Page 176 of Somebody's Watching Me
“I’m sorry.”
“From me, Jamison,” he roared, his hands fisting at his sides. “How could you keep something like this from me?”
“I couldn’t hold her.”
Chest pumping, eyes wild, he bared his teeth. “What?”
“I went to bed, and when I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, there was blood in my underwear, so I called the emergency line for the clinic.” Her voice became strained with every word, the pitch rising until she had to clear her throat. “They said it was normal and should stop.”
Hugging her midsection, she rocked. Red. There were so many shades. She closed her eyes, but the red remained.
“It didn’t stop.” Her rocking increased, soothing the churning in her stomach. It still didn’t feel real. In the bathroom that night, or now. “It kept coming and coming, and I didn’t know what to do.”
The fury in him disappeared so swiftly that he looked ready to vomit. Without direction, Liam spun away and went to the sliding glass door to stare at the turbulent landscape.
Hands braced on the sliding glass door, a cross between a sob and wail carried through the townhouse. She didn’t need to see his face to know what she was hearing was the sound of his heart breaking. Hers had made the same sound as she drove to the hospital.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“And ruin the surprise?” There was no holding back, the hysteria consuming her completely. “No, no, no! I picked out a name before I went to bed. It was a girl. They couldn’t tell me at the hospital because they said she wasn’t real yet, but I know it was a girl.”
Some part of her mind recognized she was screaming, but it didn’t dare stop it from happening. She was too far gone, her grief running the show. “Some things aren’t meant to be. That’s what the nurse said. Not meant to be. My baby—our baby—wasn’t meant to be. Why would she say that? She asked where my husband was, and I said you were busy. She gave me this look and said it again. Some things just aren’t meant to be.”
Strong and stable, he was across the room and wrapping her in the safety of his arms, allowing her to mourn for the first time.
“Why would the nurse say that if it wasn’t true?” she cried against his chest. “Was none of it meant to be? Me? You? Her? I don’t understand. Did she not want me? Did she think I wouldn’t be a good mom because I didn’t have one? I would. I would be a good mom. I would do all the things, and if I didn’t know how to do them, I would learn.”
“You’ll be the best mom.” Pressing his lips pressed to her temple, his tears mixed with hers. “You’ll do everything right.”
“I wanted to be her mom and you to be her dad.” The words were strained, the desperation heavy. “I wanted it so bad, Liam.”
Cupping the back of her head, he held her as tight as he could. “And you’ll have her. One day. We’ll have a million babies if you want them.”
She curled around him, latching onto his neck as they grieved together. Second by second, hour by hour, she told him of her time at the hospital, and he listened without interrupting, reliving the nightmare with her. The sights, the smells, the people who watched her with vacant eyes as if it were just another day.
“When I got home, you had already come and gone. I was so numb. All I could do was stand in front of the closet and stare at your empty side.” Lifting her head, she met his gaze. “You forgot a shirt, by the way. It was on my side, and I guess you overlooked it, but that was good because I pulled it on and wore it for days. I could hardly function, but living in your shirt helped.”
She rested her head again on his naked chest, relishing the heartbeat punching against her cheek. How much longer would he allow her to lie here and listen?
“That shirt got me through.”
“I could have got you through.”
An undeniable truth. “They said it could happen again.”
Hollow and empty, she repeated the parting information from her doctor. The follow-up appointment had been a haze of revelations. An hour of listening to a group of medical professionals obliterating the dream life she so desperately wanted. “They said I might never have a baby, and if I conceived, the pregnancy would be so high risk it wouldn’t be worth the effort.”
He absently rubbed his chin back and forth on the top of her head, his thoughts so loud she could almost hear them. “But it’s not impossible.”
“Well, no.”
“And your mom had problems getting pregnant when she was in her twenties.”
She didn’t know what he was getting at, and her nerves hitched up a notch. “Yeah, but with my dad, I think she got pregnant pretty easily, and then, of course, she was pregnant when she died.”
A boy. Not until Liam allowed her to read her mother’s autopsy report had she known they were able to determine the sex. But it made sense, Laura Jean had been roughly five months pregnant when she was killed.
“What did Ben say about this?”
