Almost a Family

She was putting animal shaped chicken nuggets in the cart when Jason’s voice came quietly behind her.

“Do you feel it, too?”

His words washed over her, soft and wistful, and she knew exactly what he meant. Did it feel strange to be shopping for a cake and presents for a blonde bombshell with curly hair and dark intelligent eyes so much like his?

“A little.” She kept her back to him. Looking at him now wouldn’t be wise. She’d forget everything she desperately needed to remember. Like how she couldn’t afford for fantasy to take over common sense.

“It could have been us.”

Tears pricked her eyes as he put words to her earlier thoughts. So easily, if she’d followed in line with his plan. They could be celebrating their own little girl’s birthday, shopping together. But that had been the problem. He’d planned everything down to the last detail, and she hadn’t been ready for that. Now the chance had passed them by, and she did feel the pain of the death of that dream warring with the frightening prospect of hope that all hadn’t been lost.

“Do you ever wonder?” he continued, close behind her. She could feel his body even though he never touched her.

In the end, fear won.

She took a fortifying breath and lied. “No. I’m not the kind of person who dwells on what might have been.”

She felt his withdrawal in response to her icy words. The air cooled behind her and relief mixed with regret. He was making it harder and harder to leave, and she couldn’t forget that if she let him, he’d try to order her life all over again. He still didn’t see that what he’d done was wrong. He was still sure he was right and that she’d been wrong to run. They were both forgetting that and letting the nostalgia of the good things between them distract them from the big problem. A problem that wouldn’t disappear no matter where she lived. The one thing they hadn’t discussed since being home.

It was one thing to remember the past. It was another to forget exactly why she’d left in the first place.

“We’d better get going.” She turned the cart toward the checkout, heard his footsteps behind her but didn’t dare meet his eyes.

She didn’t want him to know how much the lie had cost her.

Chapter Eight

Jason took Sara to the clinic with him the next afternoon, giving Molly time to prepare for the party. Molly went to work hanging streamers and a huge pink and white sign that had “Happy Birthday” emblazoned on it. The party was set for the kitchen. It would certainly be easier to clean up chocolate fudge cake with bright pink icing from the kitchen floor than the thick living room carpet.

The dishes were placed on top of a white-and-pink paper tablecloth. Various princesses danced across it and the pattern was repeated on the paper plates, cups and napkins. Balloons had been delivered and were arranged around the room. Molly moved the cake in its plastic domed carton, hiding it behind the set of canisters and away from Sara’s keen eyes. She was nervous, of all things. Nervous at what Jason would think of what she’d done. Hoping it was good enough.

She couldn’t blame him for thinking her cold and uncaring. From the moment she’d refused his ring, she hadn’t given him a reason to believe her anything different. He didn’t know all the fears, the uncertainty. He knew how lonely she’d been. All her life she’d longed for love. But he didn’t know that when it finally had happened, she’d let it swallow her up until she’d almost lost herself. She’d loved him so much that she’d almost let herself be assimilated into his ultimate life-plan. Leaving him had been a rebellious act of desperation to try to stay in one piece. She’d distanced herself from even her sister, the only one who might understand, in order to protect her heart.

Now that she was home, seeing a glimpse of their past, the poignancy of the present and the seriousness of Kim’s condition… She knew she’d been utterly wrong. Perhaps not in breaking things off—Jason had been terribly heavy-handed—but she’d been wrong to run away and not deal with him. Wrong to stay far away from Kim and Sara. She was trying hard to make up for it. Today felt like a test, and knowing it was the time to find out if she’d pass or fail made her tummy twine up in tangly knots.

Molly turned her head toward the ceiling as she heard Kim running the bathtub. Why was it so hard to resist the memories? Why couldn’t Jason have gotten fat and bald over the years, instead of becoming even more mouth-wateringly handsome? She put her head in her hands. It was time to face the truth, if only to herself. She’d never stopped loving him. It sounded easy, but was so very hard. She loved him for all the things that hadn’t changed, yet the reasons she left in the first place were still there. He would still expect her to be the one to do all the giving up. It wasn’t that she wasn’t willing to sacrifice. She always had been willing to compromise. It was knowing he would expect her to while he kept his life the same, knowing he’d have everything pigeon-holed in a cookie-cutter existence that still had her balking.

For even if she were tempted to leave her life behind and start anew, she knew that if she did, she’d resent him for it sooner or later.

When the phone rang she jumped, then swiveled to grab the cordless unit. Minutes later when she hung up, her hands shook and her stomach quivered.

Her decision had just gotten that much harder.

*

Jason returned with Sara at five o’clock sharp. In his right hand, he held a bag containing a change of clothes, and in the other was a large box wrapped in birthday paper. Sara rang the doorbell and giggled at her mother, who opened the door wearing a pink party hat.

“You take this.” He handed Kim the present. “I’m going to get changed first.”

“Sure, go ahead. We’re just getting supper on.”

He changed from his scrubs to jeans and a sweater and ran a hand through his hair.

He didn’t have much time left, he knew it. Molly’s trip was nearly over and she’d be going back to Calgary unless he took some drastic action. But he wasn’t sure what that action should be. He’d tried to talk to her last night about the feelings that had run between them. He’d known she was thinking about what might have been. He’d sensed it, because he’d been feeling it, too. Maybe if they could start talking about how good things had been… But after he’d mentioned it, she’d shut him out completely. Shaking his head, he stuffed his dirty scrubs into the bag. Perhaps he should let her go. Maybe it would be easier for everyone that way. It was certainly long past time.

When he enter

ed the kitchen, Sara was wearing her princess tiara and looking very regal in her favourite pink fairy dress, the layers of tulle puffing about her. Molly was taking a cookie sheet out of the oven and Kim overturned the deep fryer basket, dumping chicken nuggets on to a plate lined with paper towel.