Annie heard the truck pull into the yard. She called for the kids to get washed up for dinner and her directive was met with good-natured groans as they were dragged from the television.
“Dinner’s ready,” she said, when he appeared in the doorway.
He nodded once and left the room. Annie knew whatever damage had been done to their relationship was permanent. He’d barely even looked at her. She would hold it together for the children and she would keep things as normal as she could. When they all sat down and joined hands to say grace, Jared let her hand go as soon as Luke finished his simple offering.
Just last night their hands had lingered, linked, fingers brushing, skin sliding.
He was leaving her by degrees. Her fear was that soon she would have no place here, that he would leave her to the point where living with him in this house would be unbearable for them all.
The children kept the conversation going tonight and Jared was glad of that. Caroline seemed excited about the school play. Annie promised to take her shopping on the weekend for fabric and a pattern for her costume.
Things seemed so normal on the outside. Nobody would guess that inside he was a cauldron of turmoil and he could tell from the look on Annie’s face that she was feeling the strain. He tried not to feel sorry for her; after all, it was her lies that had brought them to this place. She had risked everything by not telling him the truth.
All day he had prayed to God for understanding, for peace, for a way to hurdle this obstacle and salvage what he could of his world.
Now he sat here, not having said a word to Annie since walking through the door. His heart broke a little more with every hour that passed. For a while it had seemed like he’d finally found someone to trust with his heart, his life and his happiness.
In one horrible morning, he had lost it all.
“Jared?”
He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t even heard her come out onto the porch. “What is it?”
She sat down on the step beside him, keeping her distance. “I can handle you knowing about Toby, I can even manage with you being angry at me. What I can’t do every day is watch you act like a caged animal when you have to be in the same room with me.”
“I don’t act like that.”
“Yes, you do. If it were just you and me in this house I would weather it, because I think what we found when we weren’t looking is better than what most people discover when they search a lifetime.”
Was he hearing her? Did she believe him? His dark expression didn’t change. “I’d stay because in my heart I know I didn’t do anything wrong giving Toby up, and nobody, except maybe your sister, knows how difficult it was for me.”
Jared looked across at her, his face shadowed in the moonlight. “He’s your son, your baby. You gave birth to him.”
“Yes, I did,” she said, proud of the fact that he was the best part of her. “I carried him inside me and felt him moving. I tried convincing myself for eight months that I could give him a good life.”
“You could have given him a mother who cared about him.”
“But I did. Your sister was a wonderful mother to Toby.” She stood up and breathed the fresh night air. “The way you were with me tonight at dinner, unable to look at me, unwilling to speak to me…if this is how it’s going to be, then it isn’t good for the children for me to be here.”
Jared wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. No matter the lie she’d told, no matter how wounded he felt, she was still the best thing for the children.
Pride kept him silent.
“Think it over tonight and let me know. I can always move in with your parents until you decide if I’m still the person you want helping you raise the children.”
He stood up, too, frustration in every movement he made. “Annie, I just don’t know how to feel about this.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you, by omission or any other way. I wanted this so badly—a family, a home.” She wanted to reach for him but dared not. “I’m sorry your mother abandoned you. I wish your childhood could have been different.”
“Yeah, well, I stopped wishing that a long time ago.”
“But you didn’t stop running, and you didn’t stop hurting. I’m not perfect, Jared, I’ve made mistakes in my life. But Toby isn’t one of them, and neither was giving him up.”
He sat there long after she’d gone inside, thoughts and emotions going around in his brain. Tonight he should have been in her arms.
Instead he would be wrapped in the anger and hurt he had carried with him for so long. Once it had been a strange comfort, a reason for keeping his emotions locked up and for keeping people out.
Now he needed more.
By the time he knocked on Caroline’s door that night, Jared was tired to the bone, weary to his soul. She sat in bed, the covers pulled up to her waist, holding the photograph he had given Annie on her birthday.
