Second Time's the Charm

“Tell that to Abraham.” This was their lives they were talking about. He wasn’t above pulling out whatever stops it took to make this work for all of them.

The way her mouth started to tremble alarmed him. When, without warning, Lillie bent over at the waist and started to sob as though her heart were shattering into a million pieces, Jon started to get really scared.

He’d done something horrible and he didn’t even know what it was. He knew only that, somehow, he was going to have to make this right.

Now.

* * *

LEAVING THE CHAMPAGNE and brownies on the table—a memory he’d never forget—Jon lifted Lillie and carried her back to his room. Not because he had any intention of bedding her, but because it was the only room in the house with a lock on the door. He didn’t want Abraham to pick tonight as the first time he climbed out of his crib only to find Lillie in such a state. She clung to his neck, digging her fingers into him while sobs continued to rack her body.

The only furniture in his room, other than the bed and nightstand, was a dresser. He gently laid Lillie against the pillows.

“Hold me.” She didn’t let go of his neck.

“I will, babe. Just give me a second to set up the monitor.”

Letting him go immediately, Lillie fell back against the pillows, appearing to calm down a little. And then she started to cry again, more softly.

Those tears trickling slowly down her cheeks bothered him more than the heaving sobs. They seemed to be coming from a deeper place than the initial gust.

These weren’t tears you cried away and then forgot. These were the kind that might stop, but would never end.

Hooking his tablet up to the speaker system on his nightstand and opening the monitoring software, he checked to see that Abraham was sleeping soundly and racked his brain for the right thing to say.

He just didn’t have it.

So he climbed onto the bed with her, pulled her against his chest and held on.

* * *

JON LOST TRACK of time but he didn’t grow tired. Lillie cried some. She slept some, too. And still he sat there, holding on. Because it was what he had to do.

Life wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t easy. And a man had two

choices. To let bitterness grow so big it suffocated every good thing in him. Or to embrace possibility and try to make the right choices.

It had taken him a while to understand but he got it now.

“I can’t.”

At first he thought she was talking in her sleep. Until Lillie shuddered and pushed up and away from him.

He let her go.

“Can’t what?”

She didn’t go far. Just sat up next to him, hugging a pillow to her chest.

“I can’t marry you, Jon. But more accurately, I can’t be a mother to Abraham.” She sounded so certain he started to believe her.

* * *

“WHY?”

Hearing the pain in Jon’s voice, Lillie knew she had to tell him. Climbing out from the hell of emotional exhaustion when all she wanted to do was crawl back into his arms and sleep until the world changed, she looked Jon straight in the eye.

“Because I already am a mother.” She heard herself and understood what she was doing, but the words sounded completely foreign to her.