Wildflowers from Winter (11 page)

“Of course you do.”

Mom’s pupils dilated. She stared, as if unsure what to do with Bethany’s odd string of accusations. Bethany couldn’t blame her. After all, she’d never told her mother what she knew. People in Peaks speculated, but Mom did her best to squelch the rumors and hide the truth from Bethany and David.

A part of Bethany wanted to let Mom squirm over this new revelation—that she knew the truth. But the other part couldn’t handle her mother’s discomfort. She rolled her eyes. “Where’s your
boyfriend
?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Pastor Fenton is not my boyfriend.”

“Then why’s he always with you? Why’s he always touching you?”

Her mother blanched. “Why … that’s just …” She put her hand to her throat. “He’s just a very caring man.”

“Yeah. That’s it.” Bethany twisted her neck to follow her mother’s stare and found the man under discussion. He used his hands while he conversed and carried himself in a way that demanded attention. His magnetic presence reeled people in with a rusty hook. The same rusty hook that had snagged her parents. All of a sudden, Bethany felt sick. “Please, don’t let me stop you from paying your respects.” She stepped around her mother and swung open the door to the ladies’ room.

Once inside, she moved to the sinks and placed her hands on the countertop, hating the way her poise unhinged at the sight of Pastor Fenton. She hadn’t expected to see him. Especially not at Dan’s funeral. Especially not with her mother. Mom’s reverence for that man had always bordered on worship. Today had been no different. It reminded her of everything she wanted to forget.

She stuck her hands beneath the faucet and splashed water on her cheeks. She pulled several paper towels from the dispenser, dried her face, and studied her reflection in the mirror. Her twelve-year-old self stared back. Knobby elbows, slumped shoulders, and brown hair curtaining a pair of eyes much too large for her thin face.

She blinked the image away. She wasn’t that helpless girl anymore. She’d stopped being that girl as soon as she left Peaks ten years ago. She refused to be an object of pity. She was a woman who’d risen above her circumstances and created a life most people in Peaks would envy. She straightened her shoulders and smoothed her blouse. She wasn’t going to hide in the bathroom. Bethany was done hiding. She pulled her hair away from her face and repositioned her clip.

Just as she turned away from her reflection, a low-pitched moaning rumbled from one of the stalls. Bethany studied the space between floor and partitions, searching for a pair of feet. She found them at the very end just as another moan stabbed the air. Her heels clicked twice against the tile as she moved toward the stall.

Another moan, fainter this time. She took another step and touched her fingertips to the cool surface of the door.

“Hello?” Her tentative greeting echoed against the tiled walls.

The sound on the other side stopped.

She leaned closer. “Are you okay in there?”

“Bethany? Is that you?”

“Robin?”

Another groan.

The hairs on the back of Bethany’s neck prickled. “Robin, are you okay?”

No answer.

She eased the door open and found Robin doubled over on the toilet, clutching her stomach, the white porcelain floor beneath her sprinkled with
crimson drops. Alarm shot to the end of Bethany’s fingertips. “What’s wrong?”

Robin looked up, her pale face paralyzed with shock, as if she didn’t know where she was or what was happening. “I think I’m having a miscarriage.”

The room darkened, then came back into sharp focus. A miscarriage? Robin was pregnant? Bethany wrapped her fingers over the top of the stall divider to still the swaying. Robin needed help, and she needed it fast.

Bethany exited the bathroom, hurried into the lobby, and cut through the line of visitors, her motions set on automatic fast-forward. Evan stood by the casket, shaking hands and receiving hugs. She rushed to his side and yanked his arm.

“Whoa, what is it?”

She whispered what she’d just seen in his ear and watched the color drain from his face. Without hesitating, he left his place by the casket and brushed through the crowd, pulling her behind him. He burst into the rest room where Robin wobbled in front of the sink and scooped her into his arms as if she were nothing more than a fragile rag doll. Not even a full minute later, they were in Bethany’s car, speeding to the hospital, while Robin lay in the backseat. Bethany gripped the steering wheel, pleading with a God she didn’t believe existed.