“I like this picture,” she said, tracing the figures in it with her fingers.
He sat down on the bed. “I know you don’t understand everything that’s going on but—”
“Toby is Annie’s little boy.”
“How do you know that?”
She looked embarrassed. “I went downstairs to get a drink of water and I heard you talking outside. I didn’t mean to listen. It just happened.”
“When she came in to tell you good night, did you let Annie know you’d heard?”
Caroline shook her head. “I didn’t want her to be more upset.” She looked at him. “Is that why you don’t love her anymore? Because she had a baby?”
He reached out and brushed a finger down her cheek.
“Annie didn’t tell me she had a baby,” he said, planning to keep this conversation simple and in terms his niece could understand. “When I found out, I was surprised.”
“It hurt you, didn’t it?”
“Yes.” She looked troubled.
“If you’ve got questions I’ll try to answer them as best I can.”
Caroline looked directly at him. “Annie gave us Toby. Was that wrong?”
Jared wondered how children were able to cut through all the flotsam of life and nail the heart of the situation. “No. In fact, it made your parents happy.”
“I know. Annie came here and looked after us. She was nice to me even when I was mean. If she hurt you, I know she didn’t mean to.”
“It isn’t that simple, Possum.”
She looked straight at him. “It should be when you love someone.” She looked down at the photograph. “It must have been hard for Annie to give her baby away.”
And for the first time, with those few innocent words from a little girl, Jared felt the tears well up in his eyes.
“It wasn’t hard for Janice to give me away. And she didn’t even try to find someone nice to take me, she just put me in a home.”
My mother, too, he thought, surprised at how the silent voice let loose those words in his head.
“That’s how I know Annie really loved Toby when he was born,” she said. “She found people who would love him as much as she did.”
Jared’s throat was clogged with emotion and he was grateful when Caroline said good-night and snuggled into bed.
When he left her room, shutting out the light and closing the door, Jared prowled around the house, walking from room to room, looking for the comfort this home had offered him before.
Now he found nothing that even felt like comfort or solace, and upstairs lay a woman who had chiseled a place in his heart that would never be filled by another.
Through everything today, the anger, hurt and frustration…even the betrayal he had felt, he couldn’t reconcile the Annie he had come to love with the woman he was trying to convince himself she was. She wasn’t the one who had abandoned her child. It was his mother who had done that, his mother who had kept him until she could no longer bear the sight of him.
She had hurt him, not Annie.
He’d ignored it, refused to think about it and tried to banish it from his life. Now it was all too clear. Annie wasn’t the one who had to leave.
He had to leave and find the rest of himself, the part he’d left inside that little boy long ago. If he didn’t find it, if he couldn’t offer her the whole of himself, then he would let her go.
He quickly wrote a note and propped it in the middle of the kitchen table for her. He went into the den and made two phone calls, one to his mother and one to Lewis.
Then he packed a bag.
Jared glanced at his watch as he cut the engine in the truck. He had stopped outside the little white house with yellow trim and a garden full of flowers.
Again he checked the address Lewis had gotten for him. This wasn’t what he’d expected. The city was still waking up, a paperboy was doing his rounds and here and there a car engine started, the early birds off to work. He would never swap country living to come back here again. The country was home to him.
He walked through the gate and approached the house, not sure of what to feel, wondering if this was a huge mistake and knowing that if it was, he needed to make it.
He rang the doorbell and an elderly man came to the door, his hair gray, his uniform proclaiming he worked for the postal service.
“Can I help you?”
Jared was sure he had the wrong house now. “I’m looking for Gloria Monahan, but I must have got the address mixed up.”
The man looked him up and down. “No. This is where she lives. I’m her husband. The name’s Ralph. And you would be?”
“Her son.”
His face didn’t register surprise; in fact, he hardly reacted at all. “Guess you’d better come in then.” He swung the door wide and Jared followed him.
“Glory…someone here to see you.”
