The Swallow's Nest

3

The baby was screaming now, a shrieking siren that seemed incompatible with the featherweight human being in Lilia’s arms.

After one examination she didn’t want to look at him. Early in their marriage she and Graham had put off having children, certain they had all the time in the world to start a family. Later when she’d been ready, he had still wanted to wait. Then Burkitt’s had entered their lives. He’d frozen sperm before chemo so that someday, when he recovered so completely they no longer had to worry about his future, they might be able to conceive through artificial insemination. But no baby birds would be hatching in this nest anytime soon, something she had tried hard not to think about.

Now she had no choice.

Instinct told her to set the child down and never pick him up again. Before she hurt him. Before the betrayal washing through her washed over him, too, and caused irreparable harm. But there was no place to lay him, no carrier or car seat. He had arrived in his mother’s arms, and now he was in hers, the only place on the porch even halfway acceptable for an infant.

She’d been raised with other people’s babies. Cousins, nieces and nephews, neighbors. As a teenager, she’d been in demand as a babysitter because she always seemed to know what to do. Yet she had no inclination to rock this one in her arms, to snuggle him against her shoulder or pat his tiny back. She was so angry that every ounce of goodness inside her had already been summoned. She was struggling just to remember that no matter the circumstances of little Toby’s birth, he had not asked for this moment any more than she.

But quite likely his father had.

She knew then what she had to do. Suddenly it seemed simple. She held the infant against her shoulder so she could open the door with her other hand and walk inside, walk through the house she and Graham had so lovingly renovated together, walk through the kitchen where Regan was piling her carefully marinated chicken wings on a platter.

Her friend looked up and smiled. “Hey, who’s that?”

“Where’s Graham, do you know?”

They’d been friends so long that Lilia’s tone wilted Regan’s smile. “Still out back, I think. Mingling. But—”

“He may be calling on you tonight for help. Say no.”

“Lilia, what—”

She stalked into the sunroom and threw open the door to the patio. The music was so loud that even the baby’s screams were muffled. She was aware enough of her own feelings to be sorry that was true. Everybody should get the full benefit of Toby’s misery.

At first she didn’t see her husband, but somehow a path cleared. Friends who had smiled at the sight of her with the baby quickly sensed all was not well and stepped away. She wasn’t surprised. She had learned to cover her despair in the past year, but fury was a different matter. Since she’d never been this angry, not in her entire life, she made no attempt to hide it.

Graham was in the far corner of their yard. He’d set up a dartboard against their tiny garage, and he, Carrick and several others, including Carrick’s date, were playing. She should have gloried in the sight, one that at times, she had worried she would never see again. At the moment her husband was up, darts in hand, and carefully, one after the other, he was aiming at the board. She watched as he scored a bull’s-eye.

Carrick moved to join her, but she waved him away. He paused. “Whose baby is that?” He looked completely baffled, and she wondered if Graham had kept Toby’s presence in the world a secret, not just from her, but from his best friend and attorney, too. Carrick usually saved his acting skills for the courtroom, but until now, she’d never had reason to doubt her husband, either.

She watched as Carrick floundered toward the truth. At that moment Graham finished his turn and turned away from the board. His smile of satisfaction died. His gaze flicked to the baby screaming against her chest, and suddenly, he looked as unwell and frightened as he had during the worst moments of his illness.

If she’d had lingering doubts that Marina had been telling the truth, they fled forever. She expelled a long, harsh breath, and then she lowered Toby until he rested in the crook of her arm, moved closer and held him out to Graham.

“All your best friends are here. I’m sure they want to meet your son, and they’ll want all the juicy details. I suggest you practice telling the truth for once and explain how this happened. They’ll be dying to know.”

When he didn’t step forward, she did, until there was nothing between them except one wailing infant.

“Lilia—”

“Don’t even try to explain. Take your son.”

He was frozen in place, as if the horror of the moment had stripped him of the ability to move.

She spoke through gritted teeth, and only for his ears. “I have managed to carry this baby all the way through the house, but if you don’t take him right this minute, I can’t say that either of you are going to survive unscathed.”

