She flipped to the next picture and smiled. Alex wore a Santa hat and was holding Grace on his lap. The next photo widened her smile. Grace was snuggled up asleep inside a Christmas stocking. She stared at her baby, her heart hurting. She wished so badly she could reach into this picture and sweep Gracie up in her arms. She would plant butterfly kisses all over her baby-soft skin and whisper in her ear that her mommy loved her.
Linn swallowed over the achy lump in her throat. I did what was best for Grace. It makes me hurt, but it was the best thing for Grace.
It was what she always told herself when her heart started hurting the way it sometimes did. Even more, she knew it was the truth. Grace couldn’t have a better family than she had now. Even though Natalie and Kyle weren’t the birth parents, they loved Grace as if they were. And in all truth, Alex and Taylor were Grace’s real half brothers, even though they didn’t know that.
Her thoughts spun back to when she’d met Keith at the bank. The affair had started innocently enough, with his giving her a ride home. It wasn’t like she’d plunged right into a relationship with a married man. But one thing had led to another, and before she knew it, she’d been swept up in a whirlwind of emotions she couldn’t seem to escape—no matter how wrong it was.
Even though she didn’t know Natalie at the time, she should have respected Keith’s wedding vows enough to end the affair, even if he didn’t. But it hadn’t ended that way at all. Instead, Keith divorced his wife, leaving Natalie a single mother of two boys.
At the time Linn thought she had it made. She got her way, at least for a while. But then after the divorce, when she thought everything would end happily ever after, he broke it off.
That’s when she found out she was pregnant.
Linn looked at the next photo Natalie had sent. Natalie, Grace, Alex, and Taylor were all squeezed into the recliner that used to be Linn’s favorite place to sit. Taylor was making a fish face, and Natalie was looking at him, in the middle of saying something. Grace’s eyes were open, and she was staring straight at Alex. Kyle had probably taken the photo.
They made a nice-looking family. But then, Natalie, Keith, and the boys had probably been a nice-looking family until Linn had stepped in and ruined everything.
Stop it. That’s all in the past. Why are you ragging on yourself for something you can’t change?
It was true. She couldn’t go back and change it. If it were to happen today, she knew God would help her make the right decision. No, she would never even think of stealing another woman’s—
The thought stopped her cold. She remembered the kiss she shared with Adam. The kiss she invited and enjoyed. The kiss she wanted to go on forever. She kissed Adam when he was engaged to another woman.
She tensed as reality hit her. No, it wasn’t the same thing. Adam wasn’t married.
But he’s engaged.
It wasn’t the same thing, was it? But no matter how she tried to justify it, she knew an engagement was a promise. One she helped Adam break. One he clearly felt guilty about breaking. But what had Linn been feeling other than the selfish desire to have things her own way? She was doing it again. She was making the same stupid mistake all over again.
Oh, God, why do I find myself in these messes?
She closed her eyes, feeling the sting of tears all the way down through the bridge of her nose. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just find a nice single guy like everyone else? Why do I keep going after the taken ones?
She opened her eyes and considered the next picture of Grace, cuddled up in her carrier. The last time she made the mistake of taking someone else’s man, she broke up a family and ended up pregnant, with her heart thoroughly broken. All the pleasure in the world wasn’t worth that pain.
But then there was Adam and the feelings that beckoned her like a tropical island during a winter blizzard in Chicago.
A thought hit with sudden intensity, like a thunderbolt, and she knew what she had to do. It wouldn’t be easy, it might take awhile, and she knew God would have to do it. Because she wasn’t strong enough to do it alone.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
After Paula left Louise’s house, she drove back to her apartment. But instead of going inside, she walked. Putting one foot in front of the other was all she could do.
Now, as she stared out over the frigid shoreline of Lake Michigan, she wasn’t even sure how she had come to be there. If someone were to ask what route she took, she would have to shake her head and say, “I have no idea.” She was struck now by the irony that the same philosophy applied to her life.
How had she come to this point? Where had she taken a wrong turn? All day her mind skirted the real issue. She thought about Louise’s actions; she even thought of Faith. But she danced around the main issue like a moth flitting around a streetlight—close enough to investigate but far enough to avoid getting burned.
She wasn’t sure it was safe to get any closer.
Her gaze traveled over the still lake that absorbed the wet snowflakes as if they’d never fallen. Faith. She kept thinking about Faith. She wished she could picture the child more clearly. All she could remember was the girl’s fine, brown curls and striking green eyes.
Eyes the color of her own.
She leaned against the railing and closed her eyes, letting the cold air slap her in the face. Even now, after hours of dwelling on it, it still seemed surreal. Her thoughts were mush, like a sticky stack of old pancakes. For the first time she wished she was more like her mother and sisters. They would have been on the phone with their closest friend by now, talking out their problem and getting advice. Their friend would have offered to pray for them, and they would have gotten off the phone feeling better about everything.
