“We had a daughter.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes. I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after our wedding when I’d returned to campus. I was in denial for so long I didn’t tell anyone. I was so hurt, so confused by everything that had happened. I thought I still had time to figure things out, and then I started having complications. It was too soon for the baby to come, but the doctors didn’t have much of a choice.”
She didn’t want to lose him in the details about how sick she’d gotten and how she’d been at risk herself. Not now. Maybe later, once the shock of it all settled and he could understand everything she’d been through. “The doctors tried so hard, but I lost her only a few hours after she was born. They took her directly to the NICU after she was delivered, and I never even got to hold her.”
“That makes two of us,” he said with a cold edge to his voice.
This was the response she’d been so afraid of. The words were like sandpaper across her already raw wounds. They’d really never healed, but having River back in her life had just ripped it all open again.
“How could you keep this from me, Morgan?”
“After everything that happened between us? I didn’t even know where to start. I was so angry with you then. I thought you’d extorted money from my father and abandoned me. Even though you didn’t know about the baby, I think I blamed you for walking away while I dealt with everything by myself.”
“I didn’t walk away.”
“I know that now, but back then I was reeling from everything going wrong in my life. I was scared and hurt and I didn’t know what to do. And then once I lost Dawn, I thought maybe it was best that I not tell you. What good would come of telling you we had a daughter when she was already gone? I know I made the wrong choice, and I’m sorry.”
“And now?” River asked, finally turning to look at her with a cold, impassionate stare. “I understand that back then things between us were complicated. But what about now? When you knew the truth about the money and what your father did? After we made love? All the times we were alone and talking about our lives? You’ve had a million chances to tell me over the last few months.”
“I know. Believe me when I tell you how much I’ve wrestled with this knowledge. It lingered on the tip of my tongue every time we were together, but how could I say the words? The longer I waited, the harder it became. She was already gone. And when I realized how I felt about you, I... I didn’t know how to... I thought you’d hate me for it.”
Morgan stopped short of telling River that she loved him. It was true, but she didn’t want to taint that moment with this. It would fall on deaf ears, and she didn’t want to be accused of manipulating his emotions.
“And if the baby hadn’t come early and everything had worked out okay...would you have told me about her then? Would you have given her up for adoption without ever giving me the chance to have a say in it? Or would I have run into a child with my eyes as she played here in the backyard?”
“Of course, I would’ve told you,” she said, although she wasn’t truly certain as she spoke the words aloud. She’d never gotten that far in the decision-making process, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Dawn Steele,” he repeated their daughter’s name from the marble slab. “You didn’t even give her my name. You hid her away in this dark corner of the yard like all the other family secrets. It’s like she and I never existed in your lives.”
“River, I—”
“Just don’t.” River turned away from her and looked out at the chaos unfolding around them. There were police and firemen all over the property with red lights and flames lighting up the sky. He watched it all dispassionately, as though it were not the scene of a terrorist act so much as a welcome distraction from the drama of his own life.
He wouldn’t look at her and in that moment, that was all Morgan wanted. She was desperate to connect with him and explain everything she’d been through, but he wasn’t going to listen to anything else she had to say.
“It looks like they have someone in custody,” he said at last.
Morgan looked in the direction of his gaze, seeing a wiry older man facedown in the grass with Harley Dalton sitting on his back. The police were in the process of cuffing the man she didn’t recognize, although he appeared to be wearing the same uniform as the caterers her office had hired for the party.
River stood up. “It looks like they’ve got everything under control here. You should be safe, now.”
“You’re leaving?” Morgan asked. She felt like her heart was slowly being ripped from her chest the farther he moved away from her.
He nodded. “I think it’s for the best,” he said.
Morgan sat helpless, watching as the man she loved, the man she’d hurt, walked across the lawn and out of her life. She feared that it might be for good.
Now she knew how he had felt.
Eleven
Morgan had all her clothing laid out across the bed. Normally, she would stay around for a few weeks after the key ceremony to visit friends and actually enjoy some time back in Charleston instead of just working. She should spend more time with the Nolans, thankful they were unharmed in the explosion and she had the chance. But this year, for obvious reasons, she was ready to go back to DC. Some might call it running away. She preferred to think of it as getting her life back to normal.
If it ever had been normal.
Normal people didn’t have a weirdo try to blow them up at a party. The cops were long gone now, but the plastic tarps still covered the gaping hole in the side of the ballroom and the police tape blocked the room off from the rest of the house. Thankfully, the fire had been contained there and the rest of the house was still livable, but it was a reminder of the explosion and everything that had followed it.
She wanted to head back to her Georgetown town house. It wasn’t tainted with the good and bad memories of River and everything else that had happened. It was a clean slate; her whole life there was. And after the last few months, she was desperate for that kind of refuge.