Grace couldn’t stop seeing the look on Hank’s face. Not the stunned disbelief, but what came after. The realization that people who were supposed to care about him had not only kept the truth from him but considered him incapable of being trusted. Grace hadn’t fully understood how devastating that would be until she’d watched the havoc it had wreaked.
That she had wreaked.
“Hey,” Jeremiah said softly from the door of her bedroom. “Anything I can get you?”
“No. I’m…” Not fine. Bless his heart, her brother was trying, but what could he do besides let her drip all over his shoulder and shush Lucas and Matthew? He’d told them she was in bed with a migraine and needed the dark and the quiet, so they tiptoed and whispered and kept the TV turned down low, as if she could sleep, or even close her eyes.
As she stared up at the ceiling, she was gripped by an urgent need to know that Hank was safe.
Johnny Brookman was listed in the Earnest directory. Would Hank’s dad even speak to her? She’d never spoken to him, had always thought he was slightly terrifying, and she misdialed twice while punching in his number.
There was a clatter as the receiver was snatched up before the end of the first ring. “Hello?”
Grace stiffened. Damn. Damn. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that Hank might pick up? She heard rustling, like blankets being pushed aside, and then he said, “Grace?”
She let out a breath. “How did you know?”
“Dumas cell phone number.” His voice was muted, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear. “And who else would panic when I answered?”
Excellent deduction. Her heart was hammering, and her palms had gone damp. “I didn’t expect to talk to you.”
“Then why did you call?”
“I just wondered…”
When she trailed off, he finished, “If I was still breathing?”
“Uh…I was going to say safe.”
“Same thing.”
After an interminable pause, she realized he wasn’t going to continue. She should say okay, great and hang up, but now that she’d established this tiny thread of connection, she didn’t want to break it. “Why are you whispering?”
“Dad and Bing are asleep.” She heard another rustle and pictured him scooping the hair back off his face, a gesture that was already becoming familiar. “Why are you whispering?”
“Jeremiah and the boys are here.”
He breathed, slow and even, in and then out. Meditative breaths, she realized. This Hank would do that kind of thing. “I was afraid you were alone.”
The admission gave her a queer little pang. After all this, he could still worry about her? “Are you okay? I mean, after you and Gil…”
“A couple of scrapes. Nothing major.”
“That’s good.” Grace pulled the comforter over her head, closing herself in with the blue glow from the phone and the thump of her heart. The longer she stayed on the line, the more likely that he would ask the inevitable questions. How could you? What’s wrong with you?
She had answers. A pat little list drilled into her by that counselor in Oregon. If she rattled them off, could she make Hank believe what she never quite had?
The silence went on so long that she started when he did speak. “Who was with you when the baby was born?”
Not the question she’d expected. “The couple she lives with now. In Portland. I moved there when I started to, um, show.” She had actively suppressed the memories of her pregnancy and Maddie’s birth, bundling them up and shoving them in the drawer along with that shoebox. Dragging them out now, she found the edges were still sharp enough to draw blood. “I left here in March and stayed in their guest house until it was time.”
“I thought you were in Pendleton.”
She hadn’t been sure he’d even known she’d gone to Oregon. Had he cared enough to ask after her, or had Korby assumed he’d want to be updated? “I told my family I was in Pendleton, but I couldn’t let everyone there see me pregnant, then show up for work at the high school in August with no baby.”
“Right. Makes sense.” Oddly, he seemed relieved. “So these people, they can afford a guest house.”
“They can afford a lot of things.” Including some that directly involved Hank, but she wasn’t blurting that out now, over the phone.
“Huh. So that’s good. For the baby, I mean.”
“Yes.” Better than Grace could ever have done, and not just in terms of money. Maddie was with people who desperately wanted a child. Surely that would be enough to offset Grace’s lack of interest…and convince Hank that his daughter was in a very good place.
Another lengthy silence. Hank seemed to have run out of questions, or the ability to absorb anything more. When he’d had time to regroup, he would probably be furious with her all over again. He had the right. As Maddie’s birth father, he had a lot of rights, should he choose to exercise them. The prospective parents had been willing to gamble that he wouldn’t fight for custody—or had wagered that he didn’t have the resources to win, especially given his recent history. Wyatt had never said so, but Grace knew he didn’t believe Hank would have the heart to tear a child away from the only parents she knew.
And somehow, Grace had to make Hank understand that she’d left Wyatt and Melanie almost no choices. “Wyatt didn’t ask for any of this, but once Gil had told him, it wasn’t like either of them could un-know it. And I swore them to secrecy because I couldn’t let my family find out.” She gave a defeated sigh. “I’ll have to tell them now.”
“What the hell for?” His voice was so loud that it startled her. He instantly muted it again, but remained emphatic. “Your dad damn near strung me up just for wearing my cowboy boots on his gym floor.”
Grace giggled, then clapped a hand over her mouth in horror. “I’m sorry. I may be a little hysterical.”
“I know the feeling.” He puffed out another long breath. “I’ve only been home for six days? And there’s been my dad, and the ranch, the big dinner at Miz Iris’s today—and now this. I’m tapped out. So if you could hold off so I don’t have to deal with your parents, and everyone else in town…”
He sounded exhausted. But steady, she realized, and almost, well, dignified. Something in his voice made her think of the stately old cottonwood behind her parents’ house. She had seen it battered by wind, stripped down to bare branches by hailstorms, but its roots were dug in so deep that nothing short of a lightning bolt could level it.
Somewhere in the process of recovery, Hank had set down emotional roots and gained the strength to weather all these squalls. By comparison, Grace felt like a tumbleweed that was barely hanging on.
And she was more than happy to steer around this particular storm. “As long as it stays between us, there’s no reason I have to tell them anything.”
“Who else knows?”
“Here? Only Gil, and now the three of you.”
He went quiet for a few more endless moments. Then he sighed. “Why didn’t Gil just leave me to rot in that hole I’d dug for myself?”
Grace had to take a moment to catch up. His questions were odd, as if he was grasping at random thoughts and blurting them out. “He said he understood better than anyone could, and he wasn’t going to let another one of Miz Iris’s boys crash and burn like he did. If he could use his experience to help you, then maybe it wasn’t a total waste. And obviously he thought you were worth the effort.”
Now the bond they’d forged was broken, because of Grace. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged him into this. If I’d just taken care of myself…” She would have been, and would possibly still be, alone. But she wouldn’t have hurt Hank so much worse than necessary. Her throat tightened around a fresh ball of tears. “I have to go.”
“Grace—”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. She hung up and turned off her phone. Then she gathered in her second pillow and balled it up against her stomach, curling herself around it the way she’d cradled her growing stomach. Wave after wave of remembered emotions swept through her: fear, dread, the sheer uncertainty of what was to come.
And loneliness. Dear God, she’d been so lonely. She’d wanted her mother to hold her hand and tell her it would be okay, she could do this. Jeremiah to tease her about how she’d waddled like a penguin in those last few weeks. Matthew and Lucas to race circles around her on their bikes while she walked through incredibly green parks in Portland, with ivy and moss crawling everywhere.
But deep in the darkest hours of the night, it was Hank she’d missed the most, and how he’d spooned his body around hers when they slept, as if she was as precious as the baby she carried.
And it was Hank’s arms she craved now.