He reached out and grabbed Toby, holding him awkwardly.

“Just confirm Marina’s story,” she said. “This is your son? And all the months I was taking care of you, working to support us and doing everything I could to make sure you survived, another woman was pregnant with your child? Were you just waiting to tell me until you didn’t need my help anymore?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“He’s yours?”

Graham looked down. If possible Toby was screaming louder, his tiny face screwed up in misery. “Yes.”

“Then I suggest you get used to taking care of him. His mother left and didn’t look back. She doesn’t want him, and as you probably figured out a year ago, neither do I.”

Then she turned and walked back through a parting Red Sea of guests who looked as if they would rather be slaves in Pharaoh’s Egypt than at this party to celebrate Graham’s good fortune.

4

From the master bedroom addition over the sunroom Lilia listened as the last of the guests fled. At first she had simply trembled with her back to the door and stared out the windows. But by the time someone called her name from the hallway she had positioned a carry-on suitcase on the Hawaiian appliqué quilt her mother had given her on her wedding day and begun to pack. She didn’t answer, but the door opened, and Carrick appeared in the doorway.

He was the first to speak. “Regan has an extra bed at her place. And you know I have a spare bedroom.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “You should be with your date.”

“We drove separately. Julie’s gone.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m going home.” She was torn between continuing to pack so she could leave faster, or asking him the question she hadn’t outside. The question won. She faced him.

“Did you know, Carrick? About Toby? I hope to God you weren’t keeping Graham’s secret, too.”

“I had no idea.”

She studied his expression. Carrick looked both furious and wounded, but she knew her question wasn’t the cause of either. “Okay.”

“He knew what I would say if he’d told me. Maybe he was trying to use every bit of strength just to stay alive.”

“Don’t make excuses for him!”

“I’m not.”

“He was your best friend before I even met you. I’m not going to ask you to choose. I’ll make it easy. I won’t be here.”

When she turned away he joined her at the bedside where she had begun packing again. He perched on the edge, long denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him, but his posture wasn’t relaxed. Carrick was holding himself like a man walking a tightrope.

“Lilia, these past awful months I’ve been right there with you. I know what you’ve gone through. Days, even nights at the hospital, then home to change clothes and go out to design appointments, or work on the website, or head out to your storage unit to be sure The Swallow’s Nest orders were being processed correctly. Dealing with your employees and doing whatever you could with Graham’s. You hardly ate or slept. Nobody could have done more to keep everything going until Graham recovered. If he did.”

She remembered an evening when Carrick had asked if she was experiencing sympathy lymphoma. He’d offered to shave her head if she wanted to enhance the effect. Then he’d marched her out of Graham’s hospital room for fish tacos and a chopped salad and sat with her to make sure she ate every bite.

Her hands hovered over the suitcase, but she couldn’t force herself to fold the T-shirt she was holding. “How could he have done this to me? To us?”

He touched her shoulder, his fingers warm against her skin, but he removed his hand quickly. He didn’t move closer, aware, she supposed, that she would either fall completely apart if he held her or, worse, she would shove him away. “I don’t know. I really don’t, but you need an answer. I don’t think you can leave without knowing.”

“Do you know what she said to me? What Marina said? She said I might hate her, or something to that effect, but at least she’d given that baby life—” her voice broke “—when I couldn’t even be bothered to have Graham’s baby.”

“Lilia...”

She cleared her throat. “I wanted children. Before he got sick I thought we were ready. Graham was the one who held back. We had that possibility of a television show, and he kept saying the time should be exactly right. Then when it wasn’t, when it was the worst possible time to have a baby, when we had absolutely no idea whether he would live or die, he begged me to get pregnant. Just like that. After the diagnosis and before chemo. Out of nowhere. He wanted me to do everything to keep us going and have a baby, too. And we had no idea if he would even live to see it born!”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Although I guess that question was answered. He did live to see his son, didn’t he?”

“You have to talk to him.”

“No, I’m going home. I stayed in San Jose the whole time he was sick. I missed a wedding, a christening. I need my family.”