Ralph disappeared down the hall and Jared heard his mother’s voice for the first time in more than twenty years.
She stopped when she saw him, her mouth open, her eyes wide. She pulled the robe tighter around her and smoothed a hand over hair that hadn’t yet been brushed into place.
“Jared.” His name was spoken on a breath of incredulity.
“It’s been a long time.”
She eyed him warily. “I often wondered if I’d ever see you again.”
“I won’t stay too long.”
“Good, because Ralph isn’t the kind who likes my past dragged up.”
He was just that…her past. As he sat on the couch she took the chair across from him. “You look well.”
“We’re adults, Jared, you can tell it like it is. I look old.”
She had aged, and the years had not been kind to her. Still he couldn’t imagine the drinking and smoking had done her many favors.
“Why did you come?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Any particular reason?”
“I needed to put some things to rest,” he said. “Old ghosts.”
“Excuse me,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m gonna need a drink and a cigarette for this conversation.” She was gone less than two minutes.
When she returned she had a lit cigarette in one hand and a glass of clear liquid in the other. Jared smelled the alcohol but said nothing.
“Did you have a good life? After I put you in the state home?”
“I was adopted by a couple from the country. They gave me the first home I’d ever known.”
She thought about his words. “What’s she like?” The words seemed hard for her to speak but after a slight pause she got them out. “Your mother.”
“She bakes and sews and drives a tractor during harvest.” Jared smiled thinking of her. “She grows vegetables and she took care of my dad when he had cancer. She dotes on her grandchildren.”
Gloria nodded. “She sounds nice.”
“She is.”
“So…you married? Kids?”
“I was married recently and we’re raising my sister’s children.” At the curious expression he added, “She was killed with her husband in a car accident.”
She took another drink. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Jared was surprised because she actually sounded as though she meant it.
“Listen,” she said a little too harshly, “I’ve waited a long time, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to tell you this so I’m just gonna go ahead and say it.”
Jared was prepared for ugly recriminations about how she wished she had given him up sooner. He wasn’t prepared for what he heard.
“I’m sorry.” His expression must have registered surprise and shock. “About the last thing you expected to ever hear from me, isn’t it?”
“Honestly? Yes.”
She fell silent for a while and then sighed heavily swirling the liquid in the glass. “I should have had the guts to give you up when you were born,” she said. “My mother warned me.”
“I had a grandmother?”
“Don’t get excited. She wasn’t no more of a mother to me than I was to you…probably less of one.” Another puff, another sip.
“But I was stubborn and determined. I’d be a better mother to you than she had been.”
“You hated me…the things you said and did.”
“I was neglectful,” she admitted. “I was a loud-mouthed drunk who cared more about getting a date than getting a meal ready for her son. But I never hated you, Jared. I hated the fact that my mother was right. I’d turned out just like her.”
“So you didn’t keep me with you to punish me?”
She looked shocked. “Is that what you’ve thought all these years?” He nodded. “I kept you with me because while I could look at you I could convince myself I had done one good thing in my life. Why now? Why after so many years did you come looking for me?”
“I want to know if there was ever a time when you loved me.”
He could see his question startled her. She cursed under her breath when she saw the glass was empty, but instead of going to refill it she put it on the table and crushed out her cigarette.
“I loved you when you were born,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I looked down at you in my arms and I was going to give you the world.”
“What happened?”
Her laugh was harsh. “Life happened. All those little things you don’t think about when they hand you that baby in the delivery room, all snug and quiet and sweet. Money to buy food, diapers, rent for a roof over our heads. I can’t even remember your father. Sometimes I’d meet a guy who didn’t mind having a kid around, but they’d all get tired of a screaming baby eventually and I’d move on.”
“I loved you most the day I let you go.” Seeing he was the one surprised she added, “It’s something you can’t understand if you’ve never done it.”
“You loved me but you still gave me up.”
