The baby wasn’t positioned in a way that made gender detection possible, they discovered the next day. For all of her angst about finding out whether she was having a boy or a girl, Elaina was hugely disappointed when the ultrasound didn’t give them an answer.
Whatever Greg was feeling, he didn’t say. He’d sat with her the night before until she’d fallen asleep sitting up on the couch after her confession. And when she’d woken, he’d still been there, dozing. She’d stood, thinking she wouldn’t wake him, but he’d stirred awake, as well, and with a “Get some sleep,” he’d given her a light brush of his lips on her brow and headed down the hall toward his suite.
He’d left her...feeling as though she was enough. For the first time in a long, long while. He’d left her, but not really. He’d given her space she needed to work things out in her own mind, to come to terms with what she’d told him. With the perspective he’d added to what had been a one-sided mental rhetoric for far too long. But he hadn’t gone away. He’d merely walked down the hall.
He’d been gone by the time she came out to make her tea that morning, and had come into the clinic just as they were being called back to the ultrasound.
From down in the darkness, she wondered if he was avoiding her. Didn’t blame him. But there was a shimmer of light now, too, deep down inside. It wasn’t all bad anymore. Maybe she’d let out some bad and made room for some good. Maybe she’d let it in when she’d cracked the night before.
Maybe, she’d let him in.
Either way, she didn’t really think he was avoiding her so much as giving her time to process.
She cleaned off her belly, pulled her scrub top down, got off that table and submitted to the blood test that would tell them most definitively the gender of their baby.
Greg, also in blue scrubs, was waiting for her in the lobby. “You want to have lunch in the cafeteria?” His gaze was warm. A little distant, or maybe hesitant, but still warm.
More than bedside manner.
She cataloged every nuance.
He didn’t seem to be turned off by what she’d told him. And strangely, she wasn’t embarrassed for having fallen apart on him.
Such an oddity, considering her usual reticence and need for privacy. But she’d changed, at least a little bit. And left room for more.
“Yes,” she answered his lunch question after a few seconds of silence. “I apologize for last night,” she added, as they walked out toward their cars. And before he could tell her no apology was necessary, or thank her for giving one, she continued, “But...thank you...for hanging out with me.”
“I wanted to be there.”
Such a simple truth. More for her to think about.
He wasn’t asking questions. Didn’t seem to be placing judgment. And now that her truths were out, they didn’t seem as life-threatening. For a second, she caught a glimpse of what her life might look like from his perspective.
And could still breathe.
“So...we’re good?” she asked as they reached her car. He didn’t have questions? Advice? Recommendations? Diagnoses?
“We’re always good, Elaina,” he told her. “I’m the guy who jumps in and stays until I’m no longer wanted around.”
He was only half joking. And she felt another pang as she considered his self-concern when they’d first talked about him renting the suite from her. He didn’t want to push himself in where he didn’t fit.
And her, with her propensity for leaning on the guy that was there...but maybe that habit within her had grown with Peter’s manipulation. Maybe he’d needed her that way. Maybe they’d have worked things out, worked long term. Maybe not. But she’d given him her all. Tried to be the wife he needed. And fought for herself, too. Just as Greg was fighting for what he needed?
Because people were supposed to need things from each other. And, to be healthy or find joy, they needed to ask for things, too...
“I’ve come to accept that I’m that guy,” Greg said, sobering completely as he stood at her car door, meeting her gaze. “And I’m okay with that. I’ll be here until you no longer need me.”
She couldn’t imagine that ever happening. The thought came to her out of nowhere. Somehow, Greg completely felt a part of her.
The realization panicked her. And brought a curious sense of more, too.
“Unless you meet the woman of your dreams and want to get married.” She grasped at a safety straw, but said it mockingly now. She’d overplayed that card and now it was done. There was no going back.
“Even then,” he said, still peering directly into her soul. “I’m here. Father to the child we created. And your friend.”
She wanted so much more than friendship from him. And was afraid to trust herself not to hurt him. Knowing that your actions could devastate someone, because you meant so much to them...
Like her parents’ sudden deaths had devastated her.