But Paula had no one to call. Her closest friend was David, and she couldn’t tell him this. Besides that, her mother and sisters would never be in this place because they never would have done what she did.
Her bangs whipped across her face, but she didn’t move to tuck them back into place. It was pointless anyway, the way the wind swirled around her like a tornado.
David. She’d kept her secret from him, thinking it buried and gone forever. Now it had come back to haunt her, and what could she do? She couldn’t tell David the truth now. He would never forgive her. It would only tear them apart again, and this time, Paula was sure, the breach would never be repaired.
She stood upright and began walking along the shoreline. Placing one foot in front of the other. She’d been thinking all day, and yet she knew she’d only skimmed the surface. She was self-aware enough to know she’d held back from going any deeper. She wasn’t sure she could handle dredging all the way to the bottom of this mire. She was afraid of what she’d find. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have a battle plan. Didn’t want a battle plan and didn’t even want a battle at all.
She wanted to go back to yesterday, before she knew. She wanted to go back to that day Deb had called her and asked her to investigate the story. She wanted to—
She wanted to go back three years ago and make a different decision.
She stopped, her Jimmy Choos scuffing to a halt on the wet pavement. Her breath felt as heavy as mercury in her lungs and every bit as poisonous.
The ache traveled upward and lodged in the middle of her throat. The back of her eyes ached with an intensity she’d never felt. She couldn’t see the shoreline anymore or the snow that blew around her. All she could see was the horror of her decision three years ago.
Like a nearsighted woman slipping on a pair of glasses, she could see the wrongness of that decision with sudden clarity. Glaring clarity. She wanted to take the glasses off and forget what she’d seen. She wanted to go back to the way she viewed things before.
It’s my choice because it’s my body. It’s not a baby anyway, only a bunch of cells. Now is not a good time for me to get pregnant. It’s not my fault I’m pregnant anyway, so why should I have to suffer the consequences? We’ll ha
ve a baby later, when it’s more convenient.
There were a dozen more arguments where those came from. But they all seemed like lies now. Paula reminded herself why she’d done it. Her job. Her promotion. Her career. They were important to her. Her career was the most important thing in her life.
The words rang empty in her mind. So empty and shallow. She had an abortion—she tried to take the life of her child for reasons so shallow? She remembered how David had wanted to come to Chicago to be with her after her “miscarriage” and how she insisted she’d be fine and would come home the next day anyway. She remembered the way he held her when she arrived home—how he wept into her hair.
It had hurt to see him that way. She’d never seen him cry. But even then, she stuffed the guilt away. She told herself she did what was best for them, but the truth was, she did it only for herself. She told herself it was only a mass of tissue, not a real baby. She convinced herself of that, regardless of what she was told growing up in church.
But her thoughts went back to what Louise said: “The fetus was breathing. Her little chest was going up and down so fast. Then Dr. Miller turned to me and put the infant in my hands—and it was an infant to me at that moment. She looked no different to me than the tiny babies whose lives I fought so hard for in the NICU.”
Paula’s hand covered her mouth. She could deny it before. Deny that the abortion was wrong. Deny that she’d done anything other than make a choice. But how could she believe that when she’d birthed a baby?
A little girl who’d lived despite Paula’s efforts to—
She closed her eyes and swallowed the bile that rose in the back of her throat.
“The fetus was breathing.”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know.
“Her little chest was going up and down so fast.”
Oh, God, what did I do? I’m so sorry! I’s so sorry.
“Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Get rid of it . . .”
No. No. Louise hadn’t done it, but Paula had intended to. She had planned to get rid of it. But it wasn’t an it. It was a child. A little girl. The Morgans’ little girl.
“I remember standing there, staring at this miniature human being. Her eyes were sealed shut, and I could see her heart’s movement through her thin skin.” Paula couldn’t get Louise’s horrified expression out of her mind. The woman had had more compassion for Paula’s child than she’d had!
Louise’s words rang in her head, overlapping, mixing together, blending with the look of horror that would be etched in Paula’s brain forever. She rubbed at her temples with frozen fingers, wishing she could scrub it all away. She was tired of thinking of this awful thing, and now she knew this was something she would never be free of.
Would she ever have peace again? Did she deserve to have peace?
“Get rid of it. Get rid of it . . .”
Such cruel, heartless words. But three years ago those same words had fluttered around her own mind. I can’t be pregnant right now. I’ve come too far in my career to let it stall. I’ll lose the promotion if I don’t just get rid of it. Get rid of it. Get rid of it . . .
Paula’s hands clapped over her ears, as if she could block out the words. But they were coming from inside her.
“The fetus was breathing. Her little chest was going up and down.”
She closed her eyes, trying to shut it out. She didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t stand the thought of what she’d done. The thought of having to live with this knowledge for the rest of her life. Would Louise’s words ring in her head forever?
