A Baby by Christmas. Linda Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ she heard him call.

      She slowly made her way to the living room. Jake was standing in the middle of the room with his hat in his hand. He wore his customary jeans, boots and cotton shirt and he looked so handsome. Just seeing him made her heart beat a little faster. Now he’d tell her that the boy wasn’t his and everything would be okay. They’d have their baby as planned.

      “Hi,” he said softly.

      She noticed him looking at her hair, which was pinned up. She wore it like that to work. She thought it gave her an added edge of maturity, but Elise knew Jake liked her hair down—he enjoyed taking it down.

      “Hi,” she replied, her heart beating so fast now she could barely breathe. They had to resolve this situation; that was all she could think.

      “We have to talk,” he said.

      “Yes.” She sat on the sofa and he took a chair.

      “I had the test done this morning,” he told her, placing his hat on the end table.

      “But you still don’t have the results?”

      “No,” he admitted. “But I need to tell you how I feel.”

      Elise leaned back and grabbed a decorative pillow for support.

      “My mother walked away from me when I was ten years old. I would never do that to a child. If the boy is mine, I have to take responsibility.”

      God, she knew that. She knew Jake. This nightmare was not over.

      “What about our plans for a baby?” She had to have an answer to that question. It had been with her day and night.

      Jake drew a deep breath. “We have to wait for the test results before we can go any further.”

      “Our lives have changed,” she had to say. “We have this tension that wasn’t there before.”

      “Yes, and I apologize for that, but this has been a big shock.”

      “I’m having a hard time dealing with it.”

      “I can see that.”

      “So where do we go from here?”

      Jake swallowed. “If the boy is mine, you’ll have to ask yourself a big question. Can you raise another woman’s child?”

      Another woman’s child.

      Suddenly she felt a deadweight in her arms and fear clogged her throat, her senses, her thinking. How did she explain to him what she was feeling? She had a hard time understanding it herself.

      Jake was taking in the expression on her face, looking like he’d been punched in the chest. He swallowed again. “I suppose the DNA test will decide our future.”

      She stared at him. “Have you considered that I might be pregnant?”

      “Yes,” he said, and looked away. “We’ll have to wait about that, too. So I’ll stay at the farm until this is resolved. It’ll give us the time we need.”

      “Yes,” she muttered, squeezing the pillow so tight her fingers were numb.

      He walked over and kissed her cheek. She felt cold and didn’t respond to his touch. How could she? He straightened and picked up his hat.

      “I’ll call when I get the results.” Then he walked out of the room.

      ELISE’S HAND WENT to her cheek. She could still smell his aftershave. She closed her eyes and her body started to tremble. Placing both hands over her stomach, she prayed a baby was growing inside her. If she had Jake’s baby, he’d come back. They would be together, but that didn’t make the other problem disappear. It only made things worse. God, she was losing her mind, just like her mother and sister, Judith, had said. And she was losing Jake.

      She wiped a tear away and tried to understand what she was feeling. A little girl’s blue face swam before her eyes and that old fear gripped her, just as if it were yesterday. Then the memories came flooding back.

      Her mother was getting ready for a party at the university. She was going with her friends, the Abbotts. Even though Elise’s father had passed away, her mother still had close ties to the university.

      Mae Abbott called at the last minute in a panic because her baby-sitter had canceled. Elise’s mother had volunteered her for the job.

      Elise was fifteen and didn’t know a thing about babies, but her mother gave her a list of instructions and told her it would be easy. Tammy was eleven months old and adorable and Mrs. Abbott had brought a playpen full of toys to occupy her. Elise fed her, changed her diaper and let her play while Elise lay on the floor reading. Engrossed in her novel she forgot about Tammy, then she heard her gagging. Elise jumped up to see what was wrong.

      Tammy’s face was red and tears rolled from her eyes as she continued to gag. Elise picked her up and patted her back, but it didn’t work. Tammy turned blue and stopped breathing. Elise was horrified and didn’t know what to do. She shook the baby, turned her upside down, but nothing worked. Tammy was limp and unresponsive. Clearly there was something obstructing her breathing so Elise had no choice but to stick her finger down Tammy’s throat, trying to dislodge whatever it was. At first, she couldn’t feel a thing, so she rammed her finger farther into the baby’s windpipe and pulled out an object. Tammy coughed and started breathing, then wailing. Elise sat with her in a chair, both of them crying hard. That was the way her mother and the Abbotts had found them.

      Mrs. Abbott was very angry and accused Elise of being irresponsible and negligent. Her mother had asked what Tammy had choked on and Elise opened her hand to reveal an eye from one of the large teddy bears in the playpen. The Abbotts whisked Tammy away to the emergency room and Elise’s mother told her to go to her room and to forget what had happened. Tammy had almost died because Elise hadn’t been watching her—there was no way she’d ever forget that.

      Later, Mrs. Abbott had apologized and said she shouldn’t have sent the bear because she knew the eye was loose, but the damage had been done. Elise couldn’t stop thinking that she’d almost killed a baby. An innocent baby.

      After that she avoided babies, her fear of them continuing through her teens, college and adult life. A lot of people gravitated toward babies, but Elise was just the opposite. Derek was the only person she’d ever told about her experience and her fear. For the first time someone made her understand it wasn’t her fault, and Derek had her actually planning the birth of their own baby. Then he died.

      When she turned thirty-five, she began to have inner stir-rings—yearnings—and she found herself looking at babies, wondering what it would be like to be a mother. Derek had told her she would be a good mother and she believed him. She wouldn’t be scared of her own child; she would love it, care for it and protect it.

      Her biological clock was ticking, the sound a silent alarm that kept reminding her time was running out. If she was going to have a baby, she’d have to do it, and soon. Somehow she reasoned that if she gave birth, she could forget that horrible day, finally put it behind her as Derek had told her. She would experience those nurturing, motherly feelings and prove she wasn’t a horrible person.

      She got up and walked СКАЧАТЬ