And her cry for a divorce had devastated Peter...
Greg knew. And seemed to take for granted that she was handling the situation.
She knew she was handling it. She’d been in and out of counseling. Would go back if the current situation seemed to demand it. Mostly therapy just helped her figure things out.
She was working diligently on that already. And was still standing the morning after. Still competent.
“I’m here for you, too,” she said, and wanted to snatch the words back immediately. Afraid of what they could mean, what she could be promising, what need he might have that she didn’t yet know about.
Afraid she’d let him down.
And still, she was glad she’d said them. The night before, when she’d seen him sleeping there, perched awkwardly on the end of the couch, her entire being had swelled with compassion. With a strong compulsion to take care of him. To get him comfortable so he’d be rested in the morning.
She needed to get to work. To get out of herself and focus completely on others. People she could help from afar, whose parameters in terms of need of her were clearly identified.
“I’ll see you at noon, then,” Greg was saying, and she smiled at him as she gave him her “okay.”
Her heart got jumbled some more when he smiled back.
Greg was just coming out of a patient cubicle, pulling off his gloves, when he saw Elaina enter the ER a couple of days later.
The emergency surgery he’d just done—making a small but critical cut into the eyelid of a teenager to relieve pressure off the optic nerve so he wouldn’t lose his sight due to swelling—had gone well. The football player’s words of thanks were still ringing in his ears, which could have something to do with the surge of good mood that filled him at the sight of the mother of his child walking toward him.
The intense look on her face—not bad, not good, just...fervent—had him pulling her into an empty cubicle at the end of the row, pulling closed the curtain at the front of the three-walled exam space.
“What’s up?”
“It’s a girl!” Her mouth remained...impassive but the glow in her eyes matched the jubilant tone in her voice.
She grabbed his hand, pulling it to the slight mound of belly covered by her white doctor’s coat. Keeping her hand on top of his on her stomach, she said, “Daddy, meet Marisol...”
Daddy.
Marisol.
It hit him like the downward slope of the very tallest roller coaster. All at once. No stopping it. Exhilarating. And his stomach flew upward into his chest—it was frightening, too.
“I’m going to have a daughter.” Who’d have thought? Who’d ever have thought?
A little girl was going to climb up into his lap, put her tiny arms around him and know that he’d protect her.
Or, or...ask him to read to her.
And put sticky lips against his cheek.
The wet drip of a tear on his hand had him glancing quickly up at Elaina. “I’m so glad I can give this to you,” she said, so serious. “I don’t know why it’s me, or now, or you, but I’m glad, Greg. I’ll be a good mother to her...”
“You’re going to be a great mother,” he said softly, keeping his hand with hers over their baby, while with his free hand he gently cupped Elaina’s head beneath her swaying ponytail. “And I’m glad it’s you,” he told her. “If I could choose all the women I’ve known in my life, you’d still be it.”
Her eyes glistened and she gave him a wobbly smile. “Marisol,” she half chuckled. “Oh my God, I can’t wait to see her...”
And she was scared. He saw the fear in her gaze.
Just as he knew that whether Elaina ever overcame her fears enough to let herself fully engage, or not, whether they were close friends, lovers, roommates or just co-parents, he’d be right beside her, raising their child.
And the rest...whether or not they’d be partners in life or in bed...time would either bring that to him, or it wouldn’t.
No amount of jumping in, pushing or action on his part was going to make a damned bit of difference.
He’d finally figured out life’s little secret.
There were some things you just couldn’t make happen.
You did all you could do, and then just had to trust.
Over the next weeks, Elaina fell in love with Marisol with an intensity she couldn’t control. There was no option. No ability to take her usual step back. Her daughter was alive inside her. With her every second. Growing beneath her heart. Living off her very breath.
She lay in the dark in her room, scared to death. Knowing that something could happen to the baby or to her at any time. And yet...she lay there smiling, too.
She’d never known love could feel so...good in an all-encompassing way. That happiness could flourish in a way that made it stronger than anything fear could dish out.
Or maybe she had. When she’d been a kid. But she had blocked the best memories of the good feeling in order to survive after her parents had been taken from her.