“And because I did you had a good life, a home, a family who cared about you. And look at you now. A man with a wife and children. Trust me, if you’d stayed with me, you’d have been in jail. You were already starting to mix with a bad crowd.”
Jared could see for the first time that his mother wasn’t a monster. She was a woman who’d made mistakes, a woman abandoned by everyone.
“Thank you.”
She cast a curious glance at him. “What for?”
“For talking with me like this, for being honest. For giving me the chance all those years ago to have a normal life with a family who loves me.”
She shrugged and gave him a nonchalant look. “Hey, I screwed up the rest of my life. I had to get something right eventually.”
Jared hadn’t planned to tell his mother so much about his life but the words tumbled out. “My wife…Annie, she had a baby when she was younger. She gave him up for adoption.”
Gloria crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair. “And I can tell you have a problem with it.”
“I’ve always had a problem with women giving their babies away.”
“I guess I shoulder the blame for that. But if you want my advice, here it is—get over it.”
Jared was stunned by her blunt, cold solution. “Just like that?”
She leaned forward, pinning him with a look. “What exactly is it you have the problem with? Are you upset that there was a man in her life before you? That she wasn’t a virgin?”
“No.” He spoke the truth. He’d been so caught up in his reaction to finding out Annie’s secret that he hadn’t even given a thought to what he knew now had to have been that special relationship she’d briefly touched on.
“Did she have a good reason for giving him up?”
“She said she did.”
“You didn’t ask her?” When Jared didn’t reply she sighed. “If you never believe another word I say, believe this. It is the hardest thing in the world to give up a child unless you’re a woman devoid of any human feeling.”
Just the kind of woman he’d always seen Gloria as.
“I can’t imagine you falling in love and marrying someone like that,” she said. “In fact, I’d say this girl must be something special.”
“Why?”
“Because of the look on your face when you say her name, when you talk about her. Some of us go our whole lives and never see that look in a man’s eyes.”
Jared actually smiled. “I did something stupid.”
Gloria laughed and for once it was a light sound. “You’re human. You’d be genetically defective if you didn’t do something stupid now and again. Is it fixable?”
“I think it might be…I hope it is.”
She stood up and Jared did the same. “Then go home and fix whatever it is you did,” she advised. “I spent my life running away from my problems, blaming everyone I could.”
“Did you ever stop running?”
She nodded, looking at the ring on her left hand. “I found my anchor. It’s the first commitment I’ve ever made in my life.”
“You have to start somewhere.”
“Yes, you do. Don’t be too hard on your wife,” she said. “It took courage to do what she did. Not all of us are that strong.”
She closed the door and Jared stood there, smiling, for no other reason than it felt good to have the past where it belonged, in the background of his life.
He turned the car around at the end of the street and headed for home.
“He isn’t back yet?”
Annie looked up when Caroline came into the den. She needed a break from staring at the computer screen. Sitting here had been a half-hearted attempt to do the budget for next month, but her thoughts had kept drifting.
“No, Possum, he’s not.”
“He didn’t leave us.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement made with confidence. “Of course he didn’t. He had things to do that couldn’t wait.”
“Annie?”
“Yes?”
“I heard you and Uncle Jared talking outside last night.”
Annie held her arms out to the girl and she came into them. They hugged each other and eventually Caroline settled on Annie’s knees.
“What did you hear?”
Annie stayed silent while Caroline recounted bits and pieces of what had been said. She knew about Toby and she knew it had caused problems.
“I’m glad you gave us Toby,” she said. “Mummy and Daddy got to do all the things with him that they missed out on with me and Luke. We weren’t babies when we came here.”
“Your mummy was my best friend when I was a little girl. I know you were worried a while back that you wouldn’t remember her when you got older.”
“Uncle Jared told you?”
“Yes. But you will, Caroline. You’ll see a photograph and remember. You’ll hear a song or see a flower and you’ll remember.”
“Grandma said sometimes when I’m not even trying to remember them, I will, anyway.”
