My Babies and Me

“Not really.” Susan continued to hold his gaze. “Doing my job, being my own person, is still important to me.” He was immensely relieved to hear that. “I just want more now. I’m adding another, new dimension to who I am.”

It seemed so logical when she said it. But what was going to happen when she was forced to choose? When Susan the lawyer was at odds with Susan the mother? She’d have to choose Susan the mother, of course; she’d left herself no other choice. And that was where he strangled every time. Being left with no choice scared him to death.

“The thing is,” she said after a pause, “I don’t know how much longer I can stand having you here, knowing you don’t want to be here.”

Michael cursed himself to hell for putting that look in her eyes. “I want to be here,” he told her, surprised at the truth.

“Out of duty?”

He didn’t know. Probably, at least to some extent. But...

“I’ve always wanted to be with you whenever I could.”

She sat watching him, her legs curled beneath her, her sleeveless cotton dress billowing around her. He’d never wished more that he was different, that he was the kind of man she deserved, the kind of man who wanted it all—home, work and family. The first two he wanted. He’d just never wanted the third.

“Can you give me a little more time?” he asked her now, praying he’d experience some kind of revelation soon, some sign that would show him the way. Lord knew, he wasn’t finding it by himself.

“If you’ll promise me something.”

“What?”

“That the minute you don’t want to be here, you’ll leave.”

“Susan...”

“That’s it, Michael.” Her eyes were filled with conviction. “I don’t want you here out of duty or any other misguided sense of moral expectation.”

He didn’t want to make the promise. Wasn’t sure he could keep it. But he was giving her so little as it was. Far, far less than she deserved or had the right to expect from him. He owed her this.

“I give you my word.”

He only hoped it wouldn’t come back to haunt him.

HE STAYED PUT all day on Monday the twenty-first of June. He’d rescheduled a couple of meetings with department heads at Miller Insulation so he could remain in the temporary office he’d set up in Susan’s study. He’d been trying to make sense of the report his market analyst had faxed over that morning. They were researching sites for a couple more factories in other parts of the country so they’d be ready to begin production as soon as the Miller deal went through.

Michael was also working on profit margins—comparing the projected cost of production and distribution against the estimated consumer price.

And he was reaching for the phone every time it rang. He hadn’t asked Susan what time her appointment with the doctor was, so had no way of knowing when he could expect a call from her.

Although he’d tried, he couldn’t quite forget that she was finding out whether they were having sons or daughters. Or one of each. The fact that he might care enough to want to know scared the hell out of him.

As it turned out, the time of her appointment didn’t matter. Susan didn’t phone at all. When five o’clock rolled around, and he realized she wasn’t going to, he’d convinced himself that he was glad. It was probably for the best if she didn’t include him every step of the way.

Too BURSTING with news to go home and pretend she wasn’t, too excited to keep her newfound knowledge to herself, Susan returned to the office after her late-afternoon doctor’s appointment and called her father.

“It’s a boy and a girl!” she said as soon as he picked up the phone.

“One of each, eh, girl?”

Beaming, Susan glanced at her desktop calendar. “Yep.”

“I wish your mother were here. She’d be beside herself.”

“I know, Pop. Me, too.”

Silence fell with their shared loneliness. “You sure you know what you’re doing, girl?” Simon Carmichael asked a little self-consciously. “Sure you aren’t just bucking convention for the sake of bucking it?”

She wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Except that she loved her babies with all her heart and couldn’t imagine not having them. “I know you all think I’m crazy, Pop, but I’m a big girl now, almost forty. Certainly old enough to make my own decisions.”