The Baby Promise

Besides, she had to do something to keep her mind off Nick still working on the yard below her. He was supposed to be gone, not running a tractor only a few hundred feet from the house. He made her uncomfortable and he brought expectations she couldn’t meet. And with those unmet expectations came guilt she thought she had banished months ago.

She didn’t want to pretend to be the grieving widow anymore. She wanted to move on with her life. Leave Jim and the memories of him and the shame he caused her behind her.

The powder melted and she turned off her heat tool and angled the card in the light coming from the window beside her. Not too cute, yet not too elegant. A man’s card, if there was such a thing. She resisted her usual urge to tie a ribbon on it, then picked up her pen and a piece of scrap paper.

She hesitated, the pen hovering above the paper. As always, the words took time coming as she struggled to imagine what Bob would want to hear from her.

She glanced sideways out the window overlooking the yard. From here she saw Nick still feeding the cows, though it looked as if he was filling the last feeder. As he got out of the tractor he walked through the crowd of animals, his movements deliberate and slow. She wondered how he’d got his limp. Wondered what kind of action he’d seen.

He cut the twine on the bale, ignoring the cows milling around him. Then he stepped back, winding up the strings he had just pulled off, his eyes on the animals with their heads now buried in the feeder.

Then he turned as if looking at the mountains. His hands stopped, falling to his side as he stood, perfectly still. Then, with a shake of his head, he returned to the tractor.

What had he been thinking in that moment? What was going through his mind?

He seemed to be so comfortable around the animals. So relaxed. She thought of what he had said last night at Bob and Ellen’s. How he had grown up on a ranch just like Jim had.

Except he seemed to enjoy the work a lot more than Jim ever did. She couldn’t recall Jim ever helping his father or even talking about the ranch with his father. The only reason they moved back to the ranch was for her sake, Jim had said. So she could have a home base and be near his parents.

Nick got back into the tractor, reversed and drove it past the other groups of cows. A few moments later he disappeared behind the shed and Beth knew he was parking the tractor, which meant he’d be here soon.

She turned her attention back to the blank piece of paper in front of her. What words could she put in there that would make Bob understand that she appreciated him? What words would be sufficient to let him know her turmoil at being here with such good people when their own son was so different from them?

She tapped her pencil on the paper, fragments of phrases spinning through her mind.

I appreciate your help…

Thanks for your support…

I wish I could tell you how I really feel…

Hope you get better in time for me to move away…

Beth tried to keep thoughts of her future at bay, but they crowded back into her mind, shoving and pushing and demanding attention.

What could she say to the man whose grandchild she would be taking away?

She pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to marshal her thoughts, then pushed aside her practice paper, picked up her pen and wrote directly on the card. She waited for the ink to dry before she slipped the card in the matching envelope she had crafted.

She hoped he would read it and understand what she was trying to say.

A knock on the door downstairs pulled her away from her tangled, tiring thoughts.

“Come on in,” she called out, getting up. Her back throbbed more than when she had sat down. She arched her back against the pain, then shuffled to her bedroom across the hall to get ready.

She pulled her hair back again, tightening the elastic that held it in place. She did a quick check in the mirror. Her eyes looked too big, her mascara was smudged and she needed some more lipstick.

She grabbed a tube from her makeup basket, then caught herself. She was just going to the hospital. She dropped the lipstick tube, then spun away from the mirror and got the card.

As she carefully made her way down the stairs, Nick hurried forward and took her by the elbow. She was about to pull away, then realized how foolish that would be.

“Thank you,” she murmured, avoiding looking up at him.

“Is this your coat?” he asked, pulling it off the newel post of the staircase.

She nodded and reached for it but he already held it up for her. Again she felt a brush of disquiet when he settled the coat on her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” he asked when she pulled away again.

“Just not used to being treated like this,” she said with a jerky laugh, hoping to dispel the curious feelings he created in her.

“Really?” he asked with a puzzled frown. “Jim struck me as such a gentleman. He was always helping out the women at the base.”

Beth slipped the card she’d finished into her coat pocket and emitted a humorless laugh. “Of course he was.”

Nick’s frown deepened and Beth realized how that must have sounded.

Nick reached past her and opened the door. She tried not to look at him as she went through. Tried not to be aware of him as he walked beside her.

He made her uncomfortable because his presence brought up memories of Jim. That’s all, she told herself.

But as she gave him another sidelong glance and caught him looking at her, the faint quickening of her heart told her something else.

Chapter Four

Nick tapped his fingers on the steering wheel of the truck he had borrowed from Bob. His eyes were on the road ahead, but part of his attention was on the woman sitting beside him.

He didn’t usually have a hard time making conversation with women, but Beth was a puzzle he didn’t know how to solve.

Bob and Ellen eagerly listened to any story he had to tell about Jim, tears slipping down their cheeks at times. Beth didn’t seem to want to hear anything he had to say about Jim.

Maybe this was her way of grieving but there was something unhealthy about her reaction.

“So, how long have you been on the ranch?” he asked finally, wanting to make some kind of conversation to fill the awkward silence.

“Jim moved me here three weeks before he shipped out to Afghanistan.”

“He was based at Suffield, wasn’t he?”

Beth nodded, staring straight ahead, her arms folded over her stomach.

“I know he said it made him feel more relaxed, knowing you were at the ranch with his parents. He said he would have worried so much more if you had been somewhere else.”

In spite of Beth’s lack of response, Nick carried on. It was as if he had to keep Jim present between him and Beth.

Because, if he was honest with himself, his own feelings for Beth were shifting, changing. And not in a way he wanted to acknowledge.