Red Lily (In the Garden 3)

“That’s a deal. I’m starving.”

They had looked like a family, she thought. A normal young family buying a secondhand car, having lunch in a diner, treating the baby to a cup of ice cream.

But putting them there was rushing it, for all of them. They were a man and a single mother who were romantically involved. Not a unit.

At home, she decided to take advantage of the rest of her day off by curling up with Lily for an afternoon nap.

“We’re all right, aren’t we, baby?” she murmured as Lily played with her mother’s hair, her big eyes heavy, her pretty mouth going slack. “I’m doing right by you? I’m sure trying.”

She snuggled down a little closer. “I’m so tired. Got a million things I ought to be doing, but I’m so tired. I’ll get them all done sooner or later, right?”

She closed her eyes, started to calculate her finances in her head, juggling funds, changing weekly deposits. But her brain wouldn’t focus.

It drifted back to the used-car lot, and Mr. Tanner shaking hands with her before she drove off. How he’d smiled at her and wished her and her charming family well.

Drifted to sitting out on her terrace with Harper, drinking cold wine in the heat-soaked night.

Dancing with him in the shimmering romance of the suite at the Peabody.

Working with him in the grafting house.

Watching him lift Lily onto his shoulders.

It should be easier to be in love, she thought sleepily. It should be simpler. It shouldn’t make you want more when love was everything.

She sighed once, and told herself to enjoy what she had, and let the rest come.

And the pain was like knives in the belly, shocking, sharp, and horrid. Her whole body fought against them, and she screamed at the sensation of being ripped in two.

The heat, the pain. Unbearable. How could something so loved, so desired, punish her this way? She would die from it, surely she would die. And never see her son.

Sweat streamed off her, and the utter weariness was nearly as severe as the pain.

Blood and sweat and agony. All for her child, her son. Her world. No price too dear to pay for giving him life.

And as the pain sliced her, sent her tumbling toward the dark, she heard the thin cry of birth.

Hayley woke drenched in sweat, her body still radiating from the pain. And her own child blissfully asleep in the protective crook of her arm.

She eased free, fumbled for the bedside phone.

“Harper? Can you come?”

“Where are you?”

“In my room. Lily’s sleeping right here. I can’t leave her. We’re all right,” she said quickly. “We’re fine, but something just happened. Please can you come?”

“Two minutes.”

She made a wall of pillows around the baby, but knew even then she couldn’t leave the room. Lily might roll off somehow, or certainly climb over and fall. But she could pace, even on her weakened legs she could pace.

She flung open the doors even as Harper ran up the steps.

“They told her it was stillborn.” She swayed, and her knees nearly folded. “They told her her baby was dead.”

sixteen

IN THE PARLOR where the light was soft through gauzy curtains and the air was sweet with roses, Harper stood by the front window with his fists balled in his pockets.