figure out a way to make it all work.”
She’d already told him and Emily a bit about Ryder. Telling him a few more details didn’t need to change anything in their relationship.
Except it did. She was letting him see her, the person. The woman who grieved, every single day, for the child she’d birthed and given up. And in his seeing, she had to see, too. Had to see how devastating it had been for her to let them take Ryder. And how incredibly painful she was finding the idea of knowing that when she gave birth to Jamie’s child, she’d be losing that baby, too. Even as she justified herself, she rejected the justification. Knew she needed to just shut up.
The baby moved again. Not as energetically, but still completely decipherable, sending muscle memory waves through her entire body.
Resurrecting a memory so vivid it took her breath. And all of her focus. She was there again, lying in her bed, curled in a fetal position, cradling her belly with her hands, promising herself that she wouldn’t give up her baby. Her father was taking her the next day to sign the adoption papers, and even while she sobbed and told herself she wouldn’t do it, she knew she had to.
Because she loved her baby, and her grandparents, that much.
“Just because a person is old doesn’t mean their life is less valuable,” she said aloud. “I was in a position to tend to my grandparents. If they were in a home, I’d have no home. No way to provide for a baby. At least not in a way that would give him a happy, secure life. I was seventeen. And while I had a trust fund, I had no access to it until I was twenty-three.”
“And your grandparents wouldn’t let you use it? Not even to support your child?”
The judgment in his tone was probably unintended, but she heard it. And was oddly comforted. “Gram was willing to give up the part of it th
ey received for my care. She thought she could talk my dad into giving me more. But it wasn’t up to them. My father had full custody of me after my mom died. He set up the trust, with court approval, and he was the executor of it. My grandparents got a monthly stipend for my care, but that came from my father, not from the trust. He also helped pay for any house repairs or other unexpected expenses that came up for them.”
Dad was a decent guy. He’d just eventually made a different life for himself. One that hadn’t fit her. And he’d been kind enough to facilitate her need to stay in Marie Cove.
Life wasn’t always neatly tied up in a pretty bow.
With his hand on her stomach, the telling seemed almost natural. Two boy babies. One in the now. One in the past.
But connected within her.
“So you went to your father for guidance, and he basically forced you to give up the baby.”
She’d been an unwed teenage mother. The situation had been of her own making. The consequences of a completely thoughtless and selfish choice. His defense of her...
She had no idea what to do with it.
Gram and Gramps hadn’t blamed her. They’d told her over and over that she needn’t feel shame. That her heart was good and pure. She’d loved Nathan with all her heart, and that wasn’t a bad thing. They’d all loved him.
“Tammy, my stepmother, offered to keep him, to raise him,” she said, hearing her voice as though it belonged to someone else in the darkened vehicle. “She cried with me...”
Her throat tightened and tears sprang behind her lids. She pushed against them. Waited until she’d won the once-familiar battle.
“My dad said no. He felt that it would hold me back. That I’d never have closure. He also didn’t think it would be fair to Ryder, being raised by his grandparents with his mother in and out of his life. Or, an alternative, to lie to him about his parentage. He said that it would be kinder to give the baby a family that was ready to love and raise him. And kinder to me to put the pregnancy behind me and move forward with my life. To give me a fresh start. To that end, he purposely arranged a private adoption so that I’d have no chance of contact, forcing me to let go.”