A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

“You think I’m wrong to be considering this?”

“No. I just hope you really think about it, about how it will feel to carry a baby inside you, to give birth to it and not have it be placed in your arms...”

She didn’t have to think about that part. She knew it firsthand. And knew she could deal with it. Which was part of what was pushing her forward.

“That’s what I’m doing. Thinking about it. I don’t think I’m going to do it. It’s like this fantastical episode playing out in my mind, but not real, you know?”

“You’re the most practical woman I know,” Olivia said, reaching a hand out to her arm, as though knowing Christine needed some connection to ground her back into reality. “If it’s on your mind, you’re considering it.”

Her friend was right. She was considering it. Just wasn’t going to do it.

“Whatever you decide, you have my support.”

Olivia’s parting words were more than a promise. They were like a whisper on the wind beneath Emily’s angel’s wings, nudging her forward.

Chapter Five

Running forward to make the slam that would win him the match, Jamie came down with his custom-made tennis racket and hit the lime-green ball at just the right angle to make his volley impossible to return. The grunt he emitted was for show.

The score—6:4, 7:5, 6:3. He’d just skunked the man who’d been a father to him for more than half his life.

Dropping off their rackets in the lockers they rented at the Marie Cove Country Club, they walked out to the beachside bar that would be filling up as soon as the day’s golfers started to wander in. Saturdays were always the busiest, but it was also the only day Emily’s father, Judge Tom Sanders, had free that week. He was heading up to wine country on Sunday for a week of boating and fishing with friends, and Jamie needed to speak with him before he left.

They ordered their customary after-a-match beer, toasted to the win and, rather than settling into a seat at the bar, Jamie asked his father-in-law if they could walk.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” the older man said, his graying hair glinting in the sunlight. A couple of inches taller than Jamie, widower Tom was lean and still drew the eyes of the women at the pool and, farther below, in the sand, as, in their tennis shorts, T-shirts and shoes, they headed down a paved walkway at the top of the beach.

“Let me help,” Tom continued, his deep baritone as commanding as always. “I’ve been waiting for the call that would tell me that you’ve started dating again, and I just want you to know that not only am I prepared to see that happen, I’m hoping for it to happen,” he said, holding his beer by his thigh as they walked. He smiled as a woman passed.

Tom watched the woman go, sipped from his beer and faced forward again.

“You know her?”

“She was in my court a couple of months ago. Tough divorce.” While Tom had done his stint in criminal court, he’d opted to sit on the civil bench after Emily’s accident. It took less of an emotional toll, he’d told Jamie one night when he’d had an uncharacteristic amount of alcohol to drink.

“So...back to what I was saying... I want to dispel any sense of guilt you might be feeling...”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” And he’d thought what he had to say would be easier. Good news. Instead, he felt like a college kid, again, askin

g the man if he could marry his daughter.

Confident of Tom’s regard, just not certain the older man would understand or condone his request. After all, Emily had always had standing in the community and her parents had a lot of money, while Jamie had been the son of a woman who worked five days a week in an office just to make ends meet.

If it hadn’t been for the tennis scholarship Tom had urged him to go after, he’d never have made it into college, much less grad school.

Besides, while he and Em had been close since that long-ago day in the emergency room, they’d taken a long time to get from there to admitting they were more than just friends.

Maybe he was premature in his declaration. He hadn’t heard a word from Christine Elliott, but then she’d only had three business days to start putting out feelers on his behalf—or considering taking on the project herself—and it wasn’t like he’d be her only professional task. She had a slew of clients. A clinic to run.

A life to live.

There’d been more than a few times he’d shuddered over the memory of what he’d done—making an appointment with a woman he hadn’t seen in two years, a woman he’d only met once, to ask her to have his baby.

And yet, while he regretted the manner in which he’d done it, he still knew he couldn’t possibly move forward with a family without doing all he could to get Christine to agree to be the one to make it possible for him.

He downed a quarter of his bottle of beer. Let the liquid wash the nervousness away. Tom would be as delighted about the baby as he’d been about Jamie and Emily’s engagement. And once Jamie told the judge about his intentions, there’d be no going back.

“I’ve decided to use the embryos Emily and I froze to start a family.” He wasn’t looking for permission. Wasn’t going to change his mind. And Tom had a right to know that he was going to be a grandfather posthumously. After losing his wife and then his only child, he deserved to know that there was good around the corner.