The Baby Arrangement (The Daycare Chronicles 3)

“Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll let her know at some point. You know she’s going to tell me to adopt, rather than birth, and while you’d think, in my position, having grown up as I did, that I’d be looking in that direction, I just want a biological family of my own.”

“So find a man to share it with you.”

Her heart lurched. And quieted. She shook her head.

“You’ve hardly dated, Mal. I’d hoped that guy at Thanksgiving—that dad—was someone you were getting interested in.”

“I have dated,” she told him. And she listed four men in three years. He nodded as each name rolled off her tongue. She’d told him about every one of them. “There’s been no spark.” She could have left it there, but for some reason, didn’t.

“You know as well as I do, Bray. The magic is so great in the beginning, but there’s no guarantee it will last. Look at us. Tragedy happened. You changed, I changed, or we found different parts of ourselves that hadn’t had reason to present before.” She shook her head. “I just don’t trust the whole magic, in love thing. Besides, you said yourself many times that I changed even before tragedy hit. I loved motherhood more than I loved being a wife.”

His words, not hers, but she wasn’t sure they were wrong. She’d loved being his wife more than she could ever put into words. And yet, being a mother...it was like an empty cavern inside of her had suddenly been filled to the brim.

“The Bouncing Ball takes up twelve hours a day of your time.”

She was proud of her daycare. It had a waiting list now, since she’d made the news the previous summer when a couple come to her for help in finding their kidnapped child. She was even, at Braden’s suggestion, raising her rates for new clients. She’d put her foot down when it came to charging her current clients more.

“I spend my days taking care of children, Bray,” she said now. “And I have a fully trained and certified staff who also specialize in child development.”

Yes, she sp

ent twelve hours a day at the center, doing what a mother does. Now, instead of just doing it for other people’s children, she’d be doing it for her own, as well. And then getting to spend the remaining twelve hours a day doing the same.

“There’ll be no more empty hours,” she said aloud.

Braden seemed to be searching for words, and for the first time in a while she hated what they’d become. Hated the friendship that kept so much inside, erecting an invisible and completely safe barrier between them.

“Tell me what you’re really thinking.” She blurted the words.

And, of course, their waitress chose right then to deliver their dinner.

* * *

She could hardly eat. But because he was devouring his steak, she forced herself to go through the motions.

Was she being way too insensitive here? Telling her ex-husband that she was having a baby when the loss of their own child was what had driven them apart?

Telling him she was having a baby when she knew he blamed himself for their loss?

“You wanted me to move on,” she said, putting down her fork when she couldn’t pretend to eat anymore. “More and more I can feel your tension, Bray. You need me to get a life.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He didn’t deny her accusation.

“I’m right, aren’t I? You feel responsible for my unhappiness, which means you can’t move forward until I do.”

Putting a forkful of meat in his mouth he chewed. His lack of response infuriated her. And yet, not as much as it might have done six months ago. Just because Braden didn’t respond didn’t mean he had no response.

“SIDS is not something you can predict,” she said. “And if we’d been home, Tucker still would have died.”

That’s what the doctors told her. And the counselors. She still didn’t totally believe it. If she’d been home, if Braden hadn’t pressured her to leave their son with a nanny so that he could have some one-on-one time with her and spend most of the night making love with her, she might have heard a change in his breathing on the baby monitor. Might have been able to get to him in time.

To do what, she didn’t know. At least she could have had a chance to breathe her own air into him.

To hold him.