Losing Micah was enough. Don’t take her baby too
.

ELEVEN

W
hile there hadn’t been an alarming amount of blood, it had been bright red. That, combined with the cramping, was enough to draw the nurse’s concerned attention and call for a doctor. Bethany stood by, afraid to move or speak, gauging Robin’s pain by her facial expressions. Right then, with closed eyes and a relaxed face, she suspected the cramps had subsided. If only she knew what to make of Robin’s moving lips.

Was she praying?

“I can’t do this.” Robin’s words came out as an almost-inaudible whisper, disappearing as soon as they parted from her mouth.

Even though Bethany was the only other person in the room, she had a feeling Robin wasn’t talking to her. So she kept quiet and tried to push away the images repeating in her mind: Evan sweeping Robin up in his arms, carrying her to the car with strong, sure strides.

If there was one thing Bethany prided herself in, it was her self-sufficiency. She didn’t need a man to take care of her. She didn’t need God to be her crutch. But now, with her nerves jumbled, she couldn’t help but think how nice it would be to have somebody rescue her the way Evan had rescued Robin.

Batting away the disturbing thoughts, she placed her hand on Robin’s shoulder. She would see Robin through this evening. She would bury her grandfather tomorrow morning. Then she would go back to Chicago and
find another job—a better one. People liked to say perfection wasn’t attainable, but she sure came close during her four years at Parker Crane.

“Last night I asked God why this was happening …” Robin looked down into her lap. “I told God I didn’t want this pregnancy.” Her breath hitched. “Not without Micah.”

The muscles in Bethany’s chest knotted.

Robin buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t mean it.”

Bethany opened her mouth, attempting to form words—to find a way to reassure her friend that her brokenhearted request meant nothing, but anything she tried to say stuck to her tongue. So instead, she squeezed Robin’s shoulder, feeling silly. Inadequate. Until the doctor entered the room. He sat in a swivel chair on the opposite side of Robin’s inclined bed and asked her a quick series of questions. The nurse came in as he finished.

“Okay, Robin, we’re going to take you across the hall and do an internal sonogram. We’ll search for a heartbeat and see if we can’t find out what might have caused the bleeding.”

Robin looked up from her lap. “You don’t think I miscarried?”

Bethany closed her eyes against the hope staining her friend’s voice.

“There are a number of things that can cause bleeding. It’s not always indicative of a miscarriage. The good thing is that the bleeding has stopped.”

“What about the cramping?”

“Many women experience cramping in the first trimester. Usually it’s just the uterus expanding. However, since it was accompanied with bleeding, it does cause some concern.”

Robin rested her head back and gazed at the speckled ceiling tiles. “Do you think my baby is alive?”

The doctor kept his face neutral, taking great care not to offer false hope or cause unnecessary concern. “The ultrasound will show us how the baby is doing.” He patted Robin’s knee and exited the room.

Bethany helped Robin to her feet and escorted her to the door. The doctor might not be concerned with Robin walking, but Bethany thought
her old friend looked ready to collapse with grief and exhaustion. As soon as they came out into the hallway, Evan stood, his hair a mess. As if he’d run his fingers through it a thousand times in the last thirty minutes.

“They’re going to do an ultrasound,” Bethany said.

His eyes zipped to Robin, then to Bethany. “Is the baby …?”

Bethany gave her head a subtle shake. “They don’t know.”

Robin’s fingernails dug into Bethany’s skin. Evan grabbed Robin’s opposite elbow, and the three of them followed the doctor down the hall. When they reached the room, Evan let go and ran his hand back through his hair. “Do you want me to come in?”

“It’s okay,” Robin said. “Bethany’s with me.”

“I’ll be out here praying.”