“Plan to come back.”

“Are you speaking as my lawyer? Can Graham divorce me for desertion if I leave?”

“Not in California. I’m talking about The Swallow’s Nest, Lilia. You’ve built your whole business on making a home and a happy marriage, and you need to figure out how you’re going to explain this to your readers. If you leave Graham and leave this house, everything crumbles to dust. And we both know your financial situation is beyond precarious. You can’t afford to walk away.”

He was right. The house was her one real asset, but she couldn’t sell it to fund a new life because it was heavily mortgaged, first to pay for renovations and the audition tape she and Graham had made for a potential television series, then refinanced yet again to help with medical bills and the loss of his income. If she sold it now she would be homeless and still in debt.

Then there was her life’s work, her reputation as a designer whom local and internet clients could count on. And what about the readers who loved her website because she shared her own stories to help them gain the confidence to share theirs?

She was too confused to think it through. She spaced her words for emphasis. “I am too angry to talk to him now.”

“Then just listen. Regan has the baby. Your guests are gone—”

“No surprise.”

“Graham’s a mess.”

She hoped it was true. “Apparently I’ve used up my store of sympathy.”

“You don’t have to sympathize. You need facts. After you hear what he has to say you can take time to think this over.”

“What is Graham going to do with that baby? I’ve never seen him hold one. Does he know he’ll have to support his head? Put him on his back to sleep? When he’s with my nieces and nephews he watches them like he’s at the zoo.”

“I guess he’s about to learn fast.”

“Right, or maybe he’ll go back to his baby-mama and ask her to take them both in. A happy little family.”

“I don’t know what Graham was thinking when he slept with Marina Tate, but I do know she’s not the one he wants.”

“Well, I don’t want him. I don’t want a husband who sleeps with somebody else, finds out she’s pregnant and forgets to tell me.”

“He’s been suffering. The depression? The way he pushed us both away at times? He was ashamed and probably torn up about what to do.”

“You’re defending him!”

“No, I’m just struggling to figure it out. And it is a struggle, but then nobody’s ever told me I might only have months to live.”

Still clutching the T-shirt, she met his eyes. Part of Carrick’s nature was to see both sides of every situation, which made him an excellent lawyer. But while he was fair, he was also human, and she heard anger resonating in his voice. Now she saw it shining in his green eyes. And he wasn’t angry at her.

“Will you drive me to the airport? If you feel that’s taking sides, I’ll ask Regan.”

“Of course I will, but do you have a reservation?”

She gave a shake of her head. “I just want to get out of here.”

“I’ll see what’s available and when.”

“I would appreciate that.”

He got up, but he didn’t move away. “Please, take your time making big decisions.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t give Graham that advice, what...a year ago?”

“He didn’t make a decision. He made a mistake.”

“That poor little baby.” Despite everything, Lilia felt a stab of sympathy for Toby, whose entrance into this difficult world had been doomed from the start. A mother who didn’t want him, a father who hadn’t acknowledged him, and a stepmother who until today hadn’t even known he existed.

She was a stepmother. For as long as she stayed married to Graham, her relationship to the little boy who had been dumped into her arms as unceremoniously as a bag of garbage actually had a name. It seemed inconceivable, like everything else that had happened in the past half hour.

Carrick started toward the door. “I’m going to send him up.”

She wasn’t going to stay in the house a moment longer than she needed to, so it was now or not at all. She finally folded the shirt. “You do that. But tell him he only has as long as it takes me to finish packing.”

She was returning from the bathroom with a bag of travel-sized toiletries when she saw Graham had come into their bedroom and closed the door behind him.

He looked as pale as she had ever seen him, paler than the terrible day in the hospital when his heart had stopped, and she had been evicted from his room as hospital staff revived him. His blue eyes were almost startling against his white skin, and his forehead was dotted with sweat. He leaned against the door, as if he was afraid his knees might buckle without support.

For the first time since his diagnosis, she felt no trace of sympathy and no surge of love. She only felt anger, cold and deadly.

