Worth the Wait (McKinney_Walker #1)(18)

She hung up, thinking she should have been more forceful, should have said all that she was thinking and had planned to say. Like, If you don’t call me back I’m going to come to your office and demand some answers. I’ll drive the six hours if I have to, but you’re not going to leave me hanging like this. Just thinking it brought angry, frustrated tears to her eyes.

Minutes later, she stared at the rocking glider in the empty nursery, not even realizing she’d walked down the hall. She did it often, paused to stare into the empty room she had to pass on the way to her own.

Framed Peter Rabbit prints hung on pale-blue walls. The dark-wood furniture—a crib, a changing table, and a tall bookshelf—all sat exactly as they had been. Sometimes it seemed all her happiness was bottled up in this room.

She moved in slowly and silently to sit in the glider. If the happiness was there, why couldn’t she feel it? Nights were the hardest. The memories of evening baths and slow rocking were still so fresh. She crossed her empty arms over her chest and rocked.

Savannah wasn’t dead, Mia reminded herself. She wasn’t really gone. But it was a loss, and she felt the pain of it in every cell of her body. She tried to imagine Savannah happy and playing, growing and being rocked by another. Hot tears burned her eyes, dripped into her lap. No surprise. They were common and frequent whether she tortured herself in here or went straight to bed. It didn’t make much difference.

She rubbed her hands over the pale-yellow chenille fabric she’d had the baby store rush order for her. She’d rocked Savannah in this nursery, in this very chair, on her first night home. Every night. Then on that last night, all night. Rocked and kissed and sang “Pretty Little Horses” until she was hoarse and her throat felt like shards of glass.

She told herself she only wanted the information they’d promised. God, how she’d pored over that photo she’d gotten. Savannah’s baby-soft hair was a little longer; the golden curls were fuller. But were her eyes red? Had she been crying? She rarely cried. Did they know what to do when she did? What she liked? Had she cried that day she’d been returned to her biological parents?

She’d come to hate that term, biological, with such passion.

It had all been so methodical, so carefully orchestrated and civil. She’d handed her baby over to a social worker in one room then was escorted out of the building before her daughter’s real mother was to arrive and receive her baby.

There had been a delay, a blessing and a curse, giving her additional seconds to hold her for the last time. Then more waiting because the biologicals weren’t even there. Her heart was ripped from her body, and they weren’t even there, waiting.

She felt as if she were breaking apart bit by bit. It was the same when she’d lost Nick, trying to live without him those first nights. Many nights. Weeks. Months. She’d gotten through it. Gotten over it. Savannah was different, but she’d survive.

Savannah’s baby book was on the shelf above the rack still filled with dresses she’d worn and bigger sizes Mia had bought for the future. She started to reach for the book, knowing she would pore over it. She would cry herself into a puffy-eyed headache.

At the last second, she grabbed a large decorative box serving as a bookend. She couldn’t say for sure why she’d put it in this room. Maybe because with Savannah in her life, it could finally be a happy box that held happy memories with hundreds of photos she’d saved over the years. Photos of her with Nick, others of the three of them: herself and Nick and Hannah. Ticket stubs and small seemingly unremarkable moments, but added together made something grand.

She sat on the floor and removed the lid. There were drawings Hannah had made for her and birthday cards with flowers and puppies added to the inside with crayon. Mia laid each one carefully on the carpet next to her. She pulled out a picture Hannah’s first-grade teacher had taken of the two of them together at Hannah’s Author Tea.

She went through each picture, smiling at the memories. Happy times, she thought. Good times. But the brighter the light, the more pronounced the shadows. How differently she’d pictured her life back then. All their plans and certainty. Losing Savannah had left a hole, but Nick and all that they’d lost had left one years before that.

She closed her eyes, fighting against the pull of sadness. Not healthy. Not productive. She put all the pictures and memorabilia back in the box, replaced the lid on the past, and slid it into the floor of the closet. The silence of the house was so loud. The sound of being alone.

I really need to get a dog.





* * *





NICK FOUGHT HIS WAY through Monday’s early-afternoon traffic to the hospital. The only reason he wasn’t risking life and limb to get there was that Hannah had called him from the ER herself. She’d had a pretty bad panic attack, but she was fine. That’s all she would say, over and over: “I’m fine.” It should have helped.