She thought of the words she’d captured on tape that day, and her eyes flew open. Sliding the bag off her shoulder, she tore through the contents until she found the tape recorder. She ejected the tape from the machine. In one motion she grabbed the tape and flung it out into the lake as far as her arm could throw it. It disappeared into the dark abyss, just like the snowflakes. But the tape left ripples, ringing outward, growing in size as they traveled away from the epicenter.
Paula turned away from the shoreline and walked. She tried to think about something else, but like a low, wet fog, the thoughts smothered her, seeped into her. She crossed Lake Shore Drive and stumbled back toward her apartment. A street bum lay haphazardly in the corner of an apartment stoop, his blanket wrapped around him, a stocking cap pulled low on his face.
She studied the skyscrapers that would come alive on Monday morning. She thought of her career and how far she’d come. She’d always been a person things came easily to. Whatever she put her mind to do, she succeeded at. She’d even been voted Most Likely to Succeed.
She’d never felt more like a loser than she did now. She was as low as the street bum she just passed. He probably never did anything as awful as she.
Somehow she made it back to her apartment building. When the doorman’s smile faltered as he bade her good evening, she realized she must look as distressed as she felt. She didn’t care.
She took the elevator to her floor, looking forward to the peace and quiet of her apartment. Maybe it would calm her.
She slid the key into the lock and turned it, pushing the door open. The sound of a TV program drifted to her ears, then she saw Linn sitting on the sofa with a fat textbook open in her lap. Paula’s spirits sank to a new low.
“Hi,” Linn said cheerfully. Then her smile slid off her face like water off a metal roof. “What happened?”
Paula inwardly cursed the bright overhead lighting. She wanted to paste on her TV smile and pretend. But the tone of alarm in Linn’s voice told her it was no use. And Paula didn’t have the energy to fake anything tonight. Not even a smile.
“Rough day.” Her words croaked out. It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d said good-bye to Louise. She cleared her throat. “Maybe I’m getting a cold.”
Paula slid out of her coat and draped it across the back of the sofa. When she kicked off her heels, she realized for the first time that her toes were stiff and achy.
“Are you all right, Paula?”
She heard the whoosh of Linn’s book closing and the creak of the sofa springs.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said. “I think I’m coming down with something. I’m going to lie down.” Maybe if she kept her back to Linn, she could hold it together. She could do it. If she could only make it to her room. Suddenly she was so tired she felt like she could sleep a week. The prospect sounded like bliss. Blissful oblivion.
“Can I get you something? Some ibuprofen or a glass of water?”
“No, but thanks.” Paula fled to her room, where she slid under the duvet, clothes and all. Her pant legs rode up to her knees, sliding easily against her hose. She wrapped the covers around her like her own private cocoon, but she couldn’t get warm. She wondered if she would ever be warm again.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Even in the darkness there was a certain peace. Paula knew she was about to do something big, but she couldn’t quite remember what. Even still, she knew it was OK. It would all be OK.
She heard voices around her, soothing and caring. Was she drugged? Maybe she was because she couldn’t remember ever feeling quite like this before. She was so relaxed, she was almost giddy. She put her hand over her mouth to stop the giggle. What would they think?
A bright light turned on, and she blinked at the intensity of it. It blinded her and made her eyes squint and ache.
“All right, Paula, we’re about to get started.” It was Donald, her old boss from WKEV in Jackson. She closed her eyes when she heard it. He was a competent man. She could trust him to do whatever needed to be done.
“We’re starting the procedure now,” he said. “Everything is going just fine.”
In the quiet of the room, she could hear the sound of metal clinking. Another sound caught her ears, a humming. She nearly opened her eyes to see what it was, then remembered she had her tape recorder running. Good thing, because she couldn’t take notes if she tried. Her limbs felt as heavy as t
ree trunks.
“Here it comes,” Donald said, his calm tones washing over her like a gentle wave. “OK, I’ve got it.”
Paula tried to look to see what was going on. There was a crowd of people at her feet. Two of them had notepads and were furiously scrawling away. No matter. Everything was fine.
Then Donald took something from her, and she suddenly knew it was the baby who had been inside her. Yes, she’d been pregnant, hadn’t she?
“What are you doing?” she asked.
The tiny body in his hands was gray blue. Was the baby breathing?
“Please, you’ve got to help her!” The fog had worn off her brain, but her body was immobilized. “Help her!”
Donald didn’t seem to hear her. He handed the baby to one of the reporters. “Get rid of it,” he said in a soft, soothing voice.
The reporter started for the door, holding the baby away from his body as if it were contagious.
“Stop! Bring her back!” She tried to sit up, but her body felt as if it were Superglued to the bed. “Please! Bring my baby back!”
Everyone moved about the room as if not hearing her.
“Please! Come back!”
“Paula?” The voice was coming from the closet or someplace far away. But she couldn’t think about that. She had to get her baby back.
“Come back! That’s my baby!”
“Paula.”
Someone was shaking her, but she resisted. My baby. Is she alive?
“Paula, wake up.”
Her eyes opened to the darkness. Somewhere outside the window a truck accelerated. She recognized the form beside her as Linn.