He didn’t quite meet her eyes. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She was shaking with emotion, but she managed to hold her head high. “How about this? You slept with Marina and she got pregnant. And you decided to keep that little tidbit to yourself.”

She went to the closet, took down her largest purse and slipped the bag of toiletries inside it. When he didn’t answer she took a deep breath to steady herself before she turned.

“How many times did you sleep with her, Graham, or have you become such a practiced liar you’ll lie about that, too?”

“Once, Lilia. Just once, I swear. The night you and I fought about having a baby.”

“As a kid you probably got everything you asked for. I guess having somebody say no to you didn’t compute.”

“There are no excuses or explanations good enough.”

“Just tell the truth then. All of it. And quickly, because I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

His speech was halting, as if he were dragging the words from a deep well. “I was an emotional disaster. I guess I can’t say ‘was.’ I still am. I saw a black hole instead of a future, and all I could think about that night was that I was going to die and leave nothing important behind. I was going to die and no part of me was going to live on. I latched on to the idea of having a baby as proof I’d been on this earth. Of course you knew better than to go along with me, but that night I couldn’t see how right you were. I went to a bar near a house I was renovating, and Marina was there. We’d gone there together a few times with others from the project. It was a place she liked.”

“What exactly was going on between you?”

“Nothing.” He paused, and then he shrugged. “I liked her. She liked me, but she knew I was married. She even came to a party here and met you. I guess there were a few harmless sparks. It never bothered me and maybe it was kind of nice to flirt a little. I knew nothing was going to happen.”

“And then it did.”

“If I say I wasn’t myself that night it’ll sound like I’m using cancer as an excuse to behave badly. But I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t thinking rationally. She invited me back to her place for a drink. I didn’t want to come home. I was too upset you were refusing to give me the one thing I thought I needed. I went.”

She was shaking; her voice was shaking. “Let me guess. Out of nowhere Marina seduced you. None of this was your fault. You went along for the ride because you were too sick to resist.”

“No. I didn’t try to stop what happened. I guess I knew right from the moment I followed her home how the night might end, but I also knew what was waiting for me in the months ahead. For that night I just wanted to be a man, not a man with cancer.”

“And birth control?”

“She had condoms. At the last minute I didn’t use one, and she didn’t insist.”

“You hoped she would get pregnant?”

“The chances seemed so small. I left it up to the universe.”

She was glad he was standing too far away to slap. “What a strange place to get religious. In bed. You think God wanted a baby to be born into those circumstances? First cancer made you do it, then God?”

“There are no words that even begin to cover how sorry I am or how stupid I was. I know how screwed up the whole thing is.”

“Did you think that she and that baby were just going to disappear? That a woman like Marina was just going to let this catastrophe go on and on and never tell anybody? Were you hoping you could have two happy families and one of them would never know? How stupid could you be?”

“I haven’t thought about anything else. Not since Marina told me she was pregnant. I knew I had to tell you. I knew I had to fix this somehow so I could keep you and Toby in my life, but I couldn’t find a way.”

“You’ve had almost a year to come up with one, haven’t you?” She waited a moment until she had swallowed angry tears. “And in none of that time could you think of any way to tell me what you had done?”

“How could I? I was terrified you would leave. And not because I needed your help. Because I need you. I love you.”

“But the moment I refused to give you what you wanted, you found another woman who would.”

“Please, don’t leave, Lilia. I know it’s asking too much, but please, don’t leave me. From the moment I walked out of Marina’s apartment I’ve wanted to beg you to forgive me. I just couldn’t find a way to say it. Because I was afraid of this, afraid you’d go.”

“Here’s a tip. You can find a nanny in the yellow pages. Or a day care center.”

“I don’t want a nanny. I want you.”

She met his eyes. “I’m going home, Graham. That’s another thing I gave up for you this year. My family. Now I’m going to see them.”

“Please come back.”

“You’ve said what you came to say. I’ve listened, which is all I said I would do. Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

He didn’t answer.

She hadn’t really believed things might get worse, but now she realized that something else was coming. “What about Toby? You don’t know anything about babies. Are you going to ask Marina to take him back? Maybe she just wanted you to acknowledge him.”