“She’s right and memories are wonderful like that. We may not always use them, but when we need them to comfort us they’ll always be there.”
“I want Toby to know what she was like.”
Annie did, too. She wanted the little boy upstairs to know how loved he was. “Then we’ll make sure when he’s older he knows. You can tell him all the things you remember and then they can be his memories, too.”
“I love you, Annie.”
Caroline hugged her so tightly Annie felt tears well in her eyes. “I love you, too, Caroline.”
When the girl pulled back, she giggled. “I’m always making you cry.”
“Tears of happiness, sweetie, that’s all they are.”
“That’s the only kind we’ll have around here from now on.”
They both looked up at the familiar, deep voice.
“Uncle Jared!” Caroline ran to him, her arms going around him.
He hugged her tight. “Where are the boys?”
“Sleeping. Annie said I could stay up a little later tonight because there was a history program on.”
He ruffled her hair. “How about you go get into bed?”
She looked warily from one to the other. “Remember what you said,” she told him. “Only happy tears from now on.”
The meaning of those words weren’t lost on Jared as she left the room.
“I didn’t hear you pull up.” Annie pushed back the chair from the desk and walked toward him. “I was just working on the accounts.”
Jared nodded but said nothing.
“She knows about Toby being my son,” she said. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean for any of the children to find out.”
Jared shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looked at her standing there. She was dressed for bed, the robe cinched around her petite frame, big fluffy white slippers on her feet and her hair pinned up.
“But it’s the truth,” he said finally. “You are Toby’s mother. That isn’t something that should be kept a secret.”
Annie wondered where this was going. “Jared, if you decide you can’t continue to be married to me, I’ll understand,” she said, the words ripping from her. “But I’d like it if we could at least have Lewis draw up some arrangement that would allow me to still see the children.”
He looked annoyed, and Annie wondered why. All she was trying to do was provide him with options.
“If I were divorcing you, Annie, we wouldn’t need Lewis to draw up anything. Do you honestly think I’d stop you from being in the children’s lives?”
“You were so angry when you found out about Toby,” she explained. “Jared, was it just that I didn’t tell you about Toby or that I’d gotten pregnant outside of marriage?”
“Believe it or not, when I stopped to think about it, I realized part of me was jealous that you had shared that part of yourself with another man.”
“I was young,” she said, trying to explain. “It’s not an excuse…I had to come to terms with what I’d done and I feel that the Lord forgave me all my mistakes a long time before I was able to.”
She came to stand in front of him. “Yes, I wanted to see Toby again, given the chance, but I didn’t come here just to be with him again. I came here for all the children…for Sara and James. And I came here for you.”
“Do you love me, Annie?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in love with me?”
She wanted to look away, so tender were her feelings for him. Instead she steeled herself and looked straight at him. “Yes, I am.”
“That works out just fine,” he replied. “Because you are the only woman I will ever love,” he said, making sure he kept eye contact with her so there would be no doubt in her mind about his feelings.
Annie had been afraid to hope all day—she’d been going over various scenarios in her head but this hadn’t been one of them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you at the start.”
“If you had, I would have missed out on having you in my life because I would have ended it then and there and taken my chances with the social worker.”
Guiding her to the small couch, Jared sat down with her tucked close beside him. He put his arm around her shoulder and took her hand and rested it palm-down on his thigh.
“Tell me about your life when you left here.”
She looked up at him. “You really want to know? All of it?”
Jared didn’t know if he was ready to hear more about Chris, especially now he knew they had been young lovers or if he could stand to hear how lonely she had been, or how tough her choices had been.
But whether he was ready to hear it or not, it was time that he did. “Start from the beginning and tell me what you feel comfortable with.”
And she did. Annie was surprised. In the next two hours she told him about things in her life that were only brought to mind by the recounting of other times.
