He exhales harshly. I know he hates when I bring this up, but I can’t help it. I need to prove this to him once and for all.
“It seemed so irresponsible to bring a baby into the world when I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to feed myself.”
I blink back tears as fast as they gather.
Machlan’s face falls. “You had no faith in me.”
“I had no faith in me either,” I say as a tear slips down my cheek. Machlan brushes it off with the tip of his finger with a gentleness that makes me want to just fall into his arms and release all the emotions I have brimming inside my soul. “I had no parents. No job. No schooling. Nothing. And I only had you sometimes.”
I take a piece of the paper towel he retrieved and dab my eyes. My heart is exposed, lying between us as he searches my face.
Love was never our problem. It’s still present, still rumbling between us even now, even after all the shit we’ve been through. We may not have been able to get on the same page or work out our problems, but there’s a relief that the love, in whatever form, is there.
“Do you think we would’ve been able to deal with it?” he asks. “Do you think if we would’ve kept her, we would’ve made it?”
“Do you?”
He chews his bottom lip while he looks around the room. Finally, he exhales. “No. I hate to say that, but I don’t.”
Tears flood my eyes again. “I don’t either. I mean, we didn’t make it as it is. Can you imagine us trying to make it with a baby?”
“No.” He forces a swallow. “Nana would’ve tried to raise it, and she was old then. But, by God, she would’ve tried. I couldn’t saddle her with that, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
A silence blankets us with stillness we both need. Machlan fiddles with our hands. He laces his fingers lightly through mine, rubbing my ring finger with his thumb.
“It eats at me every day that I didn’t tell Nana,” he says quietly.
A lump settles in my throat. “We did what we had to do. If you would’ve told her, like you said, she would’ve talked us into a decision we know wasn’t the right one for us or our baby girl.”
“I just can’t see the disappointment in her eyes,” he says over a lump of his own.
“That’s why we went to Ohio, right? To avoid all the outside pressure and judgment and see if we could be parents.”
There’s a flurry of sadness that settles deeply in the lines of his face. And while I understand it, while I feel it to the bottom of my soul just the same, I don’t want him to be sad.
I take his hand again and pull up his arm. The tattoos stare back at me. “So that clover is for me?”
He nods. “The week before I got it, the preacher was saying in church that there’s a Christian legend that says Eve took a four-leaf clover with her out of Eden so she’d have a piece of paradise with her.” He twists his lips in embarrassment. “It’s like having a piece of you with me.”
I rest a hand on his chest and don’t dare speak. My lips tremble at the sweet genuineness of his words, and if I even try to comment, I’ll cry big, fat, ugly tears.
“And the pink ribbon is for her,” he says.
I look at the sweet little mark tied to the clover. Our daughter and I are wrapped together on Machlan’s arm for the rest of his life. All the years since her birth, the years we’ve struggled and fought and couldn’t get on the same page, he was thinking of us.
Blinking back tears, I smile. “I think it’s perfect.”
“That’s the hardest thing we’ll ever have to go through, huh?”
“I can’t imagine anything being harder than giving your baby up for adoption.”
“But we did that,” he says. “You know why? Because we loved each other, but we loved her more.”
Tears spill down my cheeks in a soft, quiet stream. I wonder when he came up with that—when this big, burly man who has an incredible heart buried under his tough exterior came up with words that sweet and perfect.
We loved her more.
“We did. We loved her more. I like that,” I say.
He presses a kiss to my forehead before turning away. “I also like steak. You ready to get this thing started?”
There’s no pause for an answer, no follow-up question. He walks by, clearing his throat, and busies himself with the rest of the meal prep.
I dry my face and turn back to the tomato.
Twenty-Eight
Machlan
“Here you go.” The chains holding the porch swing jingle as I sit beside Hadley. She smiles as I tuck a quilt around her shoulders. “Is that better?”