He put his hand to his forehead, as if to brush away hair that still wasn’t long enough to be a nuisance. “There is something else. You need to know one more thing.”

For a moment she wasn’t sure she could listen. “Make it fast.”

“Marina didn’t want to have the baby. Especially after she found out I was sick and might not be around to support them both.”

She knew better than to respond. She clenched her teeth and waited.

“I...convinced her to finish out the pregnancy by promising to pay her. A lot.”

He stopped, but he didn’t have to go on, because suddenly she knew. “Your trust fund? The one that tanked the last time the stock market dipped? The one we really needed for medical expenses so I didn’t have to mortgage this house?”

“I lied to you. That money was well invested. But I couldn’t live with myself if Marina hadn’t gone through with the pregnancy. The whole thing was my fault, and an abortion would have been, too.”

“You gave her all of it? At one time the fund was worth, what, almost a hundred thousand dollars?”

“I gave her half and promised to give her the rest when Toby was born. But at the last minute I had to use it for my final round of chemo. Our insurance refused to cover the drug the doctors wanted to try, and they rejected the claim. They called the drug experimental, but my team said it was vital.”

“I know that, but you told me the insurance paid it after you appealed.”

“Because I couldn’t tell you I’d paid the bill myself with money from a trust fund I’d already told you was worthless.”

“What an accomplished liar you are!”

“Marina was furious, as she had the right to be, and that’s probably why she brought Toby here today. But that’s the end of the lies, Lilia. The absolute truth. All of it. One terrible mistake that just kept growing.”

“And now you have a baby to take care of when you can hardly take care of yourself. And nothing to live on.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

She was rarely sarcastic, but nothing stopped her now. “Maybe Marina will take you back. You can tell her how awful I am, like you did the night you used her like a broodmare.”

He winced. “Lilia, Marina won’t be in the picture. She hasn’t wanted Toby from the beginning, and now she’s abandoned him to me.”

A stab of sympathy for the other woman surprised her. “As strange as it seems, maybe I can see her point. She told me on the porch that you had promised her so much more. You lied to both of us.”

“I never promised her anything except money. We never talked about a future together, I swear. She was reading what she wanted into a one-night stand.”

“A one-night stand with a man intent on proving his manhood and his fertility. It’s no wonder she was a bit confused. If she was.”

“I’ve screwed up so many lives. I’m so sorry.”

“As exit lines go, that works. I’ll be out of here in a few minutes, and then you’ll have lots of time to wallow in all the damage you’ve done.”

She thought she was finished, but she realized she couldn’t be. Not yet. Because even though her flash of sympathy for Marina had come and gone, she was still worried about the other person in this drama.

She turned her back to him. “That baby is the biggest loser here, isn’t he? He never asked to be born. And he sure never asked to be born to the two of you. Whatever else you do, make sure he’s taken care of. Toby’s more than your selfish bid for immortality. He’s flesh and blood, and no matter how he came into this world, he deserves better than you wallowing in self-pity and wringing your hands for the next weeks. His mother doesn’t want him, and his self-absorbed father has no clue how to give him what he needs. Find somebody to help you who can act like an adult, and find somebody fast.”

“Please, come back when you’re ready.”

“I’ll have to come back to settle things. Other than that?” She shrugged. “In the meantime if you have any suggestions on how I explain this little upheaval in our perfect marriage to my readers, let me know.”

“Is there anything I can do except tell you again how much I love you and how sorry I am?”

“You can leave. Now.”

A moment later the door closed behind him. She was alone.

She dropped to the side of the bed where Carrick had been and closed her eyes, trying to calm her roiling stomach. Through all the turmoil and terror of his illness, she and Graham had stood together and faced whatever came their way. Now she was alone. When it seemed his chances of survival were slim, she had learned to face a future without him. But she had never expected to face a future without him because he had betrayed her.

No part of her wanted to call him back to forgive him. But a part of her wished it were yesterday, when whether her husband lived or died was her worst problem. Yesterday she wouldn’t have believed how insignificant life and death could seem today.