Page 223 of The Single Dads Club
Carefully I took a step toward Cocoa, and when she didn’t move, I began to stroke her in time with Mandy.
“What brings you here on a holiday?” she asked. “I haven’t told anyone about Nibs yet.”
“No, I just came to visit them. I had a couple of things I wanted to think over and I thought this might be a nice place to do it.”
Mandy nodded. “So the doctor’s visit didn’t go well?”
I sighed. “Not exactly.”
“But they can’t tell you anything until they run the tests. So now you wait and wonder, right?”
I nodded. “How’d you know?”
She offered me a small, sad smile. “Because I’ve been there.”
“You…?” I asked and she nodded.
“A year after I got married, we decided we wanted to start a family, but…” She shrugged. “Well, things didn’t happen like we thought they would. It took us seven years and several miscarriages to conceive. It was awful at the time, obviously. I felt like I’d let my husband down.”
“I’m so sorry, Mandy. I can’t believe you never told me,” I said.
She shrugged. “It was a hard string of years, but it all worked out for us in the end.”
I took a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Mason just wants a baby so damn bad.”
“Is that what he said when you told him?”
“No.” I didn’t meet her eyes, because deep down, I knew I was just using my questionable fertility to wall myself off from something that terrified me. Love. A future. “I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want to see his expression. Don’t want his pity.”
“What about the sympathy?” Mandy asked.
“Is there a difference?”
“Only one way to find out,” Mandy said, then led Cocoa onto my lap and dusted herself off. “Look, I’ve got to get going. Make sure you lock up when you leave, all right?”
I nodded, watching her go, but then she turned around again and said, “You can’t live your life in fear, kid.”
“What if it’s the only thing distracting me from how my heart is breaking?” I asked, and her eyes turned soft.
“Sometimes, you have to let it break. That’s the only way it’s going to heal. Like a hangnail. Rip it off and let the skin grow back.”
I laughed, a hollow sound. “That’s a terrible metaphor.”
“They don’t pay me to be a wordsmith.” She backed out of the enclosure, and I stared down at the cheetah in my lap for another long moment, stroking her fur as she mewled sadly.
First I’d lost my father. Now I might have lost the chance to become a mother myself—the chance to ever have a family of my own that would be full and happy and complete.
The impulse to languish and dissolve into my predicament, just like my mother had done, was strong, almost overwhelming. But then, my mother had allowed herself to dive into her grief, and what had it done for her? Even now, years later, she was letting life drift past her, unlived.
Grieving was a process, not a life sentence and, no matter what the doctor said, I was going to have to face the facts of my father’s death and my own ability to be a mother.
But I didn’t have to do it alone.
Not for the first time, I thought of Mason that day in the sand, my hand in his as he asked me to be his wife. He’d booked a trip just for me. He’d gone out of his way over and over again for my sake.
And what had I done for him? Nothing. I hadn’t even done him the courtesy of letting him know how I felt.
That was something I could change, though.
