The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“Never.” June’s response was emphatic. “He had his challenges, but he loved us completely,” she said. “What more could you want than that?”

Loved them completely, just not enough for the love to he

lp him cope through the pain. And who was Annie to judge that?

How well had she loved? She’d certainly failed her mother.

And what about Blake? She’d turned her back on the love of her life that day he’d gotten off the airplane and literally run to her waiting arms. She’d held him then, but later that day…

“I have something I want to show you,” Annie said suddenly, rising as the memories grew too vivid. Hurt too much.

She reached for June’s hand, feeling at once awkward and also strangely peaceful as her mother’s fingers slid easily into her own. Moving slowly, silently, she led her mom down the hall to the nursery she’d decorated.

There was going to be explaining to do. June knew nothing about Annie’s plans.

But that could come. For now…

She opened the door and waited.

“Oh!” June walked over to the cradle, tears streaming down her face as she lovingly, reverently, ran her fingers along the spokes and bars of hand-carved wood. “Where did you find this?”

Annie told her about the secondhand shop outside of Waco. The day she’d gone on the Internet and researched her father’s name. The picture.

“I’d never seen it before,” she said. “I didn’t even know he’d done cribs.”

“He didn’t,” June said, still touching the wood as if she were touching the man who’d made it into the beautiful piece it was. “Only this one. He made it for you, but we fell on hard times and he had to sell it before you were born….”

ANNIE WASHED UP THE teacups after her mother left. Thought about baking some cookies to take into work the next day. Her boss loved chocolate chip cookies. And she wanted him in a good mood for the article she intended to propose. Something a bit more hard-hitting than positive thinking.

Mental manipulation was abusive. Widespread. And hard to identify, most particularly for the victims. It was time to shed some light on the subject. To help women like her mother, who were easy targets, women who fell prey to exploitation due to the character trait that made them special to begin with—their tenderness and their ability to trust.The idea was only starting to take shape, but Annie had to do the piece. Maybe even try to sell it to a woman’s magazine. She had a contact or two.

She didn’t have any chocolate chips. But she knew Mike would let her do the article, anyway. He always did.

Wandering though her house, Annie longed for daylight and a good long bike ride. The tub invited her in for a soak. She thought about that, too, before declining. She couldn’t sit still. Didn’t want to be trapped in one place with her thoughts.

Was she crazy? Did she have some of her father in her, after all, and this was a low?

And sex with Blake had been the high?

Or was this merely the dark night of the soul that came before awareness? Had she been sleeping since she was thirteen, and was only now, finally, coming completely awake?

Feeling a powerful pressure to figure herself out, to know, Annie couldn’t find a place to land, or anything to occupy herself with. It was too late to go out, but too early for bed. She’d only lie there and torment herself.

Hand on her lower belly, thinking of the child who would need her whole and healthy, she found herself back in the nursery—the room that, until recently, had given her all the magic in her life, the promise of good to come. It had given her a reason to get up in the morning, something to look forward to on weekends. A purpose.

Tonight, it gave her back a piece of her past. And of her future. It gave her a piece of herself.

Confused, knowing that she was on the brink of something, sensing the pain lodged in the region of her heart, Annie sat in the rocker in that beautiful room, intending to lull herself into peace with the gentle motion. But she slid down onto the floor instead. She stared at the cradle for a long time, trying to remember her father’s hands as they worked the wood.

Eventually, her own hands found it, touching a spindle—tentatively at first, then lovingly, as her mother had. And her father, too?

Tim Lawry had made this bed for her. She’d paid an inordinate amount of money to buy it for her baby.

There was a message there for her. If only her mind would let her find it.

The knock on her front door wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should have been. Nor was Blake’s face on the other side of the screen.

She might have told herself that she wasn’t going to see him again. Wasn’t going to speak to him until after she’d used the little blue stick she’d purchased the weekend before. And that communication might have just been a voice mail. Or an e-mail.