A Baby Between Them

Annie was laughing now. “Forty-five years of midwifery and I’ve never met a first-time mother quite like you.”

Rae could believe that. Most women like her would be smart enough to make sure they didn’t get pregnant in the first place. She’d never been the kind of girl who dreamed about her wedding day or thought about names for the children she would have one day.

She read Business Week and Forbes, not Wedding Bells or Today’s Parent.

And she was scared as hell of delivering this baby.

“Well, stop worrying,” Annie said. “You may not think you want children, but you have a body built for popping them out.”

“You can tell?” Rae looked down. She could remember what her figure used to look like, but right now, as far as she was concerned, she resembled nothing more than a blob.

“I’ve delivered hundreds of babies. Of course, I can tell.”

“Hundreds of babies? Tell me, Annie. Did you ever lose a mother?”

Annie was so animated that she hadn’t seemed at all old to Rae until that moment. As the spark left her eyes, she folded her weathered, wrinkled hands on the picnic table.

“Once. I lost a mother once.”

Rae felt her stomach tighten ominously. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but like a teenage girl drawn to a horror movie, she had to know. “What happened?”

“I worked in a rural area, you have to understand. We referred all the high-risk cases to Prince Rupert, sometimes even to Vancouver. But there was this one woman. Lila was her name. She was as high-risk as they come. A smoker, a drinker and diabetic, too. As if that wasn’t enough, when she was thirty-eight weeks along, her baby shifted into breech position and wouldn’t budge.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t. We told Lila’s husband to take her to the city. We arranged an appointment with a specialist. But they wouldn’t go.”

“Did the baby survive?”

Annie shook her head. “We lost them both. Full moon that night. I’ll never forget how the father cried.”

“That must have been terrible.”

“The worst night of my life. And I’ve seen a lot of hard things.”

Rae could only imagine. As a midwife, Annie had dealt with life at its most elemental level. So different from the business world that Rae had chosen. What would Annie make of that world? The modern office buildings and posh conference rooms? The wheeling and dealing over morning lattes and evening cocktails?

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about Lila, when you’re already worried about your own delivery. But you’ll be seeing Dr. Marshall, right?”

Rae nodded. “Justine set up weekly appointments on my behalf before I arrived.”

“Dr. Marshall’s a little young, but she knows what she’s doing.”

Despite her nerves, Rae had to smile. A little young? She’d had her first appointment with the doctor last week, and the physician was in her late forties, possibly even fifty.

“You’re going to be fine, Rae.” Annie patted her hand.

Rae wanted to believe her. She seemed like a straight shooter, this Annie, and Rae liked her. But all Rae’s instincts warned her that she wasn’t going to be fine.

Something was going to go wrong. She didn’t know what. She just knew it. Which was strange, because she wasn’t usually the type to indulge in premonitions.

She noticed Annie eyeing her speculatively. “I suppose you think I’m a freak because I don’t want to keep this baby?”

“Well…if a woman isn’t cut out to be a mother, it’s better that she has the courage to admit it up front. I’ve delivered plenty of babies to families that weren’t fit to raise them. Alcoholic mothers. Abusive fathers.” Annie’s eyes became still more glazed, as she thought back to the past. “Just about broke my heart to pass those little bundles to those parents. In fact, one time I didn’t. Got into a little trouble with the law over that.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Never mind, hon. It all worked out in the end. I finally persuaded the powers that be that the child’s needs had to come first.”

“Well, I’m not an alcoholic and I’d like to think I’m not abusive, either.” Though her personal assistant at work might disagree with that second point. “But there are other ways of being an unfit mother.”

“Sure there are.”

“A child knows when she isn’t wanted. That kind of emotional abuse is just as bad as getting used as a punching bag, don’t you think?”

Now Annie’s eyes were suddenly sharp. And focused on her.

Rae realized she needed to cover her tracks. “I mean, that’s what I think. But you’re the expert. I’d like to know your opinion.”

“Being loved is the most important thing. You’re absolutely right about that.”

“Exactly. And some women just don’t have the maternal makeup to deal with a crying baby or a snotty-nosed toddler.” Or a chubby, school-age child who turned into a gangly, awkward adolescent.

“Some women don’t.” Annie’s tone was completely nonjudgmental.

“Did you have children, Annie?”

“No. Funny, isn’t it? I was too busy helping other women delivering babies to have any of my own. Never met the right man to have them with. Most wanted me to give up my career and I would never do that.”

“Me, either.”

Annie reached across the table to pat her hand. “My career provided me with a very full and satisfying life. Are you sure that yours will be enough for you?”

“Of course it will. Before I found out I was pregnant, I was very happy.” Okay, “happy” might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Once, before she’d met Aidan, she’d been close to happy. Satisfied, actually. Her mother’s death had released her from a lifetime of guilt and melancholy, and her career had been taking off. As for men, she’d dated occasionally, but she’d felt no emotional connection to any of them.

She assumed the flaw was hers. She had something missing in her, emotionally. Given her childhood, that wasn’t surprising.

But then she’d met Aidan, and for the first time in her life she’d experienced it all: emotional ups and downs, the thrill of seeing him walk into the room and dizzy joy when he actually smiled at her. Suddenly, all the romantic songs she heard on the radio made sense to her. She had rented a DVD of The Way We Were and actually cried.

“It’s your life, Rae. Just make sure that you focus on the things that are important to you.” Annie’s attention shifted back to the farmhouse. “Aidan is waving at us. I think it’s time for you to go.”

Rae looked over her shoulder. Sure enough, there was Aidan, walking with Jennifer by his side. They looked so relaxed and easy together.

What would it be like to have a friend like that? A friend you’d known forever, someone you could really talk to?

As a child, she hadn’t been good at making friends. The closest she’d come was the next-door neighbor. Effie had been gray-haired and plump. She had a large extended family in Greece, but she’d lived alone since her children had grown up and her husband had died. She’d seemed to enjoy Rae’s visits.