His Brother's Bride
“Because she’s celebrating Christmas alone?” he asked.
“It’s more than that.”
“What?”
In spite of her inclination not to, she glanced over at him. He lay on his side, his head propped on his hand, watching her. His focus was so complete it was as though he was physically touching her.
“She has no one who knows her—really knows her. No one who shares a history with her, who remembers what she was like as a baby. No one who shares a single genetic trait with her. No one to belong to.”
Hearing herself speak, Laurel felt ridiculous. She was weeping for a character in a movie, after all, but for her, the emotions the woman felt were very, very real.
Damaging.
“And you feel like her?”
“I just know how she feels.”
It felt so odd, talking like this. It wasn’t something she did. Had three and a half years of grief humbled her this much?
Or was there something about this man? Scott had changed. He’d developed an awareness and emotional maturity he’d never had before, and she felt herself opening up to him.
“You never spoke about your biological parents.” He broke into her thoughts. “Do you have any idea who they were, or what happened to them?”
The question was unexpected. It was not the kind of thing he’d ever asked before when they’d had their long discussions about life.
It also wasn’t a question she answered. In the past, this was where she sidestepped, prevaricated. But something pushed her forward.
“It wasn’t a classic unwed pregnancy, or even a teen pregnancy.” Her instincts were screaming at her to stop before it was too late.
“My mom and dad were married.” She’d never even told Paul this stuff. “My father never wanted children. Neither, from what I gleaned, did my mother. I must have been a huge mistake.”
Scott moved. Staring at the bedspread, she braced herself for whatever he was going to say.
He didn’t say anything.
“My father wanted my mother to have an abortion, but she didn’t believe in them. They were going to give me up for adoption, but at the last minute, she decided to keep me.”
How many times in her life had she wished her mother had done the kind thing and allowed her to go to a real home? To be taken in by people who wanted a new baby, who would raise her and love her all of her life?
“Apparently I cried a lot.” Some things didn’t change, Laurel thought with self-deprecation as she wiped her nose. “My father couldn’t stand the sound.”
A noise came from Scott’s bed—a cross between a snort and a cough. Laurel couldn’t look at him.
She was flying all over the place inside herself. Afraid. Jumbled. And far too needy. More than anything she hated being needy.
“My mom and dad were very much in love,” she said quietly, the words accompanied by a deep pressure in her chest. “The only time they ever fought was about me.”
Scott moved again. He must have sat up, because in her peripheral vision she could see his jeans-covered legs against the side of the bed, reaching down toward the floor.
“He finally gave her an ultimatum. Either I went, or he had to. He’d tried to accept me, because my mother thought it was their duty, but he just couldn’t take my constant whining.” She hadn’t meant to whine. She hadn’t even really known what whining was. “She chose him.”
Tears dripped slowly down cheeks that were already stiff and salty. She’d long since given up wiping them away.
And she knew now why she’d never told this story before. Hearing it out loud made it that much more humiliating.
“She took me to the police, told them that she couldn’t raise me, that she was afraid she was going to hurt me. I was placed in a foster home that very night and never saw her again.”
The mattress she was lying on depressed, and her body tilted slightly sideways. She could see Scott’s hip as he sat down, his arm as he leaned back against the headboard. For one hallucinatory second she thought he’d read her mind. That he was going to pull her up against him, offer his shoulder and let her cry.