Bethany exchanged a long glance with Evan, then ushered Robin into the small room with a table and an ultrasound machine. Robin changed in the bathroom, then came out clutching a sheet around her bottom half, and lay down while Bethany stood in the corner, wishing she could switch places with Evan. What was she supposed to do—what was she supposed to say—if they couldn’t find a baby?

“The technician will be here in just a minute,” the doctor said. “I’ll be back to speak with you afterward.”

The ultrasound technician arrived almost as soon as the doctor left. She introduced herself, turned on the machine, had Robin place her feet in stirrups, and began working. Bethany stared at the computer, trying to pinpoint something that might pass as an embryo. Black-and-white blotches rippled across the screen. She couldn’t make sense of any of it.

She swallowed and braced herself for the worst. She tried to think of something to say or do that might relieve Robin of her accumulating grief. But her mind was blank—a worthless cavern packed with fuzz. She looked from the screen to the technician, who furrowed her brow as she searched for some sign of life.

And that’s when Bethany saw it. A blip on the screen. A tiny, white, flashing blotch. Her heart sputtered. She turned to the technician. The lady’s eyebrows spread wide, stretching away the deep V that had creased her forehead. It was there. Bethany hadn’t imagined it. A heartbeat. A precious, miniscule heartbeat.

Life.

“Do you see this right here?” The woman pointed her finger to the spot Bethany had noticed a second earlier.

Robin lifted her head and looked at the screen for the first time, as if she’d been too afraid to face whatever might not be there. When she saw the beating heart, her cheeks whitened. “Is that …?”

The woman nodded, her expression melting into a large grin. “Yep. The rate is 165. Very healthy. Very normal.”

A sob bubbled from Robin’s mouth, escaping before she moved her hand to cover it. Bethany blinked several times, unsettled by the burning in her eyes.

The technician showed them a blob of black-and-white haze, which she said was the placenta. She insisted it looked healthy and just the right size. She took several more measurements, clicking her mouse on the screen. “You’re measuring about six and a half weeks. The computer has August 12 as your due date.”

Robin gasped.

Bethany pulled her attention away from the screen. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s Micah’s birthday.”

The doctor asked Robin to stay overnight to rehydrate, which forced Bethany and Evan alone together in the confines of her Audi. Unlike the comfortable silence Bethany shared with Dan, this silence crackled with tension.
When they finally arrived home, she retreated to her bedroom, eager to put the craziness of the day behind her. But she lay in bed with eyes wide open, unable to escape the image of that heartbeat on the screen.

Or of Evan carrying Robin in his arms.

The farmhouse groaned with emptiness. The lonely sound seemed to empty her as well. Tomorrow, she would bury her grandfather. Never again would she sit next to Grandpa Dan and listen to the deep rumble of his voice. Never again would she look into the steady blueness of his eyes. For the past ten years, she’d taken for granted that he’d always be there—presumed he always would. Now he was gone. If she was going to make it through tomorrow with her composure intact, she needed a good night’s rest.

But her eyes refused to stay closed.

Bethany kicked off the quilt and grabbed the coat hanging from one of the bedposts. Holding her breath, she tiptoed past Evan’s bedroom and down the stairs, grimacing whenever a floorboard or step creaked beneath her weight. When she reached the foyer, she shoved her feet into her boots, put on the coat, wrapped herself in an extra blanket, and stepped into the night. Grayish black engulfed the sky. Invisible storm clouds.

She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and marched across the frozen yard, out into the darkness of the field. If someone saw her now, marching alone across the farm at night in the middle of December, they might think her crazy. But she didn’t care.

A creek ran through Dan’s property. One Bethany spent many summers wading through with David, tying chunks of hot dogs to bits of string, luring crawdads up from the rocks. Toward the north end of the pasture, behind the barn, an incredibly large rock jutted out from the bank. It had always been one of her favorite places on the farm. Dan called it her thinking spot. Said everybody had one and that rock was Bethany’s.