She’d been an immature college sophomore all alone in the world with a life insurance policy that would barely keep her in school. If she worked, too.
The hard work had been good for her. She didn’t begrudge it.
And she didn’t begrudge working to help put Peter through medical school, either. There were a lot of times she’d wanted to stay home when he needed to go out. Times she’d have gone to the beach on a Saturday and he’d needed the stimulation of a game or hiking. She’d have liked colored lights on their Christmas tree. To own a home, even if it was a smaller starter home.
So many, many things she’d wished for back then. If she’d ever been able to choose, to have her way over his when they didn’t agree...
Something Greg insisted on giving her even when she wasn’t cognizant enough to ask for it.
A couple of weeks after her late-night talk with Greg, Elaina was on her way to the grocery store on Saturday when she made a detour. She’d left Greg at home in the shed, working on crib spindles. He’d mastered the four legs to Wood’s satisfaction and her onetime brother-in-law, ex-husband and family member had promoted him to spindle maker.
Peter was still occupying a portion of her mind. She couldn’t make a move without him there, in her thoughts. And so, almost in desperation, she went to see him. It had been over a year since she’d visited his grave.
She didn’t have so much a conscious thought that she didn’t want to go as a resistance inside her to being there. Still, her car took the turns by rote. She knew where to turn without any thought to where she was. In the first year after the accident, she’d had Wood bring her to the cemetery. Just as he’d brought her from the hospital in a wheelchair to attend Peter’s funeral.
And the years after that...she’d gone on her own. Sometimes twice in a day. But with weeks in between visits.
Trying to find herself in their togetherness, and in not being a part of him.
To take honest accountability.
To grieve.
That day, though, she wasn’t sure why she was there. Just that she had to be.
She’d told Greg their secret.
And as she parked, walked the short distance on the cement sidewalk and then through the grass to his grave, Elaina kept her hands in the pockets of her long black cardigan sweater, not caring about the recently watered grass wetting the bottoms of her jeans or the tips of her toes exposed by her sandals. She hadn’t dressed for a trek across the lawn.
She’d asked for the placement of one of the cemetery’s little cement benches across from the headstone years before. Sat down on the cold stone.
And still didn’t know why she was there.
To introduce him to Marisol? Tell him that she was having a baby girl? And that it wasn’t his?
That she was glad it was Greg’s? And that, while she would have never meant to hurt him, she wasn’t sorry she was glad that Greg was her baby’s father?
Time passed. She had no idea how much. Memories of her years with Peter played out. Some were great, some were not. From pleasure to tension, peace to stress, happy and not so much. The time, on the anniversary of her parents’ deaths, he’d brought her a beautiful frame full of pictures with her and them, to remind her of all the good that had come before.
The love that existed still...just like her love and Peter’s would never leave.
She needed to get that frame out. To hang it on a wall in her home. Marisol should know her grandparents.
“I didn’t want to divorce you...” The words came out. She hadn’t been thinking them. Yet, there they were, falling at Peter’s feet. Bones that were beneath the ground, but still there.
“I never would have.” The truth was there.
And what if she’d met Greg at the hospital with her husband still alive, in the same way she had after Peter’s death?
She might have been attracted to Greg—seemed pretty doubtful that whatever was between them wouldn’t have been there—but she knew in her heart that she wouldn’t have acted on it.
Knew it with her baby right there, inside her, with secret powers to see all truths. She wasn’t going to lie to her child. Which meant she couldn’t lie to herself.
Even by omission. But Peter had died, and she was attracted to Greg, and she was having his baby.
“I didn’t mean those words...” Her voice broke and she started to cry again. Bent over herself, she sobbed. So afraid. And so...still there. Still alive.
Giving life now.
“Since the moment I sat in that car with you and knew you were gone... I promised myself that I’d never, ever speak out of pure emotion again. That I’d hold my tongue. Watch my words, and I have, Peter. I swear to God, I have. But...”
And there was the crux of it. But...what?
“But emotion is a part of life and you’re ready to start living it again.”
The words came from behind her. A voice so dear to her for so many years.
One she trusted.
And needed to hear.