He alternately hugged her and kissed her head when she got to a tough recollection or a sad memory. And when she told him about the day Toby was born, he held her like he would never let her go.
Finally Annie wound down and couldn’t remember ever having felt more mentally exhausted than she did now. Every part of her felt raw, laid bare.
But at least there were no more secrets.
“Thank you for sharing that with me.” He pulled her more securely into the crook of his shoulder. “And I’m sorry I just took off like that last night.”
Annie laid her head on his chest, listening to the steady strong beat of his heart. “It scared me, waking up to that note,” she admitted.
“I went to see my mother.”
Now it was her turn to hug him. She didn’t look up, just tightened her arms around him. “Did it give you what you went looking for?”
He kissed the top of her head and inhaled the flowery scent of her shampoo. “Yes. I remembered her as this monster, uncaring and selfish.”
“And?”
“Oh, she agreed with the selfish part, but only because she had kept me, thinking she could care for me. The reality is that she was alone, like you were, with a baby to raise that she was ill-equipped to deal with. She said the day she gave me up was when she loved me the most.”
“I can understand that.”
“I thought you would. She said you were a strong woman, you had the courage to do what she didn’t…and that was to do the best thing for your baby right from the start.”
Now Annie did lift her head and look at him. “You told her about me?”
A wariness came into his eyes. “Was that wrong?”
She smiled. “No. Now you understand a little.” She sat up then, pushing softly against his chest to look into those beautiful blue eyes that had captivated her from day one.
“Don’t you see that Toby gave all of us something by being born? The lives he has touched are better because of it.”
Annie was right…again. “I’m asking you to forgive me.”
She frowned. “What on earth for?”
“I go to church, I try to live my life right and I know I screw things up,” he said. “But I sat in judgment of you. Everyone could see it from a distant perspective but me. I want this marriage, Annie. I want our friendship and the relationship we were slowly building.”
“So do I.”
That made him smile. “And I’m willing to take is as slow as you want but…I love you Annie. I’m so in love with you I can’t imagine a day without you.”
“Oh, Jared, I’m in love with you, too. You’re my best friend. You gave me a family, a home and a heart to belong to and grow old with. You’ve given me the world.”
He looked down into her eyes and took the fall all over again. “Thank you for loving me, for helping me to face old fears. I could never have gone and seen my mother if the thought of losing you hadn’t made me fight.”
He hadn’t been ready to give her up. “When Toby is old enough or when you feel ready, whichever comes first, I want him to know that you gave birth to him, that you’re the reason he is here.”
Annie felt the tears start to fall. “I don’t ever want to take away from what Sara was.”
“You won’t. If I had to take a guess I’d say those kids will know more about Sara from the two of us than from anywhere else.”
He sat forward and framed her face in his hands. “There is one question I have to ask you.”
“Okay.”
“Would you ever consider having another baby?”
Annie smiled. “Your baby?”
He shook his head. “Our baby.”
“I would consider it very much,” she said, throwing her arms around his neck. “You really want to have babies with me?”
“Well, not right away,” he said, laughing as he held her. When she settled back down on the couch he kissed her forehead. “I’d like to wait until Toby is a little older.”
“I think Caroline would like another girl around the house.”
“Oh, I’m sure she would,” he said, standing up and pulling her with him. “Let’s go to bed.”
They made it as far as the bottom of the stairs and then he stopped and kissed her, sweetly, gently…a prelude for all they would find with each other, all they would discover together.
“Don’t ever stop loving me, Annie. I couldn’t bear it.”
“I could stop breathing easier than I could stop loving you,” she replied. “In your heart, in your arms, I found my home and my family.”
“In your eyes I see my future.”
And as he climbed the stairs with Annie by his side, Jared viewed that future with a smile. It stretched out ahead of them, life in all its glory just waiting for them to experience it together.
God had given him Annie, and she had given him the love he had needed to face his fears and conquer the past. He knew how rare that kind of love was.
It was a gift he would never ever take for granted.