Page 80 of Embracing Love

Sandra’s Story

“How old?” asked Nadine, fighting the urge to jump up from her seat on two accounts. First, at the very news itself and second that Sandra had chosen to share this with her at all.

“Twenty-nine,” said Sandra, as she clasped her hands together and displayed her crimson colored nails. Nadine tried to disguise her surprise at Sandra’s revelation. This was intensely personal news and Sandra didn’t do personal.

Why are you telling me this? She wondered. She’d been to a few lunches with Sandra; they’d had so much to discuss especially with regards to the Paris office.

Yet it was through these outings away from the office environment that Nadine had sensed something was going on with Sandra lately. It had been mainly business talk but that in itself, the fact that the two of them had gone out for lunch, had signified a big step forward in their uneasy relationship.

“I gave him away when he was a day old.” The haunted look on Sandra's face belied her calm composure. To Nadine it seemed that the woman's normal tight steel casing had all but melted.

Even though Nadine’s maternal instincts were buried way down deep, the thought of having to give away a baby when he was a day old, shocked her. She felt that something of that magnitude would haunt a person for the rest of their lives.

In that instant, she was ready to forgive Sandra for all the nastiness she had inflicted.

“And now I get to meet him, almost thirty years later. I can’t believe it myself.” Sandra had a child who was almost as old as Ethan; that in itself was as shocking to Nadine as hearing Sandra’s confession.

Nadine gazed back at the woman who’d made life difficult for her ever since she’d joined the company. Now that same woman had come to her with her secret. She needed a listening ear, not for someone to judge her.

“I never would have guessed that, Sandra. Never. ” Nadine struggled for the right words to say, but she had none. She only had more questions, and it didn’t seem fair, or right, to be asking Sandra too many questions. She sat up, tried to pull herself together. “It must have been hard to give him away.”

“It was devastating.” Sandra’s voice wavered, but the expression on her face was as hard as granite.

Yet this explained a lot of things about Sandra lately. She kept herself to herself, keeping her nose out of other people’s business for a change, and the usual cattiness that was so often the norm for her had been lacking. A couple of times Nadine had walked into Sandra’s office and found her sitting at her desk with a faraway expression.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Nadine, because clearly the woman did. Otherwise she would have left the office by now, given that their latest meeting had finished almost ten minutes ago.

“ I gave him up for adoption when I was in college. Stuff happened, his father and I weren’t really serious. And when he found out I was pregnant, he didn’t want to know. I took a year out and had my baby.”

Nadine gulped and held her breath, trying to imagine a younger college-age Sandra, pregnant and scared, and how she might have felt. Her chest felt heavy, just imagining what it must have felt like to be so young and without support.

“My whole world ripped apart with this…this…one night stand. It was a foolish thing to do. For me especially. My family were pretty strait-laced; we never talked about sex. So the fact that this had happened was a complete shock. I still had years ahead of me in college and I couldn't bring him up alone. My parents were struggling anyway. They couldn’t help me. My baby disrupted my world and the only way out of it was to give him away. I wanted him to be with people who would love him and care for him in a way I couldn’t." She struggled to keep her voice steady.

Nadine’s heart bled. A life without the support of her parents was alien to her, just as a life of hardship and strife was not something that she knew. She’d never struggled; her childhood had been great and gilded. Hearing Sandra’s story tore at her heartstrings.

“Oh, Sandra,” she was consumed by the desire to give this woman a great big hug.

But Sandra didn’t do hugs either.

“I’ve regretted it ever since. There’s not been one day that I haven’t thought about him. Twenty-nine years. Do you know how that makes you feel? What that does to a person? Twenty-nine years of denying I had a son.”

Sandra got out a tissue, and wiped at the tears that had settled in her eyes. Nadine couldn’t help it. She walked over to Sandra, and placed a hand on her shoulder. Sandra crumbled the tissue in the palm of her hand and looked up at Nadine. “I’m okay,” she said.

But she wasn’t.

Nadine backed away a little and perched herself on the edge of the desk, knitting her hands together in an attempt to contain the despair that racked her emotions.

“Does Mason know?”

Sandra nodded. “My husband has been my rock. I told him before we got married. I felt it was the right thing to do. He always encouraged me to track him down. But I refused. I didn’t want to disrupt his world and then we had our own children. I thought it best to carry on. But of course I couldn’t. Life has a way of reminding you of the truth you try to hide. And I was frightened.”

Nadine knew that Sandra had two children and she’d already met Mason, her husband, but other than that Sandra never spoke of her personal life. Nadine didn't even know how old her children were or what their names were. Ethan had taken a liking to Mason but this was more to do with him feeling sorry for the man rather than having a lot in common with him.

Sandra looked at Nadine with red, veiny eyes; no longer the groomed and perfectly polished Sandra anymore. This was a woman with soft edges and a heart. A woman who’d battled through her life, more than half of it, carrying guilt and a secret that had been eating away at her.

Nadine pressed her lips together, so that she wouldn’t cry. “Mason is a good man.”

“He never pushed me, but I think I pushed him away. Yet he still stood by me. I know I haven’t been the easiest person to get along with. I was just worn down with life.”

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