A Christmas Baby Surprise

“You cried when the social worker at the hospital placed him in your arms. I’m not ashamed to say I did, too.”

Oh, God, this man who’d not once mentioned love could make a serious dent in her heart with only a few words. It was enough to make her want to try harder to fit into this life she didn’t remember. To be more patient and let the answers come.

She touched his elbow lightly, wanting the feel of him to be familiar, wanting more than chemistry to connect them. “This isn’t the way Christmas was supposed to be for us.”

“There was no way to foresee the accident.” He placed his hand over hers, the calluses rasping against her skin, another dichotomy in this man who could pay others to do anything for him yet still chose to roll up his sleeves.

“I never did ask how it happened. There have been so many questions I keep realizing I’ve forgotten to ask the obvious ones.”

“We picked up Thomas at the hospital. Since it was so close to our beach house, we considered staying here for the night, but instead opted to drive back home to Tallahassee. A half an hour later, a drunk driver hit us head-on.”

“We wanted our son in our own house, in his nursery.”

“Something like that.”

“What does his nursery look like at our house in Tallahassee?”

“The same as here, countryside with farm animals. You said you wanted Thomas to feel at home wherever he went. Even his travel crib is the same pattern. You even painted the same mural on the wall here.”

She remembered admiring the artwork when she’d laid the baby in his crib, enjoying the quiet farm scene with grazing cows and a full blue moon.

“I painted it?” Finally, something of herself in this house of theirs. Her eyes filled with tears. Such a simple thing. A mural for their son in their two homes—or did they have more?—and yet she couldn’t remember painting the pastoral scene. She couldn’t remember the shared joy over planning for their first child, or the shared tears.

And right now she was seconds away from shedding more tears all over the comfort of Porter’s broad chest.

When would she feel she belonged in this life?

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